Catch up in 2014? No. Vastly continue market share? Let's hope so.
Let's be realistic. It's taken a couple years for WP to get where it's at now. It isn't going to envelop an additional 10-15% market share in the next twelve months. Android continues to pull out all the stops and Apple is sitting on TONS of cash. They know they didn't impress with the iPhone 5s/c and are going to get back into fighting shape, especially after being rewarded with some spiffy patents over the past couple months and growth for their overpriced tablets/laptops. The paid off media will cream their pants and iSheep everywhere will rejoice. And let's face it, the iPhone is still the "it" thing to have for tweens and teens. Looking around, it's easy to notice that if you're a kid and don't have an iPhone the peer pressure is pretty astounding, at least in the USA. If you have something else you might as well just recede back into the corner and sing
Subdivisions by Rush. Ah, to be young, dumb, and naive.
It's all up to Microsoft. Many people outside of the U.S. have WP because of Nokia. With the handset division bought out, Microsoft has to give Nokia sheep a reason to stay on board. After that, they just have to continue to appease everyone.
They must market smartly, cannot have haplessly incompetent PR, and continue to give reasons for developers and companies to port their apps over to WP. Yeah, I know, not Microsoft's strong suit. Obviously I want MS and WP to grow and succeed, but MS does dumb things, like improves their own products on other platforms before their own, and then remove things like Flickr/Facebook photo integration from the Photo Hub on Windows 8.1. GGGAAAHHH!!! It makes me pull my f**cking hair out. It always seems like one step forward one step back with those guys.
There are three major things MS needs to do to get MS on same market share as the others:
- Continue to get good quality first party apps
- Change perceptions. WP must work to continue to change the mindset of the media, the carriers, and the people selling these phones
- Offer people options that are missing from the other platforms and then market them so (please stop the pointless, zero content ads)
ALL consumers, WP users or not, should want WP to grow. More options = more competition = better / more inexpensive options for the consumer