In an interview with Bloomberg, Microsoft Senior Project Manager Greg Sullivan said that more than two million devices have now sold into the channel. The company remains silent on the number actually in users' hands.
In another interview, with CNET, the news was more encouraging. Those people who have bought Windows Phone 7 handsets are apparently happy with them: 93 percent of customers are satisfied or very satisfied with the platform, and 90 percent would recommend it to others. This satisfaction is certainly consistent with our experience. Awareness of the brand has also risen, up 22 percent to 66 percent, showing that the company's expensive advertising campaign is starting to make people notice the platform.
A month ago the number sold into the channel was around 1.5 million. Even if the actual figure is around 2.2 or 2.3 million—a bit over "more than two million"—that means that growth of the new platform has flattened. If the number is just a little more than 2 million, it means that Microsoft is shipping WP7 licenses to manufacturers at a lower rate now than it was in the first two months. Either way, the number is unlikely to be encouraging for the company.
Marketplace, Microsoft's application store for the platform, continues to perform strongly, however. There are now more than 6,500 applications on the store, and 24,000 registered developers. Whether the company can retain this momentum in the face of bleak sales figures remains to be seen: developers are already increasingly concerned about the platform's growth and Microsoft's promotion of it.
