The Truth About Nokia in Cold Hard Numbers! Spoiler: The Company is NOT Dead
By: Hillel Fuld
For a mobile platform that is supposedly on its death bed, Nokia sure is making a lot of noise. As far as the Finnish company is concerned, the days of complete mobile domination are indeed long gone, but I would not write my obituary for Nokia just yet.
Let’s first start with some cold facts:
- Nokia still sells 1 million mobile handsets every day.
- 61% of all mobile ad impressions in Africa are from Nokia devices. More here.
- As of today, Apple and Nokia settled their various patent disputes and Apple will be paying Nokia royalties for the foreseeable future on technologies found in the iPhone.
- Nokia is by far, the most dominant mobile platform in multiple emerging markets and the company has gone on record saying that more people own a Nokia device across the globe than a toothbrush. (nope, not a joke)
While the truth about Nokia’s state is that the company is in serious trouble and their market share is rapidly decreasing, it is all a matter of perspective. In terms of its market share, its 14 year crown of top smartphone maker will be taken away from the company in the coming weeks and given to Samsung, according to Nomura, a mobile analyst. More details on that here.
According to other sources, HTC can match Nokia as well in 2012 in terms of smartphone manufacturing… Just to put things in perspective, there were times that Nokia had a 40% market share, which is a number that Apple and Google can only dream of.
So, how is Nokia fighting back? Well, they are actually doing exactly what they should be doing, teaming up with an up and coming mobile OS, Windows Phone 7. According to IDC, while Android will remain king of mobile OSs for a while, Windows Phone 7 is expected to surpass iPhone by 2015, making it the second most popular mobile platform.
Nokia, as we know, will be running the Microsoft OS on all its high end smartphones and by that, will be combining its expertise in hardware manufacturing with Microsoft’s fresh and exciting new Windows Phone 7 UI. There are even rumors of Microsoft buying Nokia, but that is a topic for another time.
In addition, Nokia is definitely not falling behind in terms of the industry and while Apple launched its own messaging service to compete with BBM and RIM in iOS5, and Google is rumored to be doing the same in the near future, Nokia has already thrown its hat into the messaging ring as well.
All in all, between its tremendous global numbers, its lucrative partnership with the largest software company in the world, and its large developer community, Nokia is, in my opinion, far from dead.
Does that mean the company can sit back and relax while counting on the fact that its dominance in certain parts of the world will be maintained? Absolutely not. The world of mobile is not what it used to be and it won’t be long before other mobile giants realize the potential of the emerging markets…
