Microsoft fails to turn punters on to WinPho 7
Only 1.6m smartphones based on MS' new OS sold in Q1
Microsoft and its hardware partners shifted a mere 1.6m Windows Phone 7 handsets during the first three months of 2011.
So says market watcher Gartner, which also noted that a total of just under 101m smartphones shipped worldwide in the same period.
And compare WinPho 7 shipments to 16.9m iPhones, 13m BlackBerrys and 36.3m Android devices.
WinPho 7's "modest" sales were actually beaten by shipments of older Microsoft mobile operating systems. According to Gartner, a Microsoft OS was installed in 3.7m smartphones in Q1 2011 - 2.1m more than the researcher's WinPho 7 total, given separately.
HP's WebOS and Linux together accounted for the best part of 3.4m smartphones.
Back in April, Gartner forecast that Microsoft will take 19.5 per cent of the smartphone market come 2015, the majority of that share being accounted for by WinPho. This time the researcher was more cautious in its outlook, simply saying that: "In the long term, Nokia's support will accelerate Windows Phone's momentum." ®
COMMENTS
Title
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed a pattern around here lately?
techSage, you joined The Register today and yet you have already replied 5 times to a single post, each time desperately trying to persuade us that MS has turned the corner with WinPho and all will be well.
This has definitely happened several times now with names I've never seen before trying to shout down any dissenting view by posting multiple replies to a single thread. I thought astroturfers were supposed to be intelligent and subtle in their manipulations. I mean at least make an effort, please....
@techSage
Arg!!! Please, if you're going to be a blatant and obvious MS-marketing drone, at least admit it openly.
All you've done so far is spout MS's marketing rhetoric repeatedly without any real discussion or sense to it. At least pretend to follow the topics and respond to them appropriately without coming up with paragraphs of text lifted straight from MS's marketing resources.
Most of the list of "features" you've come out with are just what MS is currently trying to push / foist / sell (take your pick) to whoever happens to be in their way at the time. It doesn't matter what device or service MS are meant to be promoting at the time, all they do is repeat the push for the current hot marketing items over and over again. It gets tiresome when you're meant to be looking at, for example, sharepoint and you're having lync, office 365 and other junk (*) thrown in your face repeatedly.
* topics of immediate marketing interest, not necessarily what you're interested in at the time.
Starting from the pit lane
Microsoft brought a Porsche Boxster to a Ferrari race...that started 2 hours ago.
Chances of catching the leaders? Nil.
@techSage
How, after essentially spamming this article and downvoting anyone that has anything negative to say about Microsoft or their phone, do you have the chutzpah to call *anyone* else a fanboy? Android, by the way, has butchered RIM, Nokia and WinMob 6 sales. Take your own advice and "look it up"...
Aimed at the wrong market
They need to make Windows Phone 7 attractive to business, and then market it as a business phone. If Microsoft can make WP7 a viable alternative to RIM then they'll sell them by the bucket load.
It may well be worth them investing in building a WM6 virtual machine for the WP7 to allow legacy applications to run.
If they keep marketing it as a consumer device then they've already lost the battle.
