Nokia Dethroned As Top Phone Maker By Samsung

A reader writes "PCMag's Angela Moscaritolo writes: 'Samsung is expected to account for 29 percent of worldwide cell phone shipments, up from 21 percent in 2011, when it nabbed the No. 2 spot in the market. Meanwhile, Nokia's share this year will drop from 30 percent to 24 percent this year. Nokia had held the top spot in the mobile phone market since 1998.'" Not just highest sales of smartphones, but of all cell phones.

Re:Reduced share, courtesy of Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

When they moved from generally useful "multi-tool" phones to relatively functionless whorephone candybars, courtesy of Microsoft-owned executive Mr. "Burning Platform" Elop, market share took a dive. In addition, salespeople couldn't even figure out how to sell them.

That, and it didn't help that their "sold only in a Third World hellhole" N9 phone, which ran Meego Harmattan, has a better sales record than the Windows Phones that were "meant for the First World markets".

Nokia was in free fall with accellerating market share loss, and lost 70% of their market value (!) in the 3 years leading up to hiring Elop and betting on Windows Phone. This is why the former CEO had to go. Elop and Windows Phone certainly hasn't changed the trend to the better for Nokia yet, but to put the blame for Nokias troubles squarely on Elop/WP and disregard the catastrophic trend of previous 3 years, is either uninformed or disingenious. Would betting on Android instead have done them any better? Maybe, but to claim that is a given is also way to simplistic. HTC did, and have had a similar nosedive as Nokia (source [google.com])

Re:Nokia needs to start making Android phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop? Nokia shares are more than $4 from $1.63 in July.

Yes, making Android phones worked for HTC. LOL

I don't feel sorry for Nokia

[Viol8]

They became #1 and got complacent and lazy with only half hearted efforts to push and market anything that wasn't a feature phone and with half finished OS's running on them. They could have been Samsung if they weren't too busy counting their money when Apple brought out the iPhone and had pulled their fingers out and produced a serious competitor.

Re:I know you won't want to hear this

[Kupfernigk]

No, they exist. They believe that Maemo/Meego was the One True way, and that it would have been successful but for Elop. In my view they don't really understand that ultimately it was under-resourced and too late. The N900, for instance, had a resistive touchscreen and a micro-USB that had a tendency to break off. I recommended them to my company and got the resulting flak, and I won't forget it. The N9 sold reasonably well but I suspect that Nokia could not have supported it alongside ramping up Windows Phone, and by then Android was a bandwagon that everyone was getting on to.

Step awasy from the iPhone

[tuppe666]

"You can pretend Symbian phones are 'feature' phones, they aren't, they're full smartphones"

A smartphone these days means touchscreen , not just the ability to install apps. You've been able to do that on feature phones for at least 10 years.

You are ware that Symbian not only was full touch-screen, but they outsold iPhones 2-1 before Elop's Memo. A quick look http://smartphones.techcrunch.com/d/z/Symbian [techcrunch.com]

Re:I don't feel sorry for Nokia

[swb]

What innovators are knocking Apple off their perch?

Based on iPhone 5 sales and iPad Mini sales, Apple doesn't seem to be hurting per se.

I think they've made some mistakes recently -- Maps isn't what it should have been (but is less bad than the media hype) and I think the Lightning connector introduction was handled very poorly (3 months after iPhone 5 was released, there are very few accessories available that use it).

Philosophically, I disagree with some of the constraints placed on it (no removable storage, no bluetooth mouse support) and design goals (ie, thinner and lighter seems valued over battery capacity).

But it's hard to call Samsung an "innovator" knocking Apple off their perch -- the OS they get from Google, and their hardware isn't obviously superior to Apple's (without getting into an argument as to whether phone screen size is a technology or a design). They mainly are a big company, capable of integrating top-line technologies vs. coming up with any kind of innovation.

Re:Reduced share, courtesy of Microsoft.

[tuppe666]

Samsung and HTC are the only ones making squat in that market,

Actually in context of this article, LG and Acer have dropped windows and are now profitable. HTC looks to becoming a Windows only vendor. Sony [Larger than HTC] gains in Android...are offsetting its Windows PC losses. LG is profitable again after dropping Windows. Lenovo; Huawei [also Larger than HTC], ZTE and Lenovo have made massive gains in marketshare....Nokia is now tenth behind all these manufactures. All this in a GROWING market :)

They make massive profits...not as high a margin as Apple, but then that recently lost 25% of its market cap simply because nobody believes that could continue.