India, a country with smartphone penetration, of mobile, as low as 10%, emerged second in the global Windows Phone market in the month of July 2014, just trailing the US. This is unsurprising since the majority of smartphones shipped in India are below $200 and Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) Lumia series is amongst the forerunners in this respect. By monitoring 11 global apps and games serving AdDuplex ads to 200,000 users over the day of 8th July, 2014, the country-wise division of Windows Phone market was reached upon.
The ‘other’ countries accounted for almost one-third of the global Windows Phone market. The top 3 countries – US, India and Brazil – together accounted for one-fourth of the global Windows Phone market. Interestingly, China, which is among the booming markets for smartphones, grabbed the sixth spot with just 3.7% share.
The another report from AdDuplex has revealed that the efforts of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) to regularly update its operating system and offer better features to the customers are not just magniloquent; some results skewing in the favour of Windows 8.1 are visible though. At Dazeinfo, we have been tracking the AdDuplex reports that deal in Windows Phone for quite some time and we have noticed that the OS share of Windows 8.1 has continually increased. This data is collected from 4,451 Windows Phone apps running AdDuplex SDK v.2 over the day of July 24th, 2014.
Windows Phone 8.1 Wins At The Cost of Windows Phone 8
The share of Widows Phone 8.1 OS went up to 11.9% in July 2014, a 4.2 percentage point increase from June 2014. The notification bar, updated Cortana and various built-in apps are attracting more and more customers who are migrating from Windows Phone 8 to Windows Phone 8.1 or buying smartphones that are available with pre-installed 8.1 version. Users are also inclined towards the Windows Phone 7 as its share also went up marginally in a period of one month from 17% to 17.7% in July, 2014.
Nokia Lumia 520 Continues to Witness a Decline
Though Nokia Lumia 520 continues to hold one-third share of the global Windows Phone device market, its share has declined since May 2014. The budget flagship phone is attracting fewer customers as it did before, or probably the other devices like the Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 521 are attracting more users. Lumia 720 witnessed an increase of 0.6 percentage point within a month from June 2014 to July 2014.
Inspite of marginal changes in the shares of the Windows Phone devices, Nokia continues to increase its Windows Phone device share globally. The market share of Nokia went up to 94.5% in July 2014 from 93.8%, a month before. Moreover, the top 10 global Windows Phone smartphone remain the same and all belong to the Nokia Lumia series.
Nokia Lumia 52x Yet Again Capture Half The Windows Phone Market in USA
Together, Nokia Lumia 520 and Nokia Lumia 521 held 49.2% of Windows Phone market share in July 2014. Any major shift in the Windows Phone device share is not visible except for few swaps and new entrants in some of the countries. In US, Nokia Lumia 900 dropped from the top 10 Windows Phone devices in July 2014 and paved way for Nokia Lumia 630. Interestingly, US is the only country tracked by AdDuplex where instead of Nokia Lumia 520, Lumia 521 continues to lead the pack.
Hungary is the new addition in the AdDuplex countries and the top ten Windows Phone devices in the nation are very much similar to the rest part of world. Here too, Lumia 520 captures more than one-fourth of the Windows Phone device market followed by Lumia 625 and Lumia 800. However, Nokia Lumia 800 has more market share in Hungary than the rest of the countries.
Nokia Lumia 520 and Lumia 720 continue to hold the top spots in India since May 2014, however their individual share has gone down marginally. Nokia Lumia 630 is the new entrant in the top ten Windows Phone devices in India.
In May 2014, Russia was among the few countries where a Windows Phone device by any other OEM apart from Nokia grabbed a spot in top ten devices. However, this has changed this month, when HTC 8S was flushed out by Nokia Lumia 630.
France was the only nation where HTC 8S occupied a spot in top-3 Windows Phone devices but it swapped position with Nokia Lumia 925 in July, 2014 and went down to fourth rank.
The market share of Windows Phone devices continues to grow progressively in all over the world. With the rumoured launch of high-end Windows Phone devices from LG and HTC, this share is expected to increase. Nokia is playing safely in the smartphone market and deploying the strategy that is very much similar to what Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (KRX:005930) employed in case of mobile devices – flooding the market with handsets that are available at all screen-sizes and price ranging from budget smartphones to high-end devices. The strategy clicked for the Samsung to make it world’s largest smartphone vendors, it would be interesting to see how Nokia applies and leverage upon it !
