14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone, Microsoft’s mobile operating system, has started to gain some more market share in various areas out there, including South Africa, where it is seeing increased interest from Vodacom’s subscribers the wireless carrier has revealed.
The wireless carrier has decided to provide some more info on the smartphone OS preferences of its users, and has revealed that Windows Phone is currently seeing a lot of traction, the same as Android does.
When compared to other mobile platforms, Windows Phone is still lagging behind, but it is showing improvements, and that should sound encouraging for enthusiasts.
As it turns out, BlackBerry is currently the most used smartphone platform in South Africa, being loaded on around 2.9 million devices on Vodacom’s network in the country as of June 2014, mybroadband.co.za reports.
Android comes second on this market, with 2.56 million devices, while Apple’s iOS powers 775,000 of them. Windows Phone, instead, is loaded on only 410,000 smartphones at this wireless carrier, it seems.
However, as mentioned above, things are actually looking encouraging for the platform, the same as it happens with Android. BlackBerry and iOS, however, are losing market share.
For example, BlackBerry accounted for about 3.1 million devices at Vodacom in September last year, Android was loaded on 1.45 million of them, while Windows Phone powered only 270,000 mobile devices.
Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, was present on 650,000 devices, and managed to grow to 785,000 of them in March this year, but dropped by 10,000 until June.
Chances are that Apple will regain some of the lost ground as soon as the new iPhone 6 arrives on shelves later this year, but things are not looking so great for BlackBerry, that’s for sure.
Overall, this is the only mobile operating system to have continuously lost market share on Vodacom’s network over the past nine months, and the trend might continue.
For Android, however, things are looking great, considering the 1.1 million increase in devices that it has seen at this wireless carrier since September last year.
Windows Phone is also expected to continue its ascension, though it will most probably grow at the same slow pace as it does at the moment, just as it happens on other markets out there too.
What remains to be seen, however, is whether the operating system will start gaining market share faster when new Windows Phone 8.1 devices land on shelves later this year. The OS upgrade has started rolling out to existing Nokia Lumia devices out there as well.