Windows Phone Market Share Drops Rapidly

No data is available concerning Microsoft phone sales, and estimates are based largely on guesswork -- such as Nick Eaton's seattlepi.com "Microsoft Blog" examination of the company's annual report to the SEC, which persuasively showed that the very most Microsoft could have made from Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile revenue was a relatively paltry $613 million.

Ironically, Microsoft is estimated to make at least three times as much from Android sales -- which is just as much a reflection of canny patent licensing as it does with meager sales figures.

Never able to enjoy high numbers, the typically over-enthusiastic CEO Steve Ballmer even admitted "Phones, we’ve gone from very small to very small," but also promised "you’re going to see a lot of progress in that market competitively as we move forward ".

Up until this month, the Windows Phone OS has up to now at least been able to claim a 'slow but steady' progress...although marred by slight dips such as the half-percent lost in the last 2010 quarter. While Microsoft had hoped that November's release of the Windows Phone 7 version would mark an end to flagging interest in its predecessor, Windows Mobile, this has not happened.

The same reasoning has been applied to the upcoming Mango version of Microsoft's mobile OS, and demonstrations of Mango (with and without the mobile-friendly HTML5-equipped Windows 8 prototypes) have indeed created a certain amount of buzz -- as has the announcement of a deal with Nokia (itself stung by last year's declining Symbian and sales performance) to provide only Windows Phone operating systems on Nokia smartphones starting this fall.

The near future of the partnerships is not all gloomy, with further details like Microsoft's (for the time being, still ongoing) acquisition of Skype and Nokia's recent announcement of voice-to-text messaging capabilities on upcoming phones. But the question is whether Microsoft can weather any mroe drops like this latest one and still have enough of a following to make any of it worthwhile.

James Lee Phillips is a Senior Writer & Research Analyst for IBG.com. With offices in Dallas, Las Vegas, and New York, & London, IBG is quickly becoming the leading expert in Internet Marketing, Local Search, SEO, Website Development and Reputation Management. More information can be found at www.ibg.com. Two Of Us Dating Service Company excels at connecting quality singles from all walks of life. They are well-respected and conduct highly personalized compatibility searches for over 40,000 exclusive members nationwide.