Windows Phone Market Share Dips Below 1 Percent

This isn’t something that Microsoft is going to be too happy about. Despite repeated attempts to carve out a niche for its mobile operating system, the company continues to lose ground. Even as smartphone sales across the globe increased by almost four percent in the recent quarter, Microsoft saw Windows Phone market share dip below one percent. Lack of new Lumia devices from Microsoft is partly to blame for this dismal performance.

Latest data from Gartner shows that close to 2.4 million Windows Phone handsets were sold in the recent quarter, accounting for 0.7 percent share in the market. That’s quite a decline from the same quarter last year when Windows Phone had a 2.5 percent share of the market.

Microsoft hasn’t really done much on the smartphone front lately. It did unload the feature phone business to Foxconn recently and rumors are circulating that it might retire the Lumia brand altogether. But is Microsoft going to bow out of the smartphone market completely?

That doesn’t appear to be the case, at least for now. Rumor has it that Microsoft has gone back to the drawing board and is working on a new flagship, a Surface-branded handset that could arrive in 2017.

Microsoft’s woes in the global smartphone market might continue in the short term if it decides to not release new Lumia handsets, and since there aren’t that many OEMs making Windows-powered phones, it will continue to lose market share and revenue from its phone business.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: lumia, Microsoft, Surface Phone