Nokia is no longer the top mobile phone seller in its domestic market, according to figures from IDC: Samsung has taken the top spot with 36.1 percent of market share in Finland, squeezing its rival into second place with 33.6 percent. The South Korean manufacturer shipped 211,000 devices in the country in the first quarter of this year, said the research firm, next to 196,000 from Nokia.
This marks a stark change from IDC's research a year ago, when Nokia commanded a 48 percent share to Samsung's 28 percent. In 2010, Nokia's share was 65 percent. The new statistics were first reported by Finnish site Digitoday and later provided to the Wall Street Journal.
A research director at IDC told the WSJ that while Nokia's sales are split about evenly between smartphones and "more basic" phones, around 80 percent of units moved by Samsung are smartphones. However, Nokia continues to introduce low-end devices, such as the Asha 501, that bridge the gap between smartphones and feature phones, meaning the distinction may not be quite so clear. Nokia said that Asha devices "blur the lines" as early as 2011, and now describes the Asha 501 as a smartphone outright. The company recorded record sales for its range of Lumia smartphones in Q1, but has struggled to break into important markets such as the US.
The news comes just over a year after a separate research firm reported that Samsung had overtaken Nokia in global shipments. Samsung appears to be focusing further efforts on Finland, however, with a representative confirming to Engadget that a new research facility is set to open in Nokia's hometown of Espoo on June 13th.
Comments
That’s gotta hurt
By Jessypheng on 05.29.13 12:58am
They’ll be back. EOS etc. are just around the bend + the newly released super affordable 520 and other lumias are going to change those figures in Nokia’s favor by next financial call.
By Adriel Mingo on 05.29.13 1:35am
By Ching Shih on 05.29.13 2:07am
Now, that set the tone right.
By drkrpr on 05.29.13 2:34am
Just change “the newly released super affordable 520” to “the newly developed super-fast Me 262” :-)
By Captain Megaton on 05.29.13 3:01am
Godwin in 3 posts.
By toomuchcoffee on 05.29.13 4:00pm
They will not be back before they start throwing up some Android phones. Going exclusively with WP was the most retarded thing that the Nokia board (perhaps any board in the history of corporations) ever did..
By shinogami on 05.29.13 3:17am
I’d say burning your profitable ecosystem before you have a new one in place was probably the dumbest thing any CEO ever did. To go so fast from biggest manufacturer to an “also ran”, barely competing with a struggling HTC, outside of the top-5, has to be the biggest drop “evar”.
By Patrickl69 on 05.29.13 3:22am
Symbian was going down very fast at that time. You should know that before you make up your opinion.
By vish2801 on 05.29.13 3:41am
Here is my honest question. These Asha devices are now smart phones supposedly. I’m under the impression that they run a version of symbian. If these things are true, why didn’t Nokia just keep working on improving symbian past the belle updates? They could have easily been the Asha line. I have a hard time seeing the difference between asha phones and my C6-01 running belle. Any explanation/reasoning would be welcome, I really feel like I’m missing something here.
By iver23 on 05.29.13 4:52am
Asha line utilisedsAsha Touch OS which is modified version of Series40 (S40) OS, which is entirely different from Series60 (Symbian or S60).
By ssmitar2 on 05.29.13 5:02am
true
By Matenje1 on 05.29.13 5:18am
Not true.
Asha phones has the NOS operating system what Nokia designed for its basic phones long time ago and used S30 and S40 software platforms on it.
S60 is a software platform for Symbian operating system and Symbian was used to run multiple other software platforms like S50, S70, S80 and S90. The S meant long time ago “Series” so it was “Series 60” or “Series 90” but Nokia later changed it just “Sx0”.
Then in final years fighting against Android and iOS in simplicity and efficiency Nokia needed to focus its development to only one software platform on smartphones and chose to use Symbian operating system primarily and S60 from all platforms as it was most developed and shipped. And they same time then throwed the software platfom S60 name away and rebranded the whole software compilation as “Symbian” so Symbian didn’t anymore mean operating system but whole software system.
Nokia has always kept S40 only runnin on NOS operating system.
You can use those software platforms to develop your own GUI with own design, own style and theme. And Nokia has done that.
Now Nokia has been even more worried about iOS and Android overpower and it needs to get its smartphone department statics to look good. Why it presented Asha lineup what it registers as smartphone, while it really is just a basic phone even on todays standards.
