Kantar WorldPanel sales data report for “3 months ending January” is out for Europe, US and Australia. It confirms significant gains for Windows Phone OS in UK, France, Italy. Windows Phone share of the smartphone market has grown to over 6% in Great Britain, up from 2.4% the previous year. Windows Phone has grown its user base in UK by almost 700,000 in the past year – an increase of 240%. The report reveals that 17% of new Windows customers switched from Android, 26% from Symbian, 6% from RIM and just 2% from iOS, while 47% were first time smartphone buyers. This is certainly encouraging trend for Nokia as well, because Nokia is spearheading these gains according to the report.
Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, explains: “Nokia is spearheading this growth, with the Lumia 800 the leader among the Windows handsets. However, it is not the only manufacturer benefitting from the increasing popularity of Windows. HTC’s 8X is now the third bestselling Windows device in Great Britain, demonstrating the clear cross-manufacturer opportunity of the platform.
In US also, the Windows Phone market share has grown to 3.2%, In France it is now up at 5.7%. But Italy dwarfs it all with 14% market share.
Windows Phone 8 introduction has started to deliver results everywhere, it seems. With today’s announcement of Lumia 720 and 520, it may get only better from here.
