Windows Phone has ended 2012 with a bang, crossing the 1% worldwide net usage market share barrier to end December with 1.05% of mobile internet usage, according to NetMarketShare.
While this of course represents only a small percentage of all users, it is of note that the operating system is the fastest growing mobile operating system, with growth close to 6 times that of Android and 18 times that of iOS.
Dec-11 | Dec-12 | Growth | |
Windows Phone | 0.27 | 1.05 | 289% |
iOS | 52.1 | 60.38 | 16% |
Symbian | 5.76 | 1.51 | -74% |
Android | 16.15 | 24.57 | 52% |
Bada | 0.17 | 0.11 | -35% |
Blackberry | 3.51 | 1.59 | -55% |
Of note also is that this is in a growing market, with the smartphone market growing close to 50% YoY in the face of intense competition which saw Blackberry and Bada all showing negative growth, and iOS only managing 16% growth.
Given the amount of growth in usage I think it is a relatively safe bet to say 4 times more Windows Phones will have been sold in Q4 2012 vs Q4 2011, with the only question really being if we will cross the 10 million sales mark or not.
See the chart embedded after the break.