Microsoft is aggressively investing in Windows Phone, and statistics reveal that Redmond’s efforts are more or less paying off, but its platform continues to be far behind rivals iOS and Android.

Market share data provided by Kantar Wordpanel ComTech for the month of September 2014 indicates that Windows Phone adoption has increased in some specific markets, but it still loses ground in others, which is an indication that, overall, Microsoft still has a long way to go to compete with the other smartphone platforms available to buyers.

As far as Europe is concerned, Windows Phone has a market share of 9.2 percent or very similar in large countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain.

While this does sound pretty good for Microsoft in general, and Windows Phone in particular, this figure represents a 0.3 percent drop as compared to the same period of last year, despite all improvements made by the company.

Terrible sales in China

China is one of the countries where Microsoft is really struggling to make its products available, as the local authorities have recently decided to ban Windows 8 and remove all Windows versions from government computers gradually over the next six years.

According to Kantar data, Microsoft’s Windows Phone accounts for only 0.4 percent of the Chinese smartphone market, well behind Android, which continues to be the leader with 83.4 percent. iOS is also far away from the top position with just 15.2 percent of the market.

Things are at least as worse in Japan, where Windows Phone is powering only 0.9 percent of the smartphones in the country in September. Android was again number one with 64.5 percent, followed by iOS with 31.3 percent.

Still slow sales in the United States

There’s no doubt that increasing sales in the United States is quite a big challenge for Microsoft, as Windows Phone remains the third top smartphone platform in the home market.

Android owns 61.8 percent of the domestic market, while iOS is the runner-up with 32.6 percent. Windows Phone is again far behind with only 4.3 percent.

Microsoft, however, hopes that things will significantly improve in the coming months as part of the Windows 10 rollout, but also thanks to a new strategy that could rebrand Windows Phone to Windows.

Word has it that the company is planning to rename the operating system to just Windows in order to capitalize on the popularity of the desktop operating system and thus attract more buyers for its mobile smartphone and accelerate its growth.