Windows Phone 7 Sales
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Microsoft (Kinda) Announces Windows Phone 7 Sales
In more concrete news, Microsoft announced that some 1.5 million Windows
Phone 7 smartphones had sold during the platform's first six weeks of release,
breaking company executives' previous reluctance to share any hard data on
sales.
"We are pleased that phone manufacturers sold over 1.5 million phones
in the first six weeks," Achim Berg, Microsoft's vice president of
business and marketing for Windows Phones, mentioned
in a Q&A posted Dec. 21 on the company's corporate Website, "which
helps build customer momentum and retail presence." Those numbers
apparently meet the company's internal expectations.
Microsoft hopes that strong Windows Phone 7 sales will allow it to reverse
several quarters' worth of market-share declines in smartphones, where it faces
fierce competition from the likes of Google Android and the Apple iPhone.
However, those new sales figures represent sales from manufacturers to mobile
operators and retailers, not customers.
In November, TheStreet.com reported that 40,000 Windows Phone 7 devices sold
on Nov. 8, the platform's first day of U.S.
availability. That, combined with Microsoft executives' previous reluctance to
share sales numbers, led a selection of pundits and analysts to suggest Windows
Phone 7 was underperforming among consumers, especially in contrast with the
hundreds of thousands of activations per day racked up by Google Android and
Apple iOS devices.
However many customers are actually purchasing Windows Phone 7 devices, that
1.5-million sales figure suggests that mobile operators and retailers are
taking a bet on the platform's appeal. In the meantime, some analysts are
seeing Windows Phone 7's first weeks in a positive light.
"We can say that for a company that just a few months ago was an
also-ran in mobile, having 10 smartphones released in 30 countries is not a
trivial achievement," Al Hilwa, an analyst with research firm IDC,
wrote in a Dec. 19 research note. "I would not be surprised if Microsoft
had the third-largest app portfolio in the industry by the middle of next year."
Windows
Phone 7's Marketplace currently holds 4,000 apps.
