Mid-year Update to Nokia Smartphone Forecast to 2011, with View to 2012 and new Microsoft based phones

On February 15 I was one of first analysts to provide a detailed quarterly forecast for Nokia's smartphone sales this year, after the bizarre announcement by CEO Stephen Elop to select a new Microsoft based smartphone operating system while having no phones to sell, or even to show. That caused what is known as the Osborne Effect ie it killed sales of current models. If Elop was competent, he would have seen this coming. He admits now at Q2 results that it took him by surprise. I think its fair to read into that, that Stephen Elop is completely unfit and incompetent to run Nokia in these difficult times. But lets not talk about Elop now. Lets look at the performance of Nokia's smartphone unit.

My February 15 forecast included a lot of very detailed analysis of why I felt those numbers would happen. There are tons of comments too, and many suggested I was being too pessimistic. Here is the actual forecast from February and the Reality of Q1 and Q2 results to see how pessimistic or not, I happened to be:

TOMI ORIGINAL FORECAST FROM FEBRUARY 15:

Quarter . . . Market Share . . . Unit Sales . . . .  ASP . . . . . Total Revenues of Smartphones
Q1 2011 . . 28% . . . . . . . . . .  29 M . . . . . . . . 146 Euro . . 4.3B Euro
Q2 2011 . . 21% . . . . . . . . . .  25 M . . . . . . . . 136 Euro . . 3.3B Euro
Q3 2011 . . 16% . . . . . . . . . .  21 M . . . . . . . . 126 Euro . . 2.6B Euro
Q4 2011. .  12% . . . . . . . . . .  17 M . . . . . . . . 116 Euro . . 2.0B Euro

ACTUAL NOKIA PERFORMANCE

Quarter . . . Market Share . . . Unit Sales . . . .  ASP . . . . . Total Revenues of Smartphones
Q1 2011 . . 24% . . . . . . . . . .  24 M . . . . . . . . 146 Euro . . 3.5B Euro
Q2 2011 . . 15% . . . . . . . . . .  17 M . . . . . . . . 142 Euro . . 2.4B Euro

I was being as honest and accurate and detailed as I could be. But I also wrote on the blog, that this was my best case scenario. Now we have Q2 results, the first full quarter with the Stephen Elop Effect to destroy Nokia Symbian phone sales. And look at the results. I projected 21% market share. Nokia managed 15%. I projected 25M unit sales. Nokia only did 17M. On the ASP Nokia did better but the total revenues are still almost a Billion Euros BELOW what I had projected. Yes. Tomi was indeed - far too optimistic in his initial forecast haha..

TIME TO UPDATE AND CORRECT THE MODEL

So now we have the first full Quarter of the Elop Effect and we can now do a realistic update to the model to the end of this year (and do some prelim analysis towards next year when Microsoft Windows Phone based Nokia smartphones are expected to sell in mass market quantities).

Lets change the formula for the model. I used the only analogy I could find, and I set the level of lost market share at one quarter (25%). Now we have the real number. All things considered, my guess was not bad haha, the real number is 30% loss. I don't mean 30 market share points, I mean losing nearly one third of your existing customer base - per quarter. But then we recalculate the remaining customers at hte end of the quarter, and then take another nearly one third, and remove those, and repeat and repeat..

NEW MARKET SHARE PROJECTION EFFECTIVE 21 JULY

Quarter . . . Market Share
Q1 2011 . . 24% (actual) 
Q2 2011 . . 15% (actual)
Q3 2011 . . 11% (TomiAhonen projection)
Q4 2011. .    7% (TomiAhonen projection)

Yes. Sadly. Nokia will end this year with 7% market share in smartphones, give or take a point. Single digits most certainly. (if Nokia continues on this suicidal path towards Microsoft and with the psycopath Stephen Elop in charge).

Nokia had 29% market share with growing unit sales, growing average sales prices, growing revenues and growing profits as recently as Q4 of 2010 ! Now Nokia has already destroyed half of its market share. This, during a year when smartphone sales are exploding globally. A year when Apple can't sell enough iPhones with the demand exceeding supply. Where Samsung is doing more than double the sales from a year before. And Nokia is destroying half of its market in a mere 5 months.

