Windows Mobile outsold the iPhone in Q4 2008
Here’s a bit of news that may come as a suprise to most of the iPhone obsessed world. According to Steve Ballmer, in the recent earnings conference call, more than 5 million Windows Mobile units were sold in Q4 2008. This is significantly more than the 4.4 million iPhones sold that the other Steve announced in Apple’s own earnings release.
The news is is stark contrast to most reports on Windows Mobile and the iPhone, who say the Cuppertino device has already surpased sales of our favourite mobile OS.
Of note is that the iPhone is possibly at the height of its popularity. The device is widely available world-wide, and subsidized more cheaply than most Windows Mobile devices in most markets. iPhones are also widely bought and given over the Christmas season as gifts or special treats, while WM devices are not exactly seen in the same light.
If the iPhone did not surpase Windows Mobile sales with all the decks stacked in its favour, it is pretty valid to ask if it ever will.
Listen to excerpt here, or the full Earnings call here (around 24 min 30 seconds)
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I think this year it will. The general feeling about WM currently in the press and among users is it doesnt compare well with its competitors and more and more people are contemplating moving away from the platform. The iphone, Android and now WebOS from Palm are all seen as “better” than WM even though they may have technical limitations WM doesnt have and the current version of WM is unable to dispel this feeling and by the time WM 6.5 is released there will be possibly a new iphone, definitely several new Android phones and the Palm Pre and these new devices will definitely eat into WM’s market share so I feel this year will be the turning point and WM will see very sharp sales numbers reduction compared to 2008.
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as mentionend above: Pre and Android start to grow in the same market, it’ll be just a matter of time and mid february we’ll know more what will happen this year.
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I know morale is a bit low amongst Windows Mobile users, and we hunger for some of the eye candy and usability features as found on the Pre and the iPhone for example, but when I am actually using my Touch HD these things are not an issue. Windows Mobile ODM’s have done a great job painting over the cracks in WM so far, and they are just getting better and better at doing it.
As an example, take the new footprint feature on the Touch Cruise. Not a hint of windows 3.1 there at all.
So in short, yes, MS has not been performing well, but their OEM’s have done a great job so far.
What we have seen of WM6.5 so far shows potential, (e.g. the sliding panels look good, PIE8 seems to work better than I feared, system-wide kinetic scrolling works well), so the final product might be pretty nice. Whether it will have the new usage paradigms as the Pre for example has is not known and unlikely, but these can usually be added via 3rd party apps.
In short, I would think no-one predicted WM would outsell iPhone this quarter, so similarly there is no reason to predict the demise in Q1 2009 (whatever gartner or canalys says).
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Just barely though. I’m worried. HTC can’t carry Windows Mobile with TouchFlo, and they’re serious about becoming a success with Android.
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Winmo is like the enegizer bunny it just keeps going… But, seriously one advantage I thought WinMo would have this year that people seem to be forgetting about. Is that they are supposed to have NVIDIA Tegra APX devices in consumers hands by mid or end of the year. And I could have sworn that support for the Tegra APX was only going to be for WinCE and WinMo to start with. If this is the case why wouldn’t WinMo see a spike in sales later in the coming year, considering it will be the only supported mobile platform along with WinCE at launch of Tegra. I would certainly think that alot of people would love to have a device with a Tegra chip in it(if it lives up to its hype). It would be like upgrading from a Xbox to a Xbox360.
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Hmm, wonder why this wasn’t posted on sites like Gizmodo and Engadget…
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those phones are limited.
no OS has the development community we have.
without us no phone rules.
winmo rules!
iphone as it is…limited!
you cant even do two things at once!
the pre is TBD…it looks good…
but no developers community!
i`ve heard webos should be easy to write for, but thats still TBD
android, no community, i dont think it will take. it will be like ubuntu.
does alot…but like learning another language.
people want familiarity, ease of use and no limitations!
also you have the issue with android and iphone being toys.
well, just like this quarter, when people seen that window mobile is for mobile computing, they choose it more than the others.
this is just further proof that winmo is the more practical smart phone.
its the old high school thing; anything you can do, i can do better!
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wreiad Reply:
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:34 am
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!
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WM has the biggest potential for hardware-accelerated handheld gaming. I would consider their new OSes to be epic fail if they didn’t realise how powerful they could be and could stand as direct competition to the likes of the PSP and DS. It’s like letting something slip from your hands.
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[...] [Via: WMPowerUser] [...]
[...] – wmpoweruser Sign up to the Phones Review Newsletter (free) for updates and news CLICK [...]
1. Dude, grow up.
2. The iPhone 3G is but one phone compared to the dozens of WinMo phones.
3. Do you know there is a recession going hence the brisk sales of the iPhone?
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wreiad Reply:
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Uh…
1). Isn’t the iPhone available in 2 different models?
2). Doesn’t the iPhone get way more advertising than Windows mobile?
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admin Reply:
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Brisk does not mean what you think it means.
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[...] Source – wmpoweruser [...]
