Nokia's Handset Market Share Slides

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/tech_handsets_gartner_dc' target='_blank'>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/tech_handsets_gartner_dc</a><br /><br /></div>"Nokia's share of the global cellphone market fell sharply in the first quarter of 2004, hurt by a lack of new models and a rocky relationship with mobile phone service providers, a survey found on Tuesday. Though the industry leader shipped more phones than in the first three months of 2003, its market share slid to 28.9 percent from 34.6 percent, market research group Gartner found, as Nokia lost ground to all of its top six rivals. Gartner also noted that the overall handset market was growing strongly, with shipments rising 34 percent to 153 million units in the first quarter as consumers in emerging markets embraced mobile communications for the first time."<br /><br />The report goes on to say that Motorola, Samsung, Siemens's , and Sony Ericsson all say a rise in there market share. This doesn't spell success for Microsoft as these numbers are hardware based and not specific to the OS. Motorola's share did rise by roughly 2% but that doesn't mean Windows Mobile-based Smartphones have a greater market share. However, it does show that Nokia can't take it's market share for granted.

[TANKERx]

I think that news like this is good news because, as you said, shows it that Nokia can't take its own success for granted (we see every day we boot up our desktops what happens when a company does).

But nobody can claim that Nokia doesn't care or innovate. In my opinion, nobody else is doing R&D like Nokia. Plenty of people do the 'R' and some do the 'D', but only Nokia seems to be bringing real, whacky, useful and innovative R&D products to the market where people can look at the devices and say "Hey, that looks like it could be a bit of a laugh" (for example, look at the keypad for the 7650, the new flipopen Messaging Phone with a QWERTY keyboard on a small candybar unit, the 9210 type Communicator, the 3650 (may have been a bum to use but it was different), built-in FM radio and all the ways it's pushed the uses of SMS).

Take that LED 'message in the sky' thing that Nokia recently announced. I remember seeing that technology on some 'Tomorrow's Technology' TV show, but it takes someone with Nokia's courage to say "let's do something with it".

Maybe people will want this and other stuff like cloth covered phones.... maybe people won't - but nobody can say that Nokia is sitting down and assuming that it has a god-given right to succeed. it knows it must work to succeed and it is - and maybe that's why Nokia, with Symbian, is a killer combination.

But what I find interesting about Nokia losing market share is that this is in the Middle Ground. Not with the cheap'n'Nasty stuff, and not with the High End powerful stuff but the bits in between where you get some of those nasty fridge sized Camera Phones that do a helluvalot and look good except for the fact that they are fridge sized.

I think that this Middle Ground will be better covered when the prices of the High End stuff comes down to make room for the posher and more powerful stuff.

Of course, I could be talking out of my bottom, but hey, this is just IMHO.

:-D