Also do undestand what 7% means. RIM, ie Blackberry, has now fallen to 13% market share in Q2 and everybody is calling them a failure, and most who consider future operating systems and 'ecosystems' are counting RIM out now, as having failed. THAT'S TWICE where Nokia will be, in only 6 months. Nokia is completely doomed on this path. By current projections, Nokia is not only falling from biggest to second to third, behind Apple and Samsung. And obviously by Q3 will fall behind RIM and HTC, but by Q4 Nokia will be playing 'Honey I shrunk the kids' falling behind LG and SonyEricsson and racing Motorola for who gets to be 7th biggest smartphone maker. And may even fall behind ZTE. So Nokia could be as little as 9th biggest smartphone maker. From first to 9th in less than 11 months. This is so outrageous, if someone at Hollywood suggested this as a plot for a movie, it would be rejected as unbelievable.

Lets populate the model with the rest of the data. I am modelling smartphone sales this year to hit 475 million units (up from 300 million in 2010). And I will use a linear decline in ASP, dropping it the same 4 Euros per quarter. Then I multiplied it across to get the revenues.

TOMIAHONEN PROJECTION: NOKIA SMARTPHONE SALES BY QUARTER 2011 (REVISED)

Quarter . . . Market Share . . . Unit Sales . . . .  ASP . . . . . Total Revenues of Smartphones
Q1 2011 . . 24% . . . . . . . . . .  24 M . . . . . . . . 146 Euro . . 3.6B Euro
Q2 2011 . . 15% . . . . . . . . . .  17 M . . . . . . . . 142 Euro . . 2.4B Euro
Q3 2011 . . 11% . . . . . . . . . .  13 M . . . . . . . . 138 Euro . . 1.8B Euro
Q4 2011. .    7% . . . . . . . . . .  11 M . . . . . . . . 134 Euro . . 1.5B Euro

Source: Nokia (actuals Q1 & Q2), TomiAhonen Consulting July 21, 2011 (projections Q3 & Q4)

PROFITS

I said in my original Feb 15 forecast that Nokia smartphones would be reporting zero profit by Q2 and losses from Q3 pushing all of Nokia Corp into losses by Q4. I was right about what would happen but again, Nokia's suicide has been far more rapid than even I was able to project. They reported a massive loss not just in smartphones by now, in Q2 but also the whole of Nokia Corp has gone from making profits to making losses, already now in Q2. While the delusional CEO, Stephen Elop promises that Q3 handset sales would be near zero profit or loss (in other words a big improvement from now), that should be taken with a grain of salt. This is the same man who didn't foresee the Osborne Effect and who thought China sales in Q1 willl repeat in Q2 (ie didn't know about China gifts for Chinese New Year, the Chinese culture equivalent of Western Christmas gift-giving) and who had to rush only weeks after Q1 results, with a profit warning for Q2. So he is pretty well clueless as to how Nokia's handset unit might do profits or losses.

Here are the facts. Nokia's Q2 handset profitability (ie about 500 million Euros / 700 million US dollar loss) had a one-time positive profit injection - the IPR payment from Apple covering patent lawsuits and iPhone sales for the past 16 quarters since 2007. That was worth half a billion dollars. So in reality Nokia's handset unit in Q2 is doing so horridly, it is generating one Billion dollars of a loss.

Then what does Nokia do? In early July they annnounced big across-the-board price cuts - price cuts - up to 15% in their most expensive phones. So while they already report a massive loss, and in reality their operational performance hides an even more gargatuan loss, now Nokia cuts its prices - that boosts its LOSS. Nokia handsets will not be reporting a zero profit/zero loss for Q3. Ain't gonna happen. No f*cking way.

In the Q2 results Nokia reported their marketing costs grew dramatically by 6% from Q1, for the smartphones unit (because nobody is willing to buy - or sell - Nokia phones). The quarterly results also offer Nokia's validation of my claims here, that there is a reseller boycott - Nokia admits that the channel, the resellers and the operators - are 'reducing inventories' - ie refusing to stock and sell Nokia. But Samsung, HTC, Apple phones are jumping off the shelves into the pockets of happy new customers. And what of Nokia other costs? Their smartphone sales have been cut by half from their peak at Q4. So Nokia owns all those expensive mobile phone handset factories in 9 countries including China and India, and they now are running at half-capacity. HALF CAPACITY? Imagine the costs of that! This again, while rivals are complaining they can't meet demand. Nokia can't even keep its factories running at normal capacity. Texas Instruments complained that their biggest chip customer (ie Nokia) has seen a huge drop in component shipments.. So the costs for Nokia keep going up, while the prices they charge keep coming down. This is a sure way to make BIGGER losses, not less losses.

