Europe has until now been one of the most successful markets for Windows Phone, but it appears that users on the Old Continent are jumping ship too these days.



New statistics offered by Kantar for the three-month period ending January 2016 shows that Windows Phone has lost market share in almost every single large market and what’s worse, the drop was pretty significant as compared to the previous months.
Specifically, Windows Phone dropped from 8.9 percent in January 2015 to 5.9 percent in the same month of 2016 in Germany, a decline of 3 percent, and from 13 percent to 7.8 percent in France, down 5.2 percent. Another major collapse was experienced in Italy, which has been the largest Windows Phone market in Europe for many months. Microsoft’s mobile OS is down 6 percent in this market, from 13.2 to 7.2 percent.
Overall, Windows Phone lost 3.3 percent in the EU5 region, from 9.6 percent to 6.4 percent. The only market where Windows Phone actually improved was the United Kingdom, where it increased its share from 7.5 percent to 8.6 percent, up 1.1 percent.
Performance in non-EU markets A similar declining performance was recorded in non-European markets too, including the United States. Here Microsoft’s platform dropped from 4.3 percent to 2.6 percent, down 1.7 percent.
Australians also moved from Windows Phone and January 2016 brought declining figures as compared to the same month of 2015: 5.4 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively, so it lost 3.3 market share percentage points.
As far as the reasons for this migration off Windows Phone are concerned, it’s believed that the long wait for Windows 10 Mobile and the uncertainty surrounding the platform are at fault for people moving to Android and iOS. Microsoft’s secrecy regarding the launch date of Windows 10 Mobile also hurt the market share, but since the arrival of the new OS is just around the corner, things could improve a little bit for Windows Phone.