2.9 mil Lumia phones in a quarter? Why is this stat presented as "doing badly"?
2.9mil smartphones is not a terribly good number if you consider how the market has grown, and how big Nokia used to be. In Q1 2011 they sold 24mil smartphones, and last quarter only about 6mil, over half of which were still Symbian. So, a pure-WP Nokia would now be only about 10-15% of what the company was in the "good old days".
Samsung sold about 10mil Galaxy Notes in a year (so, ~2.5mil/Q), and that "phablet" is quite a niche device. And Verizon alone sold more iPhones in Q3 than Nokia sold Lumias worldwide.
I understand that the 2.9mil figure is small compared to the figures for the other makers today, however, what were these figures for, say, the second or third generation of android devices? For a relatively new entrant, a market take up of 2.9mil in a quarter makes me think MS might rise in the phone space. Any economies of scale advantage that Apple might have bought itself would likely put Android makers and WinPhone makers on the same footing, margin wise. Can the market tolerate more than 2 major players? Quite easily, i think (given symbian is kn its way out). If you include a country like India where iphone calibre smartphones are not the dominant kind, it doesnt look like a lost game for MS. Besides, they have other assets to leverage off, like office sync (which i hear is good), azure, etc.
There are many open questions here, but for example I'm not putting a lot of faith for WP in places like India or China, as the license costs and hardware requirements make it targeted for the high end of smartphones (for now).
Also, the situation with young Android or iOS is not exactly comparable to the one now, as then the markets were still dominated by featurephones, and so there were lots of "new" customers to convert. Now for example in USA the market is 50% smartphone, and people already have invested into one of the ecosystems. Getting those users to switch is a lot harder.
Samsung sold about 10mil Galaxy Notes in a year (so, ~2.5mil/Q), and that "phablet" is quite a niche device. And Verizon alone sold more iPhones in Q3 than Nokia sold Lumias worldwide.
Maybe WP8 will change this, but I'm doubtful.