Less than a million Windows Phones sold in USA, more popular overseas?

Nielsen has released some stats about the installed base of Windows Phone and has revealed that 1% of smartphone owners in USA owned Windows Phone 7 handsets between February and May 2011.

If we combine this with Comscore data from Q4 2010, which showed there were about 63 million smartphones in use in USA we can realistically estimate than between 600,000 to 1 million Windows Phone 7 handsets are in the hands of consumers in USA.

This is rather interesting, as it further suggests (if we accept around 4 million Windows Phones have been sold)  that the bulk of Windows Phone 7 handsets are being sold overseas, in Europe and Australia/New Zealand.

The question then arises if USA is salted earth of Windows Phone, and if the OS will thrive a lot better in the Rest Of the World. If the Nokia partnership is successful this disparity will be particularly pronounced, with the phone giant selling best in places like Europe, Russia, India and China, and worst in North America.

This further suggests Microsoft needs to do two things – ramp up the quality of services it offers overseas to retain those buyers and generate good word of mouth from current owners and secondly of course redouble efforts to win back the lucrative US market, where iPhone and Android competition is the fiercest.

Do our readers agree than the Windows Phone name may be mud in the USA? Let us know below.

Via WPCentral.com