Communities Dominate Brands

Smartphones Q3 Market Shares for top handset brands and top operating systems (Updated)

Its that time again in the Bloodbath Year 2: Electric Boogaloo. We get to measure the performance levels of the major players. First, note that since we have new data on both Android and bada, I have calculated adjustments on previous quarterly data. Note that from now on I will be referring to those newer more accurate numbers which also means minor changes to Android and bada previous market shares in this blog. But lets start with the smartphone handset makers and as is my custom, lets do them in order of size.

(This blog has now been updated on 22 November to reflect the analysis I promised per each branded smartphone and each smartphone OS)

For those who just want to see the table without the analysis, here is the big picture and top 10 smartphone manufacturer brands for Q3 or the quarter from July to September:

1 (2)     Samsung       25.1 Million    21%  (17%)
2 (1)     Apple            17.1 Million    15%   (19%)
3 (3)     Nokia            16.8 Million    14%   (16%)
4 (5)     HTC              13.2 Million    11%   (11%)
5 (4)     RIM              10.6 Million      9%   (12%)
6 (7)     SonyEricsson  7.6 Million      7%   ( 5%)
7 (6)     LG                  5.9 Million      5%   ( 5%)
8 (8)     Motorola          4.8 Million      4%   ( 4%)
9 (9)     Huawei            4.4 Million      4%   ( 4%)
10 (10)  ZTE                3.1 Million      3%   ( 3%)

(others                       9.1 Million)

TOTAL                    117.7 Million

So that is big picture. Now lets go and rate the smartphone makers for their Q3

 

SAMSUNG grew massively while making a profit: A+

 

While the industry grew 9% from Q2, Samsung grew a massive 41%. After Apple took the title from Nokia as the world's biggest smartphone maker in Q2, now Samsung has snatched it from Apple. The King is Dead: Long Live the King! As we heard that the bada sales have been well below expectation - Samsung had a target of selling 10 million bada phones in the first half of 2011 - and they have only sold 8 million cumulatively since launch a year ago - the vast majority of Samsung's growth is obviously Android and the Galaxy range of smartphones. And even as Samsung corporation had disappointing results overall - the bright spot was its handset unit powered by the smartphones. The Samsung brand is currently on every one out of every five smartphones sold worldwide and Samsung has now achieved roughly the same market share in smartphones as it has in 'dumbphones'. The real question is of course the Christmas season, when Apple rolls out the iPhone 4S. Can Sammy hold onto its lead for two quarters in a row?

 

APPLE declined unit sales but made huge profits: B-

 

This Q3 was a bad quarter for Apple's iPhone. And we must bear in mind, even in its bad quarter, Apple earned the lion's share of all profits earned by all smartphone makers - so 'bad' is obviously a relative term. Any rival (except perhaps Samsung) would gladly take Apple's 'bad' quarter over what they managed..

 

But yes, in previous years the summer quarter has had the newest iPhone model in full sales. This year the new iPhone model was delayed until October, into Q4. So while of course Apple loyalists were once again standing in line and once again Apple reported massive record-breaking new iPhone 4S sales - this time those sales didn't come for Q3 sales numbers. That is the main reason why the iPhone unit sales numbers are down from Q2. Nonetheless, this is the Bloodbath and some of those sales were lost - most likely to Samsung. Apple iPhone sales were down 16% from Q2.

 

But as I've written many times on this blog, Apple's sales cycle because of only one new iPhone model released annually is peculiar, and one should consider Apple more on annual sales than measuring one quarter against the next. Always heading to Christmas, Apple has great sales and in the new year they then tend to flatten out or even decline before the next new iPhone model. That Apple continued to make massive profits tells us that the iPhone is as desirable as ever. Hence yes, I give a B- as Apple should have been able to deliver a new model in late June as per usual (as I have written here on this blog, the primary reason why the iPhone 4S was delayed so much - was due to Apple's attempt to create a handset without a SIM card - and the carriers/operators revolted and forced Apple to make a last-minute redesign.

