Windows Phone up, Apple down in Aussie smartphone sales share

Microsoft continues to post small gains in smartphone sales share in Australia at the expense of Apple.

Windows Phone grew to 5.2% of Australian smartphone OS sales share in the three months to December 2013, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. This is up from 3 percent in same period in 2012.

The gain follows a jump for Windows during the preceding three months to 9.3 percent sales share, a doubling of sales share compared with the same period a year earlier.

Despite Windows' gain in sales share though, the OS still lags far behind major rivals in consumer sales and hasn't maintained the 9.3 percent share it achieved earlier in 2013.

Kantar's numbers do not track enterprise sales though; IT managers interviewed by CRN previously anecdotally suggest that many IT managers are considering Windows phones for the workplace.

Meanwhile, sales share for iOS in Australia for the three months to December 2013 fell, down from 38.5 percent to 35.2 percent of local sales.

Android still holds the lion's share of Australian consumer smartphone market, with 57.2 percent in the latest Kantar figures. Meanwhile, Blackberry fell slightly from 1 percent to 0.8 percent.

While Kantar did not publish numbers for Samsung, the report stated that "after years of accelerated growth, Samsung is now coming under real pressure in most regions".

While the Kantar figures give an indication of sales trends, they do not show overall market share. Kantar collects the figures by interviewing smartphones owners, asking if they have bought a smartphone in the last three months. In Australia, Kantar conducts 10,000 interviews each month.