In January, Microsoft boasted of shipping 1.5 million Windows Phones to carriers. But according to estimates by a Russian analyst, only 674,000 of those phones were actually bought by end-users.
Eldar Murtazin, the editor of Russian tech site Mobile Review, made the estimate based on data from operators and retailers. (Here's the report in Russian, and translated into English.)
Murtazin has some credibility: he was the first to report that Nokia would choose Microsoft's Windows Phone (not Android) to replace its aging Symbian system. He was also one of the first to review Nokia's Symbian S3 system, based on a pre-release version of the Nokia N8 he got; Nokia later sued him to try and recover the phone.
Murtazin also tweeted yesterday that he has heard from sources that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is a short-termer, and will retire at the end of 2012 once the Windows Phone transition is compete.
