Windows Phone sales about to overtake Symbian this month in UK? Lumia the Lionshare of WP
Electric Pig (via WPCentral) reports on figures by Kantar Worldpanel Comtech indicating apparently that Windows Phone might overtake Symbian sales this month.
Note though, I’m not a big fan of these survey things. I’m not actually sure there are sales data applied here though I might be wrong.
That’s not so much WP drastically growing, though there is growth, but rather Symbian crashing from 15.5% to 2.8%. But this downward trend in the UK was evident quite far back already (on top of Nokia switching focus last February). Even as far back as mid 2010, all the phone shops were pretty much all Android already, even freaking Tesco was advertising to their customers about getting an Android 
. Nokia’s own dominance in the UK was already wavering late 2009/2010 to Samsung, and then Nokia dares to come out to the UK with their 2011 portfolio expecting anything more?
There is a noted change however in Windows Phone sales, with Nokia’s entry perhaps assisting in the growth from 0.4% to now 2.2. ElectricPig speculates Nokia could push Windows Phone to 4th most popular. Actual numbers for each WP manufacturer is unknown but EP says Nokia’s Lumia 800 took the lionshare of sales (correlating with information we previously had about Nokia taking nearly half of second generation Windows Phone devices sales).
All is relative and taking over something in decline isn’t exactly a cause for celebration, but on the upside Nokia is at least on a platform that is growing and UK customers are seeing Nokia in a new light. When going to the cinema, I especially love it when the Lumia advert appears; I love hearing comments about “Oh, that’s the new Nokia Lumia!” or “It’s the new Windows Phone” chatter from behind, to which of course I conveniently just check out my homescreen so they can glance at the real thing.
Source: Electric Pig via WPCentral
Cheers Hoi for the tip!
Category: Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone
About the Author (Author Profile)
Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Would be pretty embarrasing if they didn’t, I just hope that WP8 comes out soon, it keeps falling more and more behind other platforms.
(and I’m a pretty big WP fanboy, but the Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5 aren’t going to wait until WP8 releases, hurry the hell up MS).
(talking about specs if that wasn’t obvious)
It’ll be interesting if Nokia releases their next-gen Lumias without releasing any specs sheets and gave them out to reviewers for a test run. Once the experience is over and reviews released, they’ll release the technicalities. I think it’s better (and more interesting) this way. Just think about it. High-quality 1080p recording, seamless multitasking, incredible battery life, pleasurable display, etc… And then Nokia reveals that it’s just using the average (or even low-end) specs. That’ll turn heads for sure.
I actually like that they’re taking their time. Means if you want to use your phone for 3-4 years, it’ll still be supported.
A major reason that I didn’t want to get an Android was because of the fast rate that new phones were coming out, and there just wasn’t much in the way of support. I’m somewhat hoping that with ICS things will mellow out (or maybe not, it’s a factor that drives others away from Android).
Increasing specs for the sake of increasing specs is a bad idea. I much rather what Microsoft is doing lately which is getting better performance on lower specs. The System requirements for Vista are greater than for 7 and 7′s requirements are greater than those of 8, so quite literally depending on the system you have, you could upgrade from XP to 8 even if 7 weren’t viable (desktop only, with an appropriate GPU).
That’s a fantastic direction to be taking. Microsoft is moving Windows 8 to be able to run on 512MB RAM with a single core processor, and they’re improving the efficiency so it runs faster with those specs than Windows 7 did with 1GB RAM and a dual core processor.
I totally get your point and that is true that MS is going about things the right way. The thing about Android is not about the rate at what they released new software at but that they where still developing aspects of the OS that where missing. If you notice now that rate of new versions has virtually died off now because most fundamental aspects have now been built into the OS(ICS being the pinicle off that).
I also hope MS shifts WP8 out quickly so that Nokia can move on and WP moves to virtually the same level as other OS’s. It needs to be released for its own sake and for Nokias too.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if things slow down with ICS, but they are already talking about Jelly Bean… so who knows what might happen? Also, the slow down was a bit artificial as they were working on Honeycomb – which gave all the phones a chance to catch up and be on Gingerbread.
If JB is just an incremental improvement on ICS, refining features and adding a few new ones in, while improving performance, particularly on lower end hardware, then yeah, MS and Nokia have a lot to worry about, but if JB is to ICS what ICS was to HC and GB, then MS still has a clear advantage in that area.
“Huge success” for WP…
But here is the reason – http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/13973_A_snapshot_of_the_UK_High_Stre.php
Congrats mr. Elop!
Look at it around August 2010. There’s not much change either. Everything was already Android in the UK for a long while.
