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Telcel was giving the phone for free with an 18-mo contract in Mexico.

The options were really poor, an iPhone 3GS, an obsolete Samsung android phone, or a Lumia.

I don't think this was the reason of the overall growth, but I still suspect it helped.

Maybe with the lower price point Lumia phones? I don't know. Maybe they are pushing it really hard like here (Germany). Buy Lumia here ad, buy Lumia there blabla marketing.

Yeah, at least in the south of Brazil, you can't enter a city without seeing a huge ad saying something like "welcome to cityname, here you can buy windows phones in the storename" That and a lot of pictures of windows phone interface everywhere

Stronger marketing, better prices, better UX and I think that a lot of people is still buying their first smartphone, so lack of apps isn't really an issue since they have never had apps in the first place.

Lack of awareness. No one knows what's a phone OS here.

This is just anecdotal evidence from my personal experience, I could be wrong.