There will be more mobile subscriptions than people in the world in 2014 and Amazon is a bigger player in the mobile industry than Microsoft, according to an annual survey of mobile insiders conducted and produced by Bellevue-based mobile analyst Chetan Sharma.
The survey found that Google, Apple and Samsung are the biggest players in the mobile ecosystem, and that both Amazon and Facebook are more important in the industry than Microsoft.
Respondents believe the biggest breakthrough mobile categories of 2014 will be the trend of connected devices, also known as the internet of things, followed by wearable technology, big data and analytics, and mobile cloud computing.
That’s good news for the Seattle area. There are a growing number of big data and cloud computing startups here, as well as two of the largest cloud services providers: Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
The survey also showed that analysts expect Google’s Android operating system to continue to dominate in terms of number of devices sold but that Apple’s iOS will continue to be the largest operating system in terms of revenue.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Surface tablets have a category of their own now (rather than just being included in “other”), but the devices are still well below the competition in terms of both market share and revenue. Survey respondents felt that would continue to be true for the next two years.
“While Windows made a bold entry with Surface, the lack of coherent strategy and execution has left the platform way behind in numbers,” Sharma wrote in his description of the survey’s findings.