Windows Phone 7 off to a limp start?

As Microsoft has yet to release any sales figures for its Windows Phone 7 handsets launched last month, you’ve got to wonder if the fact that no initial indication has been given is a sign that things haven’t gone so well.

You can bet your bottom MS buck that if they’d been flying off the shelves, we’d have heard about it by now.

And according to one UK retailer, it seems that WP7 hasn’t been performing. MobilesPlease has been talking to Electronista, and has said that early sales have indeed been disappointing.

Only 3% of the devices MobilesPlease has sold have been carrying Microsoft’s fresh great hope for a successful operating system. Android phones outsold MS by a factor of no less than fifteen to one.

This isn’t exactly concrete evidence, and it’s a small sample of the whole market, but nevertheless 3% really is a worryingly low figure. Also, the retailer claims to have spoken to other outlets, including Carphone Warehouse. And while no one was revealing any figures, the general consensus was that Windows Phone 7 isn’t selling well.

Gartner figures for the third quarter market share of operating systems across the world showed that year-on-year, Windows Mobile had fallen from a 7.9% share in 2009, to a level of 2.8% this year.

A massive drop caused largely by the meteoric rise of Android, and one Microsoft was hoping the launch of WP7 would reverse. It seems that hope may be dying, and dying rather swiftly…