Nokia’s S40 phones more profitable than Sony Ericsson’s $200 Android

According to Forbes, the profit Nokia makes on their $40 (forty dollars not a S40 typo) feature phones is higher than what Sony Ericsson makes on their $200 Androids. Now that’s not what you’d expect since cheaper phones are intended to make profit on the basis of bulk sales, whilst the fewer but more expensive higher end phones bring in more profit per handset. But what if you’re all trying to make the same product? The only way to really get anywhere is to be the top dog there.

Whilst a lot of the mobile phone manufacturers have ditched feature phones, the only ones really getting anywhere is Apple and Samsung (no surprise Sammy being the most iPhone like :p). In all seriousness though, amongst the Android manufacturers, Samsung is now currently the only one who looks to be getting a good deal with it. Not even Google’s Motorola, or HTC, Sony, LG etc apparently. Fortunately for HTC though, they did manage to begin to set a good name for themselves as they manage to keep up with the times and become associate with, oddly enough, decent smartphone experiences. Let’s see how well that tides them over the SammyDroid onslought.

Most of its (Nokia’s) rivals who focused on Android smartphones are now stumbling badly. Motorola, Sony, HTC, LG and others opted to neglect feature phone development in favor of chasing hot smartphone growth – and are now fully exposed to the fearsome Apple-Samsung chimera.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2012/01/27/feature-phones-now-more-profitable-than-mid-tier-smartphones/

Even as Samsung is taking a lot of the gold from the Droid camp, it too is looking for an exit strategy with the Bada-Tizen option. Nokia understands the low end. They did lose some grip when they failed to address the dual sim trend, but they’re getting back there. Nokia’s options on their feature phones are blurring the lines to what we would in technicalities associate as being a smartphone. Nokia’s next billion strategy is very important.

People are choosing Nokia’s feature phones because they offer some of the best value for the best price. Imagine they could do that all over again with those feature phones suddenly recognized as smartphones. Some already have a lot of the capabilities of smartphones, some of the touch and types have 1GHz processors unused right now. With the ability to ship 100+m feature phones per QUARTER, Nokia’s smartphone sales could rocket all the way back up again with the conversion of those feature phones into (by definition) smartphones.

Source: forbes

Cheers Mario for the tip!

Crickey it’s February. I have a hospital placement today, 7am to 7pm (hospital is like 2 hours away?).

Category: Nokia