Sure, things aren’t fantastic. Windows Phone handsets haven’t caught the imagination in quite the same way as Android and iOS devices, but there’s something to celebrate at least. Stats from Kantar Worldpanel show that Windows Phone market share has hit 5.9% here in Britain. Whilst that may not seem massive it’s up from 2.2% last year.
Kantar Worldpanel Insight Director, Dominic Sunnebo stated..
At the end of 2012 the global OS picture shows Android on top, but clearly the rate of growth it experienced over the past year is beginning to slow as easy wins from first time smartphone buyers begin to reduce.
It has been far slower than Microsoft would have liked, but Windows Phone is now starting to gain respectable shares in a number of key European countries. However, its performance in the Chinese and US markets remains underwhelming. As the two largest smartphone markets in the world, these remain key challenges for Microsoft to overcome during 2013.
So where is that Windows Phone share coming from? Who is suffering as a result? Android? iOS? Nope. BlackBerry. It seems that RIM are finding things tough at the moment, although their 9320 device did sell well over Christmas as a gift.
Some 61% of phones in Great Britain are classed as “smartphones”. 82% of all phones sold in the last 12 weeks were smartphones.
Source – Kantar Worldpanel
Those Europeans are suckers for bloated proprietary software 🙂
I have to use a Windows phone due to my job, at first I was horrified but I now have come to like it. I think Windows isn’t as good as android or ios but I like it for that, it simple to use as a phone with everything I need to get by for work. What works well for me is that due to its restrictions I bought a surface and with the two working together there isn’t anything I can’t accomplish for work or fun. I know which device I need to do which task. Where as with the note I could in theory do anything (some would be a struggle) but because I could, I couldn’t justify the cost of an android tablet. So because it wasn’t as good I spent even more money shame for Microsoft that there aren’t more people in my scenario.