Microsoft plan to steal market share from iOS and Android by 2019 by virtue of Windows phone

According to analytics firm IDC, Android will have 79.4% of the global smartphone market at the end of this year. With 1.15 billion units forecast to ship in 2015, IDC expects Android to show 8.5% growth in shipments this year. Apple's iOS, with an expected 237 million iPhones shipped this year, is next with 16.4% of the global market. This would represent 23% growth year-over-year. Windows Phone will have the fastest growth this year with a 34.1% growth rate. That will give the platform a 3.2% slice of the smartphone pie with 46.8 million Windows Phone handsets shipping this year.

But what does the future look like? IDC set its sights to 2019 and predicts that 1.5 billion Android handsets will ship that year giving Google's open source OS a 79% share of the global smartphone market. It will also give the Android OS a compounded annual growth rate of 7.5% over the five years. In 2019, IDC sees iOS with 14.2% of the market. Apple will ship 274.5 million iPhones that year according to the forecast, garnering a compounded growth rate of 7.3% for iOS. 

Lastly, Windows Phone will see its share of the global smartphone market rise to 5.4% in 2019 according to IDC. That will be the result of 103.5 million Windows Phone handsets shipping that year. The platform's five year compounded growth rate is forecast to be 24.3%, more than triple the compounded growth rates that IDC expects for Android and iOS.

Of course, these figures are all nothing more than guesses made by IDC and anything could happen between now and 2019. Maybe we should just ask Cortana for her prediction.