Windows Phone 7 Marketshare Growing, But Still Small In U.S.

A new analysis of the overall U.S. smartphone market shows Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 doubling its share of the marketplace, yet still representing only 2 percent of all smartphones in use. The June mobilemix report from Millenial Media [PDF] shows Windows Phone 7's share of the market up from just one percent the month before, but still lagging behind even Symbian in the smartphone OS wars. The rise in Windows Phone ownership led ad impressions on the device to rise 31 percent quarter-over-quarter for the period ending in June, the largest proportional growth of any smartphone OS. Google's Android platform remained the largest smartphone OS by ownership, up one percentage point to 54 percent in June, followed by iOS at 26 percent, down 1 percent for the month. That situation was flipped when it came to application revenue, with iOS apps taking a plurality, at 49 percent, compared to 41 percent for Android. Blackberry apps represented 9 percent of all sales, while Windows Phone 7 app sales were part of the one percent of revenues from "other" platforms. Across all phones, games remained the most popular category of mobile apps for the second quarter of 2011, representing 27 percent of all ad impressions for the period. Microsoft has started a concerted marketing push for its nascent mobile platform as a gaming device, with a summer Must Have Games promotion featuring weekly marquee releases.