The mobile operating systems war is dominated by Android and iOS, followed by Microsoft’s Windows Phone far behind in the third position. Microsoft’s operating system hasn’t gained a lot of traction for some time, except in a few regions where it has seen some growth. The software giant hopes to turn things around with the upcoming Windows 10 for phones operating system, but there’s still some time left before it’s available officially — users can give it a go by signing up for the Windows Insiders program, but it’s not the final product and you may encounter bugs.
Not too long ago, the folks at Kantar WorldPanel released their smartphone sales figures for the first quarter of 2015. The numbers aren’t too surprising for Windows Phone, but there are some European countries where the operating system has seen growth. The rest, as we all know, is dominated by Google and to a lesser degree, Apple, with tiny share left for the Redmond-based company.
As per the new figures, the Windows Phone market share remains constant in the US when compared with the same quarter last year, that is, 4.3 percent. There’s hardly any change in other big markets such as China, Australia, Japan etc, but it’s the EU5 region — Germany, France, Spain, Britain, and Italy — where the operating system rose to 9.9 percent in the first quarter from 8.1 percent in the same quarter last year. More specifically, the bump in the usage was experienced in France where the number sparked from 8.3 to 14.1 percent.
“If we dig a little deeper, it is easy to see the strong value proposition that the Lumia portfolio offers, as Windows phone sales in the U.S. skew towards the prepay market (20%) and installment plans (51%). Microsoft is betting that new Windows 10 functions and the ability for developers to easily port Android apps to Windows will make the Windows ecosystem more appealing,” says Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
Last week at Build, Microsoft introduced some enticing new features which will be introduced with Windows 10 for phones such as Continuum and the ability for developers to port Android, iOS, web and Win32 apps to Windows 10, making them available to work on both Windows 10 phones and desktop. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can outsell Apple and Android, but that requires a lot of work and some new hardware partners on board.
