Microsoft Mobile OS now 9% of US installed base, but how much is Windows Phone 7?

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Nielsen have released their quarterly survey results of US phone subscribers, and as usual it makes for interesting reading.

The stats show Android has solidified its position, with 39% of smartphone owners in USA now owning an Android handset, up from 36% in last quarter.  iPhone also increased somewhat, from 26% to 28% in this quarter.

For RIM is is increasingly bad news, with only 20% of users hanging on to Blackberries, down from 23% 3 months ago and 27% 6 months ago.  This is particularly relevant as RIM does not just collect money from phone buyers, but also receives a subscription fee from its installed base, which must be around 50% less than 6 months earlier.

Last quarter Nielsen broke Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile out, showing 1% of the installed base had Windows Phone 7 handsets and 9% Windows Mobile.  Unfortunately 3 months later they did not do us this favour, but I think it is also pretty safe to say the installed base of Windows Mobile must also have decreased rapidly over the last few months, while the combined installed base of Microsoft mobile operating systems only went down 1%.

The only conclusion one could draw is that Windows Phone 7 numbers must have seen a significant boost to off-set the market share loss due to Windows Mobile users, not to mention the expansion of the smartphone installed base due to people moving from dumb phones to smartphones.

In support of this is that Statcounter shows Windows Phone 7 has the strongest month to month growth (last month vs this month) of all the smartphone operating systems in USA. Statcounter gives an idea of the installed base of an OS by looking at browser hits.

Mobile OS W23 to W26 11  W27 to W30 11 Growth
iOS 36.25 38.91 7%
Android 34.61 35.81 3%
BlackBerry OS 16.39 15.89 -3%
SymbianOS 6.18 3.58 -42%
Windows Phone 0.53 0.61 15%
webOS 0.35 0.32 -9%
WinCE 0.12 0.11 -8%
Palm 0.02 0.02 0%

Maybe Microsoft has finally convinced Windows Mobile users to adopt Windows Phone 7?

Read the full report at Nielsen here.

More about the topics: market share, nielsen, sales, windows mobile, windows phone 7

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