Windows Phone saw the best growth in market share of any mobile OS between Q1, 2012, and Q2, 2012, with its share of sales up 1.9 percentage points year-on-year, consistent with data from Kantar WorldPanel ComTech.

However, the OS still only accounted for five.6 per cent of smartphone sales in Q1 – putting it third to Android (49.3 per cent) and iOS (43.7 per cent). 

However, with Android’s share growing by just 1.4 percentage points, and iOS actually dropping by 0.9 per cent, Windows has much greater momentum, something which has helped push Nokia’s share of devices sold up by one percentage point – although again its total share is quite low, at four per cent.

“As iOS and Android continue to battle it out for prime selling smartphone OS, we’ve seen Windows steadily grow over the last year and is now at its highest sales share figure thus far,” said Kantar Worldpanel ComTech analyst Mary-Ann Parlato. “Windows’ strength seems to be the flexibility to draw first time smartphone buyers, upgrading from a feature phone. Of these who changed their phone during the last year to a Windows smartphone, 52 per cent had previously owned a feature phone.

“Comparatively, the vast majority of iOS and Android new customers were repeat smartphone buyers, with 55 per cent of latest iOS customers, and 51 per cent of recent Android customers coming from another smartphone. While the variations between these figures are small, with over half the united states market still owning a featurephone, it’s likely that many will upgrade over the approaching year, a good way to ultimately contribute to more growth for the Windows brand.”