Kantar has released their latest mobile OS market share report for the month ending July 2014, and to be honest, it doesn’t present a very pretty picture for Windows Phone in several regions. The market share is following a falling trend if we compare it with the same quarter last year. Other interesting facts presented in the latest report is the dominance of the Chinese OEM Xiaomi in its region, claiming the top spot in the one of the biggest smartphone markets — China — with a market share of 31.6 percent.
Coming over to the operating system share, Android tops the charts in all regions, followed by iOS and Windows Phone for the second and third spot — except Italy where Windows Phone boasts a 13 percent market share surpassing iOS which is at 11 percent. In the US, there’s hardly a change in Windows Phone market shared year-on-year, rose from 3.8 to 3.9 percent, even if we compare it with the previous quarter.
As for Great Britain, the market share went up from 7.1 percent to 9.9 percent, but it’s still not enough to surpass iOS, and it also went up in Italy from 7.9 percent to 13 percent compared to the statistics a year ago. The remaining EU5 region countries — Spain, France and Germany — saw a decline in the market share of Microsoft’s operating system.
The picture isn’t too bright in China either, which is one of the biggest smartphone markets in the world. Windows Phone currently resides at 0.8 percent market share, which is definitely not a good sign for Microsoft. We’ve seen several Chinese OEMs embrace Windows Phone, and it would be interesting to see how things turn out in the next few months.
The table below lists the major markets, along with the market shares of different operating systems with year-to-year change.
Despite Microsoft’s efforts to waive off license fees, and offering up Windows Phone 8.1, things aren’t going directly in the company’s favor it seems. Several OEMs are expected to launch high-end devices powered by Windows Phone, but we’re not sure if it will turn out the way Microsoft wants it to.
