14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has been focusing on the budget-friendly smartphone market in the last couple of months, as the company did not launch a high-end handset in quite a long time.
The lack of high-end smartphones is probably one of the reasons Windows Phone did not break through in the United States. However, Microsoft's mobile OS is more popular in some European countries, but also in some emerging Asian markets.
Focusing on the affordable segment is not a bad thing if you want to sell more smartphones and try to hoard as much market share as possible. Since the number of smartphones shipped worldwide increased from 2013, Microsoft's Windows Phone market share shrunk in 2014.
Research company IDC has just published its yearly statistic concerning the smartphone operating system market share for last year.
The numbers show that Windows Phone accounted for 3.3% market share back in 2013, but for last year IDC reports Microsoft's smartphone OS reached only 2.7% market share, a 0.6% drop.
Windows Phone market share may remain on the same level for this year too
On the positive side, the number of Windows Phone handsets shipped has increased from 33.5 million units in 2013 to 34.9 million last year. This is likely the result of Microsoft focusing on the affordable segment of the market.
Windows Phone's slight drop in market share is probably the result of the increased number of shipped smartphones from 2013 to 2014. According to IDC's statistics, there were 1,018.7M smartphones shipped in 2013, whereas in 2014 no less than 1,300.4M were shipped.
Android continues to dominate with 81.5% market share, followed far behind by iOS with 14.8% market share. For Android, this is a 2.8% increase, while for iOS the new numbers reported by IDC mean a 0.3% drop.
BlackBerry accounted for a mere 0.4% worldwide market share, down from 1.9% back in 2013. The Canadian company does not seem to matter too much now on the smartphone market, but this isn't surprising considering the change it's gone through.