Gartner: Windows Phone held 2.5% market share in Q1 2015

Gartner has released their market share estimates for Q1 2015. Gartner differs from IDC in that their numbers are meant to be an estimate of devices sold to end users, rather than shipped to warehouses or store shelves.

The numbers show Windows Phone grew it sales from 7.58 million to 8.271 million units, a growth of 9.1% YoY. Unfortunately this was less than the 19.3% growth of the market, meaning Windows Phone lost market share, dropping from 2.7 to 2.5% share.

The big winner in Q1 2015 was unexpectedly iOS, which grew from 15.3 to 17.9% market share, while Android dropped from 80.8 to 78.9% market share.  Blackberry sold only 1.325 million handsets in Q1 2015 for a 0.4% market share.

On Windows Phone Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, said:

“The performance of Windows Phone remained flat, mainly due to a weak ecosystem and a less desirable mobile brand, together with a strong and established competitive smartphone market. The upcoming Windows 10 will create a consistent user experience across all devices, but it remains to be seen whether developers will follow.”

During their own financial results last quarter Microsoft themselves said their strategy to grow market share (presumably via low cost devices) did not give the results they expected, and we hope the company works on increasing the attractiveness and value of its mobile ecosystem going forward.