 

The race gets really interesting now for Christmas 2011 between Apple and Samsung. Apple has expanded its carriers adding Verizon and Sprint in the USA, KDDI in Japan etc. The iPhone 4S broke Apple's sales record for first weekend sales. Certainly Apple will break its own quarterly unit sales record for the iPhone which waws 20.3 Million in Q2. But how much more can Apple do? Can it catch Samsung? It will be an exciting time.

 

NOKIA - lost market share and made big losses: D

 

Nokia actual smartphone unit sales were flat or technically grew by 1% from Q2 ie from 16.7 Million to 16.8 Million. But this miniscule growth was in a market that grew by 9% so Nokia was falling behind the industry growth rate by 8%. And its market share of course therefore shrunk from 16% to 14%. What is far worse, obviously is that whereas Nokia smartphones unit was a profit engine for Nokia up to Q1 of this year, after CEO Stephen Elop announced a shift from Symbian and MeeGo to Microsoft based smartphones, the sales collapsed. Nokia resorted to massive price cuts for Q3 to try to hold onto some market share, which meant that the smartphone unit was destined to report a big loss. Now it is Nokia's cheap 'dumbphones' that are the only unit capable of generating profits for the world's biggest handset maker.

 

Things could be worse. This is not a 'failing' grade as Nokia did technically grow sales even as losing market share but a dismal performance all the same, as Nokia reported another quarterly loss. The bizarre CEO decision to not launch the hottest smartphone this side of an iPhone 4S (the Nokia N9 with MeeGo) in any of Nokia's major markets, in fact mostly releasing it in only very distant and/or small markets like New Zealand and Kazakhstan - where the N9 would be a high-priced and high-profit phone. Further lunacy from Espoo is that the sister phone to the N9, the QWERTY-slider variant, the N950 on the same highly praised MeeGo operating system, while the phone is shipping (it is being manufactured and distributed) - is not sold anywhere! Nokia is only giving tiny numbers of the N950 to some developers.

Q4 sees Nokia's launch of the first Windows Phone based smartphones, that Nokia has branded their Lumia line (reversing CEO Stephen Elop's earlier decision to name all Nokia phones only by numbers; Nokia also introduced the Asha line of phones at the low cost dumbphones space). I visited the UK and noticed the launch marketing had mixed reviews; for example the Orange network store out of its two window displays, one featurede prominently the Nokia Lumia 800 (with a promotion that you get a free Xbox 360 gaming console if you buy the Lumia 800). But rival network T-Mobile in its two-window display featured only smartphones from rival makers, no Nokia/Lumia promotion in its window. And the independent phone store, Carphone Warehouse, in its two-window display had the iPhone 4S on one, and the Nokia Lumia 800 on the other. Where Nokia had hoped that all carriers/operators would eagerly promote the Lumia, that wish has clearly not come true but also, with Microsoft deep pockets for marketing - gimmicks like giving free XBox consoles should help boost early sales. We'll see how the launch of Microsoft on Nokia succeeded, when the numbers come out from Nokia in January. In any case, even if the Lumia 800 was a roaring success, as it is only released in a few countries before Christmas, and its the only smartphone running Windows Phone from Nokia, this will not propel Nokia back to compete with Apple and Samsung for the world lead.

HTC - Holds market share and made a profit: B-

 

HTC did a good job but not great. It saw several of the big rivals either stumble in Q3 (Apple, RIM) or fail to capitalize on that (Nokia) and there was a big opportunity for HTC to grab some market share, which it did not manage. HTC did grow sales nicely at 8% from Q2 but obviously this is slightly less than the industry grew, so again, HTC is only holding steady. But HTC did report a good profit. Lets see how the company performs for the Christmas quarter.

