Kantar November Numbers: Suggest Decline in Windows Phone and.. Increase in Symbian? Nokia is so doomed

A very accurate predictor of the current Quarter smartphone sales trends is a population-weighted average of the most recent Kantar numbers of the current quarter, compared to the previous quarter. We've now seen the pattern for many quarters and Kantar's numbers foretell very accurately what is the global reality on a very short term view, ie now in late December, with November sales data, we have a good view to Q4 (October-December) quarter sales.

Windows Phone 8 was supposed to excite the world and restore Microsoft and Windows to smartphones (yeah, when have we heard that before, and before, and before, and before). Nokia's brand new Lumia 920 and 820 were supposed to be the best Windows Phones ever made and somehow magical in restoring Nokia's past glories from America to China. With the parallel launch of Windows 8 for the PC environment, the Microsoft powered ecosystem was supposed to be on a big comeback. Well, I don't specialize in the PC world but rumors from that side suggest Windows 8 has been far worse in its early adoption than say Windows 7 was. This does not suggest a glamorous Christmas Quarter for Redmond on its main business. Well, at least we have the new Nokia Lumias and the HTCs and Samsungs and others doing the 'magnificent' new Windows Phone 8 smartphones, right? Enter Kantar. 

KANTAR SUGGESTS WINDOWS PHONE SALES ARE DOWN FROM Q3 !!

Kantar always gives us some of its markets it studies, not all. This time from the November 2012 stats they published, we have a good comparison to September Kantar data (both before Windows Phone 8 launched, and data that was reported in Q3). The regions that Kantar reported both in September and November are the European big 5 countries ie EU5 (Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain), plus the USA, Australia and Brazil. When we take the population-weighted averages of those four regions, and calculate the Windows Phone market share then and now, we get this finding:

Kantar numbers population-weighted average for these 4 regions in Q4 suggested a global average market share for Windows Phone to be 5.3% (don't worry that the reality was only 2%, remember this is not a 'globally representative' sample of Kantar data, this sample strongly over-samples Windows OS's best markets, USA and Europe, and ignores the huge smartphone markets where Windows is negligable, such as China, India and Japan. The point we want, is to compare Kantar last quarter vs Kantar now.

What does Kantar measure for those same four regions now, for November? The weighted average of those same four regions says Windows Phone new sales market share has fallen to 3.8%. Yes, a drop of one third! So what was 1.9% global Windows Phone market share in Q3, these Kantar measurements suggest that after Windows Phone 8 was launched, the global market share for Windows Phone is now crashing to 1.3%. We rounded it to 2% last quarter (was almost 3% in the previous quarter) and Kantar numbers suggest we will round off the Windows Phone market share for Christmas at 1%. That is catastrophic.

Now, remember, the Christmas Quarter, Q4, October to November, does always feature a big jump in smartphone sales. I am modelling a 30% jump from Q3 data. So while the Windows Phone market share is down by a third (according to Kantar measurements) the actual sales are not down by much. If the global smartphone market grew 30% for Christmas, then the total global Windows Phone sales (both platforms, old Windows Phone 7.x and new Windows Phone 8) would be about 2.9 million units.

By The Way.. I did warn you, that the new Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 sales will underperform at Nokia compared to the first Windows Phone launches a year ago. I explained what factors were wrong, mostly in the executive management by Stephen Elop the CEO, who raised prices, not lowered them - raising prices means less sales. Who also limited his carrier relationships, limited distribution means less sales than broad distribution. Etc Etc Etc. I told you so...

ANY OTHER CONTRADICTORY DATA?

But wait, how about China! Yeah, Nokia's Lumia 920T that will launch for China Mobile on the Chinese proprietary 3G standard, TD-SCDMA, will not launch until January. So no help there. What of other Chinese smartphone sales on Windows? Informa has just reported that Windows Phone market share in China is 1%. When Analysys, Gartner and IDC have given China numbers for their latest reports, none mentioned Windows Phone at all, it is that small.

So don't expect miracles out of China. What other news? HTC is so disappointed in Windows Phone 8, it is withdrawing its lowest-price (best-selling) Windows Phone smartphone, the 8C from many markets including the US. And Samsung? Is focusing on its new Tizen devices for next year, don't expect Sammy to waste too much of their marketing efforts on the undesirable Windows platform right now.

Kantar numbers suggest Windows Phone, after Windows Phone 8 has launched, will still sell less than Windows Phone did in Q3? That is very bad news for Microsoft and for Nokia. But now lets look at the shocker.

SYMBIAN SALES GROWING SUGGESTS KANTAR

And this second bit of data must be devastating for Espoo and anyone near Nokia strategy. It is now 9 months from the last new Symbian based smartphones released by Nokia. The model range is obsolescent. The customers are being peddled new Windows Phone based smartphones instead. Yet those old pesky Symbian based Nokia smartphones have many of the features and abilities that Nokia owners want - like great cameras, like real physical QWERTY keyboards, etc. And what does Kantar data suggest? Those 4 Kantar-reported regions, weighted average suggested Symbian sales in Q3 of 7.7% in these four regions. And now? They suggest 7.5% market share for the same four regions. After we factor in the growth in sales for the Christmas quarter, the data suggests Nokia Symbian sales have jumped from 3.3 million to 4.3 million !!!

KANTAR NUMBERS SUGGEST 6.8 MILLION TOTAL NOKIA SMARTPHONE SALES

Like I said, the Kantar numbers are very accurate in short-term forecasting smartphone OS platform performance for the current quarter. And these findings suggest total Nokia smartphone sales of 6.8 million units for Q4 which they also suggest, would split 4.3 million on Symbian (and MeeGo), and 2.5 million on all Lumia, old and new, on Windows Phone. So compared to Q3, when Nokia only sold the 'undesirable' and suddenly 'obsolete' early Lumia smartphones, and now when the new Windows Phone 8 has launched, Nokia Windows based smartphone sales would be down by 13% while the industry grew 30% in the same period (real effective loss in unit sales of 43% in a 3 month period, after the new platform had launched). I call this a disaster.

And the customers? They refuse Windows Phone but they still accept Symbian (and MeeGo). So Symbian/MeeGo sales would be up - based on the Kantar numbers - from 3.4 million in the last quarter to 4.3 million now - an increase in absolute terms of 27% in Symbian sales from 3 months ago, but after we factor in the market growth, its slightly less than the 30% growth of the market, so Symbian would only lose 3% of its share in this past 3 months - with utterly obsolete and uncompetitive phones! (and zero management support of any kind). Incidentially, my recent spot-check of Chinese online sales of handsets found two Lumia devices as Nokia's bestselling smartphones in China. And two Symbian devices - the 808 Pureview and ... the N8 !!! (Why does moron-CEO Stephen Elop not give us a Lumia with 12mp camera, if the N8, at two YEARS of age, still is a top 5 bestselling smartphone in the biggest smartphone market on the planet? Hello?)

And do you really want to cry? Nokia' second best-selling smartphone in mid December online sales in China was.. the N9 running MeeGo. A smartphone that is 15 months old, but still outsells all Lumia smartphones except one and outsells all Symbian smartphones by Nokia. Why is idiot Elop not fully supporting the N9, selling this magnificient smartphone in every market, and launching its sister phone the N950 to the world? What is wrong with the brain of the CEO? And why is the Board still allowing the clueless Microsoft Muppet to run Nokia. He should have been fired long ago. The worst CEO of all time! (PS the continued very strong sales of the N9 and MeeGo suggest very promising starts for two new smartphone operating systems that launch next year - Sailfish the MeeGo next version that will power Jolla smartphones from Finland; and the Tizen alliance which will see first smartphones launched by Samsung and Lenovo in 2013. Tizen is what Samsung too of Nokia-discarded MeeGo and its partnership, and transformed now as a Samsung-led Tizen alliance. With such partners - PARTNERS - as NTT DoCoMo, Sprint, Telefonica, SK Telecom etc - some of the biggest mobile operators/carriers in the world)

If Nokia smartphone overall number is 6.8 million for Q4, that would be slightly up, 8% up, from Q3 and no doubt, the snake-oil-salesman ultimate spin-doctor-in-chief Stephen Elop of Nokia would proudly celebrate that his smartphone unit had growth. Don't be fooled, as the market grew 30%, it means effectively Nokia lost more than one fifth (in mathematical terms, the competitive decline is 22% of its market share last quarter) of its feeble remaining market position just over the past 3 months. Not 'grew by 8%' but rather, lost one fifth of what remained. Nokia's market share in smartphones - which was 29% just 24 months ago - would now fall from 3.7% in Q3 to 2.7% now in Q4. This, if Kantar's numbers are accurately indicating the total global market reality. Do remember, that Brazil is included in this data, so its not just the rich world markets we are looking at.

WINDOWS PHONE EVEN WORSE

And Windows? The Kantar numbers do suggest Windows Phone sales collapsing from Q3 to Q4. Market share falling from 1.9% to 1.3%. Total global Windows Phone sales falling from 3.3 million in Q3 to 2.9 million now in Q4. What collaborative data do we have? We hear that in most markets the Windows Phone based Nokia Lumia smartphones have been selling out. Selling out sounds good. Until we see what trick Nokia CEO has now been playing. The Next Web quotes Elop and runs a story on 20 December explaining that Nokia has deliberately run low initial rates of Lumia 920 and 820 unit production for Christmas, to help create buzz and demand and a feeling of success. Elop admits in his CNet interview on 21 December that "there's frustration due to limited supply. Our focus is on broadening distribution."

Deutche Bank analysts have severely downgraded their Lumia sales numbers saying their market checks reveal far lesser actual sales than initial hype suggested. And remember, if the mix of Windows vs Symbian phones is now reversing to more Symbian, it means Nokia average sales prices would plummet for Christmas, and likely loss-making in the smartphone unit again increase. Last Quarter the Windows Phone unit made a 49% loss per every Lumia smartphone sold. How much worse can it get? 

Then the other Windows Phone partners? I mentoined HTC reducing its Windows Phone 8 offering, including pulling the HTC 8C from many markets and not launching its large screen Windows Phone smartphone. HTC is focusing on where the profits and customers are - on Android obviously.

We'll see soon enough in January, but yes, I am now quite confident in my previous early gut-feeling forecast number that 6.8 million is roughly the level of Nokia total smartphone sales for Q4. The mix of Lumia on Windows Phone vs Symbian is very likely to switch to more Symbian!! So I expect Nokia to have about 63% of its smartphones now in Q4 running still on Symbian/MeeGo and only 37% running on all variants of Windows Phone. 

Meanwhile, globally, Windows Phone would have something in the order of 1.3% market share for Christmas and sell 2.9 million units. It would still remain smaller than Symbian now 22 months after Elop decided to sacrifice Symbian and MeeGo instead of Windows Phone. When Palm - once the world's second biggest smartphone platform - had fallen to about 1% market share (and very unprofitable), it had its mercy killing, being sold to HP and ended. How long will Ballmer keep the massive-losses-generating Windows Phone platform even alive? It will soon go the way of the Kin and the Zune and Microsoft will shift its focus only on the PC and tablet side of the Windows 8 operating system.

How long does Nokia have as a company? I said a year ago it was a dead-man-walking. I expect Nokia to be sold any day now.. In reality, lets see how the US fiscal cliff is sorted out, some sanity and stability is restored to Wall Street, and perhaps all those giant tech and consumer electronics giants sitting on billions of cash, will finally feel it safe enought to start the bidding war on the corpse that is Nokia, mostly obviously for its rich patents portfolio - did you notice again, Nokia picked RIM's pockets again on a patents fight, like it did with Apple about a year ago, etc. So realistically? Lets say a good time frame for when the Nokia take-over battle will happen could be around February-March'ish of 2013.

For those who took part in our Crowd-sourced forecast, remember, a little over a year ago, I asked my Twitter followers to suggest what market share Microsoft Windows Phone would have now at Q4 of 2012. The forecasts ranged from 0.4% to 43.2% with the average suggested at 10.1%. Haha, if Kantar numbers do foretell a reality near 1.3%, then currently the nearest guesses are with Gibson Tang, Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Josie Fraser and Ben Fletcher. Good luck to all contestants. See the full contest and all entries here: Crowd-sourcing a forecast for Windows Phone.

Note: an early edition of this blog posting mistakenly identified the HTC handset as 8X when it is the 8C that is being pulled. The blog is now corrected.

One plug - For anyone who needs data and numbers on the handset industry, remember my TomiAhonen Phone Book with all the charts, numbers, data you would ever need to know, in a convenient pdf eBook formated for small screens so you can carry all the data right on your tablet or smartphone.

 

Comments

[winter]

@Baron95
Indeed, Tomi has missed Android peaking in each of his predictions since 2009. He also missed Apple's final victory in each of his prediction.

I dear to say that in 12 months time, Tomi will still not have predicted Android's peaking nor Apple's final victory. Making it a 5 year run of failing to predict Android's peaking.

This must be contrasted with your perfect performance. You have predicted Apple's victory and Android failure from the beginning.

[Tester]

@Baron95:

>> But you are drawing way too many invalid conclusions. My whole point is that the iPhone business has become less and less peaky.

True gold. It's really an art taking any set of numbers and twist their meaning until you get the exact results you want to prove.

When I see a sudden jump in sales distribution I call it a peak. Period. Especially if that jump can be tied to a specific event.

>> It is not debatable that Android (and WP and BB) smartphones are suffering from expensive spec inflation.

Again truly exceptional, how you dismiss all the features Apple is lacking in a single sentence.

The same thing can be summed up quite differently as well, if you apply an anti-Apple bias to it instead of a pro-Apple one: 'Apple had lost touch with the high end specs of the market.'

You gotta love your biased news reporting but it's still bullshit at the end of the day.

Yes, USA is Apple's strongest market - and it will forever remain so. There's just too many peculiarities in the US market that Apple can exploit to increase marketshare that in other countries don't exist.

[Earendil Star]

Why are many manufacturers supporting WP?

Rather easy answer:
all OEMs, except Nokia, are aware that, from a risk management perspective, it is always preferable to diversify. If this diversification is paid by somebody else (MS with its cash, trying to push the WP [P]OS), even better: free money and higher bottom line margin!

Yet, are they betting high? No, because WP continues to be a turkey. Yet, if things were to change, they're ready to reap the benefits. Just the opposite of what Nokia under THT Elop did. Betting ONLY on WP, dumping everything else and giving the good bits to MS for free. And that's why Nokia is doomed.

By the way, also carriers are profiting from the MS bonanza. While Apple is extracting money from carriers, eager to sell the iPhone (with the notable exception of China Mobile, against which Apple has been impotent since Android phones are loved by the Chinese...) MS is paying them to provide WP devices. In a sense, you could argue MS is making the price carriers are paying to Apple for selling the iPhone more bearable... :)

On US carriers, well, not much to be said. It is a cartel, that is merrily profiting from the absence of any serious antitrust activity, in a country where the only regulations are for the perpetuation of the status quo.

[Earendil Star]

Dear ExNokian, your fury against Tomi and the shock for the ill fate of WP is blinding you.

Take your time, just re-read what Tomi wrote.

He is speaking of top 5 of... NOKIA's best selling smartphones. Not overall.

I know. Reality is tough. But there's a way out: just accept it.
Everything will be easier afterwards.

[Tester]

No, this blog is realistic.

You apparently don't care to look behind the stuff you post.

Why is the Lumia 920 back on top at Amazon? Yes, right: Because it's been HEAVILY DISCOUNTED!!!

This is one of the prime methods to fake interest. Make it look like a good bargain and ratings will go up. All this shows is that Nokia still needs to pump in a lot of money just to sell their stuff. It's clearly an unsustainable operation.

(Oh, and what else did I just spot? That Lumia weighs 1.4 times as much as a Samsung Galaxy S3? Ugh... Some heavy clunker...)

As for ratings at Amazon or any other site: Anyone falling for such heavily doctored data is an idiot. Sorry, but it's a well known fact that the vast majority of tech product ratings are fakes.
That goes admittedly just the same for Samsung but the data is worthless and everyone knowing this business is aware of it.

As for the praise listed on that Nokia page, no comment. I never ever heard of most of the outfits it links to and therefore can't comment on their credibility.

But seeing 25 or so positive opinions doesn't tell me much. With a bit of googling you find just as many negative ones.

It doesn't matter anyway. Microsoft products are known to be liked by the press (or to be more precise, the money Microsoft pays is well liked) but what does it all help if the general public still ignores the platform and buys the next available Android phone instead?

And no design award or other prais can overcome this obstacle easily. You have to accept that most users go to where the masses already are - and that's Android and iOS - just the same as with Windows on desktop - the alternatives don't have a chance in the market if one (or in this case 2) platform already owns it.

People gravitate towards success - and Windows Phone is the total opposite of success right now.

[Henrik]

@P. Bokkelman. Yes Tomi have a way of saying things in a not so nice way when he talks about MS and Nokia. But he has his numbers from the last few years that has been showing that he has been right most of the time. And more then the big analysing companies. So he is allowed to be cocky and he amidst when he is wrong.

And how it's going with Nokia and WP. Sure they have a lot of good reviews and rewards. And I have never seen a phone series or OS (mobile or desktop) with to many ads here in Denmark.
It's is every where. It was really bad in the beginning of last year (2012) every bus had Lumia ads on then. Every store that sold smartphones has one big Lumia front etc. But you still see lumia ads almost everywhere just not as bad.
Yet it's still not selling.

And yes the US has never been Nokia's marked. But it's MS marked. And with MS OS some windows phones should have maked a bigger dent on the US phone marked. And with Nokia as the biggest WP OEM. Then there should have been sold a lot more Nokia phones in the US

Specs was a problem with WP before WP8. Now they can make WP that is not running on 2 years old hardware specs.
But the OS is still lagging behind.
From MS launched WP I heard that it would be the next big thing. You just had to
Wait for Nokia's WP
Wait for WP 7.5
Wait for Lumia XXX
Wait for for WP8
Wait for Nokia with WP8
Now it's Wait the next update.

It's like MS looks at the maked and says. "The other smartphones is like this and can do that. Lets get WP up to speed whit them" And then a year later when they are done with the updates. Then they are chocked that the rest of the tech world have evolved doing that time. And they are behind in the race again. But still they try the same procedure as last.
It's nice when they talk about the features in there next update. But features in the next update is not what you have now and can compete with. And if it takes to long to get the update finished and get it out. Then there is a good change that it is outdated when it comes out.

Personally I liked Nokia. my first many phones was Nokia. And I ones said that I would not buy anything else then a Nokia phone.
Now I don't even consider one. 1) I don't like the OS (I tried to play with it in the store. And... It's just not me. And the lack of apps is not helping my decision.
The last Nokia phone I considered was one with MeeGo on it. But MeeGo lacked a future from Nokia. It was "Well we have this new OS that is good. But we don't know how much time and effort we will put in to it. And what the future is of it" So I skipped it.

Ohh and about the Lumia's design as people also tend to bring up. And an Lumia with Android would be a killer phone. It's okay to look at if you ask me. But when you pick it up. It's heavy and thigh compared to other high end smartphones.

[Tester]

To be blunt, Windows Phone is 2 years old by now and it hasn't gotten any traction whatsoever so far.
I don't see that changing suddenly just because the new Lumias got good reviews. The ones last year got those as well and look where they are now.

Any serious challenger needs to offer some genuinely disruptive new features - like the iPhone did 5 years ago.

And sorry, Windows Phone is not that system.

[Tester]

>> Specs was a problem with WP before WP8. Now they can make WP that is not running on 2 years old hardware specs.

It's still a big problem. Remember the recent HTC announcement that they dropped a large screen WP8 device because the OS is limited to 720x1280 screen size?

Microsoft again made the same mistake, limiting the OS to hardware that was current when it entered beta testing. And again the world went on, evolved and WP looks outdated - again.

Microsoft seems to have one big problem. Their entire mode of thinking is deadlocked in a monopolist's attitude where *they* decide the new features and repeatedly get run over by the competition which is more flexible.

[newbie reader]

@Spawn
thank you for your WinAPI comment, it really was new knowledge for me

@Louis
What you explained, is that in USA there is carrier cartel, while in Europe there are not.

However, we discuss iPhone vs. Android, and nowhere in your post there is explained, why iPhones are offered bigger discount, than Android phones, i.e. why Apple is allowed to suck the money off the US carriers, or, if you like it this way more, to fully participate in this cartel's profit, and why antitrust stuff is not here.

My point in my posts was, that nothing like this could be reproduced on non-US, e.g. European markets, not to say about rest of the world.

I admit that I was probably to harsh at stating it "work for free", but still, the fact is, iP5 is $200, S3 is $200, and Note II is $300 in USA, all with the same 2-year contract. While real world price for SGS3 is about $200 cheaper than for iP5 now, and Note II is about the same price.

[Tester]

@P.Bokkelman:

Let's counter your post with a comment right in that article you linked to to see its real value:

"In addition, the report claimed that most of WP8's gains came at the expense of WP7, not people moving over from iOS or Android. "

So, nothing gained, ultimately, just users replacing their old phones.

[RottenApple]

Of course they got deleted!

Post bullshit - post is gone.
Post bullshit repeatedly - post may be gone even faster.
Post nothing but bullshit (a.k.a. act like a troll) - post won't be taken seriously - and still get deleted.

And now please stay away. We are not interested in your opinion that's being fed directly by Microsoft's propaganda machine.

Who do you think sponsors sites like wmpoweruser.com to spread their pro-MS lies?

Come on! wppoweruser.com is one of those 'information' sites where fools like you get fed what they want to hear, not what is true.

[P.Bokkelman]

What did I say???

http://press.nokia.com/2013/01/10/nokia-exceeds-previous-q4-2012-outlook-for-devices-services-and-nokia-siemens-networks/

[Tester]

@P.Bokkelman:

So?

The page you linked to explicitly says:

9.3 million Asha dumbphones
4.4 million Lumia smartphones
2.2 million Symbian smartphones

So, where are the promised 7 million Lumias?
I don't know but if that's 'better than expected' expectations must have relly been extremely low...

[RottenApple]

Yeah, sure, but not before hell freezes over.

Of course, if Nokia finds enough dumb people like you - yes, then they may sell 10 million.

Anyone with sufficient brain capacity would never touch that Microsoft turkey so they have to focus on a demographic that's clueless enough to buy into their grasp-of-death 'ecosystem'.

Let's just wait a few months. Soon Samsung will release the Galaxy S4 and compared to that the current Nokia offering is ancient and not desirable.

Now, over christmas they had a window of opportunity. They missed it by a wide margin due to their 'limited supply'.

Oh, and just one piece of advice: It doesn't make you look good if you gloat over other people's mistakes or mispredictions. It doesn't make you look smart. It makes you look like a bullying idiot.

[Tim]

Hi Tomi Good Blog thankyou for providing real information. Most of the news sites seem to be in microsofts pocket or just too lazy not to regurgitate the latest 'news' without worrying how accurate it is.

regarding nokia lumia user satisfaction: nokia and microsoft have obviously been spamming the user reviews on amazon. if you look at amazon best selling phones and the user reviews lumias are the highest rated. even the old 900 gets 'this is the best phone ive ever had'. lumias that dont even sell get large numbers of reviewers giving it a 5. by comparison samsung galaxy which is the best seller only gets a small number of reviewers and a more balanced rating. even when lumias were out of sight on the best selling list they were still the highest rated phones. is that just me being suspicious or is there a dead rat in there somewhere.

nokia seems to have learnt microsofts dirty tricks very fast. i wonder how that happened. nothing to do with the ex softie ceo and all his ex softie henchmen.

[Tester]

@Stephen:

That site unfortunately doesn't tell the sample size for its statistic but with a platform with a very small market share increased customer satisfaction can mean 3 different things:

- customers are indeed satisfied
- errors due to small sample size
- all unsatisfied customers are already gone so the result is biased towards the die-hard followers of the platform.

[Tester]

What 'all surveys'? Links, please!
There's at least one where WP ranks considerably worse than Android.

Plus, as I said, a platform with such bad traction in the market will also have a low retention rate among users, which inevitably means that high satisfaction values may also mean that everybody not liking the platform is already gone.

As long as there's no growth it's all meaningless.

[Tester]

Haha, that surely shows how such surveys get doctored to get the numbers the surveyor wants.

One says Android user satisfaction at 50% but then the next one, which goes into more detail shows a very high satisfaction rating for Android 4.x and a low one for Android 2.x.

In fact the Android 4.0 rating is even higher than iOS. It's only the old versions that bring the overall number down.

So my conclusion is clearly: It'S all useless numbers if OS versions from 2 years back are mashed together with modern versions from a few months back.

This looks to me a lot like IDC's attention grabbing news last year, predicting 19% market share in 2015 (which a year later was 'corrected' down to 11% for 2016.

I'd wait to bring out the champagne when WP actually sells some significant numbers. As long as we get the same promises as last year and the year before the reaction will be the same: complete disinterest in the platform.

There's still too many people around who had enough of Microsoft and those will never buy these things.

[Derek]

Windows Phone is gaining some momentum:
http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/Smartphone-Competition-Hots-Up

[Tester]

I was just waiting for some idiot to quote this report.

I had a good laugh. Yes, WP gained a bit - but if you dig deeper you'll find out that all the gains came at the expense of Symbian. Hell, it didn't even convert completely to WP!

And in the same time Android's gains were 5x to 10x as much with the exception of Italy which seems to be an anomaly.

So where does it go from here, now that Symbian is finally done? Nothing left to take customers from I'd say...

And now the really hard task for WP begins: Keeping the customers it already gained. Only if that's successfull you may bring out the champagne.