Nokia Still Number 1 in WorldWide Smartphone Market

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/03/nokia_continues.html;jsessionid=0I14GTOELNPYMQSNDLQCKH0CJUNN2JVN' target='_blank'>http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/03/nokia_continues.html;jsessionid=0I14GTOELNPYMQSNDLQCKH0CJUNN2JVN</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Even though Nokia maintained its overall lead with 56.4% of the worldwide market for smartphones, ABI Research is predicting that the Symbian-based share of smartphones will decline in coming years. Nokia sold 40 million Series 60- and Series 80-based smartphones in 2006, up from 28.5 million in 2005. That's a 44.5% increase in sales. New devices like the value-priced E61/62 helped lift Nokia far and away from its closest competitor, Motorola, which claimed only 8.5% of the smartphone market on sales of 6.03 million units (mostly Q's and the Chinese market MING)."</i> <br /><br />The article goes on to mention that they expect Nokia's market share to drop to 46% by 2012 due to increased presure from other operating systems. I wish they had included numbers showing how this relates to last year. Did Nokia/Symbian's share of the market decline? It would be cool to see how the market shares have changed over the last 3-4 years.

[Mark Larson]

I google "nokia smartphone sales 2005" and got this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/26/mobile_device_sales_q2_05/

The big winner was Nokia, which not only retained its market leadership but increased its share from 33.2 per cent in Q2 2004 to 54.9 per cent in Q2 2005 on the back of a 240.3 per cent increase in unit shipments.

Its unit-shipment growth was surpassed only by Motorola and Fujitsu, whose shipments were up 637 per cent and 259.5 per cent, respectively, year on year. Both experienced big market share gains, though their shares remain small: 4.6 per cent and 4.3 per cent, respectively.

Nokia's success helped Symbian extend its leadership of the mobile device OS market, as a 214.8 per cent jump in unit shipments pushed the operating system's share from 41 per cent to 62.8 per cent. That pushed Microsoft's share down, from 22.9 per cent to 15.9 per cent, despite a 42 per cent increase in unit shipments. Shipments of PalmSource-based devices dropped 13.3 per cent, knocking its share down from 22.5 per cent to 9.5 per cent. ®

[Mike Temporale]

Cool. Thanks Mark!

[Stinger]

Canalys (http://www.canalys.com/) do reports on the smartphone market. I think you need to pay to see the reports, but the headline figures can probably be found on the web.

EDIT: Here's the numbers (http://www.canalys.com/pr/2007/r2007024.htm) for Q4 2005/2006.