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The Future of Phones: Forever Unknowable

In a release exuberantly titled “Lumia 900 Introduction to Trigger Smartphone Renaissance for Nokia and Microsoft,” IHS iSuppli analyst Wayne Lam has some predictions about where the phone market is going between now and 2015:

Largely based on Nokia’s strong support, Windows Phone is set to regain the No. 2 rank in the smartphone operating system in 2015. Finnish-based Nokia in 2009 lost its second-place worldwide ranking because of rising competition from Google Inc.’s Android and Apple Inc.’s iOS.

In 2015, however, Windows Phone will account for 16.7 percent of the smartphones shipped, up from less than 2 percent in 2011, according to the IHS iSuppli Mobile & Wireless Communications Service at information and analysis provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). This will allow Windows Phone to slightly surpass Apple’s iOS to retake the market’s second rank behind Android, as presented in the table below.

That’s awfully confident-sounding. Windows Phone is “set” to become #2 by 2015 and “will” have market share of 16.7 percent and “will” overtake iOS. And hey, it’s an analyst who knows his stuff doing the talking, so the rest of us should pay attention.

But as Todd Bishop of GeekWire points out, iSuppli also released smartphone projections in 2009. Back then, it thought that the operating system then known as Windows Mobile would hit the #2 position by 2013, not 2015. And the #1 operating system in 2013? Why, that was, um, set to be Symbian. An operating system which is already so moribund in early 2012 that iSuppli no longer bothers to break it out into its own line.

A reasonable and well-informed person might express opinions about the long-term prospects for various mobile operating systems. Expecting Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone to result in a substantial spike in sales isn’t the least bit nutty. But making market-share forecasts for 2015–down to the decimal point!–and discussing them as if they were factual is goofy at best and disingenuous at worst.

The only prediction I feel safe making about smartphones in 2015 is that it will be startling if nothing disruptive has happened in the category by then…and once a category gets disrupted, all bets are off. (Strangely enough, this 2006 story about phone market share in 2010 doesn’t mention the iPhone or Android.)

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New Mobile AdWords Targeting Options: WiFi & OS Version

If you are an advertiser using Google AdWords you need to pay attention to the latest Google update. Advertisers can now target mobile devices that are using WiFi, as well as target what type of OS the mobile phone has.

Mobile users are taking the internet by storm. Mobile users are becoming a large portion of several combines advertising budget. With recent updates in mobile and Google now crawling mobile pages, it’s becoming an area advertisers shouldn’t ignore.

WiFi Targeting

This new feature will allow you to target mobile devices that have a WIFI connection. This is very important to advertisers that require a high speed connection to view your website. Good for many intense websites that have video or other high bandwidth content that you want to target mobile only consumers.

You can set up different campaigns to target users on WIFI connections that are on different networks as well. This will help you expand your reach and target consumers that can actually view your content.

I suggest trying this out, I have found that when you test this option that you get lower bounce rates as well as people spending longer on the site. With customers pages landing pages loading faster, it give the customer much more of a reason to go to the next page. This also eliminates the slow loading page on the mobile phone.

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