RIM - Lost market share massively but did report a profit: C-

Blackberry is in a tailspin. Because it had very strong profit margins and with rather high-priced phones sold to enterprise/corporate customers, RIM has a kind of safety-net for its profits - if a company has specified they use the Blackberry platform and have a budget for their phones, Blackberry's profits are not squeezed as badly in that sector. But its performance in the consumer sector is of course subject to normal rules, where it is seeing competition squeezing it hard. Meanwhile the business customers are gradually allowing more other phones, in particular iPhones, to be used so the business sector market share is slipping. And worse, while Blackberry did do a good shift from business oriented phones to also consumer-used phones, the problem with the youth market is that they are addicted to Blackberry Instant Messenger, not necessarily the phones themselves. So even a four-year-old Blackberry works fine. The youth will then replace their 'other' phone - with a new iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, HTC etc - and hold onto the old Blackberry for heavy messaging. Thus the replacement cycle for Blackberry is far slower than that for the industry overall, and this further hurts Blackberry sales. We see actual unit sales crashing 20% from just three months prior; and market share falling from 12% to 9% (lost one quarter of its market in only 3 months! That is disasterous). The only reason why this is not a failing performance is that RIM still generates a profit.

SONY ERICSSON - grew market share but dipped into losses again: C+

 

SonyEricsson has been on somewhat of a come-back. They plunged into deep loss-making after the iPhone appeared and stole their thunder but recent quarters they've clawed back to about neutral position and even slight profits. The design team is quite capable of making highly desirable phones and SonyEricsson leads the legacy phone makers in transitioning from dumbphones to smartphones, as they now report that 80% of SonyEricsson phone handsets sold in Q3 were smartphones. This company will likely become the first of the legacy 'full portfolio' handset makers to complete the corporate shift from dumbphones to smartphones, something Nokia was well on its path to achieve first, until Elop torpedoed Nokia's strategy. Note that in Q3 SE grew smartphone unit sales by 43% from Q2, which is even more than Samsung!

The big news over in SE land is that this company will in future be called Sony. The parents had their final split, Sony bought out Ericsson and SonyEricsson will have lived for about 10 years as a brand, but now Ericsson is finally completely out of the handset business, and Sony becomes the sole parent of this company. I do believe it may be great news as Sony seems to have had a recent 'rediscovery' of the mobile phone (and smartphone) opportunity - no doubt that too was caused by the launch of the iPhone. Sony had been badly burned by Apple's entry into the portable music player business, and must have felt, that with the full weight of Sony's assets, the smartphone unit could do better battle against the iPhone now. Give Sony as owners a bit more than a year from now, but the new completely Sony-fied smartphones should be out for Christmas 2012 and they could be true iPhone-killers haha.. Meanwhile, SonyEricsson or whatever we should call you now - get back to making profits rather than growing market share with losses. Its healthier that way.

LG - held market share, made profit: B-

LG is plugging along, now happily in the Android space from its Microsoft-Misadventure and grew unit sales by 10% which wasn't enough to pick up a market share point, so they are still stuck at 5% market share. LG big news was that the management admitted they will not hit the announced targets this year for total smartphone sales. Apparently the 3D displays and 3D cameras were not as sexy and hot as many pundits expected.

GOOGLE IE MOTOROLA - held market share, posted a loss: C-

Then we have Google in smartphone sales ie the Motorola handsets unit. This much-maligned former giant is a badly injured unit. It is now quite the orphan with Google as its 'saviour' - because Google cannot let its Motorola unit grow strongly, for fear of alienating other Android makers - Google did buy Moto primarily for the patents portfolio. Now I am predicting that the handset-maker part of Motorola is so 'toxic' for Google's Android partners, that G will soon sell Motorola on for some other global giant. Who was just in the news wanting to enter the phones space? Amazon? Or could be some PC maker struggling to find smartphone traction like Dell or Acer for example. Could even be Intel haha, after the struggles it had with the Nokia partnership around MeeGo.

