IDC reports a 150% YoY change for Windows Phone but is it enough?

The International Information Corporation (IDC) has posted its Q4 2022 global results of smartphone trends and it nicely reflects yesterday'due south report from Gartner. The data is both a mix of skillful news and bad news for Windows Telephone, showing that year-over-year (YoY) growth has increased by 150% going from 1.5% market share to two.6% in late 2022. That'southward certainly a positive sign merely in the context of the rest of the smartphone race, it's yet a drop in the bucket.

Android and iOS accounted for a massive 91.1% of all smartphone sales, which is quite astonishing. BlackBerry, while still ahead of Windows Phone (3.ii% versus 2.6% for Q4) took a drastic drop from terminal twelvemonth when it had a more comfy 8.1% market share. That's a -43% fall for the Waterloo visitor, which of course can be ascribed to holding on to BlackBerry 7 for then long.

Now that BlackBerry 10 is out and shipping, it will exist very interesting to run into if they can recapture those customers. One thing that is evident, it's hard to change momentum in one or two quarters, and then BlackBerry has its work cut out for them.

Microsoft'due south 150% increase is positive news. Even so at merely 2.6% marketplace share for the quarter, it all the same pales compared to Android (70.1%) and iOS (21%). After all, going from 1 to 2 is a 100% increase simply information technology doesn't change the fact that 2 is not a high number—information technology's all relative.

Having said that nosotros are talking about momentum hither and it seems evident that betwixt IDC's numbers (150% YoY) and Gartner'southward (124% YoY) that Windows Phone not only has information technology, information technology's ahead of Android in terms of rate of growth. That'southward very good.

Putting aside quarterly results, the yearly report shows that Windows Telephone is still simply at ii.five% (upwardly from 1.8) and BlackBerry still has a more comfortable lead at 4.five% (downwards from 10% in 2022). What this shows is Windows Phone had positive growth for almost of 2022 but it was the 4th quarter, when Windows Phone 8 was introduced, that things started to actually pick up steam.

But will that maintain? That'south the meg dollar question. If this was just one proficient quarter for Microsoft and their market share drops (or even worse, BlackBerry ten takes off), this could be merely a temporary victory. For now though, we'll take solace that Windows Phone is on the right path. In other words, we're cautiously optimistic.

Another interesting observation is that Nokia patently accounted for 76% of all Windows Phone shipments in Q4. That'due south fascinating if but because the Lumia 920, their flagship phone, not just suffers from limited carrier availability merely limited stock as well.

Despite that fact, past releasing the Lumia 505, 510, 810, 820, 822 and 920, Nokia has shown that their strategy is effective. Those figures don't even take into account the popular and depression-toll Lumia 620, a phone that is expected to boost their impetus in Q1 2022.

Source: IDC

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