Windows Phone Market Share Since Microsoft Partnered With Nokia

Microsoft is paying $7 billion for Nokia's handset business.

The two companies have been in a partnership since 2011. The first product of their partnership, the Nokia Lumia 900, was out in November of 2011.

In this chart, you can see how Microsoft's share of the smartphone market has fared since it released that phone.

Microsoft remains stuck in a distant third with just 3.7% of the market, though it's up from 1.5% when the Lumia launched.

Microsoft reportedly acquired Nokia because it was unhappy with the partnership. CEO Steve Ballmer thought Microsoft needed to completely control the smartphone branding. He thought that Microsoft and Nokia were wasting energy with two marketing plans.

Those might be problems, but really, they seem very small. The big problem for Microsoft is that its platform is at a disadvantage because it has fewer applications than Apple's iOS or Google's Android. It doesn't offer anything that's significantly better than those other platforms to make up for the lack of apps.

Owning Nokia does nothing to change that.