14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia announced its financial performance for the fourth quarter of the last year, unveiling that it sold less Lumia devices compared to Q3, but the overall sales of Windows Phone devices are said to have been on the rise.
Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore himself said that on January 25, and a new report coming from AdDuplex’s Alan Mendelevich appears to confirm it.
“Folks who think holiday sales of WP declined are incorrect. Activations more than doubled last holidays and increased each holiday month,” Joe Belfiore said last week.
According to Alan Mendelevich, the number of Windows Phone 8 devices in use in December last year was of around 35 million, almost double when compared to September.
Furthermore, he notes that over 10 million Windows Phone handsets were sold in the last three months of 2013, compared to less than 8 million in the quarter before.
Clearly, this shows growth for the platform during the last quarter of the year, despite the fact that Nokia actually announced lower-than-expected sales.
At the same time, AdDuplex unveils that Windows Phone 8 smartphones now account for the large majority of Windows Phone handsets out there.
Back in January 2013, only 19 percent of all phones running under Microsoft’s mobile OS were Windows Phone 8 devices, but they accounted for over 78 percent of that total number in December 2013, it seems.
However, as Mendelevich notes, it is possible that Nokia actually shipped more handsets in Q3 than it did in Q4, but that those smartphones were sold to end users during the holiday season, which would explain the increase in sales.
One thing that should be noted, however, is the fact that the above numbers are only estimates, completely different from the actual sales of Windows Phone handsets (official numbers from Microsoft are not available as of now).
