Microsoft isn't failing in Mobile?

[Landguy]

Let's look at the below charts, as we love charts here on the Chartz:

Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2014 (Thousands of Units)

Company	2014Units	2014 Market Share (%)	2013Units	2013 Market Share (%)
Samsung	392,546	20.9	444,472	24.6
Apple	191,426	10.2	150,786	8.3
Microsoft	185,660	9.9	250,835	13.9
Lenovo*	84,029	4.5	66,463	3.7
LG Electronics	76,096	4.0	69,094	3.8
Huawei	70,499	3.8	53,296	2.9
TCL Communication	64,026	3.4	49,538	2.7
Xiaomi	56,529	3.0	13,423	0.7
ZTE	53,910	2.9	59,903	3.3
Sony	37,791	2.0	37,596	2.1
Micromax	37,094	2.0	25,431	1.4
Others	629,360	33.5	587,764	32.5
Total	1,878,968	100.0	1,808,600	100.0

Source: Gartner (March 2015) *Results for Lenovo include sales of mobile phones by Lenovo and Motorola.

Of course, M$ is only a few million behind Apple at this point.  So, M$ has securely planted itself into the low end of the market of mobile phones.  I think that M$ is taking the long term approach to this.  They know they need the scale and distribution model in place as they have done.

Now, when we look at the breakdown of the Smartphone market:

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2014 (Thousands of Units)

Operating System	2014Units	2014 Market Share (%)	2013Units	2013 Market Share (%)
Android	1,004,675	80.7	761,288	78.5
iOS	191,426	15.4	150,786	15.5
Windows	35,133	2.8	30,714	3.2
BlackBerry	7,911	0.6	18,606	1.9
Other OS	5,745	0.5	8,327	0.9
Total	1,244,890	100.0	969,721	100.0

Source: Gartner (March 2015)

It's clear that IOS and Android are killing it.  Apple took control of 90% of the profits made by all smartphones in the 4th quarter of 2014.  But, 35 million smartphone sales by M$ and its partners is not a bad thing.  With M$ releasing Windows 10 and Windows Phone 10 later this year, there will be even more reasons to get a Windows OS phone over the coming years.  Having a platform(Windows 10) that allows all of you content from your PC/Tablet/Game system/Smartphone to be derived from the same basic software will help immensly, and will inspire people to cross buy into the platform in different form factors.

As far as the smarphone numbers themselves, 2.8% sounds bad until you think about the actual amount of new users (35 million) that are now using their OS.  M$ need only get to 8 or 9% and they have an extremely large user base to feed off of.  As we all know, the money is really made off of the apps and content long term in the ecosystem.