Elop has nothing to do with this, people just don’t want Symbian in Western nations anymore.
They could put 30 Symbian devices next to a Galaxy and iPhone on that rack, and none of them would sell.
symbian was growing but slower than others, and it sold as many as iOS and android combined in 2010, what western nations rack you are kidding about?
“Symbian was growing”
you’re shitting me right, this is Symbian in the West:
crashing in Europe: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-eu-yearly-2009-2011
symbian in the US, non existent: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-US-yearly-2009-2011
Face some facts, symbian was DEAD in the West LONG before Elop joined Nokia.
I’m sorry I was talking about symbian in general
Yeah… low end handsets. No sales of note other than a brief burst of N8s in Western Europe to note. The C6-01 flopped totally as indeed did the E7.
Dead as a dodo.
If you count number of sold devices, symbian was growing. Today nokia is not advertising symbian devices at all. Nobody knows about new symbian phones. Symbian was on 100 mln phones in 2010, after elop’s disaster in 02/2011 nokia weren’t able to keep sales. In 2011 nokia had much better phones (E7, N8) than in 2010. N8 was more popular in Q4 2010 than Nokia 800 and 710 in Q2011. Do you understand what that’s mean? N9 is more popular than 800 and 710.
Please can you prove that the N9 is more popular than the 800 because the stats from the analysts don’t support this.
Symbian was dead. Flooding the market with low cost 5800 variants doesn’t work especially when all the carriers cut back on orders the next quarter because they didn’t sell.
It depends on analysts, though. If you learned this from “famous” Eldar Murtazin, then yes, N9 is no more popular than 800, because he states that there is only 75000 N9 was produced by Nokia, which sounds ridiculous to me, especially considering my personal stats related to app sales/download numbers, which have already exceeded this amount
Other analysts, for example, here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-22/nokia-lumia-sales-seen-topping-1-million-in-respite-for-stock.html
estimates N9 sales a much more positive, between 1.2M and 2.5M according to different sources (1.4M at this Bloomberg article). These numbers seems to be better than Lumia sales at that moment.
I’m talking about Canalys and Gartner, two of the biggest analyst houses in the world.
Your figures are pre-result and data collation. Theirs are post announcement.
Oh, Canalys? Gartner? Not again, another flamewar.
You need to remember, popular is not the same with sales, but if you check gsmarena.com, N9 is more popular than Lumias.
You said Symbian WAS dead. Not yet, Symbian vs Lumia is still 17:1 in Q4 2011. If 17 is dead, then 1 is worse than dead.
Don’t be over-optimistic, WP sales in 2012 depends on how good Nokia & MS develop Lumias. We (Symbian & MeeGo fans) will not help, we will go Android if Nokia kills our OS.
Remember, there are 2 types of Nokia buyers :
1. Nokia handset lovers, whatever the OS
2. Symbian / Maemo / MeeGo / Linux lovers, whatever the hardware
“We (Symbian & MeeGo fans) will not help, we will go Android if Nokia kills our OS.”
Sure we will. I have already bought two Lumias, and will buy at least one more this year.
“Oh, Canalys? Gartner? Not again, another flamewar.”
I’ve no intention of starting a flamewar. My point is that Canalys and Gartner, along with Strategy Analytics and IDC, are the main analyst houses who do POST result calculations and, although not perfect, are recognised as being the barometer of accuracy in this matter.
The analyst estimates referred to in Oleg’s post are PRE result analysis which is largely speculation based on what the numbers might be rather than what they are.
@ZiPA,
Hahaha, I remember you, ZiPA, you aren’t Symbian & MeeGo fans. You often say bad things about Symbian & MeeGo.
Remember, not all Nokia phone buyers are Symbian / MeeGo fans. They could be Nokia handset lovers, whatever the OS, or may be WP fans.
“Hahaha, I remember you, ZiPA, you aren’t Symbian & MeeGo fans.”
I’ve owned and used pretty much every high-end Symbian phone, plus all Maemo/Meego devices. I don’t really know how I could be any more enthusiastic about it?
“You often say bad things about Symbian & MeeGo.”
Of course. There are lots of bad things to say about them.
I also say a lot of bad things about my favorite sports teams, other mobile OSs and pretty much everything else, whenever there is something bad to say about them.
So your links please? Post announcement of what? Since Nokia didn’t released any official info about N9 sales in their reports, these “post announcements”, as well as “pre-results” are plain speculations anyway.
Sure.
http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/smart-phones-overtake-client-pcs-2011
Paragraph 7 refers.
