Submitted by The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, for the three months to August 2013, shows Windows Phone has posted its highest ever sales share of 9.2% across the five major European markets* and is now within one percentage point of iOS in Germany. Android remains the top operating system across Europe with a 70.1% market share, but its dominant position is increasingly threatened as growth trails behind both Windows and iOS.
Good news for Microsoft – bad news for Apple. Of course, we’ll have to see how the iPhone 5S and 5C affect these numbers.
One percent? Even Linux desktops are more popular.
Within 1%.
Maybe these numbers reflect the new Nokia Lumia 986290346230 which gone on sale last weekend. This one will turn things around.
I guess that goes to show you that it is possible to take market share these days, its just very expensive and time consuming. BlackBerry looks dead, maybe they just needed to double down for the next 2 years with a giant marketing push.
Blackberry’s marketing “highpoint” these past few years was when the chavs in England started the riots with the help of BBM. They could’ve used that to market their brand to more chavs, but alas, RIM thought they were better than that. Beggars really can’t afford to be choosers.
Joking aside, while I can’t really give a rat’s ass about Blackberry/RIM, it’s still shame to see QNX die like this.
Not gonna happen. At worst Blackberry will be sold for parts, and somebody else will pick QNX. The automotive infotainment market can only keep growing in the near to medium future, and QNX is pretty much the gold standard there.
Isn’t the automotive infotainment market shifting more towards linking to the driver’s smartphone?
Yes and no.
The driver’s phone (or any phone that is paired via Bluetooth and in range, could be a passenger’s), is regarded as the primary source of data, e.g. media files, etc.
So you get into the car, the car recognizes your phone and becomes the primary interface for the combined functionality.
Music plays through the car’s speakers, music and calls are controlled through interface elements provided by the car, e.g. buttons on the steering wheel, display caller info in a dashboard mounted screen, etc.
You have to have the money to double down, but sometimes this strategy can work. I think it will this time as the Microsoft offering is pretty solid.
Bingo. The barrier to entry is pretty dang high for a new mobile os. Higher than Nokia or Microsoft anticipated. The design of Windows phone isn’t that bad, nor are the apps or hardware. Its just kind of scary when you think about the implications for Jolla, Ubuntu, or firefox OS phone. It ain’t cheap to play, and making it to profitability requires huge scale.
Double digit share, huh? I guess that means there’s finally more than 9 people using it
LMAO!
You got down rated to ZERO?
+9.9999999999 …
(Still no double digits for YOU!)
<(^8)<
Edited 2013-10-02 21:48 UTC
And yet I was ridiculed when I offered a region by region breakdown of Windows Phone marketshare — or when last year I claimed that the UK (and really, all of Europe) was a bright spot for Windows Phone.
Global share is misleading when you want to track momentum, as it will be a lagging indicator until success is simultaneously replicated across all regions. Which isn’t going to happen to a fledging OS.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire so they say, and it’s great to have my analysis validated by KWP’s numbers.
Microsoft is a very tenacious competitor with a lot of money, resources — and political will to continue the fight. They’ve shown with Xbox they’re willing to play a long game — Windows Phone is much the same. Microsoft will keep pouring money, and plugging away until this thing gains mainstream consumer acceptance.
If you look at it, they have all of the pieces to the puzzle. TV with the Xbox, PCs with Windows (including Tablets), and Phones with Windows Phone. They control the SDK and IDE the apps are developed with and the cloud service they most likely run on. They control the productivity suite used on them and the search engine that powers them.
Nokia’s handset division and Surface were the final pieces to the puzzle. Microsoft now controls the end to end experience.
Despite how long it has taken, or may still take Microsoft to get their house in order — it is still a very formidable house and has a strong value proposition.
Windows Phone is rising, despite what some here may want to believe.
I feel like I should almost eulogize the former Canadian powerhouse BBRY at this point, it’s tragic what has happened to them. They had the olive branch from Microsoft and turned it away. They died on their sword, but they still died.
