The latest Kantar stats are in for the three month period ending January 2016, and it looks like Windows Phone is slowly losing fans in five big European markets. Last month, we asked you if you are planning to buy a Windows Phone and just under a half of you said that you either don't, or that you've just lost interest in the platform.
While we already know from Gartner data that sales of Windows phones have taken a dive in 2015, this only serves to confirm that Microsoft really needs to think harder about its phone strategy if it really believes it can stand a chance.
In the U.S., Windows phones are at 2.6% market share for the month of January 2016, down from 4.3% in January 2015, but things are also worse in Europe's big five, where it went down 3.3% year-over-year, losing market share in Spain, France, Germany and Italy, with just a mild, 1.1% improvement in Great Britain. Australia is no different, as Windows Phone's market share went down from 8.7% in January 2015 to 5.4% in the same month of 2016.
The situation in China remains unchanged, and iOS growth is stalling in the country, but Apple still has a 25% chunk of that market, and according to Kantar's Carolina Milanesi, "price-sensitive consumers might have been waiting to see what promotions Chinese New Year would bring in early February." Apparently, the iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, and iPhone 6S Plus are best sellers in urban China.
Huawei managed to be the second most popular smartphone brand in China (24.3%), as well as the EU5, more than doubling to 14% in the latter market. Xiaomi is the third most popular brand in China and is probably one of the few glimmers of hope for Windows Phone, but it dropped over 10 percentage points compared to the same period in 2015.
Overall, Android and iOS split world market share between them in pretty much the same way as a year ago, and Windows Phone is losing ground in the one place where it has traditionally done relatively well in the past.
Source: Kantar
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