Majority of new Lumia 900 converts are coming from Android or the iPhone

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Nearly 60% of those switching to Windows Phone due to the Nokia Lumia 900 or HTC Titan II were former iOS and Android owners. Apple brand-loyalty? We think not.

We ran a poll the other day asking users if they switched to Windows Phone due to the Lumia 900 or Titan II, what OS were they coming from. And although the poll is still technically open, with 3,462 votes tallied so far we can discern a distinct pattern forming from the results.

The majority of users, nearly 60%, are coming from a combo of former Android and iPhone owners with it neatly divided at a close 30% each. Blackberry users are evidently still holding on with just 10% and a nice healthy 14% of adopters were coming from non-smartphones.

While our pals at Crackberry spun it as hope for Blackberry 10 users, we imagine a lot of folks jumped that ship last quarter to either the iPhone or Android, leaving the diehards (or still contract-bound) behind. Personally, we think RIM is DOA and look forward to a Microsoft acquisition at a rock bottom price (insert maniacal laughter).

The Android/iPhone results are interesting only because we're seeing what looks to be equal amount of folks taking up Windows Phone, leaving in the dust the notion that Apple has stronger brand loyalty than any other company.

One could also interpret the results as the Lumia 900 piquing interest from all segments of the smartphone market, represented in a roughly proportional manner. That's good news for Windows Phone as an OS and better news for Nokia who seem more than capable of garnering media attention on a wide scale. That is something the likes of Samsung and HTC have not been able to do in part because of their divided interest between Android and Windows Phone.

With the Lumia 900 seemingly selling very well (and yes, it's still number #1 and #3 on Amazon Wireless (opens in new tab)) the question now is will it maintain that momentum over the coming weeks?

We think with the glossy-white 900 set for this Sunday, April 22nd it will certainly create even more interest and those rumors of a magenta version for Mother's Day could also do wonders for the brand. We'll revisit this issue next month.

Update: To clarify, we purposefully left off previous Windows Phone users. The reason is because we were interested in only those who switched their OS due to the allure of the Lumia 900 (or Titan II). While we're sure a chunk of you were Windows Phone/Windows Mobile users, we wanted to look at the ratio of those who converted.