Nokia who did what many here said they shouldn’t now has the best selling Windows device, ever, period. Their handset divison (along with 32,000 employees and 8,000 patents) was sold to a technology company with a market cap 280 billion dollars which plans to continue that vision.
BBRY was sold to an investment bank with a market cap that’s 5x less than Nokia is worth without their handset division. Just some perspective.
With Q3 financials for Nokia looming, one must wonder, if they sell 9Million+ Lumia devices, how will some here rationalize that double digit sequential increase (I believe what will be the 4th straight quarter of such increases)
Good one.
But there are even more signals of what WP already is. When your competitors start to fight a subtle war (YouTube, Exchange protocol etc.) you know you’re on right path.
When latest iOS seems a bad photocopy of Metro, just less polished and worst looking, you know you’re on right path.
When it will happen, remember someone already said that.
Nokia brandname…
Numbers are based almost exclusively on Nokia 520 series phones. They are 80% of their sales so far. Hard to beat a 90 dollar phone with all those features. Not sure that is the phone Nokia is wanting to sell but it is selling.
Nokia business has always been about selling good phones at bargain prices. They are probably quite content to make $10-20/unit profit.[MS has always concentrated on low cost mass market products.]
This. Nokia is the master of cheap. They can turn a profit on the 520/620 alone, and in app analytics suggest that the 520 is the most popular Windows Phone — but has actually had a positive impact on the ecosystem. Its being used as a smartphone and not a glorified feature phone.
This may not be the phone Nokia wants, but its the one they need to drive volumes and push the ecosystem forward. The success will trickle upwards. You’ll see the mid tier models start to accelerate as the mindshare and ecosystem grow to a point where the next price point becomes a palatable trade off.
Nokia hardware has always been solid and affordable even with the super cheap offerings (I have a cheapo phone that just works with a English Sim in it for when I go back to the UK).
That would mean that one out of ten phones sold is a Windows Phone.
Why is it that I have not seen a single one of them in the wild since ages?
Because it takes a while for it to translate into a sizeable installed base. Its largely dependent on cell phone churn.
Because you live in a cave? d"Y~‰
I’m from Europe and I am in those 10%, woo. Just bought Nokia Lumia 920. Somewhat surprised, because from all the gloom and doom posts in the internet about WP, because it’s cheap, hardware is good and OS is also pretty damn good once you get used to it.
If Windows Phone is indeed on a sharp rising trajectory as this story suggests, then it makes the whole Nokia crash and burn and subsequent purchase by Microsoft even worse.
If Windows Phone is on the rise, and Nokia is the main source of this, then surely Nokia would see a sharp rise in its share price and fortunes?
But the Nokia shareholders won’t see any of this return, because the company has been sold at possibly the worst possible time.
It is nearly impossible to envision that this whole spectacle hasn’t been a deliberate attempt at robbing the Nokia shareholders of their investment in order to benefit the few.
That largely depends on the uncertainty over Nokia’s financials moving forward being resolved, which was not the case in the eyes of the BOD.
Plus, further success warrants further investment, probably beyond the scope of what the Board was able to stomach. It is a gamble either way, and to them taking Microsoft’s money now was a better gamble.
Windows Phone is doing well, but it will take time until the market share translates into an installed base and the success becomes self sustaining — there’s a good deal of pump priming to be done.
Nokia from what their proxy materials say considered all options, including terminating their existing agreement with Microsoft, going with Android, and being bought out.
Q3 and Q4 will tell us more. I expect around 9 – 9.5 million units shipped in Q3.
Yes, worst time to sell and best time to buy for Microsoft.
It’s pretty simple : shareholders wanted to cash a division they didn’t think it could succeed or, probably, a division they had no will to wait for in order to show more positive signals. I don’t think ALL shareholders thought that but the most influent ones for sure.
