Windows Phone doubles share in Europe, trails iPhone by only 1% in Germany

http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/30/windows-phone-doubles-share-in-europe-trails-iphone-by-only-1-in-germany/

by rl12345 • 13 years ago

103 94 13 years ago

Windows Mobile market share is a long way off 8.8% according to Statcounter: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-DE-monthly-201209-20130...

That said I could believe the sales growth as Nokia are know for making great quality low end devices so there could be traction gained here as the allure of flagship phones is not as appealing/affordable for all as base technology improves.

IMO the best thing WM could do is create a phone that works more as a mobile base station for all your computing in the way Ubuntu Touch are attempting. The latter launching in a couple of weeks. Can't wait to try it out!

rl12345• 13 years ago

True, but the smartphone market could be considered as a leading indicator for the whole mobile one. What caught my attention is that MS is/was being considered as a dead horse in this race by a lot. Well, dead they are not.

pedalpete2• 13 years ago

There may be something funky with Statcounter, when looking at North America, they show Blackberry as doubling it's growth since May, doesn't seem like the most reliable source. http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-na-monthly-201209-20130...

Also, its Windows Phone, or WP, not Windows Mobile.

OrwellianChild• 13 years ago

This is consistent with product launches... Blackberry released the Z10 smartphone in May 2013. The Statcounter data tracks usage, which would plausibly go up quite a bit with new users on a phone with more fully-featured internet access. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Z10

cwoods• 13 years ago

The stats are sales over the last 3 months, not install base. However, Statcounter tries to measure usage, not unique devices. Netmarketshare tries to measure individual browsers/devices.

For example, if you browse 10 sites in a day on an Android phone, but your neighbor browses 990 sites a day on her iPhone, the Statcounter numbers with just you both being counted will be 1% Android and 99% iPhone even though the install base is 50% each.

This is the reason that Statcounter and Netmarketshare browser share numbers are so different from each other, with Statcounter showing Chrome in the lead and Netmarketshare showing IE in the lead.

Joeri2• 13 years ago

Those statistics are for usage instead of devices, include tablets and not just phones, and sidestep people who don't have a data plan (a more common situation for low end smartphone buyers in europe vs the US).

Touche• 13 years ago

As the article points out, has to be the low to mid-range phones. The Lumia 520 costs $100 off contract, which is an amazing deal.

drill_sarge• 13 years ago

Don't forget iPhones are way more expensive here (in EU) than in the US.

rbanffy2• 13 years ago

I'm quite sure you can carefully select the market your research covers as to make any given platform lead. For instance, Windows Phone is the absolute leader in phones whose brands start with "N" and end with "okia".

skrebbel• 13 years ago

Actually, that would be S40

Topsteed• 13 years ago

It's because Europeans are a bunch of idiots. They're dumb enough to let gays ruin their society and their dumb enough to use Windows Phone instead of the vastly superior iPhone.

There's no news here, no surprise.

innino• 13 years ago

Thanks for contributing to Hackernews.

ethana• 13 years ago

How are these kind of commenters even exist on hacker news?

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

It's OP's first comment. I'm guessing that it's an alt of another user?

kintamanimatt• 13 years ago

Well, anybody can register for an account and no community is immune from trolls. They don't last long here though and there's some pretty decent moderation that happens both by the mods and the community itself.

WasimBhai• 13 years ago

Dude, that is racist. Calm down.

lolololololo• 13 years ago

http://i.imgur.com/OfqdZeE.jpg

pedalpete2• 13 years ago

I don't want to feed the troll, but I'm wondering if Topsteed will be selling all of his Apple products http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/10/tim-cook-power-...

C'mon Topsteed, if you're going to live like a Neanderthal (no offence to Neanderthals), may as well get rid of all your technology and leave HN (and the internet) alone.

Who calls themselves Topsteed?... oh, that's too easy, just go get therapy.

rbanffy2• 13 years ago

Don't feed the troll. It'll go away.

acchow5• 13 years ago

This is share of sales in the last 3 months, not share of devices in the wild. It's no surprise that iPhone's sales share plummeted the last quarter before the 5S release.

cremnob2• 13 years ago

Whenever you see a story about market share, it's for a quarter.

marcosdumay• 13 years ago

Depends on how the shares are measured.

