Windows Phone in China reaches 2.54% says Statcounter
As noted in a comment by Keith in Janne’s last post, China seems to be responding to Windows Phone. It had previously been reported that there was a possibility that it had somehow overtaken iPhone in marketshare.
Folks noted that in no way did statcounter reflect this. Having said that, it is important to note that statcounter’s mobile OS data is across ALL current handsets in use. Given China’s enormous population, it would be difficult to even make a blip so early on. As such, some dismissed this as lies.
Somehow it has. 2.54%. A random blip in a week.
http://gs.statcounter.com/?PHPSESSID=afe6ef4ocvq97bkhrt5ub6v961#mobile_os-CN-daily-20120522-20120621
I can’t actually believe this might be the case and reckon there might be an error somewhere in how statcounter is reporting. It might be a momentary blip. Looking back since January, WP has been making a slow but steady growth in China. Not sure how since they weren’t officially available there until end of March, right?
Hopefully this correlates to Nokia Lumia doing very well in China and NOT the other manufacturers trying to eat Nokia’s ever vanishing pie.
Category: Nokia, Windows Phone
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- Tyrone Woodson | June 26, 2012
I’ve been following Statcounter for a while and unfortunately there seems to be problem with the China data. It goes up and down which suggests it fails to report marketshare consistently and accurately. Having shown < 1% marketshare up to this point I very much doubt it suddenly would have 2.54. Remember this is a huge huge market so any spikes you see will most likely be bias/errors and not the actual marketshare.
It doesn’t seem to be a random daily error at least, since it shows growth for today (22/6) since 21/6.
Can be some other kind of error of course.
Apparently Nokia launched Lumia 900 in China this week.
Did they just sell a gazillion of them?
so many gazillions that apprantely Apple has filed for Bankruptcy!
Oh, did Apple do that? I didn’t see that one coming. I sure have been missing a lot of cues lately.
“It goes up and down which suggests it fails to report marketshare consistently and accurately.”
Well doh! It doesn’t measure market share. It measures internet page loads and not even those totally accurately. Internet usage != market share. Rich people and expensive phones are over-presented.
What’s more, making any conclusions from StatCounter data misses one big pink elephant in the room:
Most people still don’t even use internet on their phones!
Windows Phone – 0,55% june 20
Windows Phone – 2,54% june 21
Not in a week, in a day. Something ain’t right here.
And it’s still rising: 2.71% now.
The monthly figure stands at 0,61% for June.
So what is the correct data?
This looks more like daily stats to me, meaning how many of those specific OS get activated on a daily basis on Chinese networks and not really marketshare.
With all the cheap Chinese android devices out there, it would make sense that a lot of those devices get activated on a daily basis.
Ah. that makes sense. Why didn’t I think of that >.<
Well, both CAN be correct. The monthly stat is the average for the month, the 2.71% is the daily figure for today. I guess someone just activated a whole bunch of Windows Phones for some reason. Or StatCounter is mistaken.
Yeah, I’m still inclined to believe it’s an error. Hope it is not.
I am also inclined to believe in an error, but let’s keep checking what it could be.
Windows phone is growing.. Nokia shall rise again. 808 will be accepted in us and they should send it to china asap.
For India Symbian 60% in April and in June 38 %
similarly S40 11% and 24%..
I think it’s not accurate.
Well that data I think IS accurate. There’s no spikes and Symbian has been losing marketshare consistently. The S40 jump you see is Asha.
So Nokias India marketshare has more or less stayed the same, or slightly decreased.
Marketshare stayed the same but in smartphone sammy and htc are eating their cakes very well. I have seen to may shops who has changed there distribution channels from Nokia to Samsung. And even in villages where Nokia was well known player. Now people started using Samsung devices.
im just wondering what kind of symbian phone is selling that much in india.i dont see any symbian phones in any retailers.s40 line has been given some marketing push and asha 200 is doing well.
The problem is that StatCounter had been incorrectly including Series 40 in Symbian figures for the longest of time, artificially inflating Symbian. They fixed this a month or two ago and now the stats are finally correct showing the separation of Symbian and Series 40 in new monthly data. Old data will remain incorrect of course.
Thanks I got the point. but I think on China page they have mentioned this info but when i opens India’s page then info isn’t there.
Oops, I missed this message earlier or I wouldn’t have re-stated the part about S40 data being included in statounter data in my messabge below.
I know this is not related to the article but i need help. I asked a question in the ‘Ask a Nokian’ section. Anybody who can help should please help
I have no idea about validity of stats, but did not the Lumia 900 just go on sale in China?
Lumia isnt the only Windows phone, probably HTC and others as well.
