14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone operating system does not seem to be doing great lately, though we expect that to change within the next few months, as Microsoft is readying a few Lumia smartphones.
Even though Microsoft’s operating system is the third ranking mobile platform after Android and iOS, the difference between it and its competitors is really huge.
Market share aside, it looks like it took Windows Phone a few years just to surpass Symbian's mobile web usage, which dropped to 2.61% in August, according to NetMarketShare.
The statistics released by the survey company indicate that for the first time since its launch, Windows Phone mobile usage has been higher than that of Symbian OS. Last month, Windows Phone mobile web usage accounted for 2.69%, only 0.07% more than Symbian.
As for the mobile web usage market share for the various OSes, Android tops the rankings with 45.01%, closely followed by iOS with 44.34%.
Although smartphones sales have skyrocketed in the last few years, there are still lots of mobile users who own feature phones because they can’t afford to switch to a mobile operating system.
However, since the price for Android and Windows Phone handsets is getting lower each month, smartphones are likely to replace feature phones, even if not completely, in the next few years.
For example, Java ME has a 3.77% market share when it comes to mobile web usage. This is slightly higher than both Symbian and Windows Phone, but it shouldn’t be surprising at all.
BlackBerry OS is ranked sixth for mobile web usage with a 1.18% market share and is followed by Kindle (0.31%) and Bada (0.03%).
Keep in mind that while NetMarketShare numbers do not reflect the actual number of devices available on the market, they can still offer an interesting view on the yearly and monthly trends on mobile web usage.
For example, iOS had around 63% mobile web usage back in September 2012, and now Apple’s mobile OS has only 44%, which is still a high number. In order for Windows Phone to reach similar numbers, Microsoft may need to do something revolutionary very soon.
Android, on the other hand, continues its steady growth and managed to surpass iOS last month by a small margin. It will be interesting to see the next month’s metrics, which might provide a better insight on how well Windows Phone is doing among consumers.