Windows phones plummet below 1% market share

Gartner’s worldwide smartphone sales report for Q1 is out and the results are dismal for some.

According to findings by the technology research and advisory firm, Windows has seen a decline in its smartphone sales since last year, meaning it now holds only 0.7% of global market share. Selling 2.4 million in Q1, substantially less than its corresponding 2015 figures of 8.27 million units, means it has dropped its share from 2.5%.

The report also shows that worldwide smartphone sales grew by 3.9% to 349 million units, largely driven by demand for low-cost smartphones in emerging markets and for affordable 4G smartphones.

“In a slowing smartphone market where large vendors are experiencing growth saturation, emerging brands are disrupting existing brands’ longstanding business models to increase their share,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner.

“With such changing smartphone market dynamics, Chinese brands are emerging as the new top global brands. Two Chinese brands ranked within the top five worldwide smartphone vendors in the first quarter of 2015, and represented 11% of the market. In the first quarter of 2016, there were three Chinese brands — Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi — and they achieved 17% of the market.”

Apple had its first double-digit decline year-on-year, with iPhone sales down 14%. Other notable troubles included Lenovo, which disappeared from the top five smartphone vendor rankings as well as the top 10 mobile phone vendor market in the first quarter of 2016.

“Lenovo had another challenging quarter with its worldwide smartphone sales declining 33%,” said Gupta. “Its smartphone sales fell by 75% in Greater China, where it faced strong competition from local brands. Lenovo is also struggling to bring synergies with Motorola’s device business, managing lower costs and overheads of the two brands.”

In light of this, he said Nokia’s recently announced return to the smartphone and tablet market will not be an easy mission.

“In today’s market it takes much more than a well-known brand to sell devices. Making good hardware won’t be an issue for Nokia, but users need a compelling reason to remain loyal to the same brand,” he said.

“Furthermore, that the smartphone market is slowing down makes it difficult for mobile phone vendors to reach previous levels of growth. New company HMD is entering the market at a less prosperous time, making it even more difficult for the vendor to do well in the short term.”

Image courtesy of Mike Mozart under CC-BY-2.0