“Research firm IDC has released its latest estimates of current market share for major smartphone operating systems, and its forecast for what the business will look like in 2016,” Harry McCracken writes for TIME Magazine. “The new data–which says that Android and iOS will go into decline while BlackBerry flatlines and Windows Phone booms — is getting lots of coverage, all of which treats it respectfully.”

MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, um, Harry doesn’t read us. Not that we blame him; he likely has his reasons.

“But when I read IDC’s projections, my instinctive response is the same as it always is when a research company makes these forecasts: How the heck would it know what’s going to happen to smartphones? How could anyone?” McCracken wonders. “IDC makes its estimates on an ongoing basis; we always know its breakdown of current smartphone share and its forecast for four years from now. Judging from the past couple of years, the business is already changing in ways that IDC failed to anticipate. Its 2016 projections are sharply different from the ones it made in 2011 for 2015, which were a far cry from its 2010 projections for 2014. All of which leaves me deeply skeptical about the whole exercise.”

McCracken writes, “We don’t know a thing about what any of these operating systems will be like in a few years. Without that knowledge, it’s impossible to have an informed opinion about how they’ll fare.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Thank you, Captain Obvious.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "DustyMac" for the heads up.]

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IDC: Windows Phone to pass Apple’s iOS by 2016 – June 6, 2012
IDC: Windows Phone to surpass Apple’s iOS by 2015 – June 10, 2011