Re the Microsoft Phone 7 units I can’t really find much on specific sales numbers. How is it doing? Is it kicking ass on Android and iPhone or not?
Pretty dismal.
Less than 4% of total smartphone sales by number.
But it’s pretty early still, and no one knows what Nokia is planning with their Windows Phone license.
WP7 is doing a heck of a lot better than the KIN, at any rate. Nokia has been talking like they’re going to bet their entire smart phone future on WP7. We’ll see how that works out.
Here’s a recent post from Engadget that discusses it.
I’m highly suspicious of that report because I cannot see any practical way that Windows Mobile 6.5 outsold WP7 since there hasn’t been a phone release running it since November 2009. Perhaps there’s a version of Windows Embedded being sold for enterprise solutions that require mobile computing (think UPS handheld scanners and the like) that’s rolled into that number.
The Nokia partnership will be a very important step as will the coming Mango update which seems to bring WP7 to near parity with iOS and Android on key features. It’s very difficult to quantify if WP7 has been “successful” from a sales perspective because we don’t (and likely won’t) know what MS and it’s partner’s benchmarks are and what type of velocity is required for profitability and what their plans are for the long term. MS probably expects to only compete, not win, for quite a long time and they realize how far behind the game they are. Simply building mindshare (which they’ve done a very good job of) at this point is perhaps more important than phone sales.
WP7 is certainly dwarfed by iOS and Android from a sales perspective. They are also dwarfed by RIM but RIM is slipping quickly and could be vulnerable. WP7 is whipping webOS which is older and has substantial support from HP.
WP7 is going to be on all the carriers soon, they started primarily on AT&T which means they had to compete head-to-head with the iPhone was a bad decision. They have reported a lot of issues with AT&T salespeople being myopic when selling and pushing people to iPhones and nothing else and often completely ignorant about WP7 devices. Once they are on Verizon, US Cellular and Sprint they may gain momentum from folks that justifiably despise AT&T.
We’ll see. I like my WP7 Samsung Focus even if there are some occasions where it’s immaturity rears it’s head. I like it better than the iPhone 4 and much better than my previous Android device. I would LOVE to get free of AT&T though and if Sprint or US Cellular gets a WP7 device that I think is as good or better than my Focus I will probably switch quickly.
This just happened to a close friend of mine. Don has been a computer expert since the early days of DOS, and for a variety of personal and professional reasons he wanted the new WP7. Last Thursday he walked into the store and asked for one. He was amazed at how strongly and stubbornly the salesman tried to talk him out of it.
I’ve known Don for 40 years, and having seen him in action many times, I wish I’d been there to see this one, because Don loves nothing more than to argue (good-naturedly), and has forgotten far more than that salesman will ever know. So he let the salesguy make his points against the WP and for iPhone, then, point by point, Don explained how and why the WP was the better choice for him. Before Don walked out with his new WP, the now-wiser salesman had sheepishly conceded that the WP was the better phone at least in Don’s case.
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Yeah, the AT&T quasi-exclusive was a lousy idea. AT&T’s current perception is as the network you put up with to have an iPhone. They’re a bad fit for WP7, and the fact that WP7, at this point, is lagging behind iOS and Android doesn’t help.
That said…they’re cool device, and MS ain’t giving up. I’m curious to see where they are twelve months from now. If I was buying a phone right now, it wouldn’t be an option because turn-by-turn free GPS is a huge deal for me, and there’s a few Android exclusives I use a lot that don’t yet have good counterparts. Post-Mango, though, that might turn around pretty quick.