Microsoft Now Builds Nearly 95% Of All Windows Phones

The Microsoft-Nokia deal closed, and Microsoft now builds and sells millions of phones each month. But more to the point, Microsoft now builds 94.5 percent of all Windows Phone devices. That’s according to adduplex, an advertising company that services the mobile platform.

Its July report on the Windows Phone ecosystem indicates that in the month, devices that it marks as Nokia units had nearly 95 percent market share. That market share now belongs to Microsoft.

As adduplex notes, the assets that Microsoft now owns are still gaining market share, picking up 0.7 percent in the last month.

So that makes Microsoft the de facto Windows Phone OEM. Microsoft is working with global OEMs in an attempt to broaden the hardware base of its mobile platform. Those efforts, in many cases, are nascent. We should, however, see a number of new handsets running Windows Phone inside the next 12 months.

The Nokia assets that Microsoft purchased provided the company with partial-quarter revenue of just under $2 billion, and negative earnings per share for the truncated period of $0.08. It’s expensive revenue, in other words. Microsoft indicated during its earnings call that it expects the division to stop losing money by the middle of 2016.

Microsoft wants to sell lots of phones and derive profit from that revenue. But it also wants other companies to buy into Windows Phone. As such, it likely wants to see its percentage market share decline over time, as unit volume expands. For now, Microsoft’s Lumia phones all but are Windows Phone.

This sticks in my mind.