At the beginning of September, releasing the results for the three months to the end of July, Kantar ComTech's strategic insight director Dominic Sunnebo pointed out that "Windows Phone's growth isn't coming from stealing Apple or Android consumers. Only 27% of Apple and Android users change their OS when they replace their handset. The majority of those that do switch tend to move between the two big operating systems with very little movement to Windows."
Now that has been borne out with the latest set of figures from the company, which measures the share of sales of phones in various countries, broken down by platform and, sometimes, by handset.
The latest data covers the three months to August 2013, and shows that Windows Phone's share of handset sales across the five largest EU countries (UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain - which it calls the "EU 5") has hit 9.2%, and is at 12% and 10.8% in the UK and Spain particularly.
Sweet spot for sales
Sunnebo said last month that 42% of Windows Phone sales over the past year have come from feature phone owners upgrading to a smartphone. That, he says, "is a much higher proportion than Android or iOS. The Lumia 520 is hitting a sweet spot, offering the price and quality that new buyers are looking for."
The other 52% - though we don't know what proportions - will come from first-time buyers of smartphones, and people switching from other smartphone platforms. Whichever it is, Sunnebo reckons they're doing the job of getting Windows Phone into peoples' hands: "These models are hitting the sweet spot with 16-24 year olds and 35-49 year-olds, two key groups who look for a balance of price and functionality in their smartphone."
But some analysts wonder whether those sales - which as Sunnebo suggested last month are probably coming from feature phone users upgrading - came at the expense of profits. Nokia's Lumia 520 and 620, its budget offerings in the smartphone market, is reckoned to have sold well. However the fact that the Finnish company's board sold the handset maker to Microsoft, and accepted a $2bn temporary loan as part of the deal - suggests that the 520 was not a gigantic profit-maker. It did, however, build share.
(Update: how do we know that these are low-end phones that Nokia is succeeding with, rather than those such as its high-end 920 or others? Because Nokia's results tell us. According to its second-quarter figures (PDF), its overall smartphone average selling price (ASP) fell to €157, compared to €191 and €187 in the previous two quarters. It's selling more Lumias - but at a lower price. And more generally, in Europe its overall phone ASP dropped from €75.8 to €72.4, even while it was selling more smartphones in the region. So clearly, those smartphones are not priced to compare with the HTC One, Galaxy S4, or iPhone 5.)
Feature phone owners are more than half of all mobile users globally; and they're the ones who will be targeted by the big companies in the coming year.
Germany and Spain: Android rules
In Germany, where Android now has a massive 78.7% of sales, Windows Phone is now at 8.8% of sales, against the iPhone's 9.4%. The release last month of the new iPhones however may shift that again in Apple's favour.
Android's dominance in Europe, where it has 70.1% of sales in the five biggest countries, reaches its zenith in Spain, where Kantar says it had 90.8% of sales.
But Sunnebo says: "After years of increasing market share, Android has now reached a point where significant growth in developed markets is becoming harder to find. Android's growth has been spearheaded by Samsung, but the manufacturer is now seeing its share of sales across the major European economies dip year on year as a sustained comeback from Sony, Nokia and LG begins to broaden the competitive landscape."
Handset share change from August 2012 to 2013 from Kantar ComTech He points to separate data which shows that Samsung's share of the "EU 5" has dropped slightly, from 49% to 47.1%, while that for Apple, Sony, and LG has risen. For the latter two, their growth in share (4.3%) more than offsets Samsung's drop of 1.9% - but seem to balance out the falls for HTC and Motorola. With Google's Nexus 4 having helped LG stabilise its position at the end of 2012, Samsung's Korean rival is now making its way back into the smartphone space.
US and Japan: iPhone country
Android's strength in Europe contrasts strongly with the US and Japan, where Apple has strongholds. In the US, the Android-iPhone split in the three months to August - preceding the launch of the new models - was 55.1% to 39.3%; in Japan, it was 48.6% to 47.4%, and the launch of the new iPhones on DoCoMo is expected to push sales even further.
Kantar ComTech doesn't give figures for absolute sales, and it's not possible from the data it provides publicly to know what proportion of those phones go to new owners, and which to people who are either upgrading on the same platform, or switching.
For Apple, dominance in the US is all but assured: the carrier pricing strategy there (which means that a cheaper phone can cost the same as an expensive one) favours the iPhone, which with the aid of the iPhone 5C could hit the 50% market share (though not installed base) point by the end of this year.
BlackBerry: squashed
One company which can't find any good news in the latest figures is BlackBerry. Its sales are following the same trajectory as Nokia's Symbian did - but Symbian at least was publicly killed off by Stephen Elop. BlackBerry is in a jam of its own making.
Its share has collapsed to 0.5% of sales across the EU 5 - driven there partly by Germany and Spain. Its highest share is in France, at 4.2%, with the UK behind it at 3.7%. In the US, the other key western market, its sales share has dropped to 1.8%.
That compares with former highs ofnearly 20% in Spain (in October 2011), 14% in France (in November 2011) and 21% in the UK (October 2011). Its best was 7% in the US, also in November 2011. But like Symbian, it seems there's no way back for BlackBerry - and Windows Phone has indeed taken its place, as Elop forecast it could, as the third ecosystem.
Now it just needs to make money doing it.
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