Windows Phone has sneaked past Blackberry into third position among smartphone operating systems worldwide, according to IDC, but its 3.2% market share of devices shipped in the first quarter of the year still pales in comparison compared with Android (75.0%) and iOS (17.3%).
Windows Phone shipped 7.0m units in Q1, up 133.3% from Q1 2012, a performance that “helps validate the direction taken by Microsoft and key partner Nokia” according to IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo. Nokia accounted for 79.0% of all Windows Phone shipments during the quarter and has now shipped 20.3m Windows Phone devices in total. IDC says that the gains made by Windows Phone “demonstrate both end-user demand and OEM support”. But it is clearly still nowhere near enough to get anywhere near Android, which increased its market share from 59.1% a year ago to 75.0%, shipping 162.1m handsets in the quarter. “Given the relatively low volume generated, the Windows Phone camp will need to show further gains to solidify its status as an alternative to Android or iOS,” Restivo explains.
Windows Phone’s move into third position was helped by another seemingly poor performance by Blackberry, which shipped 6.3m units in Q1, down from 9.7m in Q1 2012. However, IDC says that this decline actually masks the progress that the company has made over the year.
“In its first quarter of availability, BlackBerry formally introduced and shipped more than a million units running on its new BB10 platform, a significant breakthrough for the company,” it says.
Some 37.4m iOS devices were shipped in the first quarter of the year, up from 35.1m in Q1 2012.
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