The analysts from IDC just published their forecast on the smartphone market development in the next five years and it contains some pretty interesting numbers. Apparently the future is bright for Microsoft and its WP7 mobile OS. According to IDC, it should climb to a global number two spot in the next four years.

In the lead Android has little to worry about as it will be nearing a 40% market share over the course of this year. An increase in sales by 23.8% over each of the following four years will let it increase that even further to an estimated 45.4% in 2012 when Nokia is supposed to make its first large-scale move with WP7 devices.

Naturally a large part of those increases will come at the expense of Symbian, which will be rapidly losing ground in the years to come. The Nokia platform will be down to 20.9% before 2011 has ended and with a 0.2% market share, Symbian will be virtually non-existent in 2015.

The sales of iOS and BlackBerry devices will be growing by 17.1% a year and 18.8% a year respectively until 2015, but that would actually mean they are underperforming the market. That will lead to a slight slip in their market shares iOS will be running on 15.3% of all smartphones in 2015, while BlackBerry OS will only be powering 13.7%.