Nokia Share Of Smartphone Market Dives

[Ben]

TR are a little sensationalist, and I've seen various numbers floating around the web that aren't quite as bad, but the outcome is this: Nokia is still growing units of smartphones shipped, but not fast enough to stop its market share sliding.


Nokia’s problems in the smartphone market have been well documented, here and elsewhere, and today’s announcement by CEO Stephen Elop confirms that they are losing ground to other manufacturers - and quickly.

Stephen Elop was installed as CEO of Nokia last September. He was the first non-Finnish chief to be appointed and obviously the former-Microsoft executive was seen by the company as a way to reverse its fortunes in the smartphone market. However the reaction to its flagship smartphone the N8 was mixed to say the least and Nokia failed to reveal sales figures today which can’t be a good sign.

Overall sales of smartphones by Nokia rose from 20.8 million in Q4 2009 to 28.3 million in Q4 2010 which was also an increase from 26.5 million in the previous quarter. While this all seems hunky dory, when you look at the percentage of the smartphone market Nokia possesses, the figures become a lot more worrying for the Finnish company. At the end of 2009, Nokia had 40 percent of the smartphone market but by the end of last year that had dropped to 31 percent. It is this decline that Elop has been brought in to halt and he made reference to this at the results call: “Nokia faces some significant challenges in our competitiveness and our execution. In short, the industry changed, and now it's time for Nokia to change faster."

In what could be a more significant indicator of where things may be going, Elop also said Nokia must “build or join a competitive ecosystem," which could, and no doubt will be, interpreted as an admittance that Nokia may have to look to OSes such as Android and Windows Phone 7 if it wants to regain lost ground in the market. However Nokia has made no mention of it getting rid of its Symbian OS and will point to its imminent (?) release of Meego as a possible way forward.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-phones/news/2011/01/27/Nokia-Share-Of-Smartphone-Market-Dives/p1

[Ben]

There'll be a lot of renewed speculation about Nokia adding other OSs to its range after Elop's comments.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/27/nokia_strategy_hint/

[Hands0n]

The tough thing for Nokia to do is to either convince the buying world that Symbian^3 really is all that it is cracked up to be, and make it so. Or to find that other ecosystem to join and actually make a decent buck out of doing so.

I do not agree that joining Android would not be profitable. The differentiation would be in the hardware, not the OS itself. And Nokia have a history of making very good hardware, just let down by very dodgy OS - the N8 appears to have failed to live up to the hype, its predecessors since the N95 suffered the same fate.

I'm not convinced that Nokia would do any better licensing Windows Phone 7.

So that really only leaves Meego as a viable alternative. Can Nokia pull it all together and take on the world with yet another new mobile phone OS? Possibly, if they drew a line under Symbian.

[Ben]

The problem I see with Meego is that it has taken so damn long to get it going! Still we wait. It's a massive National Lottery hand pointing to just how far behind the curve Nokia have fallen.

I do think the best, strongest Nokia has its own OS, just like Apple has iOS. Symbian used to rule the waves, for better or for worse, but it just can't compete with the latest and the greatest concepts. Either we see Meego soon, or Nokia does need to seriously consider relinquishing OS control and going with someone else's platform.

Even then, will they be able to produce relevant hardware? Looking at the form factors they've produced recently I'm not 100% sure - HTC and Samsung have done a remarkable job at producing touch screen handsets.

[The Mullet of G]

Sales are up almost 10 million units compared with the same quarter last year. You guys must be nervous wrecks at halloween as you panic way too easily. :)

[Ben]

What use is that if the market is growing dramatically faster? If things keep going like this Nokia will be a bit player, albeit of a significant bit, amongst smartphone giants.

[Hands0n]

Sales are up almost 10 million units compared with the same quarter last year. You guys must be nervous wrecks at halloween as you panic way too easily. :)

What panic? I'm not aware of any particular curfew on discussing Nokia with anything but glowing praise.

Even Nokia know that they're in trouble. They are smart enough to know that they need to do something different, that [persevering with] the old tired formula and OS will do nothing but harm them in the long term. Even the 10 million figure you throw out needs to be looked at in relative terms. Nokia's market share has slipped. They have got to stop the rot sooner rather than later - so perhaps the panic is at Nokia but it is certainly not with its observers.