Of course, Microsoft are most likely counting *deliveries* as “sales” – not sales to actual consumers. Everybody knows this is how they count “sales”. The number of actual consumers buying WinMo phones is almost certainly far less.
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wreiad Reply:
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Can you give us the actual numbers? Exactly. Shut up and go away.
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Hmm, okay, so for all of those who love to tout one OS over another, please answer the next questions: How long has MS been selling WinMo? How mahy phones does WinMo come on? How long has Apple been selling the iPhone? Not to rain on most people’s parade here, but in the environment I work in, an extremely large network company (yes, you know the one), almost all of the WinMo users hate their phones (not apocryphal, these are comments from friends and co-workers). All of them are just waiting with baited breath for the company to vet the iPhone for work. Now, if anybody missed that, these are people who work with other people around the world constantly. They are not fanboys, they only want what works. They hate WinMo, for the simple reason it is to hard to do anything with it. The second largest number of users use the RIM products. Now tell me how that is going to look when we start sending out iPhones instead of WinMo phones to employees? What is that going to do to MS’s share this year, when more and more business (and not the mom and pop, nor the IT laden MS shops) turn to the iPhone? Just a thought.
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admin Reply:
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Here is a thought that may blow your mind. This is a Windows Mobile fan site. There are many Windows Mobile fan sites just like it.
There are many people who love windows mobile. You and your friend may not be them, but there are millions of people who are.
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drackmere Reply:
March 24th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
That is your response? You are kidding right? Just a blow off of “This is a Windows Mobile fan site. There are many Windows Mobile fan sites just like it.
There are many people who love windows mobile. You and your friend may not be them, but there are millions of people who are.” to a simple statement of fact? And you think I am one of them? Well just to set the record straight–I don’t own a WM phone, never have, never will, it’s a principle thing, I actually have them. As for “friend”, amazing, ignorant, and petulant. Children all over the world are applauding. Fanboy site is right. I asked simple questions and none of you answered them. I await further amazing verbiage on your part.
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admin Reply:
March 25th, 2009 at 12:24 am
If you read a bit more closely, you will see I never accused you of loving or even liking Windows Mobile.
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drackmere Reply:
March 25th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Just for clarification, since apparently this does not mean what I thought it meant: “There are many people who love windows mobile. You and your friend may not be them.” So do I take that as meaning “you do not not like WM, or maybe you do?” Just want to know for clarification because I am fairly certain that sentence construction does allude to the fact that I may or may not be part of the group who do not like WM, or possibly I do. A master of equivocation, I bow to you sir. However, my point is still valid. The questions have been left unanswered.
aleis Reply:
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
and yeah you and your co-worker all suck!
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drackmere Reply:
March 24th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Brilliant, I await the next fascinating installment of your verbal legerdemain.
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wreiad Reply:
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:15 pm
It’s hard to do anything with Windows Mobile? Are you serious? You can’t be.
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drackmere Reply:
March 25th, 2009 at 1:32 am
Yes, actually the usual complaints apply: crashes, freezes, horrible (not my word, my colleague’s) navigation, poor layout, etc. All of the employees in my group who are able to have company phones either have a) RIM, or b) Palm (and those are dwindling, the Palms are worse than WM for some of these folks). They returned their WM as soon as possible. Personally, I don’t care. I am a technology agnostic as far as that is concerned, I use what works. As for the rest, I was just relaying what had been told to me first hand, but I guess even that is flame bait.
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robin Reply:
May 7th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Earlier in the thread you said: “Well just to set the record straight–I don’t own a WM phone, never have, never will, it’s a principle thing, I actually have them.” [think you meant hate them] – Now you say you are technology agnostic – which is it: you hate WM or you don’t care about the technology, as long as it works?
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[...] Sursa: Wmpoweruser.com [...]
[...] Reports had Apple and their iPhone pushing Windows Mobile down to 4th place in the global mobile market share, but it still seems Microsoft successfully pushed out more mobile phones than Apple. One up for Microsoft I’d say. Source – wmpoweruser [...]
[...] Source – wmpoweruser [...]
[...] Source – wmpoweruser [...]
[...] z komunikatem witryny WMPowerUser, ostatni kwartał 2008 roku pokazał, że platforma Windows Mobile wcale nie stoi tak tragicznie [...]
[...] z komunikatem witryny WMPowerUser, ostatni kwarta? 2008 roku pokaza?, ?e platforma Windows Mobile wcale nie stoi tak tragicznie [...]
[...] z komunikatem witryny WMPowerUser, ostatni kwarta? 2008 roku pokaza?, ?e platforma Windows Mobile wcale nie stoi tak tragicznie [...]
[...] z komunikatem witryny WMPowerUser, ostatni kwarta? 2008 roku pokaza?, ?e platforma Windows Mobile wcale nie stoi tak tragicznie [...]
[...] obviously just a bit of fun, it is likely that its only due to the efforts of HTC and Samsung that Windows Mobile did so well in Q4 2008, beating out media darling, the Apple iPhone, quite [...]