Kantar Worldpanel has released the smartphone OS share figures for the last quarter of the year ending December, 2013, which shows Android to be the leading OS with Windows Phone stable at the third spot in most regions. Earlier this month, they mentioned in their yearly report that Microsoft’s operating system is gaining popularity and managed to grab the third spot in the ranking when compared with 2012.
According to the recent report, the Windows Phone market share remained stable with double figures in Europe, and managed to snag 10.3 percent for five European countries, including Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The year-to-year change compared to the same quarter last year has yielded positive growth for the Windows Phone operating system in most regions, except Latin America where Windows Phone saw a fall by 1.9 percent. A minimal increase is spotted in the US and other markets such as China and Australia, but they remained under the influence of Android.
The most surprising part, as seen before as well, is the Windows Phone market share on Italian shores where it surpassed iOS. iOS saw a sharp decline in the share, a massive 10.3 percent. It’s not just Italy, iOS has seen declining trend in all five major European markets when compared with the same quarter last year, which should give the Cupertino giant something to think about in the European markets.
“Windows Phone has now held double digit share across Europe for three consecutive months. Unfortunately for Nokia the European smartphone market is only growing at 3% year on year so success in this market has not been enough to turn around its fortunes – reflected in its recent disappointing results. Its performance also deteriorated toward the end of 2013 in the important growth markets of China, USA and Latin America,” according to Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
Here’s a detailed chart showing the market share of different operating systems in various smartphone markets.
Last year turned out to be good for the Redmond giant in terms of operating system share, but will it rise this year? We can’t bet on that, but it should as rumors suggest OEMs other than Nokia might launch a few Windows Phone powered handsets later this year, and should increase the competition. What do you think?
Further reading: Microsoft, Windows Phone
