14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is working to bring Windows 10 to the market as fast as possible, and given the fact that it's going to be offered for free for PCs and smartphones running Windows 8.1/Windows 7 and Windows Phone 8.1, respectively, the consumer appeal of the current OS versions is on the rise.
Living proof is France, where the market share of Windows Phone jumped from 8.3 percent to 14.1 percent in the 3-month period ending March 2015, while all the other big platforms lost plenty of users.
This data is provided by Kantar and was published by LesNumeriques.com and only concerns the French market, which is slowly becoming a very friendly environment for Windows Phone.
Microsoft's efforts to improve Windows Phone and bring more affordable devices to the market appear to be paying off just ahead of the debut of Windows 10, so the company might be playing the winning card this time to pave the way for the upcoming operating system.
Both iOS and Android lost users
While the increase of Windows Phone's market share is obviously good news for Microsoft enthusiasts, there's also something else that Windows users can celebrate.
Both iOS and Android lost users in the aforementioned three-month period, which pretty much means that many of them actually moved to Windows Phone, given the fact that Microsoft's platform is the only one that posted an increase during the time.
Android, for example, dropped from 65.2 percent to 64.6 percent, a decrease of 0.6 percent, while in Apple's case, the loss is even bigger, from 23.4 percent to 19.4 percent (down 4 percent).
Needless to say, this is quite good news for Microsoft and Windows Phone, but there's no doubt that Redmond still has a long way to go to compete against Android and iOS in every market out there. But if the same direction is maintained, we should expect some pretty big surprises when Windows 10 becomes available.