Microsoft has released stats on Windows Phone, and it looks like the plan to go fully low-end has worked for the most part, despite developer and manufacturer woes.

The best selling device is still the Nokia Lumia 520, launched in September 2013. Alongside the Nokia Lumia 521, it accounts for 60 percent of Windows Phone usage in 2014.

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In total, 71 percent of Windows Phone users are running low-memory devices, these including Windows 7 phones with 256MB memory or Windows 8 phones with 512MB memory or lower.

The top five best selling smartphones running Windows Phone are all low-memory devices, and eight of the top 10 are low-memory.

Microsoft has been pushing for low-end adoption, not releasing a high-end flagship this year. HTC has broken the rule with the One M8 for Windows, but the phone has not seen huge success in its opening months.

In the report published by Microsoft, the software giant suggests optimizing apps to low-memory devices to developers, claiming it could double the user-base if it runs well on all device types.

Microsoft has been optimizing Windows Phone for the past three years to make sure it can run on almost any device, competing with BlackBerry and Android for the low-end market.

The low-end market can be valuable for adoption in places like India, but for app developers it means less potential revenue from app sales, leading to more freemium products.

Microsoft is already in a slump when it comes to apps, with a lot of the new services unavailable and some of the old services not updated to the latest Windows Phone update.

Having this new information on the demographic might distance developers even further from the platform, especially if the best selling smartphone was released a year and three months ago.

TagsWindows Phone, Nokia Lumia 520