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Nokia now world's largest Windows Phone manufacturer, according to Strategy Analytics

Nokia now world's largest Windows Phone manufacturer, according to Strategy Analytics

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Strategy Analytics Q4 2011 smartphone platform market share numbers indicate that Nokia is already the largest seller of Windows Phones in the world.

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Gallery Photo: White Lumia 800 hands-on photos
Gallery Photo: White Lumia 800 hands-on photos

A new report out of Strategy Analytics today claims that Nokia took the title of world's largest Windows Phone vendor in the last full quarter from HTC, a remarkable feat — if accurate, that is — considering that it wasn't even in the Windows Phone business in the quarter prior. The market intelligence firm reports platform market share numbers throughout the year, and it says that Windows Phone shipped a total of 2.7 million units in Q4, of which some 33.1 percent were Nokia devices — nearly 900,000 units. Nokia launched both the Lumia 800 and 710 in certain markets during the quarter, but the deployments were limited: the 710 hadn't hit either Europe or the US at that point, and the 800 — arguably the more important of the two — hadn't come to North America.

Strategy Analytics doesn't break down non-Nokia OEMs in the press release — it just says that "others" captured 66.9 percent of the market — but it does note that Nokia's gains come largely at HTC's expense, which had been pushing Windows Phone the hardest through 2011 and the launch of Mango earlier in the year. Realistically, though, it's still very much anyone's game: 2.7 million units in a quarter is a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of millions of Android and iOS handsets sold globally, so there's plenty of time and space for HTC (and Samsung and LG, if they're still interested in playing along) to catch up.