The ones that use web sites logs are for the total of the devices in use, for example.

superails2• 13 years ago

I think it is the Nokia Lumia 1020/EOS, which I've heard is more of a sham than marketing would lead you to believe. I have to admit when I've seen the commercials, I wanted one also.

acchow5• 13 years ago

"more of a sham than marketing would lead you to believe"

In what sense? Some very reliable reviewers (e.g. Brian Klug) say the camera truly is incredible...

MartinMcGirk• 13 years ago

I actually switched from my iPhone 4 and bought a Lumia 1020 to give Windows Phone a try. I can't speak to the technical camera jargon as I'm not much of a camera nerd (yet), but what I can tell you is that the camera is phenomenal compared to what I've used previously.

Of the two pics it takes, the 5MP oversampled pics look great, but still look like cameraphone pics. The 34MP pictures though are a different beast. I took a picture of some work colleagues in the office the other day and was able to zoom in and read the place names on a map pinned to the wall a few feet behind them. I took a picture of a crowd that was gathered across the street and was able to zoom in later and crop out some decent (slightly grainy - but not awful) looking photos of people chatting as if I were stood a few feet away. The detail really is amazing compared to anything (phone based) that I've seen before.

I have no idea what half the options on my 1020's camera do, but having the option of a manual focus slider is great too. The 1020 isn't a DSLR or even probably a decent point and shoot, but it's definitely not a sham. I wouldn't carry a dedicated camera around with me, and in my experience having the 1020's camera has been great so far (I've only had it a week).

leggo2m• 13 years ago

Microsoft PR department trying real hard in recent days trying to drum up some positive press.

Avitas• 13 years ago

Customer: "Our global market share is a pimple on the ass of our competitors. Are there any numbers ANYWHERE that can make us look like, at the least, a full-blown cyst?"

Marketing Exec: "Sure, let's look at the numbers. US...no. EU...no. Asia...no. Africa...no. Middle East...no. Austral--"

Customer: "Stop. Just stop."

Marketing Exec: "It's okay, getting your message and name out there is far more important than the actual numbers. Plus, we'll find positive numbers and trends that we'll plaster in the occasional release. We also still have the stats on individual countries to go through."

Customer: "Okay, let's go down the list and pick some. We've got our astroturfing contractor waiting."

cremnob2• 13 years ago

Interesting to note that iOS gained share in the US by 5.4% while Android declined by 5.6% in a quarter without new iPhones launching.

There may be some truth to Horace Dediu's hypothesis that Android has peaked in the US.

smegel• 13 years ago

Is this because Android is more dominant than both of them?

zyb092• 13 years ago

This must be bullshit. Not that I have scientific evidence, but as a app developer I got quite good at identifying a device type just by having a quick glance at it and that's what I usually do to keep me busy in public transport and other places. What I see is about 50% iPhones, the majority being iPhone 4, not so many 4S, but also quite a few iPhone 5. Next up are Samsung phones of all kinds, with the prevalent being S3, S2 and low budget ones like the Ace. Not so many S4 though yet. HTC and everything else are kind of the underdog. And very rarely someone pulls out a BlackBerry. But Windows Phone? I think I've seen one so far. I don't doubt there are out there, but comparing the share with the iPhone is ridiculous.

Joeri2• 13 years ago

Where do you live? Smartphone marketshare is highly regional. I live in belgium and see them all the time.

Greenisus• 13 years ago

And how you able to tell the difference between the 4 and 4S? Are you looking at the seams in the antenna?

zyb092• 13 years ago

yeah iPhone 4's have a line on top, while 4S's don't. Easy to see when someone is holding it in their hand.

rlu• 13 years ago

I don't know. I went to Europe for all of June and saw a lot more Windows Phones than I do in the U.S. Particularly in Italy.

spongle8• 13 years ago

Your average Starbucks in London, UK over the last month seems to have the following market share: couple of ipads, single iphone, couple of Samsung android handsets and a lot of windows phones, all Lumia. To be honest I'm quite surprised myself even as a WP user. You see chromebooks a lot as well. Not seen a single surface (yet).

