Strategy Analytics awards Windows Phone its first 10 million + quarter, calls it “the world’s fastest growing major smartphone platform”

We have been waiting rather long for it, and now Strategy Analytics has been the first major market research company to suggest more than 10 million Windows Phones have been shipped in one quarter.

Windows Phone outgrew the market, which only increased 45% and doubled its market share to 4.1%.

Windows Phone and Android were the only operating systems to grow share, at the expense of the iPhone and Blackberry.

Of Microsoft they wrote:

Microsoft shipped more than 10 million smartphones worldwide in a single quarter for the first time ever in its history during Q3 2013. Microsoft has doubled its global smartphone market share from 2 percent to 4 percent in the past year.

Microsoft grew its smartphone shipments by 178 percent annually in Q3 2013 and it is currently the world’s fastest growing major smartphone platform. Microsoft’s growth is almost entirely due to Nokia and its steadily improving Lumia portfolio across Europe, Asia and the United States.

However, Microsoft is clearly still at a low level of share worldwide and it is struggling to gain serious traction in several major markets like Japan, South Korea and Africa.

Given that Windows Phone has been able to maintain its growth for at least the last 5 quarters do our readers think it will soon close the 9% gap between it and iOS? Let us know below.

Read the whole post at Strategy Analytics here.