HUAWEI AND ZTE - held market share and made profits - B

We haven't had exact breakdowns of either Huawei or ZTE smartphone sales for Q3 and their sales numbers even in my estimate here are just that, estimates. I'm pretty confident they have increased sales roughly in line with the industry (if it was significantly more, we'd hear about it) and no signs say they are suddenly failing, both being Android producers. Their overall scale is now so big, that the Japanese rivals around positions 11th and 12th biggest makers (Sharp and Fujitsu) are not big enough to rival the Chinese.

OPERATING SYSTEMS

Then we have the operating systems. First, for those who may be here for the first time - remember, I am only counting smartphones, so where for example the iOS operating system also is used on iPad Touch and iPod devices, those are not counted as smartphones. Similarly Android tablets are not included in the Android smartphone numbers here, etc. Bear in mind that I have 'downgraded both Android and bada from the previous numbers, so you may find especially that my Android and bada numbers may be significantly different from numbers reported by some other analysts recently. But I trust my math, so here goes:

1. (1.)    Android (Google)                   56.4 Million    48% (40%)
2. (3.)    Symbian (Nokia)                   18.1 Million    15% (17%)
3. (2.)    iOS (Apple)                           17.1 Million     15% (19%)
4. (4.)    Blackberry OS                      10.7 Million       9% (12%)
5. (5.)    bada (Samsung)                     2.6 Million       2%  ( 2%)
6. (7.)    Windows Phone 7 (Microsoft)  1.3 Million       1%  ( 1%)
7. (6.)    Windows Mobile (Microsoft)     0.4 Million       0%  ( 1%)

(others 11.1 Million)

TOTAL        117.7 Million

Note the others includes all other smartphone operating systems including Palm/WebOS, Maemo, MeeGo, LiMo (Linux Mobile) and a multitude of unlicenced variants of Android. No other OS reaches 1%.

ANDROID - Grew market share strongly: A

Android is the run-away train. Some analysts are already calling Android as having passed the mid-point and have more than 50% market share for Q3. I was leaning towards that analysis too, until we got the official number from Google of total activations at 190 million units, and I did my correction to Google total shipments so far. By my analysis now, in Q3, Android is still a bit below the mid-level, but did grow by 30% just from Q2 and are obviously dominating the OS race. I peg their Q3 market share at 48% but they will likely pass the 50% level easily by Q4 of this year.

SYMBIAN - Dropped market share: C-

Whereas Nokia itself slightly grew smartphone unit sales, the other remaining Symbian partners are only left in Japan and after NTT DoCoMo announced in late February to discontinue Symbian because of Stephen Elop's announcement of Microsoft - and tellingly, NTT DoCoMo did not pick Microsoft but rather went Android - now most DoCoMo handset makers in Japan do Android phones and Symbian is vanishing from sight. Still, for this quarter one more time, Symbian is technically the second bestselling OS on the planet. Note that even 9 months after Nokia CEO killed Symbian and switched form it to Microsoft Windows Phone, this 'dead man walking' OS called Symbian is outselling that 'wonderful' new Microsoft OS by ... 14 to 1 !!!  Even if we add the obsolete Windows Mobile OS (which Nokia is not adopting) then Symbian alone outsells both Microsoft smartphone OS's by.. 11 to 1 !!  Still, while the industry grew 9%, Symbian sales fell 4% so Symbian effective decline was 13% compared to the rivals in the industry.

iOS - Dropped market share strongly: B-

Apple's iPhone dropped market share more than Symbian but gets a better grade? Why is that? Because this is the seasonal dip in Apple sales, before the new model is released. But why the B-, because Apple should have managed this far better (see above about futile attempt to launch iPhone 5 without SIM card slot). Expect strong rebound for iPhone in Christmas Quarter.

BLACKBERRY - Dropped market share severely: D

Blackberry as written in the above. The OS had over 20% market share just two years ago, and is now down to single digits.

