This is share of sales in the last 3 months, not share of devices in the wild. It's no surprise that iPhone's sales share plummeted the last quarter before the 5S release.
Windows Mobile market share is a long way off 8.8% according to Statcounter: <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-DE-monthly-201209-201309" rel="nofollow">http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-DE-monthly-201209-20130...</a><p>That said I could believe the sales growth as Nokia are know for making great quality low end devices so there could be traction gained here as the allure of flagship phones is not as appealing/affordable for all as base technology improves.<p>IMO the best thing WM could do is create a phone that works more as a mobile base station for all your computing in the way Ubuntu Touch are attempting. The latter launching in a couple of weeks. Can't wait to try it out!
I've got the feeling the iPhone lost its cool here in the Netherlands. Suddenly the buzz is all about Nokia and HTC while Samsung and Apple are becoming less popular.<p>And I think I can understand why. The Nokia 520 is a great device for under € 170. And the HTC has a great screen, stereo sound and a very smooth designed Android version.
Shouldn't be such a surprise to anyone. Nokia has always done well in Europe. It's a trusted, recognized brand, with lots of credibility, and they had actually just started to deliver again (Lumia 1020 & amazing lower end phones). The road-map for windows phone looks good too.<p>I will admit--I have owned Windows Phones (now a 1020) only because of Nokia, and I am content with them. Sure the 1020 doesn't have all the bells and whistles from a software perspective, but the hardware is amazing and WP8 has been out for only a year. Really interesting to see how things will go with the Microsoft buy-out in the next 1-2 years. Some key people leaving, etc.<p>PS. I have grown up with the legend of the "indestructible Nokia" that cannot be killed. Let's see if Microsoft can do it.
So WP seems to be taking market share from which seems to be almost exclusively from "Other" (presumably Win Mobile and BB).<p>iOS and Android are largely either growing or holding steady (varies by country - Android could be seen as flat lining but then you look at China where it had 9% growth which suggests that might be a bit of a premature accusation).<p>So, we seem to have a market place with three players - Android, iOS and Windows Phone.<p>The question is can the market support that or will there be a drive to a single platform?<p>Personally it feels I can do most of what I do without worrying what device I have in front of me or what it's running and I don't think twice what device someone else has before e-mailing them, sending them a document or whatever. The days of having to use something similar to someone else to be able to interact seem long gone.<p>So it seems to come down to whether any particular platform can remain profitable for it's owner, for device makers and for software developers. Right now the answer to that seems to be yes for Android and iOS and maybe for WP, but it doesn't feel like there's any reason to believe that there's any inevitability about any of them dying out.
A less misleading headline would probably be "Windows Phone sales in the last 3 months double in Europe. Share of new sales trails iPhone by only 1% in Germany"
This must be bullshit. Not that I have scientific evidence, but as a app developer I got quite good at identifying a device type just by having a quick glance at it and that's what I usually do to keep me busy in public transport and other places.
What I see is about 50% iPhones, the majority being iPhone 4, not so many 4S, but also quite a few iPhone 5. Next up are Samsung phones of all kinds, with the prevalent being S3, S2 and low budget ones like the Ace. Not so many S4 though yet. HTC and everything else are kind of the underdog. And very rarely someone pulls out a BlackBerry.
But Windows Phone? I think I've seen one so far. I don't doubt there are out there, but comparing the share with the iPhone is ridiculous.
I guess "trails Android by only 70% in Germany" wasn't considered a catchy enough headline.<p>A 5 point increase from last year is certainly positive, but I think Microsoft is going to spend a lot of money to sustain that, and it's only going to get harder when they stop using the Nokia brand for smartphones.<p>Whatever Nokia was asking for those rights, Microsoft should probably have paid.
Since when is 80% increase "doubling"?<p>Still, getting close to 10% of market share is really a "massive achievement". I did not expect that. I wonder what was the main reason for people to buy it. I mean, if you're not a programmer/developer and you enter the store and see Lumia, SGS4 and iPhone4/5, how does the average customer select?
Weird way of reporting the stats (as others in this thread seem to imply) or not, just walking around in Germany is enough to realize that Windows Phone is comparatively popular there. It's very present both in real users' hands and advertising. I wonder if focusing on ROTW markets is Microsoft's strategy.
It would be sad if the only thing giving them even that share is the Nokia brand and perception that it's European. MS may have killed off the only thing Windows Phone actually had going for it in europe.
Interesting to note that iOS gained share in the US by 5.4% while Android declined by 5.6% in a quarter without new iPhones launching.<p>There may be some truth to Horace Dediu's hypothesis that Android has peaked in the US.
It's because Europeans are a bunch of idiots. They're dumb enough to let gays ruin their society and their dumb enough to use Windows Phone instead of the vastly superior iPhone.<p>There's no news here, no surprise.