Kantar: In April Windows Phone hits new market share highs in UK, Germany, Europe overall

The full Kantar WorldPanel results for April is now available, and it shows Windows Phone continuing to make progress in key EU markets like UK and Germany.

Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, comments:

“Android and iOS continue to take the lion’s share of smartphone sales in Britain. However, Windows phones are becoming increasingly popular with consumers. Windows has grown its share by 4.4 percentage points compared with the same period last year and now holds an 8.4% share of the market.”

The increase in market share to an all time high of 8.4% is in the face of discounting by Apple of its older iPhone 4S and 4 models, with all three of its handsets remain in the six best-selling smartphone models in Britain.  This should reassure readers that Windows Phone has what it takes to compete with the rumoured low-cost iPhone when it is released.

Windows Phone has once again also outsold Blackberry in UK, Blackberry’s strongest European market, with Blackberry only managing 5.6% market share, despite heavy marketing of the Blackberry Z10, which was released In February this year.

Although Android is still the number one OS in the US with 51.7% share, Apple is growing at a slightly faster rate and holds the number two spot with 41.4% share. In good news for Microsoft, Windows Phone continues to make solid progress with OS share hitting 5.6% and the Nokia 822 selling well on Verizon.

Overall in Europe Windows Phone now has 6.7% market share, up from 6.5% last month and 3.7% last year. Meanwhile iOS dropped from 19.4% to 18.4%  last month, meaning Windows Phone is selling more than 1/3 of the volume of iOS, up from 1/5 last year.  It is not inconceivable, if Apple fails to adequately address the low-cost market, that Windows Phone will have a larger market share than the iPhone by next year.

Dominic notes increasing European price consciousness has seen Sony and LG increasing their market share in countries like Spain and Italy, especially in the sub 150 Euro handset segment. 

Windows Phone’s market share there should therefore be positively impacted by the release of the Nokia Lumia 520 in May.

See the full numbers after the break.

Thanks Arun for the tip.