Morgan Stanley predicts more than 43 million Windows Phones will be sold in 2012, mostly by Nokia

January 11, 2012 | By Surur

Its rather sad when the analysts are more upbeat than this writer, but we certainly hope Morgan Stanley’s prediction of massive sales growth by Windows Phone in 2012 will come true.

The analyst predicts Nokia will sell 37 million Windows Phones in 2012, and HTC another 6 million, bringing the total up to 43 million just for those two. This number excludes any Samsung, LG, Acer or ZTE Windows Phones, which should boost the total some more.

With the expectation currently being that around 600 million smartphones will be sold on 2012 it would give Windows Phone a market share of between 7 and 10%.

Morgan Stanley expects shipments of Nokia’s Windows Phones sales to increase from 37 million units in 2012 to 64 million units in 2013.

HTC’s will similarly increase from 6 million to 10 million in 2013, giving a combined total of 74 million Windows Phones in 2013.

If 43 million Windows Phones are to be sold in 2012 I expect we will be needing to see signs of massively increased sales as early as now, if more than 8 million Windows Phones are to be sold over the next quarter.

Do our readers sense that the tide is turning, and are Morgan Stanley’s numbers realistic? Let us know below.

Via AllthingsD.com

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 analysts, market share, sales, windows phone 7.5

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YJ5XLEMMJVDDWX2ANDWZCGCLUM Charles

A bit early to expect seeing a sharp increase, particularly since the desired devices aren’t even available yet. I expect 2D Qtr to be the beginning of the sharp increase with 3d and 4th Qtrs being the blow out period in 2012!

Anonymous

If 3 million Windows Phones are sold in Q1 2011, that means 40 million will need to be sold in the rest of the year.

The longer we delay the increase the bigger the increase will have to be.

Anonymous

Well… It’s kind of a river… It starts as a small trench, but if the waterflow finds it easier than the current direction it’ll soon build up to a massive stream who will eat up the eroded sides of the… Wait… What were we talking about again?
Anonymous

This depends heavily in what NOKIA can show @ Barcelona next month.

http://twitter.com/ousooner314 ousooner314

I’m
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JFRSB7FFT2UK2MD4VIW7O5IRUQ kim

My feeling is that Microsoft / Nokia are targetting the developping countries mostly (India, China, etc.).

That is why they are proposing exclusively low end devices (no dual core processors, no more than 16GB storage, sometimes no gyroscope or FFC).

They may be successful in this portion of the market.

But in the mean time they will probably keep on losing all the portion of the population that need powerful and efficient smartphones (32GB storage or more, dual core processors, USB mass storage, file explorer, better navigation software and services such as Google Maps, YouTube, etc).

That’s sad actually. I would be desirous to join Windows Phone, but the low specifications of the available devices prevent me to do so. Notably the lack of storage (16GB is not enough) is my major concern.

The manufacturer failed to attract me with a hero smartphone: None of the WP7 phones DO NOT MAKE ME DREAM. They all have something wrong or missing.

Anonymous

No, not exclusively low end. To most people in most markets, that don’t know and don’t care about specs, the 800 and 900 will look like faster and better designed mid and high end devices.

http://twitter.com/gmelika George Melika

I used to feel the same way until I went to the Microsoft store and checked out the 710. For a “low-end” phone, it is far superior to a lot of phones out there. It is definitely better than all of the first gen wp7 phones. I can’t wait to checkout the 800 and the 900 in person because I’m sure I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I like MSFT’s efforts to compete on features rather than specs, that’s how apple is doing it anyway. The difference is, MSFT sucks at promoting and advertising those features. Hopefully, that improves this year. It really must.

Anonymous

Don’t know about Microsoft, although I expect them to follow up on the success of #smokedbywindowsphone in future marketing.

Anyway, I expect Nokia marketing to do a great job. As they have done in markets where the Lumia 800 is currently available.

Anonymous

I’m just as sceptical as the next person, but I have to believe that with a heavy marketing plan for the US that focuses on features and the excellent design of the Nokia 900 the public will take notice. Thankfully they had enough design sense to create a cyan phone that automatically makes it stick out in the crowd. They should have made a white one as well. There are a lot of people that sport a personality that is flamboyant and want their phone to match. There are also quite a few people that I have talked to that are just plain tired of black and gray.

I too believe that the 2nd quarter is when we will begin to see this thing turn around and when it does, I already have a huge party planned because I love Windows Phone and really look forward to seeing it successful.

Anonymous

Agree. Personally, I get the feeling that Nokia has already sold more handsets than both HTC and Samsung combined for Q4. They’ve got super marketing, and fantastic designs, both key to selling lots of handsets.

Nokia really is the ‘Ace’ that WP has needed.

http://www.TheGuruReview.net TGR

This is doable. However, MS and Nokia must make clever and wanting advertisement for WP7. Outside of techies and a few others. Who knows about WP7 phones. Also, MS has XBOX Live which has over 60 million users and I rarely see any advertisment about Windows Phone 7. They are totally out of sync. I would go after my gamers as well as others. WP7 is not the iPhone which people advertise on every avenue. MS needs to state the cool things about WP7 and its ease of use where non techies get it. They need to buy all the Super Bowl air time and make people understand that WP7 is cool and a true extension of Facebook (although, I am not a facebook fan).
markiz

I don’t believe this will play out like this. WP might see big sales when Apollo comes, combined with the what’s certainly going to be a massive push from MS when W8 is ready.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Gregerson/1482695506 Kevin Gregerson

I’ve been in tech retail for 10 years as a rep, retailer, corporate retail, managing reps including a windows phone team. I’ve seen windows mobile, droid, Iphone, blackberry and windows phone. I’ve had them all as phones, and the windows phone was by far the easiest to use out of them all thus far. Every update brings functions I can use in ways that make sense. Does it have the number of apps that ios or droid has. Not yet, but I can try all the ones there are and its a bit easier to uninstall apps and my battery life is much better than other phones I’ve had. My HTC Titan is by far the best I’ve owned to date.