If Microsoft had any vision, maybe they could, but they are pretty much reactionary these days.

I'll believe it when I see it, or possibly even later.

Considering that by 2015 iOS will be on all (remaining) us carriers by then, I seriously doubt it. Unless Apple shows up with an Etselesque iPhone 5, it's highly unlikely that Apple will be seriously affected by windows phones.

Apple has already "diversified" their iPhone line-up, as IDC suggests they should. I would expect that Apple will continue their trend of keeping a previous generation device available at a significant discount. Currently, you can purchas an iPhone 3GS for $50. That's well within reach of the commodity smartphone buyer.

$50 + a high monthly contract. If you're willing to accept an arbitrarily high monthly fee, then you can buy basically anything for $50. At least here in Sweden the 8GB 3GS is almost 4 times more expensive than the cheapest Android phone (both without contract). Until you can buy an Apple phone for $200 without any sort of contract then they'll still be far off from competing with Android in the lower end of the price spectrum.

Yeah, I guess the article does say "worldwide" market share. It's difficult, as a US consumer, to develop a view of overseas markets because things are so different here.

In the US, the differentiation you mention doesn't even exist, because all phones here come with a contract. Even obtaining "no contract" prices is difficult, and when you do get them, you still buy a locked phone that can't be used on another carrier.

It's like dealing with an organized crime syndicate.

Go to a tech conference. Count MacBooks to PCs and tell me again why the army of devs that choose Apple today will suddenly write apps for a soon to be dead Silverlight SDK?

There might be other arguments to make the point you want to but mass developer adoption is not one of them. Circa 1998 your line could have been - "Go to a tech conference. Count PCs to Macbooks and tell me again why the army of devs that choose Microsoft today will suddenly write apps for a soon to be dead <insert technology here>?". Developers largely follow users - so I look at apples enthusiastic userbase as a much more effective moat than Apple's popularity with developers.

What will iOS be by 2015? When we are not able to predict what comes after iOS 5 how can IDC predict/project an arbitrary conclusion? Just doesn't make any sense!