Windows Phone 7 Off to a Slow Start in the UK, Retailer Says

Windows Phone 7, the new mobile operating system from Microsoft, is reportedly registering very slow sales on the market in the UK, with Android and Symbian^3 devices being much more popular among end users.

According to a recent post on MobilesPlease's blog, Windows Phone 7 devices account for only 3 percent of their sales, ad for only 2 percent of overall sales through MobilesPlease.co.uk.

Moreover, they report that Symbian^3 devices outsold Windows Phone 7 handset by 3 to 1, which does not look too encouraging for Microsoft's mobile operating system, as the only Symbian^3 smartphone available for purchase was Nokia N8.

“With Windows Phone 7 Microsoft have genuinely made an effort to differentiate, however they have arrived very late to the market and catching up with the other players will be a Herculean task,” the said blog post reads.

Reportedly, the slow sales are a generalized problem, and are not particular to this retailer. According to them, other stores also report slow sales of handsets running under Microsoft's OS.

“The retailers I spoke to said that demand for iPhone, Blackberry and HTC handsets was strong in the smartphone sector,” the said blog post reads.

Whether users are not interested too much on the devices, or there are not too many devices to sell (a local Carphone Warehouse store did not have any Windows Phone 7 handsets on display) it remains to be seen, as the OS does not have too many weeks on the market.

Initial reports on the new platform showed that Windows Phone 7 was received very well by end users, with most of handsets running out of stock.

However, we should not forget that Microsoft and its partners will still have to raise awareness on the Windows Phone 7 devices that were released on shelves last month, and on the available deals for them, both in the UK market and elsewhere.

“The Windows Phone 7 handsets -as nice as they are – are by and large generic phones from well known manufacturers, and in most cases an almost identical model is available from the same manufacturer with Android, and given the choice people seem to be picking Android,” the blog post continues.