Microsoft’s Already Dismal US Smartphone Market Share Falls To Just 3 Percent
Windows 10 Mobile is destined to land sometime later this year (Microsoft hasn’t given us a definite date, only saying that it will land some time after Windows 10’s July 29th debut), and it can’t come soon enough. Microsoft’s smartphone market share has been stagnant in the sub-five percent range for quite some time with no signs of improvement.
The latest U.S. smartphone market share numbers from comScore so no signs of improvement, and in fact show an even further slide for Microsoft’s Windows Phone smartphone operating system. For the three-month period ending in May, Microsoft’s market share fell from 3.5 percent to 3 percent. That puts Microsoft in an extremely distant third place behind second place iOS (43.5 percent) and market leader Android (52.1 percent).
Microsoft’s poor U.S. performance aligns more closely with BlackBerry (1.3 percent share) than with the the two titans from Apple and Google.
As for top device makers, Apple was by far the leader with 43.5 percent of the market followed by Samsung with 28.7 percent. Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been blockbusters sellers since their debut last fall, while Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge started turning on the heat in early April. LG, Motorola, and HTC rounded out the top five. Microsoft was nowhere to be found in comScore’s rankings.
Microsoft has come under fire recently for flooding the market with an overabundance of low-end, budget smartphones with low resolution displays and meager internal storage. However, Microsoft is hoping to change that with the introduction of Lumia 940 XL. The flagship device is tipped to include a Snapdragon 810 processor with 3GB of RAM, 5.5-inch QHD display, 32GB of internal storage, and a 20MP PureView camera.
For those that don’t need such a big phablet to carry around, Microsoft will also offer a Lumia 940 with a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor, and a 5.2-inch 1080p display. Both smartphones will of course come out of the box with Windows 10 Mobile.
