Data from Strategy Analytics suggests sales of Windows Phone units were up over 275% year-over-year for the third quarter.


http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-pho...erating-system


I can see Windows Phone taking 2nd spot in years to come...

It may happen, Apple's on the high end, Android everywhere and Nokia tries to get their foot in the door on the low end atm. And that's were most units are sold.

It's easy to show high growth when starting from a low base. If you already have 81% market share >200% is a lot more difficult.

Agreed. A relatively immature OS and Nokia's commitment of late meant this market was bound to grow rapidly from modest beginnings.

The hardware's getting there and I guess there will be a tipping point when all the major app developers see it as a lucrative platform. I want it to succeed - competition is healthy for hardware/OS evolution.

That growth looks really good in isolation.

However WP is only accounting for 4% of overall device sales. Android covers over 80%, iOS 14%.

That shows how far Nokia have fallen. They used to be the ones with 80% market share, but mind numbingly incompetent management has led them to their current situation of being a distant 3rd. And they've only gone to a distant 3rd as the prior incumbent took way too long to get new products to market.

I really think Nokia should have made a few Android phones before committing to Windows Phone. If they had done that their market share would be a lot higher. At the moment the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC seem to have a much higher market share.

Android would never have worked for Nokia.

If you look at the quality of their hardware prior-to and immediately following their switch to WP7, it was nowhere near competitive with what was being released by major Android OEMs at the time.

Well we will never know but WP was a disaster for them as they are about to disappear.

Actually you are wrong. Nokia was constrained by WP7. It only supported single core and wvga resolution. What else was Nokia supposed to do. It is an eternal shame that we will never see a Nokia Nexus.

I can't see Microsoft continuing the WP "success". All the other OEMs are going to drop it and without Nokia who is going to drive it forward?

That is actually a plausible long term scenario because the "cheap" Apple iPhone products* aimed developing markets retail at $635 (see http://www.amazon.co.uk/iPhone-Unloc...ne+5c+unlocked) whereas cheap Windows Phone products retail at $111 (see http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brand-New-...item2a2f1bd072). Now, in the growing mobile phone markets of India, China and elsewhere, what will the consumers go for - $635 or $111?

*I regard the pricing of the iPhone 5C as a grave error of judgement and so did many investors and market analysts because Apple shares fell when the pricing information was revealed.

Can't've been that disastrous, it made them valuable enough for MS to buy them.
There's no way they'd've fetched £4.6bn in the state they were in prior to switching to WP7.



No, I'm right - on this point even more than usual.

Which is why I said to look at the hardware they produced before switching as well.
You claim Nokia were 'constrained' to WVGA screens, yet no Symbian handset ever had a screen that detailed.
And the CPUs? Don't make me laugh. At the time Elop made his 'burning platform' speech and announced the switch to WP7, Nokia were using 2-year-old 680MHz single-core CPUs in their top-of-the-range Symbian handsets.

WP7 was perfect for Nokia: a) they could never have competed with other Android OEMs, they simply weren't capable of producing good enough hardware b) the hardware restrictions allowed them to simplify their handset development and in doing so get back on their feet c) it allowed them to stop pumping vast amounts of money into software development without achieving anything.



Why not? MS are buying the entire Nokia handset division, they can continue to develop Nokia's handset roadmap seamlessly.

In fact, since both MS and Nokia have admitted that they didn't know what the other party was developing when it came to WP and the Lumia range and therefore missed numerous opportunities to better integrate the two, it's far from unreasonable to believe that MS make a better job of things now it's all under one roof.
Not to mention MS have both the money and determination to make it work, as well as the desperate need to stay relevant in the mobile industry.

Yes the purchase of Nokia risks driving away other OEMs but they were leaving anyway, so long-term it's better for MS to go it alone than to hope that companies like HTC and Samsung ever decide to make a proper go of things.

No you have utterly missed the point. WP and sticking with Symbian to long has ruined Nokia to such an extent that it has no choice but accept the Microsoft take over.

Of course Symbian devices had shitty specs. They were Symbian devices. Why on earth do you think they would have pumped out a 600mhz low resolution Android handset? The N9 showed what they were capable of. That could easily have been released much earlier and running Android.


If Microsoft was to keep Nokia separate and keep the name then OK, they stood chance. But no. Goodbye Nokia and all that worldwide hardware good will. And hello Microsoft phones who will be starting from a very low base. It is a good job Microsoft have plenty of money. They are going to need it.

The hardware that was cancelled, and was being lined up to replace the ageing processors was much much better, but as soon as Elop was brought in it was all cancelled. Effectively ending any hope of a smartphone being premium from Nokia for many years.

Sticking with Symbian did, the switch to WP hasn't hurt them any more than they already were.

And they had every option not to accept MS's takeover - sales of the Lumia range, whilst small when looked at in reference to the market as a whole are on the rise and whilst they made a small loss last quarter, it's vastly reduced from a year ago. Add to that WP8's rising marketshare purely on the back of Nokia's handsets and it's clear they'd finally turned a corner.
Nokia had done the hard part, they could easily have chosen to continue to go it alone now and MS's bid reflected that. Nokia would not have fetched as high a price a year ago.



I think that because it's the best hardware Nokia was producing at the time.
No amount of wishful thinking changes the crap Nokia were churning out.

The N9 was 18 months behind comparable Android handsets and the idea that Nokia could somehow have gotten it to market sooner by switching to Android is laughable. They would've been starting from scratch with a whole new OS, as opposed to MeeGo which they'd've been developing for years.



Worldwide good will? Are you high?
Nokia produced terrible handsets for years and drove away huge numbers of customers.

How do you know? If they had ditched the ancient Symbian OS (which I think is a relic from the old Psion days) they might have been able to make a few half-decent Android phones. They could have used both Android and Windows. To be honest I'm not surprised that they're gonna be taken over by Microsoft.