As a side point, I get a lot of people ask me what to buy after they threw £450 on a 4S and broke it (I'm the local informal tech advice guy for the school my kids go to's population of parents). The iphone doesn't have a great reputation in the UK after the first purchase from experience: it's expensive, unreliable (icloud is a piece of crap) and breaks easily and every repair place is dodgy including the apple stores here. This makes it a really bad investment. I don't suggest a solution in particular but people come back with Lumia handsets over new iPhones as they are much cheaper and are functionally equivalent. Either that or they buy a shit android and hate it.

JonoW• 13 years ago

Yeah I'm in London too, have seen a noticeable uptick in the number of Lumia's recently.

acchow5• 13 years ago

How can you differentiate a 4s from a 4 just by glancing at it?

eropple• 13 years ago

The 4S lacks the seam at the top.

sz4kerto• 13 years ago

All of my friends have yachts, so everyone in the world must have one or two. All statistics are bullshit, personal experiences are always valid though.

hrvbr• 13 years ago

Not in France. I don't have a car so I take the bus and the regional train a lot. Most people there have either a dumb phone or an old & cheap Android or Blackberry. At my driver's license courses, I was surprised that at least 3 people had a Windows Phone (the cheaper models). iPhones are for rich people.

In countries where people buy their phone without a contract attached, there is a real market for a <100€ device. The cheaper the better.

Tloewald2• 13 years ago

I'm curious as to bow you tell an iphone 4s apart from a 4 at a glance.

spongle8• 13 years ago

Because the 4 is being held wrongly...

chiph• 13 years ago

Not to be "single data-point guy", but including mine, there are 3 in the technology group at work. And maybe 3 iPhones, with 5 or more Androids rounding it out.

The phone has a few nits (the single volume control being #1 on my list) but on the whole I like it. Partly because I got a little burned out on iDevices (3 iPhones over the years) and wanted something different, but also because of the camera (I have a 928, which I got like 2 weeks before the 1020 was announced - bad timing). I took some photos at a backyard party the other night, and the low light performance is excellent.

I like the look of the phone, and I'm hoping that Microsoft turns some of the Nokia designers & engineers loose on the Surface, and give it some style.

jonemo• 13 years ago

Weird way of reporting the stats (as others in this thread seem to imply) or not, just walking around in Germany is enough to realize that Windows Phone is comparatively popular there. It's very present both in real users' hands and advertising. I wonder if focusing on ROTW markets is Microsoft's strategy.

sgloutnikov• 13 years ago

Shouldn't be such a surprise to anyone. Nokia has always done well in Europe. It's a trusted, recognized brand, with lots of credibility, and they had actually just started to deliver again (Lumia 1020 & amazing lower end phones). The road-map for windows phone looks good too.

I will admit--I have owned Windows Phones (now a 1020) only because of Nokia, and I am content with them. Sure the 1020 doesn't have all the bells and whistles from a software perspective, but the hardware is amazing and WP8 has been out for only a year. Really interesting to see how things will go with the Microsoft buy-out in the next 1-2 years. Some key people leaving, etc.

PS. I have grown up with the legend of the "indestructible Nokia" that cannot be killed. Let's see if Microsoft can do it.

mittsh• 13 years ago

Agreed. Nokia always had a nice reputation in Europe – like Samsung has in S.Korea – and it just wasn't justified at all during the Symbian era. But trust from customers is still there.

Alterlife2• 13 years ago

I've been using a Lumia 620 for the last three months, and I have really tried to like it.

Switched back to my 2 year old android ZTE blade with a cracked screen two days ago. I feel like I just got an upgrade.

Nokia used to make great phones... and I still love the hardware. but the windows phone package leaves much to be desired.

inoop2• 13 years ago

I'll trade you a working blade for that 620. Your choice of white, black, or gray. I even have an OLED screen lying around :)

ZeroGravitas2• 13 years ago

Almost all the stories about "Windows Phone" doing well in various markets, suggest that it's actually Nokia's brand that's doing all the work. A brand that Microsoft won't be allowed to use on future smartphones if the purchase goes through. That's got to be a worry.

qwerta• 13 years ago

Windows Phone are actually very good if you want 'no apps, just phone'.

tsotha3• 13 years ago

If you don't want apps, why are you paying more than about $30 for your mobile?

strager• 13 years ago

Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

thomasz• 13 years ago

for the browser, map, skype and facebook.

