Market Share by Net Application is a company that analyzes website traffic and generates a trend analysis based on this activity. While there are many naysayers about how successful Windows Mobile 6.5 has been, Market Share's latest trends analysis may put some of the "Windows Mobile is dead" comments to rest.

From November to December 2009, Windows Mobile experienced a 50% increase in web traffic measured by Market Share. Windows Mobile jumped from a .04% share of the traffic to .06%. The growth is second only to the Android OS. The iPhone remains at the top of the heap, claiming .44% of the traffic, with Symbian pulling in .23% of the traffic.

There was no explanation for the increase, but the increase could be a sign that a)Windows Mobile 6.5 is more successful and inviting than many thought b) Microsoft's advertising campaign for Windows Mobile is more successful than first thought or b) the spike is device related. We are seeing more powerful Windows phones hitting the market (LG Expo and HTC HD2) that improve Windows Mobile's browsing capabilities.

Regardless of the reason behind this spike, it will be interesting to see if this trend continues into this new year.

Via WMPoweruser

Windows Mobile has taken another hit in the PR department. In a report coming from comScore, Microsoft now sits in third place behind RIM and Apple in regards to devices that are currently in use. ComScore, a research firm, conducted a monthly poll in which the inquired of respondents which type of phone the own. According to FierceDeveloper.com, comScore found that 14.9 million respondents use a Blackberry phone. iPhone was listed in second place at 8.9 million users, while Microsoft came in third at 7.1 million for Windows Mobile. Upwards of 196 million reported that their phone did not use a proprietary OS.

While polls of this nature aren’t perfect, this is consistent with what we’ve been hearing from other realms. One doesn’t have to search very hard to find multiple reports of the demise of Windows Mobile as a platform.

My primary question is how much of this is due to Windows Mobile being weak in the brand recognition department? Many people don’t even realize that they are using a Windows Mobile phone, much less what flavor of the OS it is running. Without a doubt, Microsoft has a high bar to shoot for with Windows Mobile 7, not the least of which is a release date that doesn’t slip into the distant future.

It's that time of year when smartphone market share numbers are released, and we see even more stories about the death of one platform or another. Android kills WinMo. Android kills BlackBerry. iPhone kills everybody. (OK, hard to argue with that one.) But whatever.

It's not that the numbers are unimportant. It's just that we could all use a little reminder about context. The chart you see above from Gartner [via Ars Technica] is from the third quarter. Windows Mobile 6.5 and the rebranded "Windows phone" launched in October, thus the corresponding marketing push isn't reflected here.

That said, at least one analyst isn't overly optimistic. From Computer World, which broke down the results and said that Windows Mobile's market share fell 20 percent in Q3:

Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi, asked by e-mail today if Windows Mobile will get a boost in the fourth quarter from the new Windows Mobile 6.5, responded: "No, not really ... you might see enough traction that might stabilize the decline."

Not to mince words here, but stabilizing a decline sounds like a "boost" to us. It's all relative. OK, it's still relatively not good, but we'll take stabilizing a 20 percent year over year decline in advance of a presumed major OS announcement (Windows Mobile 7) and subsequent marketing push — see how we keep mentioning marketing?

Personally, I'll take stabilization at this point. Keeping the boat afloat is more important right now as Microsoft continues to position the fleet. Don't worry about one ship trying to outrun the others. Windows Mobile 7. Zune integration in the mobile and Xbox spaces. Windows 7. It's all (hopefully) coming together. The fourth-quarter numbers will be more telling, but we all need to be looking more long-term right now.

No doubt lots of people are clamoring at the notion that "Windows Mobile is dead" (evidently this crew has moved on from mocking Palm) and what with Motorola on WM hiatus, Palm parting ways, the eternal delay of WM7 and the perhaps too-little-to-late Windows Mobile 6.5, it is easy to see why.

On the other hand there is the stark reality: Microsoft has a lot of licensees (14 to be exact), including most recently LG, which is committed to a reported 50 devices in the next few years. HTC has lots of hits with its Touch series and their increase in market power is unrelenting.

To back this up, iSuppli, which performs market analysis, came out with a report stating that though Microsoft is down right now, it is poised for a strong comeback. It is predicting "a 15.3 percent share of the global market in 2013, second only to the Symbian operating system, which will control 47.6 percent." Basically they're going to bounce from No. 2 to No. 3 this year and back to second-place by 2012.

Expanding on this, Tina Teng, a senior analyst at iSuppli, goes on to correctly note

“To win in today’s environment, a company needs not only an operating system but also device support, an application store, a broad portfolio of applications and support from the developer community. While Windows Mobile is losing some share to competitors in 2009, most of the alternatives cannot match Microsoft’s complete suite of offerings.”

This isn't too hard to fathom either with Ballmer revamping the Windows Mobile team and making it the second top priority for the company. Heck, look at all the Live services (Bing, Mesh, MyPhone), tech previews (Recite, Deepfish), Marketplace, the Chassis-1 specifications, the Orion project, TellMe, gesture navigation, non-touch gestures/Side Sight, Silverlight, free automagic-ness and Windows Mobile 7 looks to be a monster OS with very advanced technology. Now combine all of that with 14 hardware manufacturers, market presence, integration with Windows 7, Xbox and that Zune HD thing. Ka-ching.

Microsoft has all the pieces, now it just has to merge them all into a unified and compelling OS.  One year from now we thing will be very interesting times.

In business, it's all about doing better. Month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year. You need to do better than before. That's growth.

And numbers published today by the analysts at Gartner show that Windows Mobile is far from dead. Specifically, worldwide sales to end users were up 12.2 percent from 2007 to 2008, giving Windows Mobile 11.8 percent of the 2008 market share, behind Symbian and Research in Motion.

OK, WinMo's growth wasn't anywhere near as strong as RIM's (96.7 percent) or Apple's (245.7 percent!) or even Palm's (42.2 percent). But it's positive growth. The Symbian OS fell 6.1 percent from 2007 to 2008 but still has a little more than half of the world's market share. (For more on that, check out Nokia Experts' own Matthew Miller over at ZDNet.)  BlackBerry has 16.6 percent of the market, followed by Windows Mobile at 11.8 percent. The iPhone came in fourth at 8.2 percent.

What's it all mean? The smartphone industry is growing by leaps and bounds. Windows Mobile isn't dead, and there's still plenty of geeky goodness to go around.

JKOnTheRun via ZDNet