Nielsen: Nokia only sold less than 300,000 Nokia Lumia 900 in USA

Nielsen have posted their Q2 2012 numbers for the US market.

It shows that in Q2 2012 Nokia only 0.3% of smartphone users had Nokia Windows Phones.  With Comscore saying there were about 110 million smartphone users in Q2 2012, that translates into only 330,000 Nokia Lumia owners in USA. This number needs to be split between the Nokia Lumia 710 and the Nokia Lumia 900, suggesting less than 300,000 Nokia Lumia 900’s were sold up to the end of June 2012.

The number also shows USA only 1.3% of phone subscribers in USA owned Windows Phones by the end of June, translating into about 1.43 million Windows Phone users, only a small increase from the 1.2 million Windows Phone users in January 2012.

The last Nielsen numbers also indicated Windows Phone had a market share of 1.7% in Q1 2012. This was up from 1.3% in Q4 2011.  The drop, despite the release of the Nokia Lumia 900 in USA back to 1.3% seems counter-intuitive, suggesting Nielsen may not be having a very good handle on counting the small Windows Phone 7 market.

Update: Nielsen has contacted us to make it clear they do not support multiplying their numbers with Comscore numbers, saying they measure subtly different elements of the phone market. While the math appear reasonable they therefore do not feel the 300,000 number is accurate.