Windows Phone Bigger Than Apple IoS?

source: Statista

Forecasting is a tough challenge, even if it is natural to wonder "what will happen this year, or beyond," and something we always hear lots about at the start of a year.  

Most of us would not wish to be reminded of how wrong our own forecasts have been. 

Consider projections about market share in the mobile market made just a couple of years ago, when Microsoft purchased Nokia in 2013 and made a renewed push into the mobile operating system business. 

That move of course required analysts to make estimates of potential changes in the mobile operating system market. Many expected Windows Phone to become the third largest OS in terms of market share. 

At least a few major firms forecast that Windows Phone would eclipse eclipse Apple iOS to become the second largest OS market share. 

That is not to diminish the accuracy of other predictions made by those firms, or the overall accuracy of any other forecasts always made by market researchers, weather experts, economists and executives in general. Still, forecasting is a tough business. 

In 2011, Gartner expected that by 2015 Microsoft would have nearly 20 percent OS market share by 2015. 

But Windows Phone seems unable to grow beyond about three percent of the installed base even if recent sales share was as high as 13 percent in Italy. In the same time period in Italy, Android grew 68 percent, by way of comparison.  

It's just hard to predict the future.