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

It would be sad if the only thing giving them even that share is the Nokia brand and perception that it's European. MS may have killed off the only thing Windows Phone actually had going for it in europe.

ohwp• 13 years ago

I've got the feeling the iPhone lost its cool here in the Netherlands. Suddenly the buzz is all about Nokia and HTC while Samsung and Apple are becoming less popular.

And I think I can understand why. The Nokia 520 is a great device for under € 170. And the HTC has a great screen, stereo sound and a very smooth designed Android version.

mercer2• 13 years ago

I'm thinking that perhaps the temporary (but lengthy) period in which the iPhone was the most popular phone was, for the most part, an aberration.

Apple generally just does it's thing where it doesn't go for the largest market share, but because they were unusually innovative/lucky with the iPhone, they had a period of popularity. The fact that the iPhone 5C isn't the cheap phone we expected seems to confirm this.

It seems quite possible that things are 'normalizing' again, and Apple will end up comfortably occupying a big chunk of the high-end space. Maybe they're trying to come up with another killer product category to dominate in, but I wouldn't be surprised if internally this isn't and hasn't ever been their goal.

Now, investors might feel different, of course, and I find that interesting to observe.

Tloewald2• 13 years ago

What's amazing to me is how apple has resisted the temptation to go for market share with the iphone. That said, apple got and sustained a dominant share of the music player business against everyone's expectations and without compromising on quality (although i don't see apple doing an iphone shuffle).

It might be that microsoft's success with windows was the aberration. After all DOS and then windows were inferior products that achieved critical mass and widespread success because IBM got them into the enterprise and apple was asleep at the wheel.

biehl• 13 years ago

A less misleading headline would probably be "Windows Phone sales in the last 3 months double in Europe. Share of new sales trails iPhone by only 1% in Germany"

touristtam• 13 years ago

Make it even "Windows Phone sales in the last 3 months double in Europe. Share of new sales trails iPhone by only one percent point in Germany".

Always makes me twitch when I see statistical simplification in the headlines.

huxley• 13 years ago

Or perhaps, "Windows Phone sales in the last 3 months double in Europe based on estimate derived from interviews of consumers"

Cite: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/30/windows-phone-doubles-shar...

"... reflects the latest three months of actual smartphone sales, which the research company gets by interviewing actual consumers."

babuskov• 13 years ago

Since when is 80% increase "doubling"?

Still, getting close to 10% of market share is really a "massive achievement". I did not expect that. I wonder what was the main reason for people to buy it. I mean, if you're not a programmer/developer and you enter the store and see Lumia, SGS4 and iPhone4/5, how does the average customer select?

miguelrochefort2• 13 years ago

Windows Phone is simpler and more consistent than any of them.

Tyrannosaurs• 13 years ago

So WP seems to be taking market share from which seems to be almost exclusively from "Other" (presumably Win Mobile and BB).

iOS and Android are largely either growing or holding steady (varies by country - Android could be seen as flat lining but then you look at China where it had 9% growth which suggests that might be a bit of a premature accusation).

So, we seem to have a market place with three players - Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

The question is can the market support that or will there be a drive to a single platform?

Personally it feels I can do most of what I do without worrying what device I have in front of me or what it's running and I don't think twice what device someone else has before e-mailing them, sending them a document or whatever. The days of having to use something similar to someone else to be able to interact seem long gone.

So it seems to come down to whether any particular platform can remain profitable for it's owner, for device makers and for software developers. Right now the answer to that seems to be yes for Android and iOS and maybe for WP, but it doesn't feel like there's any reason to believe that there's any inevitability about any of them dying out.

ZeroGravitas2• 13 years ago

I guess "trails Android by only 70% in Germany" wasn't considered a catchy enough headline.

A 5 point increase from last year is certainly positive, but I think Microsoft is going to spend a lot of money to sustain that, and it's only going to get harder when they stop using the Nokia brand for smartphones.

Whatever Nokia was asking for those rights, Microsoft should probably have paid.

Windows Phone doubles share in Europe, trails iPhone by only 1% in Germany

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