[Ben]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/18/nokia_q3_2007/


Nokia's swallowed an estimated 39 per cent of the global mobile phone market in its third quarter, sending profits rocketing 85 per cent.

Net income hit £1.09bn, compared to £590.3m for the same period a year ago. A gold star goes to Nokia's Enterprise Solutions division, which boosted its revenues 105 per cent.

Overall, sales were up 28 per cent to £9.01bn.
Wow. Nokia continues to go from strength to strength. I love my Nokia's, even when I hate them, but I don't think I would have predicted such massive financial gains and market share at the behemoth given the fierce competition.

[Hands0n]

I think that a lot of Nokia's success lies in the simple fact that they seem to have a handset for all occasions and people. I mean, in this marvelous 3G/HSDPA/HSUPA age Nokia still produce the likes of the 1100 to the N95 8GB and beyond. And across that entire range the operation of the handset is mostly consistent and predicatable. They have kept their HCI consistent through time - you could be brought out of deep freeze from the early 1980s and be quite able to operate any of their range today.

The brand loyalty to Nokia is intense, some will have nothing else. Hardly surprising then that Nokia are scoring such a huge global hit. And it is only going to get better for them in the International markets as some of their product aimed at our saturated market is distributed abroad.

Nokia's biggest challenge is going to be to keep the saturated markets interested and make an effective response to the likes of the Apple iPhone. Like it or not, the iPhone is going to figure in discussions for quite a long time. Worse for the incumbent manufacturers is that this is Apple's first go at a phone. Think on about Gen2, 3 and even 4 iPhones and there must be many a shiver going around the rival's boardrooms.

Nokia will, I believe, be able to make a sensible counter response - particularly as they are very well experienced in the current 3G HDSPA/HSUPA technologies (well, they do make the network's transmission kit also). Apple will not, outside of the USA, get such an easy ride as back home.

[Ben]

Their handset range is indeed staggering, and has been for as long as I can remember. They've also always catered so well for business, manufacturing sensible phones that work, and work, and work, before all-out shouting about this quiet fact with the launch of the E-Series. I'm not actually bowled over by much of the E-Series, with the exception of the E65 which, I can only imagine, has universal appeal to any executive.

But then that's always the way it is - there's always one big handset, with an army of variations to accurately cater for individual markets and market segments.

Yes, going forward Nokia have a massive challenge if they're to remain UI king of the mobile world. They're aided by the oh so limited availability of the iPhone, which should buy them enough time to evolve their own touch OS. But quite how they react to the overwhelming potential of OS X on a mobile phone is really going to be the highlight of the next 12 months. Is the future really in Symbian and S60?