Mobile Phone 2009 Sales/Market Share Charts. Nokia looking at 13th consecutive year at number one.

Some interesting numbers to take a look at from Communities Dominate Brands. Nokia continues to dominate the leaderboards, selling the most phones, selling the most smartphones and having the most popular smartphone OS.

Nokia have been number one since 1998. Quite an achievement to still be number one 12 years later.  In 1999, Nokia were number one with 27% of the market, the next was the then ferocious motorola at 17%, Ericsson (not yet formed with Sony) came third at 11%, Panasonic were 4th and Samsung were 5th at 6%.

Nokia’s peak was at 2008, rising to over 40% global market share. Soon recession and competition started biting at those margins.

In comparison, 105 million less phones have been sold in 2009 than in 2008, with Nokia’s numbers reducing in Market share, smartphone share and OS share.

Q4 2009 showed much promise of recovery for Nokia. Q1 2010 is due out 3rd week of April, so we’ll have to wait and see if Nokia’s come back continues.

Note, these are GLOBAL figures.

If you’re used to just US figures, it might be shocking to see Nokia even in the top 5 of Phone sales and even Smartphone sales. It might be even frightening to see Symbian even being mentioned as it doesn’t exist in practically 99% of American tech blogs. But yes, Nokia and Symbian -  they’re quite popular in the rest of the world. Where RIM and Apple rule the roost state side, these 2009 results show they’re both pretty microscopic Global sales wise.

Note also that the numbers provided don’t seem to account for revenue/gross sales/net profits. Though Nokia may sell the most, they aren’t all priced the same, with the majority of sales numbers coming from lower-mid range handsets.

Market Share 2009 (2008)

Very interesting is the rise of China’s ZTE, not only pushing the healing Moto down a peg, but Sony Ericsson too, taking 4th place.

1. Nokia ………….. Finland…………432 million…..34%  (36%) 472 million extrapolated from 2008 total
2. Samsung……….South Korea…..227 million…..18%  (15%)
3. LG………………..South Korea…..118 million…..  9%  (7%)
4. ZTE………………China……………..60 million…….5%  (4%)
5. SonyEricsson….Japan/Sweden….57 million……5%  (7%)
6. Motorola…………USA………………55 million…….4%  (8%)
7. RIM……………….Canada…………..35 million……3%  (2%)
8. Huawei…………..China……………..31 million……3%  (2%)
9. Sharp…………….Japan……………..27 million……2%  (3%)
10. Apple……………..USA………………25 milllion…….2%  (1%)

All other branded phones………………..74 million…..6%  (6%)

Pirated ‘unlicensed’ phones…………..120 million…..10%  (8%)

Total sales for 2009……………………1,260 million (=1.26 Billion) (was 1.31B in 2008)

Smartphone Market Share  sold 2009 (2008)

RIM, Apple and HTC are all pretty much Smartphone focused. Whilst they seem invisible in relative global sales, they’re dominating the airwaves, tv stations, blogs, and tech sites with their high end, lustworthy devices.

1. Nokia………..Finland……..68 million…..39%  (41%)
2. RIM…………..Canada…….37 million…..20%  (16%)
3. Apple…………USA………..25 million…..15%   (7%)
4. HTC…………..Taiwan……… 9 million……5%   (5%)
5. Samsung……South Korea…7 million……4%   (2%)

Smartphone Market Share by OS

There should be a strong surge in 2010 for Android as pretty much everyone and their grandmother is building an Android phone. Windows Phone 7 looks to be stirring things up, but it might be too late to drastically change any figures for 2010. I’m not sure if iPod touch is included since it does use the same OS despite not being a phone.

Nokia’s got a couple of “new” OSs coming too with MeeGo and Symbian^4 supposedly arriving Q4. These two are both radically different to their predecessors (whereas Android and iPhone will be steady upgrades)

1. Symbian (mostly Nokia)………….80 million…..46%  (54%)
2. RIM (Blackberry)…………………..37 million…..20%  (16%)
3. Apple (iPhone)……………………..25 million…..15%   (7%)
4. Windows Mobile (mostly HTC)… 11 million……6%  (12%)
5. Google Android (mostly HTC)…….7 million……4%    (1%)

Total Sales between 2000 and 2010

There have been more phones sold than there are people on earth (though not every one of those phones are still in use.). Only three manufacturers thus far have reached the billion mark. Despite Motorola’s disappearance act for the last few years (ignoring it’s re-emergence with Droid) Motorola’s previously high presence in the industry still shows, pipping Samsung to third in terms of over all sales of the decade..

1. Nokia…………………………..2.8 Billion……34%
2. Motorola……………………….1.1 Billion…..13%
3. Samsung………………………1.0 Billion……12%
4. SonyEricsson…………………..600 million…7%
5. LG…………………………………500 million…6%

other branded………………….1.8 Billion…..22%
unlicenced……………………..   500 million…6%

TOTAL sales 2000-2009……..8.3 Billion

Go check out Communities Dominate Brands. There’s some pretty interesting commentary too highlighting the mobile trends of the decade and of 2009.

Tags: Nokia

Category: Nokia