Exemplary Final Report Research on Understanding Microsoft’s Operating System’s Weak Smartphone Market Share

Marketing Research

Executive Summary – Background
Smartphone ownership and usage is at an all-time high. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s operating system (OS) has never had a competitive market share in the cellular industry. Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS have dominated the market despite Microsoft’s efforts to increase their popularity—and ultimately their demand. Underlying reasoning for Microsoft’s shortfalls in the cellular industry were unclear at first. Predicted problems included Microsoft’s absence when the smartphone craze arose, and their inability to effectively market their competitive advantage over the competition. Today, Microsoft owns only roughly 4% of the U.S. smartphone market share (Lella.).
Based on research, our group wanted to know what should be done to recover Microsoft’s awareness in the smartphone industry as a competitive smartphone operating system. Research objectives were aimed at discovering college students’ general perspectives concerning smartphone brands, and the major motives for students to purchase Android or iOS based smartphones. The last research objective was designed to learn the reasoning for Microsoft’s low popularity in the cellular market, and what could potentially be done to produce more demand.
Executive Summary – Results
After conducting research, the results coincided with the predictions. In general, consumers did not have negative or distorted views of Microsoft OS based smartphones. Instead, they grew to love the operating system most popular with their friends or family. Similar to Microsoft’s saturated presence in the PC world, Android and iOS acquired large market shares by not only entering the market first but also with competitive products. College students didn’t