Apparently the recent snafus with the NoDo update haven’t soured IDC on the platform, as the internet research firm released a report this morning predicting that Windows Phone, with a projected 67% year-over-year growth rate, will eclipse Apple’s iPhone to become the #2 smartphone in the market worldwide.
It’s not all roses for Windows Phone in the IDC report, as Google’s Android is expected to take over as the number one smartphone platform this year, and then balloon into a dominant position by 2015, with some 45% of the market. Here are the numbers, as projected by IDC:
IDC is tracking what it calls “exceptional” smartphone market growth in 2011, and expects it to continue:
The worldwide smartphone market is expected to grow 49.2% in 2011 as more consumers and enterprise users turn in their feature phones for smartphones with more advanced features. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone vendors will ship more than 450 million smartphones in 2011 compared to the 303.4 million units shipped in 2010. Moreover, the smartphone market will grow more than four times faster than the overall mobile phone market.
As we said in our rant yesterday, this smartphone game is still in the early stages, botched starts for Microsoft notwithstanding, and we’re latching on to any piece of good news we can get about Windows Phone. Certainly this IDC report qualifies as good news, maybe things aren’t so bad after all!