Survey finds American smartphone buyers do not associate Windows Phone with Nokia

We know Nokia owns more than 80% of the Windows Phone market, but it seems to potential US Smartphone purchasers the connection is yet to be made.

MKM Partners commissioned a survey of 1500 US consumers performed between March 7th and April 2nd, 2013 and found that 6.4% had Windows Phones, but that only 1.6% were Nokia users.

At least 39.5% knew Windows Phone 8 handsets had launched, a sign of the effectiveness of Microsoft’s commercials. Yet only 19% of the  respondents were aware that Nokia has a Windows Phone 8 handset, trailing Samsung at 26% and HTC at 21%.

MKM Partners’s Michael Genovese noted:

While the WP8 OS is gaining in popularity, a disturbing number of respondents (50%) who were aware that WP8 handsets were available for purchase couldn’t associate a handset brand to the OS. In particular Nokia is lost in the shuffle, despite its early standing as a Microsoft partner.

The good news of course is that we know from statistics by Adduplex that Nokia does have a good Windows Phone market share in the US, with their handsets selling a lot better than HTC and Samsung’s ones, suggesting some education is going on when buyers step into stores, but it also clearly shows Nokia still has a lot of work to do to disassociate their brand from their old Symbian handsets and attach it to the Windows Phone OS which they so dominate.

Read the rest of the results at Barrons here.