Microsoft has aggressive plans for Windows Phone 7. They are busy integrating with Nokia and at the same time cooking some fruity updates. But how well has WP7 done since its new avatar released last year? Gartner puts the number at 1.6 million for Jan-March 2011. If you need a perspective, the Samsung Galaxy S2 running Android is said to have 3 million pre-orders already and the iPhone 4 did over a million on launch day last year.
Whats even more embarrassing is the fact that a total of 3.6 million Windows phones were sold in the quarter, which means a good 2 million Windows Mobile phones were shipped. Windows Phone 7 has lacked traction and if it is to do anything close to what the predictions for 2015 are, we would need to be surprised in coming quarters.
We saw some initial launches by Samsung, Dell, HTC and LG supporting WP7 last year, but since then the launches have dried down. Microsoft has had a minor update (NoDo) for its Windows Phones and we have been teased with Magno (WP 7.5). I have personally been using a Windows Phone 7 and the UI quite appeals to me, but its just incomplete. Hardware isn’t Microsoft’s issue anymore, it’s a software game now.
