Andy Lees : More Windows Phone 7 handsets than Android devices were sold in their first year

October 20, 2011 | By Surur

happy-10 Speaking at the AsiaD conference Andy Lees confirmed that more Windows Phone 7 handsets were sold in their first year than Android handsets in their own respective first year.

While this number is hard to pin down, Garnet estimates the full-year Android sales in 2009 to be 6.8 million.

While the real number is likely lower as the first Android year would run from September 2008 to September 2009, and exclude the busy 2009 holiday season, it does give us a ballpark figure, and is consistent with our own estimate of around 6 million Windows Phone 7 handsets out there.

Of course Android saw much smaller initial distribution and much less of an initial push by carriers, and the smartphone market was a lot smaller then, so on closer inspection the achievement is not that noteworthy, but it at least sets a pace for the second year of Windows Phone 7 sales, when 67 million Android handsets were sold.

Do our readers think this news is worth celebrating? Let us know below.

Thanks Anon for the tip.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged android, market share, windows phone 7

Anonymous

Either way: all the more reason to suspect that Windows Phone will take off in the coming years. I mean, Android is practically free compared to Windows Phone, yet Windows Phone still sold more handsets in the first year? There is one word for this: Awesome.
Anonymous

I take this as a greater achievement than what Android achieved. Android was a success because it was a viable option against iOS and Blackberry. Up until Android came along you really only had one smart phone OS to choose from. Windows Phone has had to fight a saturated market and make itself stand out. Android had none of those issues.
http://kickass77.myopenid.com/ NanYang

Android 4.0 has just released. More tough fight in the future for WP7. Good luck and nice consolation.

Anonymous

Except it will take “Android time” to get to existing phones – i.e 12+ months

Welcome to Android.

rsgx

Exactly this.

One phone will have Android 4.0 for the next 4 months “officially”.

Even the new Motorola Razr, just announced and still not out, won’t get ICS until ‘early’ 2012. In other words, probably sometime in June next year.
randy williams

Yea and about that time WP8 Apollo will have came out. So all the copying that 4.0 did will still looked dated because Windows would have did another sort of overhaul on the UI..

Anonymous

Wow, if this is true that isnt too bad. I am very surprised as I was pessimistic about wmpowerusers estimate of 6million.
One thing to note, the built-in facebook app numbers have gone down from the 1 million to 980,000 on its facebook page. Which i think is more accurate since a week before the supposed 1million mark, the fb page was showing around 930,000
Anonymous

Now if we can only get goodness like this bad boy
The third phone in the Nexus family, after the HTC Nexus One and The
Samsung Nexus S, the Galaxy Nexus is the latest Android smartphone to be
developer in tandem with Google engineers. The Galaxy Nexus will have a
big 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED Screen (with a
wow-inducing 1280 x 720 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio), a 1.2 GHz
dual-core processor and capability for both 4G LTE and 3G HSPA+,
depending upon availability and location; it’ll also be packing 1GB RAM,
a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash, a 1.3 megapixel
front-facing camera ,1080p video recording and NFC capability for mobile
payments and “bump” sharing with other phones. It will also be rocking
that curved glass design of the Samsung Nexus S; unlike the Nexus S, the
Galaxy Nexus will not have any physical hardware buttons, instead
opting for touch buttons on the display screen.

Anonymous

Meant to add “coming soon”

Anonymous

5 MP camera? Really? It’s gotta be at least 8. That’s shameful.

http://davepermen.net davepermen

People that only care about specs-porn will always chose android. But specs don’t mean a thing. They’re just there to brag (and in case of android, to actually get it smooth and responsive)

still, when android users touch my 1ghz single core omnia 7, they all silently get envy about the smoothness and responsiveness.

so yes, nice specs, but so what?

http://twitter.com/laserfloyd Lewis McCrary

I think it’s pretty nice considering WP7 came into a very saturated market with two major players already going head to head.
http://twitter.com/ama_neden ama neden

That is a huge succes. More Wp7 devices sold in first year despite high popularity of both android and iphone. Really awesome.
Anonymous

This is meaningless. I’m a huge WP7 fan but comparing WP7 first year to androids is apples and oranges. The smartphone market was just starting to boom with the introduction of the iphone 3g, and Android only had a couple phones on a few carriers world wide. WP launched while the smartphone craze is in full swing with multiple devices on 60 carriers. All negativity aside, i think wp can have a very bright future. The key is marketing, making sure people know about it. Everybody knows about the iphone now but you still see ads for it to keep it fresh in peoples minds. Microsoft needs a huge marketing campaign. And they also have to convince people to make the switch which means highlighting what windows phone does better.

randy williams

Yea but they launched on a negative campaign after coming from the oh so awful (not really to me other than touch screens) Windows Mobile. A seriously bad taste reputation compared to no (copying the iPhone yet still free for all OEMs) reputation would seem to me a little harder to sell… Just a thought.
Anonymous

Yes, this is a very important factor being left out of this article. The market back then was a fraction of what it is today

There are so many things that Microsoft had which gave them a very big advantage when launching Windows Phone. They had relationships with OEMs and carriers as well as parts suppliers. They already had a team in place to develop the OS. They had staff in place to work with OEMs and carriers. The channels were all in place. They already had the core OS (CE) Even with all this they are having problem meeting the very slow start Android had

I think you have to blow a lot of sunshine up a dark place to make this into a positive thing.

Dave

Anonymous

lol, what gasping at straws. I laughed when I read this, Android sold 6.8 million in its first year yet windows phone sold more which is 6 million. lol So what this really says in a much smaller market a single device the G1 outsold all wp7 devices in first year sales.

I now know the real problem with windows phone 7 and its fanbase they are so focused on Android they can’t see the wood for the trees.