BADA - increased market share strongly: A-

While the gossip and guesstimates of bada performance had yielded a very wide range of guesses of what bada quarterly sales and market shares were, we now do have the cumulative numbers and can count a reasonably good guess on the quarterly splits. But the clear evidence is that bada is the run-away fifth biggest OS, miles ahead of Windows Phone 7 for example (which is about as old but supported by a large army of handset makers, while bada only powers the low-cost end of Samsung's smartphones). bada is still a big-player, globally only at 2% of the market, but they do power more than one in ten Samsung smartphones sold today.

WINDOWS PHONE - declined market share: C-

So here is the pride and joy of Microsoft, why they decided to abandon Windows Mobile, an OS they had developed for a decade and which at its peak held 12% market share. Now how is the 'magnificent' Windows Phone 7 doing a year after launch? Well, it is following the devastation path of its predecessor, Windows Mobile. Both OS platforms lost actual unit sales, and saw big drops in market share from Q2. As recently as Q1, when Nokia's partnership was announced, Windows Phone 7 had achieved a 2% market share position. Half of that is now gone - where you'd expect the opposite, a strong growth pattern after Nokia was announced? - and Windows Phone is now at 1%. They lost 7% actual unit sales ie with the industry growing 9%, the effective loss compared to the industry for Microsoft's Phone OS was 16% in just one quarter. Disasterous indeed. The first Lumia 800 phone by Nokia cannot come soon enough for Microsoft.

WINDOWS MOBILE - declined market share: C-

Some analysts are grouping both Microsoft OS's together - that is unfortunate and definitely it is inappropriate, as they are incompatible. But this OS is truly disappearing before our eyes, I count WinMo sales now so low that the market share is rounded off to zero percent (ie under one half of one percent) and I think from Q4, I will start to put WinMo into the 'other' category where the other tiny operating systems are like Palm WebOS, MeeGo, Maemo, LiMo etc..

Thats the analysis of Q3 in the smartphones bloodbath. More news and analysis coming on this blog as we await Q4 results and report on the full year.

PS for those who need more info about the handsets industry, please take a look at my TomiAhonen Phone Book for all the stats and facts that you may want.. 



Smartphone Market Data: Revising Stats for Android and bada

Before I get to the final count of Q3 numbers for smartphones, we need to do two corrections. We - and I mean the analysts who track the mobile stats - have been using Android 'activation' numbers as reported by Google to guide us on Android total sales, from which we have calculated market shares. But we never had a cumulative number to compare to, so it was always a hazy guess. We finally have that number now from Google in Q3, when they said the cumulative shipments of Android smartphones had reached 190 million by end of Q3. If we used the 'activation rate' numbers as reported, we'd get to about 205 million, so the numbers in the public domain over the past two years, have 'over-reported' Android numbers typically by about 8%. There is no question Android has been the hottest smartphone OS for the past two years, but the enormous numbers have been a bit too high. I have corrected the numbers and report here now the 'down-revised' numbers. I have no better insight except the total cumulative sales - so I am assuming a consistent 8% error and arrive at the following unit sales and revised market shares for Android:

                             Q2 09  Q4 09  Q1 10   Q2 10     Q3 10    Q4 10     Q1 11     Q2 11  
Previous Android    1 2%    4 5%    5 10%  11 18%   20 25%  30 30%  36 35%   49 45%
Updated Android     1 2%    4 5%    5 10%  10 16%  16 20%  24 24%  32 32%   43 40%

Note: the first number is total units of smartphones sold (or 'activated') in millions, and the second number is the market share. The above is 'best fit' to match both the growth curve, and the reported 'activation numbers' by Google and adjusting downwards for 8% over-statement before.

