Gartner has released their estimates of smartphone sales for 2014 and reveals, like IDC, that market share for Windows Phone is anemic when compared to iOS and Android. The report, which can be found here, estimates that 35.133 million Windows Phones were sold in 2014. That means it garnered 2.8% of the 1.245 billion smartphones solid in the year. When compared to 2013, that represents a drop of market share by .4% despite the improvement in unit sales.
From a units moved perspective, Windows Phone did fare better than it did in 2013 according to the report. Windows Phone only sold 30.714 million units in 2013 which increased to the afore mentioned 35.133 million units. This is likely reflects the high number of low-end, budget friendly devices bumped up the numbers but it was washed out by the increase by Android and iOS. Android saw an increase market share of 80.7%, up from 78.5% in 2013 while iOS dropped by .1% but still had 15.4% of the market. If you do the math, Android and iOS accounted for an eye watering 96.1% which is similar to what IDC reported in their annual report.
For Microsoft as a vendor, the sales figures as far as units go isn’t great new either. Sales figures were down from 250.8 million units in 2013 to 185.6 million in 2013. Keep in mind that this includes feature phones and not just Lumia devices.
Overall it isn’t a great picture for Windows Phone but not one that should surprise many readers. The hope of course is that with Windows 10 that Microsoft will claw back some market share and become a bigger player in the market. Universal apps will help but it will take more than just that one feature and of course the need for a flagship phone will remain unanswered until the next generation of Windows hits the market later this year.
