14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft itself revealed a significant drop in revenues for its mobile business in the latest fiscal quarter, and now a new report from Gartner comes to confirm the decline of Windows Phone. But at the same time, the same research shows that iPhone sales went down for the first time ever in the fourth quarter of 2015 when compared to the same period the previous year.
Specifically, Windows Phone dropped to 1.1 percent market share in Q4 2015, according to Gartner, as only 4.3 million devices running Microsoft’s smartphone operating system were sold during the quarter.
Android remained number one with 80.7 percent market share, up from 76 percent in Q4 2014, while iOS was the runner-up with 17.7 percent, down from 20.4 percent.
In the case of Windows Phone, these figures are not at all encouraging, especially given the fact that Lumia 950 and 950 XL, Microsoft’s new flagships running Windows 10 Mobile, launched during the quarter. And yet, given the fact that they were only newcomers and not all markets received it at the same time, a better impact on sales could be recorded in the first quarter of 2016.
The iPhone decline
In the case of the iPhone, it’s believed that this drop in sales was caused by the lack of innovations brought by the 6s and 6s Plus models, both of which were launched in September as upgrades to the core versions 6 and 6 Plus, respectively.
While the new iPhones did come with hardware upgrades (2 GB of RAM, improved camera, and new CPU), the majority of buyers didn’t rush to replace their existing phones, mostly because the differences between the old and the new models were only minor.
Gartner says that while Apple had a hard time making the iPhone more appealing during this whole time, Android continued to increase its share with the help of affordable devices.
“Android benefited from continued demand for affordable smartphones and from the slowdown of iOS units in the premium market in the fourth quarter of 2015,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner.
The recovery
Both Microsoft and Apple are working on plans to recover in the mobile business, and the first is the Cupertino-based company.
Apple is planning to launch a new 4-inch iPhone next month that would come as a more affordable version of its premium devices and thus counteract the growth of Android in this side of the business. The smaller iPhone could come with powerful hardware, such as A9 + M9 chips and 1GB of RAM, but it will lack more premium features such as 3D Touch. It could launch in mid-March together with the iPad Air 3.
In the case of Microsoft, Redmond is also believed to be working on the Surface Phone, the company’s truly premium device that could compete with the iPhone and top Android devices. Little is known about this device right now, but it’s likely to be built by Panos Panay, the man in charge of the Surface division, who managed to make the tablet one the best-selling devices created by Microsoft. If the project is real, don’t expect it to launch sooner than the fall of this year.