Same for Samsung bada. We heard that the total activated bada number cumulatively is only 8 million by Q3 of 2011. That meant that we had over-estimated bada actual performance by a factor of two. I reduced the numbers but also made the pattern to show a reasonable growth curve as per stories coming from some markets that bada is picking up steam. Here are my old and revised numbers for bada:

                             Q2 10    Q3 10    Q4 10    Q1 11    Q2 11
Previous bada      1.0 2%   1.3 2%   3.0 3%   3.5 3%   5.4 5%
Updated bada       0.7 1%   0.8 1%   1.0 1%   1.2 1%   1.8 2%

Please take these numbers as the revised numbers that I will also be using for all my updated statistics for the smartphone industry overall, as well as specific Android and bada stats.

Note that the overall market size has not changed. As both Android and bada numbers have 'shrunk' from what I have reported before, if the total number remains the same, where is the 'gain'. We know very accurately iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia (Symbian) sales per quarter which is the vast majority of the rest of the market. For the 'other Symbian' it is increasingly only Japanese handset makers who have abandoned Symbian now in 2011 after Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced his shift to Microsoft OS. Even so, the total aggregate Symbian number has been rather well reported by the big analyst houses, usually in quite similar numbers too.

We know it can't be Microsoft - Windows Mobile is vanishing and even Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer says the new Windows Phone OS is selling in tiny numbers. But we are looking at a scale of 9.5 Million 'missing' smartphones by Q2 of 2011. Who has them?

I have allocated the missing smartphones in a small part to Linux Mobile (LiMo) as it is used in Japan and some other Asian domestic manufacturers. But the majority of the 'shortfall' is most like those 'Android clone' phones that run some variation of Linux based Android-like software, like many 'no name' brand phones from third-tier makers out of Shenzen in China. So for those who have an interest in one of the 'major' operating systems known globally - do not worry, the numbers you've seen here have not changed. Only for Android and bada as per above, and then the 'miscellaneous' category has grown bigger.

Ok, next lets do the Q3 results for all smartphones and their operating systems.

Crowdsourcing a Forecast? Ran a Twitter contest about Microsoft in Smartphones

I had an idea on Twitter last week and thought it would be a fun little game among some of my most dedicated followers and a way to give away a nice little freebie gift. Since I have been quite public about how I think the Nokia and Microsoft partnership will fare in the coming early years (in other words, I have been extremely pessimistic about it all) and I have said in public I expect Nokia to have about 8% market share in smartphones end of 2012 when all their smartphones should be running the Microsoft Windows Phone based operating system, and that Microsoft overall would only have about 10% at that time, I wondered what would be the guesstimates of my followers on Twitter.

So I asked my followers to submit their guesses. Almost immediately the response was better than I expected, to I refined the contest, to give the guess to the accuracy of one tenth of one percent (ie 8.4% or 12.3% etc). Also as I would be giving away a prize (free ebook) to the person who guessed the closest, I also said that any one number % guess, would be given on a first-come, first-served basis, so whoever was first to claim a given exact percentage, would have that number and be the only one obviously eligible to win the prize at that specific number. Any Twitter follower would be allowed only one guess. And as some started to request numbers that were already taken, I would then tell them which were the nearest numbers above and below their request, that were still available.

This was all fine and good until about 120 entries had come in over the weekend and I found that several whole ranges of numbers were taken. First to go were 7.x and 8.x, soon also 5.x, 6.x and 9.x went. By Tuesday morning we had over 150 entries and all numbers from 4.6% to 13.4% were taken and 14.x also was all gone.

I had also thought that this would be an interesting test of crowd-sourcing, the wisdom of the crowd, Alan Moore's 'Nobody is as clever as everybody' etc. But I had unwittingly spoiled part of the precision of this 'instrument' in forcing people to pick unique numbers. Why didn't I let people pick multiple times the same number if they wanted, I could have easily given them each the winning prize as its an ebook haha, no real printing costs for me, etc.

I'm sorry I was not thinking. This could have been far more revealing if we had been able to see where the guesses were clustered, if many for example picked 8.4% and 8.6 % or whatever..  And by Tuesday, so many of the numbers were gone, that some who wanted a number, were now forced many whole numbers away to the 'nearest available' number.