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1924314
Table 3 refers. You’ll note ‘Other’ is 1.17 million. MeeGo is included in this figure giving credence to Canlys’ estimate of 600K. We know that Nokia took the majority of Microsoft sales so their estimate of 1.2 million looks pretty solid too.
@Mark
I’m still unsure you are right or wrong, but even you are right, 600.000 is still good for DOA, low marketing, not released in western Europe & overpriced phone. Besides, how many N9 is produced? 600.001?
No, it SHIPPED as many as Android and iOS combined. iOS sold all of them, Android’s probably in the shipped category as well.
I’m actually neutral to anything wp, but Jay,”but on the upside Nokia is at least on a platform that is growing”
I respect you but now you’re just fooling your readers.
Every year since 2007/8 Nokia sold more but their market share kept contracting. Don’t have the precise details so there may be some discrepancies but that’s the trend. I’m sorry if you think I’m trying to ‘fool’ anyone. But please, take a look at the trend of Symbian even in Finland.
http://mynokiablog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SYMB-600×484.jpg
Downward slopes don’t usually mean growing. If you mean in sales, well then yes, everything that sells one more than the previous occasion is growing that way.
Please, if I was trying to fool anyone, I would just omit certain speculations and just post it as WP overtaking Symbian. I wouldn’t warn about these not necessarily being sales data.
Can’t take this prognosis seriously. A firm nobody has heard about claims that WP (which sold the worst in UK compared to other countries) will overtake Symbian (which practically isn’t sold there barring netstores). I wouldn’t actually see it as customers seeing WP in a new light. UK market seems quite saturated by Apple, RIM and Sammy.
P.S. Time to crack down on all the anti-Symbian comments in the thread
“Kantar Worldpanel (formerly TNS Worldpanel) is an international company leader in consumer knowledge and insights based on continuous consumer panels.”
You may not have heard of them. They are, however, the leader in their field.
Arguing from ignorance is no argument at all.
They are advertising themselves. Is that the best “proof” you could come up with?
I think you’ll find Jay was talking about the UK – this was the whole thrust of the article; you seem to have missed that completely
now it happened “samsung overtake nokia to become no.1 smartphone maker in india”.now they are advertising everywhere.nokia will find it hard to gain back market.
+1 nokia is almost crying in India right now
new symbian phones may save them a little here
as there is some love left for symbian atleast in India
Otherwise time for pack-up soon
Agree, Samsung is hurting them badly
and people are also showing interest in iPhones now cause they are becoming aware that atleast it’s reliable in the long run.
Tough-tough times ahead
people had started loosing intrest for symbian in 2009.if they had launched belle then it should have holded on.
HAHAHA… symbian is dead i told you… despite all the cry babies saying elop took their candy but he gave you mango why don’t you like fruits fanboys? this is a sign of the DOS… death of Symbian
May be you are right. But Sorry, if Elop took my candy & offered mango, I prefer go to my neighbor that offered apple or green robot toy…
that will be a better alternative… my point is symbian is a static OS. you use belle it still feels you are using nokia 6600. it sucks and i am still using e71 as my 2nd phone, even if i gat nothing install or even music… it restarts 4times a day
If your phone is bad then don’t say it’s symbian’s fault.
To be fair to symbian.
No new high devices in 2011 and the 1ghz belle devices weren’t in the uk .
And hardly anyone would have bought them anyway.
Yea, and you are Nostradamus right ?
Don’t have to be, Symbian devices haven’t been selling. Not to English speaking white people anyway.
And what about English speaking black people?
Same.
Nope, but since after an initial burst sales of the N8 tanked and the E7 flopped it’s a pretty safe bet. Symbian at the high end has been dead in Western Europe for years.
You can fool people some of the time, not all of the time.
Windows phone will not help Nokia against the Android platform. Nokia Symbian user base has move to Android and Windows phone need a serious remake to have any change to get those users base back to Nokia.
As usual, I would not be so categorical. In fact, according to some research 25% of the UK buyers of WP were ex-Symbian users. So, at least some Symbian users will of course buy WP/Nokia WP. If WP gets more features Symbian users have become used to, the chance of that happening will obviously increase.
Important to also remember that probably a vast majority of Symbian users also rarely or never use some of the features folks on fora like this might consider essential.
Do you have a link where I can read that research of the 25%?
The moment when WP get the features Symbian users have become used to we’re talking about WP8 at by that time the bulk of Symbian users have already jumped ship to Android.
In a couple of months the contracts of all of those who bought an N8 expires and for them WP8 is not available and for those customers Android is by far the most obvious choice because Symbian is after Elop’s death declaration a no go.
