Windows 7 has received big thumbs up in the predictions that were released by experts at Ovum for telecom industry in year 2011. The predictions show Windows 7 as the fastest growing platform for Smartphones. The prediction comes as big surprise as experts has indicated the telecom markets in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe will witness intense competition which will lead to lower prices which will affect the segment growth as the margins shrink further to a new level.
Asia and Africa still have potential customers. These potential customers are people who live in rural areas. The rural areas are mostly not attractive to service providers due to the difficulty in reaching customers and the costs involved.
The telecoms predictions indicate that service providers will start begin to feel the pinch as the revenue growth rates will become rarer. Service providers will have to satisfy themselves with a single digit or at the most low double digit growth and this pattern will be become a norm for almost every service provider operating in regions such as Latin America and Eastern Europe. In such market scenario the competition between service providers will be focused on winning market share of rival companies to keep the revenue coming.
However, not everything is bleak for telecom sector in 2011. The smartphones which were only popular in developed economies and markets will cut through the barriers and enter the emerging market. The reason that is given for proliferation of smartphones in emerging markets is increased availability of mid range devices and significant drop in their prices. This will bring in customers who wanted to enjoy the better, bigger and faster devices at lower prices. This will invariably cause the prices of the services to drop as companies compete with each other to increase their customer base. The operators will be forced to increase their cost efficiency efforts in order to deliver as per customer expectations as well as to retain margins.
Ovum analyst have mentioned in their prediction that when the smartphones proliferation become more common, the customer preference will mostly focus on the operating platform of smartphones. Windows 7 is likely to emerge as winner as Microsoft is dominant player in IT for long period of time. Customers always prefer a unique and desirable interface for their devices and Windows 7 has the capability to give the customer an experience which was only possible till now with Apple’s iPhone.
Meanwhile, in the present situation, Android is considered to be the winner in terms of popularity among mobile developers, followed by the iPhone. Android offers preset, but customizable software for the OEMs, which is not run by the limits of any single device manufacturer.
