In an article about Microsoft's smart phone hopes and dreams, some interesting numbers are revealed:
Around 118 million smartphones were sold last year, according to market researcher Canalys.
Symbian captured 67 percent of the OS market.
Microsoft came in second at 13 percent.
RIM [in third place] took 10 percent.
Microsoft says it will sell almost 20 million copies of its Windows Mobile OS in fiscal 2008, which ends June 30. The previous year (July 2006 to June 2007), the company sold 11 million units. It's goal is to capture 40 percent of the smartphone market by (fiscal?) 2012. If the smart phone market doesn't grow at all in the interim (and it will, of course) that means that Microsoft will need to sell almost 50 million units a year, over twice what it's now doing. Given recent excitement around devices from Apple and Google's Android platform, it's unclear how this can happen, but there you go.
Oh, and did I mention recently that Windows Mobile is crap? Because it is.