Microsoft: 2 Million WP7 Licenses Sold [Microsoft Says That They've Sold 2 Million Windows Phone 7 Licenses To Manufacturers, Silent On Number Of Devices Activated]

Posted on TFTS by Kevin Schram on Thursday, 27. January 2011 under: Mobile/Cell Phones

Windows Phone 7 is the newest major mobile operating system. Microsoft has been putting a huge marketing push behind the new OS, and so there’s been a lot of discussion about how well it’s doing. Microsoft has once again graced us with an update on the sales race – they’re admitting that they’ve sold 2 million licenses for the software to phone manufacturers.

Note that Microsoft isn’t providing the number of new phones activated like Apple does with the iPhone or Google does with Android. Microsoft defenders will say “Well, a software license sold is a sale to Microsoft,” but when the competition is quoting one thing, it’s slightly misleading.

According to Microsoft’s market research, 93% of people are satisifed with WP7 and 90% would recommend it to friends. They’re adding about 100 new apps each day to the Marketplace and there are about 6,500 there right now.]

Both the iPhone and Android are activating about 250,00 devices per day, right? Probably higher now, but how does WP7 rank if you broke it down per day? Windows Phone 7 went on sale in Europe on October 21, 2010. The announcement regarding the 2 million licenses sold was made on January 26th, 2011. That’s 97 days. Or about 20,000 phones ‘licensed’ per day. Not quite to the level of the iPhone and Android yet. But there are a hundred Android phones and the iPhone carries the golden iPhone name.

While Windows Phone 7 may not be besting the iPhone and Android (yet), it’s being very highly critically received. Both tech reviewers and regular folks seem to really like the operating system, and I really imagine that it could do well for Microsoft. You’ve got to give them credit for A – taking Windows Mobile 6 out behind the woodshed and putting it down and B – not following the same homescreen grid with icons that both iOS and Android use.

Source

Ural
Well Android is activating over 300k daily, Apple around 176k daily, windows 7 phones assuming all of them are sold only in the US, around one every 3-4 days.. (and thats a very optimistic figure!).
Considering the US census bureau there are a total of 19,354 cities in the US. Not all of these cities are fully covered by all four major telcos (Verizon, ATT, Sprint and T Mobile). Though its safe to assume that Verizon and ATT are there, Sprint / T Mobile and a local operator can be counted for the rest, so there are at least 3 (or more) places where to purchase Windows cellphones in each of these cities, which equates to 58,062 stores where a Windows phone can be purchased.
Assuming All these stores average about 6 windows cellphone in stock (some may have more in large metro areas, others less). We can speculate that each store sold an average of 30 windows phones since it was released.
(here we are making another assumption, that no windows cell phones where sold outside the US, which is not true, but we favor-skew the numbers to favor Microsoft)
With sales beginning on October 21, 2010 as of Jan 28th, 2011 its been 99 days since these phones have been available to customers. Each store has sold and average of 30 phones (some may have sold more other less) in 99 days.
Which implies that 1 windows phone is sold every 3-4 days (3.3 to be exact). Now this is an optimistic figure. If we increase the amount of locations that have window phones for sale (Store in Europe and Japan, some must be in stock, so the amount sold would actually be less).
So no matter how you cut the mustard, Windows 7 phones are following Kin’s steps. And its a flop, that will cost Microsoft a LOT of money to fix. And some one will be held responsible. May we ask Steve B what his thoughts are?