According to Gartner, no Windows Mobile phones were sold in Q2 and Q3 2011, 5.5 million Windows Phones till Q3 2011

In an article where the writer basically argues developers should abandon Windows Phone and develop for Android, the Guardian did however reveal a bit of very interesting data.

According the the graph released by Gartner, Windows Mobile shipments stopped in Q1 2011, meaning all the numbers released since Q2 2011 have been pure Windows Phone 7 numbers.  This information is important, in that Gartner has up to now insisted that the number is a combination of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7, which would obviously have reduced the very important number of Windows Phone 7 handsets sold.

Based on this data then, we can seen in Q3 2011  1.7 million band in Q2 2011 1.73 million Windows Phone 7 handsets were sold.

Looking very closely at the graph one can also discern the Q1 2011 share of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. Counting pixels, one can see 2 million Windows Mobile handsets were sold and 1.7 million Windows Phone 7 handsets were sold.

Using the same method we can see about 0.55 million Windows Phone 7 handset were sold in Q4 2010, and a suspicious 1.7 million Windows Mobile handsets.

That would makes sales basically completely flat for the whole year, and suspiciously constant.  It does make one almost question Gartner’s methodology.

It also gives us a total for Windows Phone 7 sales for the 12 months since launch, ending in Q3 2011, of about 5.5 million, according to Gartner at least.

Of course all of these numbers are now somewhat irrelevant (hopefully) with the arrival of Nokia on the scene, but it does make it easier to interpret future releases by the company.