This is of course true. It could be some other manufacturer as well, although I find that unlikely at this time – until WP8 really.
And to think just a few months ago, people were saying WP would not even be able to launch in China due lack of eastern language support.
Both, proven very wrong.
People have been indeed saying a lot of things.
It has poor support indeed
Because users can only draw chinese words for texting which is extremely slow
Most of us use pinyin or cangjie. These are missed in windows phone. This makes people frustrated for a OS that has an advanced social integration
There is no plugins or 3rd party apps to deal with it as WP7 is a closed ecosystem.
I’m sure arts will disagree with you…
what do you know any way?
Weirdfisher actually has a point, unlike the people who said Windows Phone will never come to languages like China because it relies too heavily on western typography and reading direction… That is about as silly as saying PureView will never work on Windows Phone… Haven’t those people heard of software. You know, the thing you can develop and improve over time to do whatever.
Weirdfisher on the other hand makes a good solid point and I have nothing to add to that – Microsoft and Nokia, take not and fix.
but you know what? The point he raised, is blatantly false.
Pinyin input is available.
And this is the problem.
The respreading of complete bullshit by people who dont even know two shits about what they are talking about.
As for proof,
http://news.images.paojiao.cn/shouji/zx/20123/3/61496973/13316088438512012031310055832.jpg
the link above shows chinese pinyin input.
the link below shows drawing of chinese characters.
http://iphonetouch.blorge.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/1842902182.jpg
is a iphone link, more to show what drawing chinese characters look like.
i have not explored my lumia enough to find the drawing part, but i regularly use pinyin.
You call that obscure picture a proof?! Anyone can Photoshop pretty much anything. A random photo is not a proof of anything.
Now I’m not saying anything about, whether that pinyin input exists or not. I’m just saying that some random picture is not a proof at all.
So you should provide some real evidence, if you want people to take your claim seriously. That picture won’t convince or at least shouldn’t convince anyone.
when you don’t know what you are talking about? please. shut up.
Do users have to copy and paste word from the ‘pinyin app’?
Or is it fully integrated into the OS?
I think the former doesnt count
Im sure cangjie is not integrated, but not so sure about pinyin
so, you don’t have a wp device and here you are spewing garbage? please. you are an embarrassment to the Chinese people.
why not you go talk about stuff you actually know about?
owh you again?
disagree.
I presume you have either outdated information, or just vomitting out complete bullshit you heard along the way by complete idiots.
Because if the person who actually used the device would know that pinyin input is available, and that your statement is basically, WRONG.
Could the reason be KakaoTalk? Or something else out of MobileAsiaExpo?
http://www.techinasia.com/kakaotalk-windows-phone-app-launch/
Perhaps Nokia has indeed been successful in shifting a significant amount of Lumias in late June in China and now some popular app or service is causing an up-tick in Internet usage on those devices.
You can see some small up-ticks already earlier in the week. Perhaps 610 and/or 900 are indeed selling in numbers – and as people get the apps, services and things going the change in StatCounter is permanent?
Or is this China Unicom now also selling Lumia 610? China Unicom is China’s second largest operator.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/15/nokia-lumia-610-coming-to-china-unicom-elop-slips-details-in-co/
That is news from a week ago. Did they start selling this weekend?
This news actually slipped through my radar in all the doom and gloom. This could be potentially huge for Lumia.
I think WP is doing well in China because we are starting to see significant spikes. But the volatility means the data collection for China has some issues. I do think yesterday’s data was either a statcounter glitch or a change in the method in which statcounter is collecting its China data. Probably the latter and the WP usage is real.
I had linked to the 30 day daily chart in Janne’s original post yesterday and at the time it showed WP’s June 21st share to be 6.58% which would be an impossible 1 day gain (0.55% the day before).
statcounter does change its methods of course. Until recently they were including S40 stats in with Symbian and last month you may have noticed a huge drop for Symbian’s share in countries where the S40 is strong. Hopefully they have fixed a flaw in the WP collection and this is for real.
I forgot to note that the 6.58% had fallen to 2.54% by the time the day was over but that is still an impossible 360% 1 day gain.
Well spotted BTW – all this. Thank you for that.
But is it, really? 600 (and 900) seem to be coming to two operators over there right about now. Also there has been a conference and many news regarding Chinese Marketplace (from Nokia actually) in the past day or two.
These all may be linked and the activity is real?
Keith too:
On the other hand some other platforms see also huge daily differences. For example Android has seen 13 percentage point differences between few consecutive days. It may also be just that as a day progresses more data is collected and sometimes there is real range day-to-day too.
