Gartner’s most-recent sales figures for the global smartphone market have shown us something we already knew, that Windows Phones aren’t even remotely popular. According to the figures, which were released on Thursday, a mere 1.1% of the new smartphones sold last quarter were Windows Phones, while Android and iOS devices accounted for 80.7% and 17.7% of global sales, respectively. Despite how much faith Microsoft seemed to have in Windows 10 Mobile, it looks like the operating system wasn’t enough to save the company’s mobile business.
Gartner’s figures for global smart phone sales were released today and one thing is clear: it doesn’t look good for Windows phones. When we last heard from Gartner, it was in the middle of November, 2015 and Windows Phone was down to 1.7% of sales. Today, Gartners reports show that just 1.1% of handsets sold in the fourth quarter of 2015 had Windows installed on them. Android also took a bit of a stumble, dropping from 84.7% to 80.7%. Since Blackberry and Others both dropped from 0.3% to 0.2%, iOS was the big winner, increasing from 13.1% to 17.7%, despite the slowing growth of iPhone sales. Samsung remains at the number one spot for devices sold; however, they did drop from 23.7% in the third quarter to 20.7% in the fourth quarter. It is, however, a gain from the same quarter in 2014. Apple’s numbers unsurprisingly match up exactly with the iOS numbers. Huawei, Lenovo, and Xiaomi round out the rest of the list. Note that Lenovo’s sales include Motorola. In smart phone sales for all of 2015, Samsung remains number one, despite dropping from 24.7% to 22.5%. While Apple holds steady in second place, rising from 15.4% to 15.9%, Huawei has the biggest increase on the board from 5.5% to 7.3%.
