Kantar Worldpanel Comtech’s figures for last month’s smartphone sales are out this week, and they make for interest reading. As you’d expect, Android remains dominant with Apple’s iOS in second position, but the real revelations are found further down the scale. Based on current sales trends, Windows Phone sales in the UK will finally overtake Symbian this month.
Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, which conducts a survey of 15,000 consumers every month to find out the smartphone that they’re using, and if they’ve bought a new one, giving us a fascinating state of the nation somewhat at odds with RIM’s “everything’s rosy” numerical smoke and mirrors.
Unsurprisingly, Android remains the number one smartphone platform with 36.9 percent of of users brandishing a Google phone of any brand. Apple follows with a solid 28.5 percent.
But it’s the monthly sales figures for January 2012, rather than install base statistics, that have piqued our interest. Here too, Android is dominating, but Symbian sales have crashed year-on-year, from 15.5 percent of smartphones sold in Britain to just 2.8 percent.
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That should come as no surprise, given that the platform’s effective death was announced in February 2011, when Nokia revealed its plans to adopt Microsoft’s Windows Phone. But the latter platform is making quiet inroads, with its sales moving up from 0.4 percent to 2.2 percent year-on-year.
That’s still a slither of a slice of the smartphone pie, but based on average rates of decline for Symbian (-1.06 percent per month based on that year-long drop – it’s likely that this figure is accelerating, of course) and increase for Windows Phone (+0.15 percent per month, but again, this may have increased with Nokia’s huge marketing blitz late last year), Windows Phone would finally become the fourth most popular smartphone platform in the UK this month, based on current sales.
Kantar does not break down platforms by manufacturer, but the company’s global consumer insight director Dominic Sunnebo told The Guardian that the Nokia Lumia 800 made up the “lion’s share” of these sales.
It’s got a long way to go of course, but with more than one million Lumia Windows Phone sales under its belt globally, Nokia does at least appear to have picked a slightly stronger horse than Symbian at last.
Is it the one you’re backing though? Let’s hear your thoughts on Windows Phone in the comments below. Is it too little too late or a plucky upstart?
(Image via nokiaconnects)
