Why Windows Phones international presence matters.
I think most people are largely ignorant that there is a world outside of their personal bubble and are completely negligent of the impact the other people in the rest of the world have the potential for.
Anyway, I thought of a new reason that might explain, aside from pure numbers, why developer traction is picking up on Windows Phone lately, and that reason is the OS's success outside of developed countries.
An article I read today said that in Vietnam the percentage of handsets running Windows Phone jumped up to 24% this year. In terms of market share, this is definitely one of the biggest countries for the platform, but this upward trend is many developing nations is actually not uncommon at all. India and China are 2 HUGE markets where Windows Phone is actually doing very well.
So, why does this (or should this) matter to applications developers? Most of the more popular services out there like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc... are free platforms. Their revenue tends to be tied up in advertising, either directly or indirectly, or in some form of optional features. These companies only find success in volume and they only grow by expanding that user base.
Once your service saturates the North American market, where do you go from there? Your investors will expect or even demand growth. And that means expanding into markets like India or China. Countries, which by the way, are larger in terms of population and population density (over a billion people in each country) than the United States.
It is easy to ignore a platform like Windows Phone in North America where the market share is sub-5% and shrank over the last quarter. At 2.7% (which I read somewhere today) and assuming every single one of the 313 million people own a phone... that would be just a paltry 8.45 million Windows Phone users.
But, in a country of 1.3 Billion like India, with a 5+% market share and rising, that number is 65 million. That's about 20% of the population of the US. In other words, the market for Windows Phone users in India could potentially be larger than the market for iPhones in the US.
In countries like Vietnam where growth has exploded to take over nearly a quarter of the market, it really isn't impossible to imagine that there might be some countries, where in the next 5 years, WP actually surpasses Android. In North America, or even globally as a whole, this isn't likely. But, it definitely seems possible in some countries.
And, if markets, especially ones like India and China which have close to 1/3 of the worlds population, continue to see growth, any app developer that wishes to go global won't be able to ignore the platform for long.
Also, the effect is cyclical. As more apps move to the platform, more users move. As more users move, more developer momentum is generated. For those who have said and continue to say that Microsoft should abandon Windows Phone, they should really stop basing their arguments on the success of the platform locally. On the whole, the platform is alive and well.
Anyway, I thought of a new reason that might explain, aside from pure numbers, why developer traction is picking up on Windows Phone lately, and that reason is the OS's success outside of developed countries.
An article I read today said that in Vietnam the percentage of handsets running Windows Phone jumped up to 24% this year. In terms of market share, this is definitely one of the biggest countries for the platform, but this upward trend is many developing nations is actually not uncommon at all. India and China are 2 HUGE markets where Windows Phone is actually doing very well.
So, why does this (or should this) matter to applications developers? Most of the more popular services out there like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc... are free platforms. Their revenue tends to be tied up in advertising, either directly or indirectly, or in some form of optional features. These companies only find success in volume and they only grow by expanding that user base.
Once your service saturates the North American market, where do you go from there? Your investors will expect or even demand growth. And that means expanding into markets like India or China. Countries, which by the way, are larger in terms of population and population density (over a billion people in each country) than the United States.
It is easy to ignore a platform like Windows Phone in North America where the market share is sub-5% and shrank over the last quarter. At 2.7% (which I read somewhere today) and assuming every single one of the 313 million people own a phone... that would be just a paltry 8.45 million Windows Phone users.
But, in a country of 1.3 Billion like India, with a 5+% market share and rising, that number is 65 million. That's about 20% of the population of the US. In other words, the market for Windows Phone users in India could potentially be larger than the market for iPhones in the US.
In countries like Vietnam where growth has exploded to take over nearly a quarter of the market, it really isn't impossible to imagine that there might be some countries, where in the next 5 years, WP actually surpasses Android. In North America, or even globally as a whole, this isn't likely. But, it definitely seems possible in some countries.
And, if markets, especially ones like India and China which have close to 1/3 of the worlds population, continue to see growth, any app developer that wishes to go global won't be able to ignore the platform for long.
Also, the effect is cyclical. As more apps move to the platform, more users move. As more users move, more developer momentum is generated. For those who have said and continue to say that Microsoft should abandon Windows Phone, they should really stop basing their arguments on the success of the platform locally. On the whole, the platform is alive and well.
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