One-tenth of a percentage point does not a turnaround make, but at this point Microsoft’s Windows Phone team will no doubt take anything it can get.
Microsoft’s share of U.S. smartphone subscribers was 4.0 percent for the three months ending in April, according to the latest numbers from the comScore Networks research firm. That was up 0.1 percent from the 3.9 percent market share in the three months ending in March.
No, it’s not exactly a statistically significant trend, but it is better than the steady declines the company has been experiencing in market share. The report follows the launch of the flagship Nokia Lumia 900 in the U.S. in April.
Fierce Wireless has more on the numbers, including a chart of historical comScore data. Google’s Android topped the charts with more than 50 percent market share in April, with Apple’s iPhone No. 2 at 31.4 percent, and RIM at 11.6 percent.
Microsoft’s numbers include legacy Windows Mobile users, so the trends aren’t a pure representation of the new Windows Phone OS. Microsoft was still down in April compared to the January stats, when it had 4.4 percent.
Separately today, the site All About Windows Phone reported that more than 100,000 apps have been published to the Windows Phone Marketplace, although more than 10,000 of those aren’t currently available (having been unpublished or pulled from the market) so the actual number of available apps is closer to 88,000.