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

38 Comments
  • Yes just what i wanted to see :P
  • Why not wp7 in the poll?
  • We're looking for new users to Windows Phone as an OS. The Lumia 900 is just the vehicle for that. While surely there are some coming from Windows Phone, it's sort of a separate question if you're just look at new OS adopters rather than every OS. And that's what we were interested: what is the ratio of just the new OS adopters. We have reasons for that including better directing content on our site to cater to our readers' interests.
  • No WP as an option? Although you were attempting to gauge the numbers of new users, without the WP option I cannot help but think the poll flawed. I would love to believe people are flocking to the phone I suspect however a large proportion are simply upgrading existing devices and to be honest any new customer is pretty likely to come from Apple or android.
  • It's not flawed... Why would anyone lie or fabricate on this poll? However, do you check on up?
  • Why do you say lie or frabricate? The flaw was the lack of WP as an option. I realise what they were trying to do I just do not think it should of been reported until you also knew that figure. It now appears that we are saying most users are coming from Android and Apple which although extremely likely because of the market penetration of these devices is possible not as significant because I suspect a large number of 900 owners are previous WP device owners and so that for me would of been the more valuable nugget.
  • Flawed poll
  • Not a flawed poll, you are just interested in a different question. We only want to know the ratio of those coming to Windows Phone for the first time, those that switched their OS because of the Lumia 900 or Titan II. We're interested in converts not the choir.
  • Troll
  • The cyan went down in the amazon rankings!? I presume that's due to the shortage of cyan color devices. And I thought I'd mention this here because it's slightly related to the success of the Lumia 900: i noticed that the Rogers app available in the Canadian marketplace shot to 4th in the free apps rankings. That wasn't in the top 5 before. This is interesting because the Lumia was released April 10th, so one could interpret that there was a decent amount of Lumia devices sold even though there has been no advertisements at all for the 900's launch
  • Nope, it held steady. The #1 and #3 is across all carriers, not just AT&T. That's very impressive even with the cyan being backordered.
  • On a different topic, I got to say that the Droid Razr Maxx being at the top should keep the others on notice about battery life, including even Nokia. A smartphone that can last the day without a single charge even with the heaviest use case is desirable, and Nokia should try to do the longer battery life especially considering the trend towards non-removable batteries.
  • ?? How is this poll flawed, it would be difficult to pull every single person that came from another os so he used a small sample to give everyone an idea which type of users came over. The fact that this poll does not show existing wp7 is irrelevant. He is only interested small group in the general population.
  • It would be interesting to know the % of those ios users who are ios developers. The reason being you need a mac to develop on ios and I find it hard to believe most mac users will be ditching that too. I would guess the majority are either norms or ios users wanting A 2nd dev platform.
  • The poll result is certainly very encouraging, hope this trend continues.
  • It's not a flawed poll because it's literally the Lumia 900 that's drawing in coverts, not Windows Phone in general. The 1st generation WP devices are very mediocre and did not sell well. The Lumia 900 is the first certified "hit" for WP platform.
  • Actually that would be the 800... And in the UK atm, the 710 is selling like hotcakes at £129 SIM-free. The 900 was 5 months late to the Nokia WP party...
  • The real interesting number that's missing here is how many of the lumia 900 buyers are new to the platform.
  • Why no option for WinMo??
  • The current marketshare is 50% Android, 30% iPhone. Therefore because there are a greater proportion of Anroid users out there these stats are actually showing that a greater proportion of those iPhone users are switching than the Android ones (because there are less of them out there)
  • Imagine how far WP7 would be if they had launched the Lumia 800 and then followed it up with the 900?
  • This poll needs to be in a commercial, interviewing former Android and iPhone users asking them why they switched. Tired interface, slow and buggy functionality, etc. This would resonate with non-techie people if presented properly...
  • The crackberry users can spin it however they want, but crackberry should do a poll of how many users are carrying company mandated devices....that's my guess for why they haven't switched.  Crackberry market share is highly dependent on draconian corporate policies.
  • A lot of companies caved to the end-user's iphone cravings. 4 years ago, when the iphone 3G came out, the company I worked for didn't support the iphone and all business people had blackberries. 6 months ago there were a handful left and they were staying with blackberry because they thought it was better for what they needed (mainly a reliable email service)
     
    I'm not sure how many of the current blackberry users are forced to use that OS,  I think a lot of them are using it because they really like certain features that iphone and android don't do well (exchange email in android is crap, including 3rd party apps and don't even get started on security with android devices)
     
    A lot of those things are better with windows phone and Micrsoft just needs a few more enterprise features to get the rest of the blackberry users converted.
    With the issues blackberry has releasing a new device, windows phone 8 and the iphone 5 might take away whatever market share they have left
  • Unscientific Poll is Unscientific.
  • It's strange that you left out previous windows phone users (on a windows phone web site, I'm sure those who don't even have a lumia didn't vote)  
     
    it makes sense that most of the converts would come from the two most popular operating systems, where else would they come from? without the number of windows phone users upgrading to the lumia, the real interesting number is left out (what percentage is new to windows phone users).
     
    but you have to look at these numbers and compare them to the actual marketshare.
    for example, Android gets under 28% in your survey yet the marketshare for that platform in February was 48%. RIM had a marketshare of 12% at that time and shows up as 10% on your survey. Apple was at 32% (but 48% of new users) and are also close.
    This means the percentage of Android users who convert is lower than blackberry and iphone users.
     