Nokia try to sell Asha phones for developing countries as smartphones where they really need real smartphones or then very basic phones with 1-3 SIM card slots and battery what can hold one month before charging or give 10-15 hours talk times.
By Fri13 on 05.29.13 8:45am
I’m not sure its a competition of what was to blame, they did plenty of stupid maneuvers and haven’t done one thing smart in years.
By johndrinkwater on 05.29.13 4:11am
Competition forced them to do plenty of stupid maneuvers.
Competition is never good, teamwork and co-operation is much much better for everyone.
By Fri13 on 05.29.13 8:45am
It wasn’t. It was not fully objective, but was a reasonable one.
By jalexoid on 05.29.13 7:46am
Yeaaaaah. That would seem like a great statement to make if you didn’t have OEMs like HTC, Motorola and LG in this world. How are they doing when focusing exclusively on android. Gotta love android fans, will seemingly cherry-pick every stat and figure they can get ahold of.
By simbadogg on 05.29.13 3:32pm
I’m a Nokia fan.
There are always going to be “also ran” companies. LG and HTC were never, NEVER as strong as Nokia. Motorola used to be colossal in phones, but they were bested by competitors. Motorola was massive in the 1980s, early 1990s. In many western nations, phones were either Motorola or Nokia. Motorola had an iPhone level hit with the V3 RAZR. I loved mine, I got one secondhand for about 300 USD when they cost 800 new. It turned heads everywhere, and I loved the hardware of the thing. Best featurephone design ever, I reckon.
The RAZR was milked dry, and competitors left the non existent “follow ups” for dead. Oh great “Moto”, a fatter RAZR, one made from plastic…now it’s even bigger….oh, and bigger still and in LAVENDER……nothing like the product people loved! Motorola killed itself, at the same time competition moved forwards aggressively.
Nokia was Motorola at its prime strong too. A strong Nokia would have smashed ascendant Samsung back the frig down. Galaxy S in 2010? Here, have an N8/N9 running Android, see you in hell! Nokia would be running the show right now while Samsung nipped at their heels. Nokia strength, Nokia design, Nokia sales, Nokia marketshare….they were stronger than Samsung. Nokia flagships to this day are better made than Samsungs, as squandered as the beautiful N9 aesthetic was.
Nokia are following in Motorolas footsteps, they are doing this to themselves. They havnt had a serious competitor to the iPhone and Samsung devices since the N95, a product which would outsell and outperform any pretenders to the throne.
Could Nokia rise again to have a brief “Droid” moment? Could they once again be Nokia with a capital N? We just have to keep watching it all unfurl.
By jaywontdart on 05.29.13 6:19pm
I think this is the 2nd time in less than 24 hours that you have posted ~250+ word replies to a short statement that I made, which pretty much answered/rebutted/addressed nothing that my post was actually about.
Here it is, again, super simple:
….the point of my post apparently went so far over your head, I’m not even sure if it was visible to you
By simbadogg on 05.29.13 8:18pm
You excused their current ~3% marketshare by saying “at least they are beating (insert amateur hour companies)!”
I simply have higher standards. I want to see Nokia step up to Apple and Samsung.
And win.
By jaywontdart on 05.29.13 8:33pm
Why not pick the latest quarter bro? when Nokia was beaten by any of LG, Sony, HTC, Huawei, Yulong, ZTE?
By The Pilgrim on 05.31.13 11:57am
no they wont not at the rate the market is buying their phones
By Matenje1 on 05.29.13 5:27am
It will carry on hurting Nokia until Elop embraces Android. Fact of the matter is that Nokia is making exceptional hardware, it’s the software that is limiting them. Even if Nokia launch a 41 MP phone which is only 2 mm thick it still wont get Nokia out of the doldrums because Windows Phone as an OS is just not as competitive as Android. Unless Microsoft miraculous get their Sh!t together in June which I doubt they will.
Nokia should carry on doing what they are doing on Windows but also try at least a couple Android models too.
By Shisanyama on 05.29.13 1:53am
I don’t see how switching to android will help their situation since Samsung is top dog in android. Htc proves primo hardware doesn’t translate to sales
By Jessypheng on 05.29.13 2:53am
Yet HTC is selling more devices than Nokia is.
By Patrickl69 on 05.29.13 3:23am