MNB RG: Estimating Jolla sales so far

Quick heads up again as Janne estimates the sales for Jolla so far.

Cheers Janne!

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Estimating Jolla sales so far

Some bickering on MNB resulted in the infamous Random Random asking this question: “And how many have they [Jolla] actually sold?” I first thought of answering in the thread, but my ponderings grew too large for that. So, I’m trying to piece together how many Jollas have they actually sold so far.

We know they sold around 450 units in the November 27th sale event. It is possible not exactly all buyers arrived (at least one online report of someone getting in to a cancellation place by queueing on the outside), but it is pretty safe to say they sold at least very nearly 450 units for sure on that day.

The online pre-orders were tracked in various places, with some calculating Jolla may have been fulfilling around 400 orders each day for a period of around 2-3 weeks before Christmas, which would amount to 6000 units if that were the average five days a week for 3 weeks. Jolla themselves have said all the pre-orders were shipped by end of December – not really exactly true, but most probably were – and most before Christmas, so this is roughly all the pre-orders they’ve sold to the first around 30 countries (EU plus Norway/Switzerland).

Pre-order orders tracked e.g. on Maemo.org got nearly 450 orders listed, with order numbers from roughly around 1 – 5000 and 1 – 6000 in two ranges. These order numbers were given for currently active pre-orders only I believe, so they wouldn’t include non-sale countries at this time. Some of these may have been delivered through DNA shops in Finland, so not all would be included in the above fulfillment estimate (who knows if that estimate is accurate anyway), nevertheless, not including some outliers, there were maybe 5000, +/- a thousand more in two ranges… totaling some 10000 pre-orders sold in November/December? Some of these shipped from Jolla, others were store-pick-ups from DNA.

We also know DNA stores in Finland got a few non-reserved Jollas. DNA say they have 74 such stores, so if we assume all stores got an average of 10 extra phones, that might add perhaps 740 phones to the mix. If the extras were 100 phones per store, it would be 7400 phones – not that I think it would be that high, just to put us into a some kind of ballpark. Outside of pre-orders, DNA probably has sold some hundreds or thousands of “extra” Jolla phones.

Anyway, we can be quite sure Jolla has at least around 1000 phones, because the first sale event and Maemo.org tracking alone give roughly 900 data points. Judging my the order numbers, which seem to be fairly accurate, anouther 9000 – 10000 order fulfilled can be estimated. Then maybe some thousand extra sales in DNA stores and more recently Jolla has opened up webstore orders for new orders, probably a few hundred or thousand more there.

So, how many Jollas has Jolla sold? Just by piecing the above together, we come to a 10000+ number. It would seem Jolla was able to fulfill EU/EEC pre-orders with that number and still have devices left to be sold after those by DNA and by their own webstore. And while Jollas have come with both 11/2013 and 12/2013 manufacturing dates, it is possible they have a fixed initial batch they are making. How big is that batch?

In the end, the best number comes from Jolla themselves, at the press event of November 27th, they would sell 20000 phones in 2013. I’m not actually sure they got all those sold, it is possible those extra phones to DNA (which seems to have been able to replenish their stock too in December judging by DNA webstore statuses) and Jolla’s own webstore are included in that 20000 number.

So, I’m thinking so far Jolla has sold (as in shipped/sold to end-customer) somewhere in the range of 10000-20000 phones, possible a little more but probably not much more.

Anecdote: We know DNA listed Jolla as their 5th sold phone in December – including DNA Store sales and DNA Store pre-order pick-ups. If anyone can estimate how many phones DNA usually sells of their top models in December, that might give us more clues as to how many DNA has sold. If we assume Jolla directly shipped some 6000 phones in December, DNA may have sold another 6000+ Jollas in their stores, maybe even quite a bit more. Would that gather fifth place in their monthly tracking, I don’t know.

Finally, what will happen in 2014?

Another number from the Jolla press event of November 27th: In 2014, Jolla targets 1 million Sailfish phones a year. That does not mean just Jolla, but other manufacturer devices too. Depending on who you believe, Nokia N9 sold around 600k – 2M+ phones during its year or two, so that puts some frame of reference there. 2014 Jolla sales will probably be in some hundreds of thousands of units, if all goes to plan.

Category: Nokia