Nokia is breaking its own records as shipments and sales of Lumia devices constantly increase. While other Windows Phone partners may technically be fighting for crumbs, combined they have helped Microsoft’s mobile platform hit another fantastic milestone.
Unit shipments of Windows Phone have exceeded the 10 million mark — for the first time ever.
It was only a few days ago that the Finnish telecom giant confirmed that it had shipped 8.8 Lumia smartphones in the third quarter of the year. And now, research firm Strategy Analytics has announced its figures for Q3 2013.
The numbers fly in at 10.2 million Windows Phone units shipped in the third quarter, making for a stark increase of 3.7 million handsets that made their way to store shelves in the same period a year ago.
Obviously, Nokia takes most of the credit in helping Redmond achieve this milestone. Higher sales of Lumia handsets were recorded in the three prime markets — US, Europe and Asia.
That is not to say the market share of Windows Phone is charting similar success. They are still at a low level worldwide compared to Android and iOS. But Microsoft’s fledgling mobile operating platform can now lay claim to 4.1 of the market in the third quarter.
Android and iOS had figures of 81.3 and 13.4 percent, respectively, according to the firm.
By the same token, BlackBerry still found enough movement to make an appearance on the list. A total of 2.5 million units gave the former Canadian king a 1 percent slice of the market.
Those of you interested in the total number of units that changed hands in the past 90 or so days, will find that the Android total came in at 204.4 million units (wowzers!) and iOS came in second with shipments of 33.8 million units.
Low world-wide is somewhat misleading. They’re lower than iOs in the U.S. Google pretty much dominates everywhere. But outside the U.S. Windows Phone and iOs are close, even in places like China where Windows Phone is pretty low, iPhone is doing no better. This 10 could have easily been 15 if other vendors where making quality hardware and really pushing it like Nokia. Even when there were more Windows Phones on the market early in WP8, the majority of the marketing was still for Lumias. Even if you go outside of phone into tablet, Surface was marketed more than than Windows tablet, and even the commercials for other types of tablets were Microsoft commercials.
Taken into account everything 4% is trivial in many ways. People will really start noticing when they move into the 10% figure. But in certain markets, yeah, Windows Phone is really coming into its own. I expect big things now, surely.