AdDuplex have released some data from their 3rd May survey of the Windows Phone market using information gathered from their ad network pulled from more than 500 applications in use worldwide.
As usual it makes for interesting reading. We have already seen one surprise, the rapid ascent of the Nokia Lumia 520, which has jumped to 4.4% of the market in less than a month, overtaking the Nokia Lumia 720, 822, HTC 8S and Nokia Lumia 900 amongst others. If this is an indication of volume it suggests the handset may have topped a million sales in only a month (crudely 4.4% of the 30+ million Windows Phone users).
The survey however also revealed Samsung’s complete failure to take part in the Windows Phone 8 ecosystem.
From having 12% of the Windows Phone market before Windows Phone 8 in October 2012, the company fell to just 3.7% of the market in May 2013, and only 1.6% of the Windows Phone 8 market. That makes their Windows Phone 8 handsets a truly tiny niche of the already small Windows Phone market, and indicates how little effort the giant smartphone company has expended.
In contrast HTC has done a much better job at maintaining their Windows Phone market share, as the above graph illustrates, having about 18% of the Windows Phone 8 market.
To put it differently – 1 in 5 Windows Phone 8 handsets are by HTC, 1 in 50 are by Samsung.
The report contains other interesting titbits – despite its late start Verizon has continued to grow its share of the Windows Phone market from 30% last month to 33% this month, mainly due to sales of the Nokia Lumia 822, which is now 24.4% of the US market – a stunning result which suggests Verizon would have been a much better launch partner for Windows Phone 8 than AT&T. We will have to see if the Nokia Lumia 928 will meet with the same success.
Windows Phone 8 is also making gains in UK, and is now more than half of the market, even though the Nokia Lumia 800 still leads with 19.4%.
Windows Phone 8 in general is now close to overtaking the installed base of Windows phone 7, with 49.4% vs 50.6%. In the markets where Windows Phone has the greatest market share (ie Mexico) it is based on the cheapest Windows Phone 7 handsets, but Windows Phone 8 is already making gains in places like Poland and Russia. Windows Phone 8 is also already more than 50% of the market in India, led by the aforementioned rapid ascent of the Nokia Lumia 520.
AdDuplex note they have seem some unreleased devices in the wild, saying:
- Quite a few Nokia RM-860 in the wild lately, which is Lumia 928 and it’s a sign of its imminent public release.
- SAMSUNG SPH-I800 – seen quite a few times on Sprint in the US. It has a 720p screen. Most likely a version of ATIV S;
- Nokia RM-941 – seen quite a lot of this. Mostly in Taiwan. WVGA display;
- Nokia RM-910 – seen a few times in Vietnam. WXGA screen;
- Nokia RM-875 – seen mostly in Finland, but some other places too. WXGA screen
- We’ve also seen quite a few phones running Windows Phone 8.1 mostly on the Nokia P4301 test device, but on a few 8X and Lumia 920 too. Builds: 8.10.12072 to 8.10.12079.0.
For reference the current version of Windows Phone is version 8.0.10211.
Adduplex will publish their full report on their blog tomorrow.