In the smartphone world, the Windows Phone operating system has traditionally been in third place in many countries.
Microsoft doesn’t like this fact and has been trying hard to make up ground between it and the distant first and second place operating systems. According to the latest report from analytics firm Kantar, it looks like Microsoft is starting to close the gap somewhat.
Indeed, based on he latest numbers from the analytics firm, the Windows Phone operating system has seen significant growth – at the expense of two other operating systems on the smartphone market. To be sure, as the BlackBerry operating system loses ground, much of the defection from BlackBerry is landing at Microsoft’s feet.
The analytics firm reports that Windows Phone grew from 6.2% market share to 6.7% market share in the UK in only a month. That may not sound like huge growth, but considering exactly 12 months ago Windows Phone 8 had only about 3% of the smartphone market in the UK and the growth is significant. Interestingly, the numbers indicate that the biggest change for Windows phone came in Italy. In February of 2012, Windows Phone 8 devices accounted for only 5.4% of all handsets sold within Italy. By the end of February 2013, the Windows phone operating system accounted for 13.1% of all smartphones sold.
As noted above, the ground Microsoft is gaining is coming mostly at the expense of Blackberry, but Redmond’s mobile OS is also picking up share lost by Symbian. The numbers show that over the last 12 months Symbian and BlackBerry have both dropped dramatically in Mexico with double-digit declines. While Windows Phone is coming on strong and BlackBerry is on the decline, the third-place operating system has a huge gap between it and the two OS leaders.
For the three months ending in February of 2013 Android had 51.2% of the market in the US while iOS had 43.5% of the entire market. By comparison, Windows Phone has only 4.1% of the overall market and BlackBerry sits in fourth place with a mere 0.7% in the US.