You know, there’s still people who buy a smartphone because it’s a Nokia. The OS doesn’t really factor into everything (though it’s quite significant). Just saying.
Quite clearly, if the OS factored in, they wouldn’t have bought a Nokia in the first place.
Also, Nokia doesn’t need to get previous Symbian buyers, they’re going for new smartphone buyers, that’s where the market growth really is.
S
In order to grow, Nokia should get previous Symbian buyers AND new smartphone buyers. In order to achive this, Nokia should not rush to extremes, like Elopocalypse. Elopocalypse was the most stupid speech I have ever heard. No one is prohibited to Nokia to release new WP devices together with new Symbian and Meego devices to give customers a choice. Samsung does something like this: it releases Android devices, WP devices, and even devices with their own Bada OS, and all they get approximately the same marketing efforts, they are all offered simultaneously in the same mobile stores. Samsung doesn’t claim something like “we will kill Bada in the favor of WP withing two years” or “we will not sell our Android devices in Western Europe in order to give WP devices a better chance”. This simply deprives the customer and developer confidence in the future, and there can be no positive results from these statements at all.
Getting previous Symbian buyers will be pretty hard, given how most Symbian users feel burned and don’t want another Nokia because of it. I know a lot of people who had N95s, and you have no idea how hard it is to get them to even consider a Lumia, let alone another Symbian phone. It’s an uphill battle to keep their existing customers, much less resistance to focus on new ones, or previous S40 owners who quite frankly are very happy with their phones.
“Getting previous Symbian buyers will be pretty hard”
True, if Nokia offers them WP. The story will be different if Nokia offers Symbian / Maemo.
I don’t say which one is better, it is preference matter. You need to accept that there are people that aren’t similar with you in preference.
Samsung is smarter than Nokia, they have wider product range, so they can catch more various customers.
If 25% of WP buyers were ex-Symbian, then that’s just sad.
That’s still piss poor numbers and will not make Nokia a serious contender in this very competitive mobile space.
Watch Samsung, Google, and Apple continue to gobble up marketshare and mindshare.
Yes, I agree with your statement but I also have to agree with Viipottaja’s answer partly so I will refine your statement that
The Nokia power-users who want to do things their way, who wants to customize the look and feel in certain way, who wants to Feel Free, will not be WindowsPhone user that easily.
To them, Android is the only replacement/answer to their satisfaction.
And then there are consumers, people who do less of the other things and do more of let’s say only surfing, only picture taking and viewing, only listening, only making calls or texting. For them OS doesn’t matter but other things such as Brand, Look and feel of device, in which OS’s look also is a part of it. Many other things included so WP is an ideal solution for them.
For easy understanding all I can say that there are huge number of people using basic phones, WP or iOS is just advance version of those basic, cheap looking phones.
Those users maybe never used ^Feature phones^ before simply because it doesn’t match with their Society Status. For them it doesn’t matter much what is working inside as long as it feels good when they look at it.
Agree, to each his own. Just as long as Nokia is offering a choice to its consumers then I’m good.
And also yes I agree that if Nokia want to take back those power-users, they really need to make WP as Free as the Maemo/MeeGo/Symbian(/Android) is, or they need to come up with an alternative.
Well, I’m a Symbian and Maemo5 power-user and I love WP on my Nokia Lumia 800.
It may be limited in some ways compared to Symbian & Maemo, but it more than makes up for it in terms of sheer usability, speed & reliability.
I’ve never suffered a crash with WP7, the email and browsing experience is first-class and it multitasks well enough for what I really need.
No – I’m not maintaining servers via SSH or other massochistic stuff, but I use my mobile intensively throughout the day and need to rely on it for communications, time-management and navigation.
I love my N8 with Belle and my N900 with the CSSU updates, but the Lumia is the device I rely on and enjoy using the most.
You didn’t answer FireDragon, he asked for “free”, but you give usability, speed, & reliability.
Maemo isn’t WP rival, they target different customers, WP is for those need smoothness, but doesn’t care about the openness, Maemo (& Symbian) is the opposite.
Free is a stupid criterion when you have to pay for the hardware.
You like to play dumb, don’t you?
I don’t mean “free of charge”, but “free to install anything”, “free to customize”, etc
Free to install anything is rather meaningless as well if nobody makes anything for you to install.
Free to customise is nice, yeah, but it’s a two-edged sword. It creates fragmentation, differing experiences, is harder to provide support for and can also introduce stability issues. I’ll take limits to customisation if it means I don’t have to worry about crashes.
“Free to install anything is rather meaningless as well if nobody makes anything for you to install”
AFAIK, there are 3rd party that provide Symbian / Meego apps, outside of Nokia store.
