It’s beyond obvious at this point that Windows phones represent a mere sliver of the smartphone market. Different market research firms give slightly different numbers because they measure things differently, but the point remains the same: Microsoft’s smartphone platform, whether Windows Phone or Windows 10 Mobile, is a very, very distant third to iOS and Android and doesn’t look to improve its position any time soon.
Nevertheless, we’re duty-bound to report the latest numbers, and Comscore is next in line with their own estimates. According to them, Windows phones’s U.S. market share remains unchanged in the January 2016 reporting period at 2.7% of the market.
Comscore also studies the top 15 smartphone apps across platforms, and no surprise there as well. Microsoft doesn’t have a single smartphone app among the most popular, and not even Office Mobile has cracked the top 15. Again, that’s not a surprise, and really outside of Facebook, the most popular apps are primarily first-party Apple and Google apps that are simply installed by default on iOS and Android.
Opinions remain divided on what, precisely, is Microsoft’s strategy in the smartphone market. For the foreseeable future, we’ll likely be reporting more of the same as iOS and Android continue to battle for the top spot in an increasingly saturated market where most people who want smartphones already own them, and so switching users from their chosen platform becomes increasingly difficult.
