Windows Phone Collapses to 0.3% Market Share with Just 1.1 Million Phones Sold

We’ve known for a while that Windows phones were losing ground, but a new report published by analyst firm Gartner shows just how fast the platform is declining these days as compared to all the other mobile operating systems out there.

Gartner says that approximately 1.1 million phones running Windows were sold in the fourth quarter of 2016, down from nearly 4.4 million in the same quarter the year before.

The market share drop perfectly reflects this collapse in terms of sales, with Windows now accounting for only 0.3 percent of the smartphone sales, down from 1.1 percent one year ago.

Unfortunately, there are no signs of recovery for Windows Phone and when looking at the figures achieved by Android and iOS, the forecast is even more pessimistic for Microsoft’s mobile platform. No less than 352 million phones running Android were sold the previous quarter, up from 325 million in the same quarter of 2015, while iPhones accounted for 17.9 percent of the sales with 77 million sold units.

Microsoft’s efforts to overhaul Windows phones

With Microsoft not very keen on overhauling Windows phones, it was just a matter of time until speculation pointing to the complete demise of the platform made the headlines.

A new report claims that Microsoft could give up on Windows 10 Mobile after the Redstone 3 update due in the fall, not to abandon phones completely, but to embrace a different strategy that would have the company try to tackle mobile users with a more capable platform.

Microsoft is working on bringing the full version of Windows 10 on ARM processors, and the first devices running the platform are expected to see daylight as soon as this year.

It’s believed that Microsoft itself wants to make the most of this new concept, so its eagerly-anticipated Surface Phone could run the full version of Windows 10 on an ARM processor developed by Qualcomm, possibly the Snapdragon 835 if it launches this year (although by the time the Surface Phone sees daylight, the Snapdragon 835 might no longer be the best of the best).