Tomi Ahonen’s market analysis Q1

With all the numbers about market share flying around the internet there is one source that is always worth a read; Tomi Ahonen’s blog. Not a person to post half baked stuff, he has posted his analysis for the first qaurter of 2011 based on the numbers of all major research houses.

There is no point in avoiding it, Nokia is freefalling down the charts for yet another quarter, let’s see how the numbers stack up on manufacturer level.

Rank . . Brand . . . . . . . Millions sold . . . . . . Market Share Q1 . . . . (market share Q4)
1 . . . . . Nokia . . . . . . . 24.2 million . . . . . . . 24% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (29%)
2 . . . . . Apple . . . . . . . 18.4 million . . . . . . . 18% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (16%)
3 . . . . . RIM . . . . . . . . 14.5 million . . . . . . .  14% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (14%)
4 . . . . . Samsung . . . .  12.6 million . . . . . . . 13% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (11%)
5 . . . . . HTC . . . . . . . . . 9.7 million . . . . . . . 10% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  9%)
6 . . . . . SonyEricsson . . 4.9 million . . . . . . . . 5% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  5%)
7 . . . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 million . . . . . . . . 5% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  4%)
8 . . . . . Motorola . . . . . . 4.1 million . . . . . . . . 4% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  5%)
9 . . . . . ZTE . . . . . . . . .  2.2 million . . . . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  2%)
10 . . . . Sharp . . . . . . . . 1.8 million . . . . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  2%)

Nokia is still on top by a fairly decent margin, but it has dropped significantly. A 5% marketshare loss in a growing market and that for the company with the biggest in house manufacturing scale available.

Here’s another set of numbers, but on OS base. This will be some nice food for the Windows Phone bashers since Windows Phone 7 is losing out to the old and limping Windows Mobile.

Rank . . . Operating System . . Market Share Q1 . . . . . (was market share Q4)

1 . . . . . . Android . . . . . . . . . . 35%. . . . . . . . . . . . . . (30%)
2 . . . . . . Symbian . . . . . . . . . 25% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (32%)
3 . . . . . . iOS . . . . . . . . . . . .  18% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (16%)
4 . . . . . . Blackberry . . . . . . .  14% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (14%)
5 . . . . . . bada . . . . . . . . . . . .  3% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  3%)
6 . . . . . . Windows Mobile . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  2%)
7 . . . . . . Phone 7 . . . . . . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  2%)
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  1%)

The OS level numbers are where the real fight is. Symbian isn’t number one anymore, by a big margin. And these numbers even include the sales of Japanese operators that also use Symbian.

Tomi also included his projections for Nokia for this year, and they probably won’t be far off from reality. Mr. Ahonen has been in the ballpark before with these kind of predictions.

Quarter . . . Market Share . . . Unit Sales . . . .  ASP . . . . . Total Revenues of Smartphones
Q1 2011 . . 28% . . . . . . . . . .  29 M . . . . . . . . 146 Euro . . 4.3B Euro
Q2 2011 . . 21% . . . . . . . . . .  25 M . . . . . . . . 136 Euro . . 3.3B Euro
Q3 2011 . . 16% . . . . . . . . . .  21 M . . . . . . . . 126 Euro . . 2.6B Euro
Q4 2011. .  12% . . . . . . . . . .  17 M . . . . . . . . 116 Euro . . 2.0B Euro

I’ll be honest, I share his vision of the market. There are commenters both here and on other sites that often qoute the kind of marketshare Symbian has. While it is true that Symbian still commands a decent share of the market, the drop off it has seen over the past quarters has been alarming at best.

“But the february 11 announcment did that, Elop made a bad call.”
True, the man could have made that particular announcement better, but would it really have made a big difference? These numbers are all for Q1 related to Q4, the February announcement wouldn’t have had that big of an impact on the sales I presume. Besides Nokia didn’t have a real compelling portfolio to boost sales in the first place.

Nokia is bleeding marketshare bad with Symbian, period. How should that be interpreted? Is Symbian really that bad that it won’t sell? Probably not, but the competition has become so much better and Nokia hasn’t really made an effort to launch captivating devices that can boost sales.

I’m honestly curious how Nokia will look at the end of this quarter let alone the end of this year. (sadface)

Read Tomi’s article here

Category: Nokia