     
  • This is exactly what I thought when I read the article.  I thought that the numbers for iOS and Android were actually low, compared to market share of the other OSes.
  • I was going to defend this article by saying I can understand their intentions, but you have brought up a valid (and interesting) point.
    Though I did also want to say that I had switched to WP7 from a non-smartphone but not because of the Lumia or Titan because they didn't exist at the time! (proud owner of a Omnia 7). Again I understand their survey's purpose, but I feel it's biased towards these two handsets because that seems to be the norm as of late. Sure they might be two of the "best" WPs available to date, but by far not the only ones. And I'm still convinced my 1st Gen phone is better in some aspects considering it was easier to unlock and has deeper access.
  • Here is how WP is ranked in sales at bestbuy.com this week: AT&T (69 phones offered)
    18. Nokia Lumia 900 Black (34. a week ago, not available a month ago)
    25. Samsung Focus Flash (28. a week ago, 25. a month ago)
    41. Nokia Lumia 900 Cyan (45. a week ago, not available a month ago)
    49. HTC Titan (53. a week ago, 33. a month ago)
    50. Samsung Focus S (54. a week ago, 50. a month ago)
    59. HTC HD7S (63. a week ago, 58. a month ago)
    63. HTC Surround (65. a week ago, 61. a month ago) T-Mobile (27 phones offered)
    3. Nokia Lumia 710 Black (4. a week ago, 5. a month ago)
    4. Nokia Lumia 710 White (5. a week ago, 6. a month ago)
    6. HTC Radar (7. a week ago, 9. a month ago) Verizon (56 phones offered)
    53. HTC Trophy (52. a week ago, 34. a month ago) Sprint (47 phones offered)
    39. HTC Arrive (28. a week ago, 37. a month ago)
  • Awesome news.. WP sales went up for EVERY phone on both AT&T and T-Mobile!  That's gotta count for something!
  • Hey Malatesta, was there anyway to separate those who answered the poll as "what did you use before wp7" and those who answered exactly what the poll asked? It seemed like a lot of the comments were "I had a ______ then got a hd7/focus/etc. and now I have a Lumia." and then answered based on that.
  • My answer is complicated, but if I keep it to what was actually on the line that the Lumia is on, the answer is Android.  The Nokia Lumia 900 is my first Windows Phone, and I got it more because of Nokia than Windows Phone.  My dream phone would have been a Nokia running Android.  Don't throw rotten tomatoes at me!
    I picked up the Lumia 900 because Windows Phone does voice dialing via Bluetooth better than Android does.
  • Hopefully they will never make that terrible mistake and sell out reliability and ease of use and one of the most important differentiating factor they have for their phones. 
    The previous Nokia CEO said going with Android would be like peeing in your pants to keep warm and I couldn't agree more. On Android, Nokia would just be another Android phone maker and have to battle it out with a dozen Korean brands and fight over scraps in the constant, pointless ghz and screen size war that never ends. 
    If Nokia ever left Windows Phone for Android, I have no doubt my next phone would definitely not be a Nokia and they're a fair chance it would be an iPhone. 
     
  • I wasn't suggesting that Nokia should do Android phones exclusively.  They could be like HTC and Samsung and work with more than one (non-proprietary) OS.  A Nokia-manufactured Nexus phone would have me dancing in the streets!
  • Actually the numbers are useless except as a gauge of converts.  The real question is how many sales are to switchers (from other smartphones, feature phones or dumb phones) VS. how many upgraders (current WP7 users).  If the vast majority is upgraders THEN the platform is not expanding it's user base and market share (which is what WP7 really needs).  If all the sales are to current users upgrading their first WP7 (Focus, etc.) or even switching from WP7 on another carrier for the combination of HSPA+/LTE then WP7 market share will continure to fall or stay on a low plateau.  There are always people "trying out" or jumping between platforms with no true loyalty or always going back to what they like (iPhones?).  My last point is because of the special relationship with Nokia and MS how long before Samsung, HTC and LG "give up" on WP7 because of poor sales.
  • I feel like the first sentence of this story is flawed. It states that 60 percent of people switching to WINDOWS PHONE are switching from iOS and Android. Well of course they are! What other OS is available?! Both the Nokia 900 and HTC Titian II are At&t phones which gives you iOS, Android, and BlackBerry (who has one of those?) to choose from. Add to the equation that technically you can't switch to the WP operating system from a device already running WP, and you will get a lot of people switching to WP from iOS and Android.
  • I've said it before and I'll say it again.
    Apple is not the enemy. Android is. 
    Windows Phone should be targeting the huge population of  non-enthusiast Android users frustrated with glitches and unreliability. They'll be much easier converts than diehard iPhone fans. Apple will always naturally limit their own market share by offering only one phone. They should also be targeting the Blackberry by firming up the corporate/enterprise features. 
    Of course, any market share we gain for Windows Phone 7 is a good thing!
  • I'm a former iPhone and Android user and I was ready to make the switch to Windows Phone. I find the Windows Phone UI to be very clean, simple, and just plain works. Even if my Lumia 900 doesn't see a full or modified update to WP 8.0, I'll be happy with this awesome phone for a good long while.