Kantar: Europe no longer a Windows Phone stronghold as sales collapse there

Kantar has released their market share numbers for the 3 months ending January 2016.

Up till now Windows Phone sales have been surprisingly resilient in Europe, but it seems the world-wide collapse of sales of devices running the OS has finally now also come home to roost here.

Except for UK sales are uniformly down on the continent, with EU5 numbers down to 6.4% of sales, taking us back to 2013 levels.

Even UK sales are down from last month, from 9.2% to 8.6%.

Besides UK Japan is an other surprise growth market, particularly significant since a number of new Windows 10 devices have been released there, and it is good to see that they are finding some traction.

The 3 months ending January 2016 includes the release of the Lumia 950, 950 XL and Lumia 550, indicating the devices have not found much traction with buyers on the continent. US numbers are slightly up month on month in USA, from 1.6% in December 2015 to 2.6% in January 2016, likely indicating some effect from the Lumia 950’s release on AT&T.

Unless Microsoft’s 3rd party Windows Phone OEMs find traction in Europe (somewhat unlikely given that it was Nokia’s influence which helped Windows Phone gain its toe-hold there in the first instance) it seems likely we will see these numbers deteriorate further, especially if self-fulfilling negative sentiment becomes embedded.

Of note is that Kantar measures consumer sales, and not enterprise sales, where Microsoft has traditionally been strong, and where the company is making a strong push now, and unless Microsoft itself release more numbers it seems Windows Phone’s progress will become increasingly opaque.