“I’ll take limits to customisation if it means I don’t have to worry about crashes”
It is preference matter, people have different opinion on it.
In a twisted way, even as a WP fangirl, I’d like WP to be at most have the third largest marketshare. Not the second or first. Why? Simply because MS works SO much harder when they’re in the third place.
Well, although a tie with second place wouldn’t be bad.
Agree on some part, my dream market is the biggest only has 30 %. Customers are happy
Definitely, while there are advantages to one dominant force, the disadvantages far outweigh them.
WP will absolutely overtake Symbian in UK because Symbian sales in UK is 0 %, Nokia doesn’t sell it anymore in UK, haha
nokia lost the race because nokia didn’t show up on the race. But there are many people like me loyal to nokia and hope it does well in the future.
I doubt they will ever be on the top again. But at least they are on stable platform for the future.
I think they could be, with S40 sales they still have the largest marketshare of any company, including Samsung, and if they work their Meltemi/Smarterphone/Qt for the next Billion strategy right, they’ll be on top again at least as far as numbers go.
symbian shouldnt have done any good to nokia,even as a symbian fan i has to agree with it.android is better than symbian in almost everything.what windows phone can do only time will tell.
Android is better then Symbian? Really? There are numerous little features that out-of-the-box Android lacks in comparison with out-of-the-box Symbian. My wife recently bought Samsung Galaxy S Plus and she was really disappointed. Where is support for multiple profiles? Voice control? Call recording? Ability to report calling party name by voice when headset is in use? No, no, and no. Some (not all) of these little features may be implemented via third-party apps from Market, but many of these apps are buggy, so you should spend some time to find something worthwhile.
In my opinion, Android have only two strengths in comparison with Symbian:
1. Android had better interface long before Symbian Belle was released. First S^3 phones should have Belle on them to compete.
2. Android have Market with tons of apps. Yes, many of them are pure garbage, but many are not. In order to achieve this, Nokia had to offer Qt (or even Qt Quick) much earlier.
Indeed, awful S60 phones played their role in the transition of Nokia customers from Symbian to Android too.
agreed. Android still have better notification system among other things, but the gap is no longer that big.
Also, did you know that android can’t connect via adhoc wifi connection?
I heard about it.
As far as all those little features go, out of the box isn’t really that important. If there’s a particular feature you really need, a custom ROM can offer it, whereas if there’s something Symbian doesn’t have, you’re screwed.
Android is better then Symbian? Really? There are numerous little features that out-of-the-box Android lacks in comparison with out-of-the-box Symbian. My wife recently bought Samsung Galaxy S Plus and she was really disappointed. Where is support for multiple profiles? Voice control? Call recording? Ability to report calling party name by voice when headset is in use? No, no, and no. Some (not all) of these little features may be implemented via third-party apps from Market, but many of these apps are buggy, so you should spend some time to find something worthwhile.
In my opinion, Android have only two strengths in comparison with Symbian:
1. Android had better interface long before Symbian Belle was released. First S^3 phones should have Belle on them to compete.
2. Android have Market with tons of apps. Yes, many of them are pure garbage, but many are not. In order to achieve this, Nokia had to offer Qt (or even Qt Quick) much earlier.
Indeed, awful S60 phones played their role in the transition of Nokia customers from Symbian to Android too.
Sorry, I missed while replying.
Agree.
My Belle 700 is capable to challenge Gingerbreads, I have compared it to my mother’s Galaxy Tab.
Using Opera Mini?
hmmm. My n8 not so much thou. Its more like simple stuff like scrolling or swiping its butter smooth, but sometimes it lags without a reason, or when opening heavy websites it breaks down completely. Its like give it a challenge, it breaks down.
My galaxy tab 10.1 is consistent at everything. That i mean lag as well. But it does work consistently too.
Is your experience like that?
Sorry, I don’t know about N8 with Belle, I don’t have N8. Mine is 700, it has better hardware than N8.
I never use Symbian built in browser, people said it is bad, but I never test it. I always use Opera on my Symbian & Android device.
New symbian sales will change after premiere of new phones.
Not really, although if the interface on the 808 is at least as good, if not better than the one on the N95, I might just wait for it to drop to half price to buy for a camera.
You’ll have a surge of people who are really into cameras buying it at the start, and then it’ll trickle off, because for everyone else the camera on the iPhone 4S is more than good enough.
Lionshare of next to nothing is, you guessed it, just about zilch.
subscribe.
The users have spoken: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402264,00.asp
Don’t see how that’s good news for WP?