Windows Phone has had a pretty busy year with a lot of awesome devices being launched and lots of marketing happening around them. But has all that money and effort meant something or was it just wasted?
A new report from Kantar seems to say yes, all that time and energy are adding up to something. According to their data Windows Phone has been growing steadily in most markets. What’s even more encouraging is that this report stops at the end of November so the Windows Phone 8 devices don’t factor in.
The report shows that Windows Phone has become quite popular in Italy with a year over year increase of 8.2% in market share. Great Britain sits in second place with a 3.4% increase, most likely due to Nokia’s efforts and good prices. The US is still a tough nut to crack for Microsoft and OEMs with only a marginal increase of 0.6%.
Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at Kantar commented:
Although Windows [Phone] sales in the US remain subdued, Nokia is managing to claw back some of its share in Great Britain through keenly priced Lumia 800 and 610 prepay deals. The next period will prove crucial in revealing initial consumer reactions to the Nokia 920 and HTC Windows 8X devices.
As we mentioned earlier, it’s encouraging to see positive numbers especially considering they don’t take into account sales of the Windows Phone 8 devices such as the HTC 8X and Lumia 920 which, by all accounts, are selling very well. It will be very interesting to see what the actual sales numbers are and if there was any change in market share after this quarter, but for that we’ll have to wait until early next year.
So what do you folks think: is Windows Phone finally starting to matter in consumers" eyes? Have you seen more people using Microsoft"s mobile OS? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to check out the source link for more data points.
* EU5 refers to aggregate data across the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain