While there are debates as to whether Microsoft had good sales during the holiday season, smartphone sales reports from various market research firms are supporting the software company’s claim of selling twice the number of units sold in Q4 2012 last year. One such report came from New York-based market firm ABI Research.
The latest report from ABI Research brought the usual news on the current standing of Android and iOS as the first and second mobile platform, respectively. However, they made it clear that Android‘s current success is not solely theirs, but more from the growth of forked Android platforms or AOSP (Android Open Source Project). AOSP listed a 137% year-on-year (YoY) growth, mainly because of the growing support from Asian countries like China. Overall, Android took 77% of the smartphone market share for Q4 2013.
Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, had a very low YoY growth with only 7%. This showed that even with the release of two new iPhones, they are not as attractive to consumers as they were before. But despite that, they still managed to scraped 18% of the total market share last quarter.
Things are much better with Microsoft and Windows Phone, both on YoY and quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) growth. They had listed the second highest YoY growth after AOSP with 104%; from selling 5.3 million units in Q4 2012, the shipment was doubled, reaching 10.9 million units during the holiday season of 2013. Of course, majority of the sales came from Nokia Lumia smartphones.
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Even though the official sales report on Windows Phone was not yet released by Microsoft, we assume that the figures gathered by ABI Research is closer to what Joe Belfiore is claiming in his recent Twitter post. With the continuous good sales of the Lumia 520, plus the growing followers for the Lumia 625, 925, and 1020, Nokia had maintained their sales above 8 million units. Adding up the sales from Samsung, HTC, and Huawei, it’s possible that Windows Phone really performed well before 2013 ended. Of course, the momentum should be maintained so as to make the dream of becoming the second mobile ecosystem possible. Through effective promotions and giving attention on other market categories, we can clearly see a brighter year for Microsoft’s mobile platform.
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