Sometimes market share trends shown by Kantar WorldPanel report are really surprising!! If you compare their latest report for 3 months ending July to the last report ending June, it seems that Lumia sales may have dropped at Verizon and picked at AT&T. While the growth at AT&T is 4.5 to 5.2% the drop at Verizon is bigger from 5% to 2.3%. Don’t know what exactly caused the drop at Verizon but increase in AT&T market share may be due to launch of Lumia 520 as prepaid phone at the carrier.
The August report will help in understanding the impact of Lumia 1020 launch at AT&T. The report also posts a rosy picture about first time smartphone buyers opting “Windows phone” over iOS and Android due to MS’s acquisition of Nokia. Though they haven’t considered that Lumias under MS will not have Nokia brand and hence this advantage may be negated.
“However, with Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia, we may see a larger proportion of consumers choosing a Windows device over iOS or Android, replicating the strength seen in Europe and Mexico (where lower priced Nokia handsets now represent about one in ten of every smartphone sold). Windows has shown, in the past, particular strength among first-time smartphone buyers, and Nokia has benefited the most from the OS growth thus far. Nokia, as a brand, still represents 7% of the featurephone market, and it is likely that many of these consumers will upgrade in the coming year.”
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