Strategy Analytics: Microsoft's Windows Phone OS Holds 3.9% Of Global Smartphone Market, 8.9 million units shipped

According to the latest research data from Strategy Analytics, Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS maintained its third position in the global smartphone shipments. Microsoft’s market share increased from 3.6% in Q2 2012 to 3.9% in Q2 2013.

This represents 59% YoY growth, the second fastest after the 68% Android managed, and much faster than the 20% iOS achieved.

Much of Android’s growth was in the developing world with low-cost devices, an area where Windows Phone is already seeing significant traction due to a better user experience, meaning Windows Phone may also be able to tap into the same growth engine.

Subtracting Nokia’s 7.4 million Lumia shipments,  other OEMs such as HTC, Samsung and Huawei would share 1.5 million handsets between themselves, giving Nokia 83% and the other OEMs 17% share of the market.

Here is the comment about Microsoft from an analyst Linda Sui at Strategy Analytics,

“Microsoft is making steady progress in the smartphone market due to strong support from Nokia. However, we believe Microsoft’s WP8 platform still needs to improve in at least two areas before it truly takes off. First, the license fee charged to smartphone makers for WP8 must be more competitive to compete with Android in lower price-bands. And second, Microsoft must dramatically accelerate its support for advanced technologies, such as octo-core chipsets, because WP8 continues to lag behind Android in the premium smartphone category.”

Source: Strategy Analytics