Windows Phone 7: 1.5 Million Devices Sold, But Not To Consumers
In the last six weeks, there has been a lot of speculation over just how many Windows Phone 7 handsets have been sold since the devices hit the market. Now we have a number, sort of: 1.5 million, revealed by Microsoft's …
Context & Ripple Effects
The 1.5 million figure lands after weeks of speculation about how Windows Phone 7's launch is actually selling. Analysts had framed a million units as the bar for calling the launch a success, and early post-launch reporting counted just 40K phones sold in the first days — so 1.5 million clears the headline threshold comfortably.
The catch is who bought them: Microsoft's own disclosure confirms these are handsets moved into the channel, not into consumers' hands. That distinction matters against Microsoft's stated ambition of 30 million Windows Phone 7 devices sold by the end of 2011 — a sell-in number can be manufactured; sell-through cannot.
First-order effects
- Microsoft hits its first public sales milestone six weeks after launch, but the confirmed detail that none of the 1.5 million went to consumers means carriers and retailers now hold that inventory and bear the risk if demand doesn't materialize.
Second-order effects
- Carriers sitting on unsold stock have every incentive to discount and promote aggressively through the holiday quarter, which pressures margins on every Windows Phone 7 handset before consumer pull has been proven.
Third-order effects
- The episode sharpens a split in how mobile platform traction gets judged — sell-in press releases versus actual sell-through — and pushes scrutiny toward independent signals like the app marketplace, where IDC's data shows Windows Phone 7's ramp tracking reasonably well against Android and the iPhone App Store.
The trend: Smartphone platform launches are increasingly measured on sell-through to consumers rather than channel shipments, forcing vendors to prove retail demand before their next-generation bets — including Microsoft's unconfirmed plan, reported around this time, to bring Windows to ARM processors.