Windows Phone jumping to No. 2 in smartphone market by 2015?

Microsoft's partnership with Nokia has the potential to push the Windows Phone ecosystem into the number 2 spot in the smartphone operating system market share by 2015.

At least according to Wayne Lam, a senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS iSuppli, who asserted as much in the market intelligence firm's latest report about the positive response for the Nokia Lumia 900 after it was unveiled last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Senior principal analyst Francis Sideco concurred, adding that "the introduction of the Lumia 900 shows that Nokia believes the road back to smartphone dominance runs through North America."

The report stipulates that this is because the Lumia 900 was designed with a North American audience in mind instead of Nokia's traditional route of re-purposing handhelds sold elsewhere and then bringing them over here.

More so, the 4G LTE-ready Lumia 900 has top-notch specs, including a 4.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen and a 12-megapixel camera.

IHS isn't the only research firm with solid confidence in the Windows Phone platform. A report published by Connected Intelligence, a service of the research firm NPD Group, in September posited that Microsoft's mobile OS has serious potential to give Android (the current market leader) some more competition.

As of ComScore's latest figures recording the U.S. mobile market share as of November, Google still controlled nearly half of the mobile OS playing field at 46.9 percent. Apple was in second place at 28.7 percent, while Microsoft was still in fourth place with only 5.2 percent -- a 0.5 percent decrease from the previous month.

But leading up to 2015, there are plenty of other factors to consider before iSuppli's predictions for Windows Phone come true, including how the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem pans out and inevitably with whatever Apple comes up with in the next couple of years.

Obviously, we'll also know better as to how feasible this prediction is once Windows Phone 8 is finally released.

[Table via IHS iSuppli]

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