In February, research firm Strategy Analytics said that Windows Phone had finally surpassed BlackBerry to become the third biggest mobile OS, behind Android and iOS. Today, that same firm issued a new global smartphone report for the second quarter of 2013, and it was a mixed bag for Windows Phone.
The good news? Units of smartphones with Microsoft's Windows Phone went up from 5.6 million units shipped in the second quarter of 2012 to 8.9 million in the same quarter of 2013 (Microsoft has never issued any official Windows Phone shipment numbers). The bad news? The actual market share for Windows Phone only went up slightly in the same time period, from 3.6 percent in 2012 to 3.9 percent in 2013.
One of the firm's analysts, Linda Sui, said that while Microsoft has made some gains in the smartphone market, she believes the company need to do two things to become even more competitive against Google and Apple: Sui stated:
First, the license fee charged to smartphone makers for WP8 must be more competitive to compete with Android in lower price-bands. And second, Microsoft must dramatically accelerate its support for advanced technologies, such as octo-core chipsets, because WP8 continues to lag behind Android in the premium smartphone category.
The market share for smartphones with Android went up from 69.5 percent in the second quarter of 2012 to 79.5 percent in 2013. There were a total of 186.6 million Android smartphones shipped worldwide in the last quarter, according to the firm. Apple's iOS is in second and actually lost ground in terms of market share, going down from 16.6 percent in the second quarter of 2012 to 13.6 percent in 2013. Apple announced a few days ago it shipped 31.2 million smartphones in the second quarter of this year.
The really bad news is reserved for BlackBerry. Despite launching their new BlackBerry 10 smartphones earlier this year, Strategy Analytics doesn't even show BlackBerry devices on their list anymore and doesn't mention them in their press release. We assume that Blackberry's market share is included in the "Others" category. Their numbers are now below that of third place Microsoft.
Source: Strategy Analytics | Image via Strategy Analytics
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