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“Windows Everywhere” ought to be repurposed to “Android Everywhere,” given the state of the market for Internet-connected devices.

Shipments of new Android devices have already passed Apple and Microsoft’s sales combined, and by 2015, projections from Gartner show that they could be well on their way to eclipsing the rest of the entire connected device market.

androidThough Microsoft has worked to move Windows onto all of the form factors that Android has a presence on, an anemic consumer and OEM response to Windows Phone, compounded by the company’s stumbles with its original Surface RT tablet have put Google and Apple in the drivers’ seats of the tablet and smartphone markets.

Interestingly, Android’s success isn’t the worst news for Microsoft’s bottom line. The company is making a ton of money from licensing patents that it claims Android violates to manufacturers of devices that use Google’s operating system.

Of course, these projections rely on nobody disrupting the connected device market any time soon. It wasn’t that long ago that Microsoft was a major player in the smartphone industry, until Apple came along and turned the smartphone market on its head with the launch of the iPhone.

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