gartner worldwide smartphone sales grew 9.7% year-to-year; MicroSoft saw a 50% market share loss

[zMeul]

source: https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3215217

 

Quote

Global sales of smartphones to end users totaled 403 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015, a 9.7 percent increase over the same period in 2014, according to Gartner, Inc. However, this was their slowest growth rate since 2008. In 2015 as a whole, smartphone sales reached 1.4 billion units, an increase of 14.4 percent from 2014. 
“Low-cost smartphones in emerging markets, and strong demand for premium smartphones, continued to be the driving factors,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. “An aggressive pricing from local and Chinese brands in the midrange and entry-level segments of emerging markets led to consumers upgrading more quickly to affordable smartphones.” 
Mr. Gupta said that 85 percent of users in the emerging Asia/Pacific market are replacing their current midrange phone with the same category of phone. In addition, currency devaluations against the U.S. dollar in many emerging markets are putting further margin pressure on many vendors that import devices. Current market conditions are prompting some vendors to consider setting up manufacturing operations in India and Indonesia to avoid being hit by future unfavorable currency devaluations and high import taxes. 
In the fourth quarter of 2015, Samsung and Huawei were the only two top-five smartphone vendors to increase their sales to end users (see Table 1). Apple suffered its first decline in sales of smartphones — iPhone sales were down 4.4 percent.

 

 

 

 

oh, poor MicroSoft ... NOT!

over this last year+, what did MS do on the smartphone market?! they dragged the feet, and continue to do so, on W10 Mobile launch

if they continue this trend, in couple of years MS won't even have a market share to worry about

[Trik'Stari]

So, Windows Phone is even less popular now?

 

Awesome. More security through obscurity for me.

[Kherm]

Once again, They haven't been known as MicroSoft since the 70's

[The Benjamins]

Remember when windows phone had the big market share, along with black berry.

[RagnarokDel]

To be fair, in Eastern Canada at least, there's only 1 provider from whom you can get a Windows Phone: Bell. I'd rather get my dick cut off and turned into sausage then use Bell as a carrier again.

[suicidalfranco]

remember when bb didn't consider the iPhone as threat? or when balmer laughed at it?

good times, good times

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

So, Windows Phone is even less popular now?

 

Awesome. More security through obscurity for me.

wouldn't it be better to pick up a bb10 device them? looking at that 0.2% marketshare

[Trik'Stari]

Just now, suicidalfranco said:

wouldn't it be better to pick up a bb10 device them? looking at that 0.2% marketshare

Aren't blackberry devices used by certain security services? That's fairly high profile.

[zMeul]

Just now, suicidalfranco said:

wouldn't it be better to pick up a bb10 device them? looking at that 0.2% marketshare

BB have moved from their proprietary OS to Android

[suicidalfranco]

Just now, zMeul said:

BB have moved from their proprietary OS to Android

still is supported by bb

1 minute ago, Trik'Stari said:

Aren't blackberry devices used by certain security services? That's fairly high profile.

but haven't read of successful attacks at it so far, so they must be doing something good or they're just that obscure

[CtW]

This isn't surprising given the shit app support and their constant delays with shipping Winphone10.

[Doobeedoo]

I guess they still have a chance with Surface Phone if they make it work smooth with mobile OS and it's store. They need to push that and results can be expected.