News · 29 Nov 2010 · MTW Editorial Team
Everybody’s been waiting for official Windows Phone 7 sales numbers now that handsets have been on sale for more than a month in Europe and 3 weeks in the US. Unfortunately Microsoft isn’t releasing anything yet which in turn fuels all kinds of doom and gloom speculations all over the internet. One thing is for sure: If Windows Phone 7 broke any sales record Microsoft would have issued a press release (just like they did with the Kinect). So, is it a flop ? Frankly I don’t think so. Like I said many times since the European launch; It was nearly impossible to buy a WP7 devices because of the lack of devices on sale. OEMs and Carriers (especially Europeans ones) apparently totally messed up the launch. LG was the only one ready with loads of Optimus 7 devices out of the gate followed by Samsung who is currently having a hard time pumping out Super-AMOLED screens for all of its high-end devices and finally HTC, who,in my opinion, didn’t have the backbone to actually launch 6 devices in one month (Desire Z, Desire HD, Trophy, Mozart, HD7). Retail channels only started selling devices in the second week of November (before that all the stock was allocated to carriers). The US also apparently suffered from relative a lack of handsets (let’s not talk about the disastrous Dell Venue Pro “launch“…). Oh and the marketing just sucks…IMO.
In my opinion, everybody should just chill a bit about this and wait for Microsoft’s official word on the matter before claiming thatthe platform is DOA. Windows Phone 7 was never expected to sell like hot cakes but thankfully word of mouth is really good. Once devices are fully back in stock and with the holiday shopping season underway we should expect a steady growth of WP7 users before the beginning of next year. People should forget about Microsoft’s past mobile offerings (Windows Mobile) and see Windows Phone 7 as a totally new product starting from zero. Once you have this in mind you will realize that this is going to be a long road and that a brand new platform doesn’t skyrocket to the top in just 4 weeks. Comparing it to Android’s current sales numbers is toatly ridiculous.
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