Now 21st shows 2.54% and 22n is 2.71% and has been holding steady for past few hours. Of course the day is quite far along in China. I wonder what this link will show when the day flips to the next:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-CN-daily-20120523-20120623
At least it shows now what pressing the big red button in the Great Firewall would look like.
It’s a good sign the day is starting off strong again in China, indicating the usage is real and you’re right it could from a big surge in sales but considering how big the spike was yesterday and so far today I think it is more likely a correction in statcounter methodology which is just as good. In the chart you linked to it shows the percentage difference between the low and high values for Android is 36% while but it is 624% for WP.
It’s only released at the 1st of every month but I would love to see the netmarketshare data for China because their collecting methods are more reliable* but unfortunately we cannot see the breakdown by country in their data without subscribing to their service and it’s a couple hundred a month. I saw someone post a breakdown of netmarketshare’s India data last month and it was also showing quite the surge in WP usage which is not showing up in statcounter data yet.
*I think netmarketshre is more reliable because they geoweight and remove things like Chrome’s pre-rendering (which really skews browser stats for both desktop and mobile but fortunately not the desktop or mobile OS stats). Geoweighting is not perfect but it is better than not doing anything.
Good points, there.
As I was told if I want to see true statistics there then I must look at and only at: 1) used energy – payments/usage 2) Expences on transport – payments/volume of transported goods. Those parameters shows real conditions, all the rest can be so to say “enchanced”. If one does not know the China as it realy is, then pretty easy can make many mistakes.
What is your point, though?
We deal here with what we have available. You are more than welcome to try and provide us with better data.
point is that statcounter data for china is not a great measure…statcounter AFIK as several sites as a research pool base, now most of them if not all are based outside china… and many of them blocked by the great firewall.. so the data coming out of china is very inconsistent similar to a small country, witch should tell you that something is deeply wrong with those stats (given how huge the market is), its a number but I would not give it much credit…
noki: OK, that is fair.
Although where was this point when everyone was disputing that Lumia had started selling more than iPhone through official channels… and used StatCounter as proof?
In any case, hopefully Lumia catches on in China. The cheap 610 might be important for Nokia’s Q3, considering that high-end probably suffers from the WP8 issue more.
“was disputing that Lumia had started selling more than iPhone” that was disputed because it was plain ridicule..
Not necessarily. Sure, they most likely meant official sales as opposed to grey imports, but it is not impossible it happened. The official iPhone is not THAT big in China. Again, StatCounter was used to counter any implication Lumia was making any impact there…
And iPhone is quite old as a model.
This is the problem when the world is looked at through black or white glasses, people expect that Windows Phone can’t do well anywhere – if it doesn’t do well in most places, or hasn’t done well so far. That may still change. Of course it may also not change.
Same with Google and social. Yet Google’s Orkut landed big time in Brazil. I know Orkut is not a preferable example because it failed to do well overall in the long term, but the point is – don’t assume global success is guarantee of local success, or lack thereof. Or vice-versa. Windows Phone might do very well in some place like China.
And really, it only takes massive success in a few places to be back on track. Many things can happen. There is still reason to be hopeful for Nokia, even though reality is a hostile takover bid might arrive anyday.
I certainly agree about the hostile takeover possibility but I suspect that any hostile takever bid would soon be met with a gentle takeover bid. In that event I would hope Nokia would be spun right back off once its phones and tablets are selling in sufficient numbers again.
“In any case, hopefully Lumia catches on in China.”
Hopefully it doesn’t. Ever. The faster WP totally dies, the better for the human kind.
Why?
Of course China data is not gathered at the same rate as western countries but it is a lot more than your fabrication suggests. See the link below for the page view sample size of every country they gather data for.
http://gs.statcounter.com/sample-size/StatCounterGlobalStatsApr12_SampleSizeCountryBreakdown.csv
The 2.71% from yesterday eventually settled at 1.37%, the 2.54% the day prior still stands. For whatever it is worth.
It’s back down again so who knows what’s going on with the Chinese data gathering. The volatility is such that we cannot put much faith in the data but at least it appears to be indicating significant growth for Windows Phone because it was around .25% up until last month.
Also sorry, I had linked to the desktop page view sample day in my previous message (currently April 12, 2012) on statcounter’s faq. The mobile page view samples are a lot less but it is still a large enough that the Chinese data should not be so volatile. My best guess now is that they were not able to gather a full set of data for those days showing the big spikes so they published the numbers for what they had.
Here is the page for the mobile page views.
http://gs.statcounter.com/sample-size/StatCounterGlobalStatsApr12_mobile_SampleSizeCountryBreakdown.csv