What I did do, was to back on Twitter to see all submissions, to try to collect the 'first guesses' ignoring if those were taken, but unfortunately there were so many comments that I couldn't get back to the beginning. That would have been probably more telling than just this list we have now.

So, first, for all who have already entered (or who may still want to enter) here is the official entry list of all who had submitted a guess and gotten a number by Tuesday 8 November 2011. What is the market share in smartphones of all Microsoft based operating systems sold in Q4 of 2012, including Nokia phones running Microsoft (but ignoring all non-Microsoft Nokia phones such as running Symbian, MeeGo etc) and any other smartphones running Windows but ignoring tablets and PCs. Each entrant is up to accuracy of one tenth of one percent. The names here are the Twitter handle and in parenthesis the name on TW behind that handle. The official entries are:

Tweetvote of what will be Microsoft Windows Phone 7 market share at end of Q4 of 2012, a little over a year from now:

0.4% - @3GDoctor (David Doherty)

0.5% - @MyInnerSperse (Bruce Burke)

0.9% - @tonyfish (Tony Fish)

1.0% - @BenFletch (Ben Fletcher)

1.1% - @Dutchcowboy (M Lens-FitzGerald)

1.4% - @gibtang (Gibson Tang)

1.6% - @josiefraser (Josie Fraser)

1.7% - @miusuario (Omar Moya)

1.8% - @r_g (Ged Carroll)

1.9% - @lukabirsa (Luka Birsa)

2.0% - @rionov (Rio Novrianto)

2.1% - @jmacdonald (Jonathan MacDonald)

2.6% - @simplynand (simplynand) - said 2.63%

2.7% - @eldarmurtazin (Eldar Murtazin)

2.9% - @Starlo777 (Steve D)

3.1% - @dougsymon (Douglas Symon)

3.2% - @devonseaglass (Ian James Cox)

3.3% - @edent (Terence Eden)

3.4% - @jakublipinski (Jakub Lipinksi)

3.5% - @virtopeanu (Dan Virtopeanu)

3.6% - @ClaireBoo (Claire Boonstra)

3.7% - @cibyr (Ian Cullinan)

3.8% - @mobilezeitgeist (Heike Sholz)

3.9% - @AgileArtem (AgileArtem)

4.1% - @sdemidov (Sergey Demidov)

4.2% - @ilocco (ilicco elia)

4.3% - @c1rrus (James Nash)

4.4% - @Pierkka (Pirkka Poole)

4.5% - @mobilesguruji (Ankush Kala)

4.6% - @juhariis (Juha Riissanen)

4.7% - @yeswap (Dennis Bournique)

4.8% - @Guamguy (Guamguy)

4.9% - @InvulgoSoft (Thomas Andersen)

5.0% - @kaimac (kai macmahon)

5.1% - @sirraH77 (Harri Viitamaki)

5.2% - @jamescameron (jamescameron)

5.3% - @sbepstein (steve epstein) - said 5.25%

5.5% - @hockamania (Daryl Goh)

5.6% - @Miss_mobile_web (anne thomas)

5.7% - @ian_martin (Pablo Medeiros)

5.8% - @NOMOSDesign (NOMOS Design)

5.9% - @tom866mot (Tomislav Tomic)

6.0% - @Madijn (Michael N)

6.1% - @HarveiBeili (Harvey Beilinsohn)

6.2% - @russellbuckley (Russell Buckley)

6.3% - @kapten_grogg (Anders Mellqvist)

6.4% - @michielb (Michiel Berger)

6.5% - @DHDe22ers (Dick)

6.6% - @PinnacleSalesUK (Pinnacle Software) - Said 6.55

6.7% - @ei_HMcCarthy (Hugh McCarthy)

6.8% - @leeomar (Lee Omar)

6.9% - @ju_key (Uwe Kaminski)

7.0% - @arnozinho (arnozinho)

7.1% - @r0gu (Rogu)