It takes time to climb from 0.something to success but they didn’t want to wait, dealing with preassure on stocks and so on.
On the other side, Microsoft wanted to buy an already established and very innovative business, without bulding one themselves. They have plenty of cash to use and buying something out was the right choice.
The most important thing to consider is both Nokia and Microsoft surely had these numbers when they agreed to sell device division so they both knew that things were quickly improving.
If MS didn’t act, they could be forced to pour much more cash to buy Nokia devices if they started to be successful. What it is weird is Nokia is willing to sell when its context is definitely improving. Don’t forget 9.something is just an average but in many markets (and important ones) WP is already well over 10% and still improving.
Nokia’s projected revenue in handsets for Q3 ’13 is -2% plus or minus 4%.
So the “sharp rising trajectory” still doesn’t hit the make break point on profitability.
As to share price and return to stockholders it’s just the opposite of what you are imagining.
1.) Nokia hasn’t been sold. Just the Devices and Services (handset) division.
2.) It was the ongoing losses in D&S that was dragging down the whole company. They would have been profitable if they weren’t in the handset business. And MSFT was giving them $1 billion a year on top of a $1.5 billion initial payment to partner with them so the losses were even worse than they appeared.
3.) Stock price went from the mid-$4 range to mid $6 almost as soon as the sale was announced. So shareholders have already seen a lot of return.
4.) Conspiracy theories have abounded about MSFT trying to kill Nokia and then take it over, manipulation by various groups to work against the Shining Knight of Telekom, etc. Turns out all they needed to do to succeed was stop killing themselves and sell the poison apple back to the originator of it.
D&S alone wasn’t killing them, I’m surprised you say that when its pretty much spells out why there’s an IFRS loss. Its mostly due to restructuring costs and charges related to their NAVTEQ acquisition amortized over many quarters.
What did change was their market valuation, which has always been a bit of voodoo, but probably Microsoft’s convertible bonds and the looming all cash transaction helped them there.
Equivocation.
Restructuring was primarily needed in D&S related areas. But it did affect the NSN and Navteq/HERE divisions as well. Just not nearly as much.
It’s in the Earnings Reports for any interested in checking.
The valuation voodoo paid off big when they unloaded D&S though. When the phone pins got pulled out the pain magically went away. <(^8)<
surely people want it for the features of the phone and not the OS upon it.. I would care less about the os If I could or someone would hack it and make it work with android… I would buy one in a heartbeat.. Of course you will have to deal with the patent police and everything else M$ could throw at ya..
Nokia already made Android work on their phones. And according to an article in the NYT it wasn’t hard to do either.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/behind-microsoft-deal-the-…
Not surprising since Android supports a much wider variety of hardware and Nokia had lots of Linux experience already.
Haven’t looked to see if there are custom ROMs available for Lumias.
They are beautiful, tough handsets. It would certainly be nice to have one that you could put a different OS on if that was what you preferred.
That comment assumes quite a bit. The biggest assumption is that Window Phone 8 actually needs to be replaced by an Android distribution. Have you actually tried Windows Phone 8?
He may be assuming it needs to be replaced. Long term sales figures seem to back that up. Even though Nokia has almost 90% of the niche and a big increase in sales lately their Devices and Services division is still projected to lose about 2% for Q3 ’13.
All the sales and no profits ; what does that say? Especially since that includes multi-billon dollar partner payments from MSFT.
He appears to be declaring that he doesn’t want even a great phone like one from the Lumia series with WP8 on it and would want one if something else were available on it. That’s a preference, not an assumption.
You seem to be implying that he hasn’t tried it and that if he had he wouldn’t want something else. What evidence can you present to support that?
