Gartner"s figures for global smart phone sales were released today and one thing is clear: it doesn"t look good for Windows phones.
When we last heard from Gartner, it was in the middle of November, 2015 and Windows Phone was down to 1.7% of sales. Today, Gartners reports show that just 1.1% of handsets sold in the fourth quarter of 2015 had Windows installed on them.
Android also took a bit of a stumble, dropping from 84.7% to 80.7%. Since Blackberry and Others both dropped from 0.3% to 0.2%, iOS was the big winner, increasing from 13.1% to 17.7%, despite the slowing growth of iPhone sales.
UPDATE: To be clear, the numbers in the last paragraph are a comparison between the third quarter of 2015 and the fourth quarter of 2015.
Samsung remains at the number one spot for devices sold; however, they did drop from 23.7% in the third quarter to 20.7% in the fourth quarter. It is, however, a gain from the same quarter in 2014.
Apple"s numbers unsurprisingly match up exactly with the iOS numbers. Huawei, Lenovo, and Xiaomi round out the rest of the list. Note that Lenovo"s sales include Motorola.
In smart phone sales for all of 2015, Samsung remains number one, despite dropping from 24.7% to 22.5%. While Apple holds steady in second place, rising from 15.4% to 15.9%, Huawei has the biggest increase on the board from 5.5% to 7.3%.
There were a total of 403 million units sold in the fourth quarter of 2015, a 9.7% growth from the fourth quarter of 2014; however, it is the slowest growth rate since 2008.
It"s important to note that these numbers reflect market share in sales. They do not reflect market share in actual usage. In terms of usage, Windows phones have a 2.8% market share.
For more on Windows phone market share, AdDuplex statistics were also made available today.
Source: Gartner