Samsung Galaxy S-II
One of the big ironies about Nokia is that while it has struggled to beat off competition from Samsung and Apple, the company has for 14 years reigned as “world’s biggest handset maker” thanks more recently to it reach into emerging markets with cheap, feature phones.
Not any more.
Today, two research companies report that Samsung has finally unseated Nokia as the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, based on shipments in the first three months of 2012.
Samsung shipped 93.5 million handsets in the first quarter of 2012, compared to the 82.7 million units shipped by Nokia, according to Strategy Analytics.
IHS iSuppli puts the numbers at 92 million for Samsung and 83 million for Nokia.
Nokia recently released a range of high-end smartphones that run on Windows Phone, following a 14-month partnership with Microsoft, but offerings like the Lumia 800 have failed to get the traction needed to keep apace with the sales-decline of phones that use Nokia’s older, Symbian operating system.
Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics said.
“Samsung and Apple are outcompeting most of their major rivals and the smartphone market is at risk of becoming a two-horse race.”
A “two-horse race” is precisely what Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said he wanted to prevent when he announced his company’s partnership with Microsoft in February 2011.
Samsung and Apple’s combined global market share for smartphone shipments stood at 30.3% this time last year; now it’s at 54.8%, according to Strategy Analytics.
Shares of Nokia were down by 0.7% to 2.74 euros in Helsinki on Friday afternoon. They’ve fallend by 54% since the start of the year, and currently give the Finnish company a market cap of 10.3 billion euros ($13.6 billion).
Samsung meanwhile reported its highest quarterly profits since 2008. The South Korean company earned $4.5 billion in the three months to March 31, up from the $2.5 billion it made in the first quarter last year.
COMMENTARY: This is obviously very bad news for Nokia. Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston said of the new figures.
”Nokia was the world’s largest handset vendor between 1998 and 2011, for 14 years, before finally yielding top position to rival Samsung this quarter.”
According to IHS iSuppli, Nokia is also being left in the dust by Apple and Samsung when it comes to unit sales of smartphones.
Smartphone quarterly unit sales were down across the board between Q4 2011 and Q1 2012:
- Apple dropped 5%
- Samsung dropped 11.
- Nokia dropped 39%.
- RIM dropped 21%.
- LG struggled with a 19-percent drop.
Courtesy of an article dated April 27, 2012 appearing in Forbes and an article dated April 27, 2012 appearing in SlashGear
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