No his argument is that its the great Nokia hardware that is selling the phones. In reality the hardware is run of the mill mostly. Excepting the camera on the Nokia 1020, the other Nokia models are just running Snapdragon 800 processors…so what makes the hardware so great? Nothing, it’s just that WP8 is more efficient on the same hardware with better battery efficiency and better controlled data consumption than Android flavors. That is because the battery efficiency, background task management and data consumption management is handled right in the WP8 os in a more strict way than Android. Because of basic hardware running more efficiently…this is the reason why people are impressed with the new Nokias. Hacking Android on them if it was even possible would negate this. This is why I asked has he even used WP8 because if he did he would notice these software mechanisms immediately. I did when I switched from Samsung S3 to Nokia 925. I’m writing this post on my 925 right now!
Please clarify what you mean by mediocre hardware.
Nokia phones have great designs, great durability, great voice quality, great cameras, and great screens.
They don’t need high end CPUs because the operating system doesn’t present much of a load to the hardware.
While that may be described as being efficient what it really means is that lesser chipsets will work just fine with it and that the battery drain will be low since it isn’t doing much.
It’s ok to like that. It doesn’t mean that the phones are of lesser quality though.
Yes, it sucks, HARD. Your argument is very very very tired. Anyone criticizes WP, all you hear back is “have you used it yet?” Like that will change people’s mind! Yes, I used it, found NONE of the apps I regularly use, and promptly told the sales puke to show me a better phone with more apps.
Anyone that says WP8 has no apps has not seen the store in a while. I have found more useable apps for my Nokia 925 than I ever had for my Samsung s3. The store is growing at a good clip and I have been able to find all of the apps that I used to run on my Samsung and if I did not find the app then there was an equivalent that was as good or better. Nothing really missing at this point except for Instagram and there is a ton of replacements for that. Also Microsoft and Nokia have both been cranking out apps…apps that my friends see and it makes them want to trade un their S4s and iphone5s. MicrosoftPhotosynth is one of those cool apps. Nokia’s Now+ driving app runs without a connection and is easier and smoother than Google maps, which is also available for WP8. My phone has sold on its own 5 people this week. After they see my Nokia being used during the workday, they want one. I can’t blame them, I love mine and it never crashes.
Edited 2013-10-04 00:18 UTC
REAL Microsoft Office, Xbox integration, smoother email apps and integrated Facebook are all home runs for WP8 in my book. I even have my Starbucks and Walgreens card apps and Etrade d"Y~‰. Along with a hundred more apps on the phone literally. Out of the thousands of Android apps, there are probably 80% of them that are crap, don’t do anything, or poorly written. It’s tough to beat the reliability found in managed code apps created in Visual Studio for Windows Phone 8.
If it sucks so hard…can you tell us what apps that you use regularly that are missing?
Edited 2013-10-04 01:04 UTC
With the downfall of BlackBerry I don’t see Windows phones going anywhere. I doubt they will ever rival Android or iOS in the general consumer market, but if they play their cards right I could see them as the dominant smartphone for the enterprise market. It’s a brand name business’s trust and has always been Microsoft’s bread and butter.
Windows phones are actually pretty nice. My roommate has one and I’ve played with it a lot. Being a Linux user for 10+ years I prefer Android devices personally, but I’d like see Windows and Firefox (they seem to be targeting low end devices from what I’ve seen – it’s a good niche for them to fill) do well. More competition means better products.
Once the “Nokia” brand name is retired, expect sales to TANK! There is a REASON that Europe is selling more WP handsets, and it’s the brand name, and the trust that past Nokia users have for that brand. Think people will buy a “Surface Phone”? You are dreaming.
If you see the full story iOS is 2% up YoY at 16.1%, Samsung 1.9% down at 47.1% and Nokia 0.9% up YoY at 7.8%, with Kantar strategic insight director Dominic Sunnebo pointed out that “Windows Phone’s growth isn’t coming from stealing Apple or Android consumers”. I mean, they got far less BBRY users than Apple… As BBRY is a dead platform I guess Windows Phone is not really getting “new” users or “new” market share…
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/01/microsoft-nokia-s…
Edited 2013-10-05 01:38 UTC
+1