Nokia

With an IDC-estimated 10.8 million units shipped during the first quarter of this year, Samsung files as the world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor, behind Nokia, Apple and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. However, the rising popularity of Samsung’s feature phones and dumb handsets powered by their own operating system called Bada has helped the Korean phone maker capture the #2 slot in terms of all handset units shipped globally.

Samsung was outdone only by Nokia in the first quarter. According to IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, Samsung shipped 70 million handset units during the first quarter of this year versus the 108.5 million Nokia phones. With 18.7 million iPhones Apple came in fourth, behind LG Electronics which shipped 24.5 million handsets. That was last quarter…

The global handset landscape is going to alter rapidly by the June quarter’s end, predicts Japanese research firm Nomura. Their analyst was quoted as saying that “Nokia looks set to relinquish its smartphone crown (in unit terms) to Samsung and Apple”. This means, their analyst argues, that Nokia will be #3, with Samsung and Apple taking the #1 and #2 slots, respectively. Mind you, Nokia has been the world’s top handset maker since 1996…

Expand
Expanding
Close

It is pretty desperate times over at Nokia which has lost significant amounts of its market cap Since new CEO Stephen Elop announced plummeting numbers for most of its Symbian Smartphones and dumbphone handsets earlier this week.  What does one expect when the CEO publicly executes its flagship Symbian product with nothing to replace it for almost a year?

The company is now worth $25B and Microsoft is said to be trying to by the mobile phone division for somewhere around $19B.  Nokia-Siemens and its other businesses would likely remain independent.

For Microsoft and Nokia, it seems like a pretty cozy deal.  Microsoft goes from building OSes to building experiences end to end, like Apple, RIM and HP.  Just like PlaysforSure->Zune

But what about Microsoft’s other partners in Windows Phone 7?  Samsung, who has created arguably the best WP7 device in the Focus, HTC who has a broad range of Windows Phone 7 devices, Acer and other players would be left out in the cold.  They won’t use WP7 when Microsoft is making hardware through its Nokia subsidy (again, just like Zune).  You can’t compete against the company that makes your software.

They’d all probably double down on Android at that point.  In fact, just reading the tea leaves now might have executives at those companies scaling back their Windows Phone 7 R&D.

A floundering Nokia tied up with Microsoft could be the best thing to happen to Android yet.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Gartner is out with their first quarter 2011 mobile phone market survey. The results are astounding. The first quarter belonged to Google and everyone else was reduced to extras in an Android show. Both Apple and Google grew their respective share of the smartphone market, estimated at 100.8 million quarterly units – nearly double the 54.5 million units from the year-ago quarter. Smartphones grew 85 percent and cut into sales of regular handsets, accounting for almost one quarter (23.6 percent) of the 427.8 million handsets shipped during the first quarter.

Predictably, Android was the leading smartphone platform in the first quarter of 2011. And here comes your mind-boggling takeaway: More Android-powered smartphones were sold during the first quarter than the combined sales of Apple’s iPhone, RIM’s BlackBerrys, Microsoft Windows Phone smartphones and vendors belonging to the Other OS category. And that is worldwide, mind you. Go ahead, do the math yourself (the below table).

It’s fascinating that Microsoft and Symbian combined had three percentage points lower market share than Android. Also, while Apple doubled iPhone sales,  they barely gained any marketshare. This just shows that Android is gobbling up market share at a rapid pace, eating pretty much everyone’s lunch in the process…

Expand
Expanding
Close