PROJECTION FOR MICROSOFT PHONES IN 2012 (COMING SHORTLY)

I will do my update and detailed first projection for Microsoft based Nokia smartphones for 2012. At this moment its late here in Hong Kong and I can't really concentrate to do this properly. But I know there are readers of mine who are waiting for my updated forecast for 2012 sales in Q3 and Q4. So I will post this blog now, I will return shortly to do the Microsoft and 2012 bit (and beyond). But trust me, it won't be rosy. Nokia and Microsoft will not get 20% or better market share in any conceivable scenario now, not after the carnage we see happening in 2011. Microsoft will not even get into the low double digits by end of 2012. But yes, I have to come back to that, at this point I will just post this blog and get some rest.

UPDATE July 25: I have now provided the update for Microsoft based Nokia smartphone sales for years 2012 and 2013. I used best case example of real existing smartphone sales patterns, so this is very real, and it is the best-case scenario.

Comments

[peter]

SoVatar: You have to start the suit to find more fact. just like Murdoch case. more fact will be found each day. Conventional wisdom manifests Elop and Jorma are criminals. They are not Trojan of Microsoft but agents of Wall Street Short sellers. That's why you have to sue in Finnish court not here in America.

[Rino]

Tomi, You can read Sapnish, then read this sad news:
"Smartphones: Blackberry superó a Nokia en la Argentina
Los celulares de la canadiense RIM coparon el 40% del mercado en el primer semestre de 2011. En un año, Nokia pasó del 41% al 15% de los teléfonos inteligentes vendidos en el país",
Full new link: http://www.ieco.clarin.com/tecnologia/Blackberry-desbanco-Nokia-smartphone-argentinos_0_521948060.html
Thank you very much, for you and you post.

[peter]

Yes, Stephen Elop, you Microsoft Muppet. You must be fired and sued and barred from any executive position in any publically traded company. You are a disgrace! Your name will be synonymous with total corporate destruction from the inside - and by the CEO. Shame!

[peter]

tomi: the only thing that idiot elop got correct was to cut head counts by 4000 this year and another 3000 for year 2013. previous management obviously failed to do it.
can you comment on it?

[Endymion]

Greetings Tomi. I'm part of a mostly silent majority that follows your blog. Somewhere around the start of this year I took interest about the fate of nokia both as a longstanding client, and as a potential developer. While Android shows some promise I dislike a simple thing about the system: JAVA. It's cumbersome in regards to code, patent-ridden and well, lets just say it doesn't strike my fancy, even if it gets ported to the N9 via the "Alien Dalvik".

Maemo (or meego if you wish to call it so) has QT, allowing us to freely use it with Python and C++. And the beauty is... it's not as striped down a linux as the android version. It's somewhat trivial to port many applications from established desktop linux distributions. WebOS is also a beauty to develop, using HTML5 + CSS + Javascript, and SDL on the C front... and guess what: we can run WebOS games already on a n900 with a bit of tweaking.

So potentially, N9 is a platform that can run everything any linux-based phone on the market can offer, compared to wp7, with XNA and Silverlight... add the revolutionary UI and, its truly a tragedy...

Oh well, maybe there's some changes coming. There are signs that the N9 may be released in more countries as this link ( http://thehandheldblog.com/2011/07/21/nokia-q2-results-n9-rethink/ )shows... so maybe there's still hope.

And there's almost no trace of windows phones on the official nokia blog articles. One wonder's if windows nokia phone's are just a mirage. On the other hand there's plenty of flak going on there with many quotes on your articles Tomi (one of the more recent threads: http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/07/21/securing-the-nokia-n9/#disqus_thread ). Keep up the good job ;)

[peter]

To Endymion, you and the article were day dreaming. as long as criminal elop is in charge, it won't happen. he enhanced hie point again during earning call QA session: n9 meego is a regional phone, targeted at specific regions.

that't why Tomi and I want elop to be put into jail and no bail out for life.

[peter]

nokia is dead when crimnial ceo elop announced the burning platform of symbian on Feb., 11.

$2.6B inventory has to be written off.
nokia brand is completely damaged which was worth $10B alone.
share price was cut off more than half. $20B has already vaporized.

How big is a crime can be ? That's 1000,000 times bank robberies.

