Market surveyor comScore has just released their latest quarterly market analysis for the US cell phone marketplace.
Some of their findings are unsurprising, but there’s one big surprise – or, more to the point, one small surprise.
But, first, the expected. Blackberry’s smartphone market share continues to drop drastically. For the three month period Nov 2010 – Jan 2011, Blackberry had an average of 30.4% of all smartphones currently in use in the US. But for the three months immediately previous (Aug – Oct 2010) its share was 35.8%. With a loss rate of 5.4% per quarter, this could mean Bye, Bye, Blackberry entirely by the end of next year.
Android based phones appear to be the beneficiary of Blackberry’s losses, with their market share soaring ever upwards, from 23.5% in the preceding quarter to 31.2% in this quarter.
Apple stayed virtually unchanged at 24.6% last quarter and 24.7% this quarter (the Verizon version of the iPhone was released on 10 Feb, so perhaps the 0.1% increase in market share was due to the three weeks of Verizon iPhone sales).
Palm continued to decline, dropping from 3.9% to 3.2%. If they continue to lose a 0.7% market share each quarter, they’ll have disappeared by the end of next year too.
And now for the surprise. Microsoft proudly released their completely redone operating system, Windows Phone 7, on 8 November last year, giving them almost the complete quarter to ring up sales and take market share. So how did it do?
In the preceding quarter, it had a 9.7% market share. In this latest quarter, the massive marketing behemoth from Redmond, WA (my own home town) put its concerted corporate weight behind pushing the phone as powerfully as it could. With the benefit of massive promotion, many headed sales channels, pent up demand, and the Christmas season, you’d expect great things, surely.
And so it ended up with a market share of – ooops – 8.0%. A drop of 1.7% from its market share with an embarrassingly lackluster and obsolete earlier phone operating system the previous quarter. If Microsoft continues to give away these sized chunks of their market each quarter, they too will have disappeared entirely by late next year.
Well done, Microsoft. Not!