Shareholders and nokia distributors go ahead sue the nokia ceo NOW.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Everybody

I will return with individual comments. I wanted to mention, I now have done part 2 in this analysis, the projection for Microsoft smartphone sales in 2012 and 2013. I think you will find the analysis illuminating

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

No starting with first set of comments

Hi live, elmo, jjh, Yuri, cygnus, Alan and Michael

live - thanks, we definitely agree. Thanks!

elmo - good points and yes he should be investigated not just in Finland but also on Wall Street haha. But yeah, Nokia is important to Finland's economy but not quite to that scale haha..

jjh - be nice! Finland's GDP is about 240 Billion dollars so if we say a third of Nokia's workforce is in Finland we could say 20 Billion is the contribution to Finland's economy (Nokia revenues 2010 were $58B) so 8% is perhaps more accurate, far more than 3% haha.. and still today, not a decade ago.

Yuri - good points and it is bewildering yes. I do think MS was thinking that WP7 was dead and needed emergency rescue. They could have bought a troubled handset maker like Motorola but felt its better to take over Nokia kind of 'for free' and get a bigger stronger provider. I am sure MS calculated that with Nokia they'd be well above 20% market share by 2012 and would be able to fight Apple and Google on 'even terms' haha.. Now that is proven to be a total fantasy.

cygnus (several comments) - thanks for the comments. Love the image of eating from dumpster and sued for every last penny. I certainly hope to contribute to the truth coming out as soon as possible, so that this can start to happen. He is causing so much damage to Nokia now, he has to be fired immediately. And as to the Osborne Effect - very good observations. Yes! Totally true. Osborne at least replaced his with a better device. Elop replaces a winner with a loser (while killing the hit superphone and OS in the process, by which I mean MeeGo)

Alan - am awaiting. the official Sammy numbers come out July 29 ie this week Friday. I will blog about it. But just today Strategy Analytics said they count between 18M and 21M Samsung smarpthones for Q2, so by that Samsung would be past Nokia but too close to call for Apple, so we still have to wait until Friday.

Michael - thanks, haha..

Thank you all for the comments, keep the discussion going, I will return soon with more replies

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[UGG]

I’ve found that sometimes a good visual can make all the difference to a blog post, so I’m always sure to include at least one. They brighten the place up a little too.

[Cheap Beats By Dre]

lop got correct was to cut head counts by 4000 this year and another 3000 for year 2013. previous management obviously failed to do it.
can you comment on it?

[Cheap Beats By Dre]

in any publically traded company. You are a disgrace! Your name will be synonymous with total corporate destruction from the inside - and by the CEO. Shame!

[beats by dre store]

elop got correct was to cut head counts by 4000 this year and another 3000 for year 2013. previous management obviously failed to do it.
can you comment on it?

[beats by dre store]

cut head counts by 4000 this year and another 3000 for year 2013. previous management obviously failed to do it.
can you comment on it?

[beats by dre store]

year and another 3000 for year 2013. previous management obviously failed to do it.
can you comment on it?

[VogueBagSale.com]

I am so glad this internet thing works and your article really helped me. Might take you up on that home advice you

[prada]

Devo sottolineare, che in tutto il tempo che ho speso on-line, a seguito di siti di informazione, non ho letto uno come utile e ben fatto come questo, io non frequentemente commentare web log comunque per te io sentito il bisogno di fare un'eccezione, questo è certamente il lavoro veramente alto e completamente opposta a quella sciocchezze, che trascorrono gran parte del mio tempo on line, lettura. Grazie per aver dedicato del tempo e investire lo sforzo di presentare i vostri lettori con un rapporto di 1 ° classe. Non vedo l'ora di leggere molto di più del tuo lavoro, ancora applausi.

[Lancel]

J'ai pensé qu'il allait y avoir une certaine message ennuyeux, mais c'est vraiment compensé pour mon temps. Je vais poster un lien vers cette page sur mon blog. Je suis sûr que mes visiteurs se trouve que c'est très utile.

[Abercrombie]

Governo primo ministro greco George Papandreou, sull'orlo del collasso, time pronto any incontrare l'opposizione su richieste di not governo di transizione. Che haya gettato inside piani dubbio every not referendum sul cello di salvataggio UE di Grecia. Il voto minacciata l . a . scorsa settimana tanto atteso accordo every ridurre debito greco elizabeth rafforzare not fondo di salvataggio della zona pound male impotence è stato effettivamente visto appear not referendum every l'adesione della Grecia nel blocco dell'euro.

[ノースフェイス]

ースを参照して、9年間の義務教育のスポーツ芸術を開始するには、文部科学省は来年は（2 +1）、プライマリとセカンダリの学校の生徒が2スポーツのスキルと芸術的なスキルを習得すると述べた。