7.2% - @CWmobil (Computerwoche Mobil)

7.3% - @OWStarr (Oliver Starr)

7.4% - @bookmeister (bookmeister)

7.5% - @fribeiro1 (Fernando Ribeiro)

7.6% - @drostyboy (steven)

7.7% - @rabschi (Cornelius Rabsch)

7.8% - @Rock35 (Rock35)

7.9% - @nokleby (ChristiAN)

8.0% - @slackerninja (rishi alwani)

8.1% - @suarezjulian (Julian Camilo Suarez)

8.2% - @yousifabdullah (Yousif Abdullah)

8.3% - @phil_linttell (phil Linttell)

8.4% - @reyes (Mauricio Reyes)

8.5% - @NeilMilliken (Neil Milliken)

8.6% - @Teemu (Teemu Kurppa)

8.7% - @anshelsag (Anshel Sag)

8.8% - @baranyurdagul (baran yurdagul) - said 8.75%

8.9% - @O_NunoPereira (Nuno Pereira)

9.0% - @3fs (ThirdFrameStudios)

9.1% - @bhuwan (bhuwan)

9.2% - @wpruvot (Wandrille Pruvot)

9.3% - @ThatChrisSmith (Chris Smith)

9.4% - @kojacker (kojacker)

9.5% - @cybronics (Jerome Derozard)

9.6% - @indigo102 (Martin Wilson)

9.7% - @_sommer (Hrvoje Sommer)

9.8% - @jainrounak (Rounak Jain)

9.9% - @tomdunbar (Tom Dunbar)

10.0% - @mbrit (Matt Baxter-Reynolds)

10.1% - @Eshanse (Esben Hansen)

10.2% - @mattjbush (matthew bush)

10.3% - @ccoc (Colin Crawford)

10.4% - @khouryrt (Rita El Khoury)

10.5% - @karipelaaja (Harri Manninen)

10.6% - @barbaraballard (Barbara Ballard)

10.7% - @Pishba (Patty Hartwell)

10.8% - @eccella (Nigel Alexander)

10.9% - @AndyTow (Andy Tow)

11.0% - @rodrigottr (Rodrigo Arantes)

11.1% - @fneuf (fneuf gazouille)

11.2% - @aktiwary (Ashutosh Tiwary)

11.3% - @punkedge (Pankaj Bengani)

11.4% - @_wideangle (Juha Meronen)

11.5% - @wishblizz (wishblizz)

11.6% - @bartfuzzle (Bart Fussel)

11.7% - @garelaos (Gareth Jones)

11.8% - @pannkaz (Pankaj Kapoor)

11.9% - @raimundo (raimundo vazquez)

12.0% - @syamant (syamant sandhir)

12.1% - @seetu (Sitaram Shastri) also said 30M is number

12.2% - @billboxer (william fasse)

12.3% - @Mawkins (Mark Hawkins)

12.4% - @bernardosanchez (bernardosanchez)

12.5% - @janole (Jan Ole Suhr)

12.6% - @gcameron00 (Graham Cameron)

12.7% - @Markies (Mark de Kock)

12.8% - @cybette (Carol Chen)

12.9% - @teemuo (Teemu Ollilainen)

13.0% - @lesanto (Glenn Le Santo)

13.1% - @asrialbaker (asrialbaker)

13.3% - @bmkatz (Brian Katz)

13.4% - @mjjagpal (mj)

13.6% - @AlexeiBoiko (Alexei Boiko)

13.7% - @Haaza (Marko Haaja)

13.8% - @gcsanda (Gergely Csanda)

13.9% - @anti_nomy (Mike)

14.0% - @abouillot (Alexandre Bouillot)

14.1% - @darlingbuds (Andrew Darling)

14.2% - @lassi (Lassi Kurkijarvi)

14.3% - @kmtee (KM Tee) said 14.32%

14.4% - @MBBdV (muriel devillers)

14.5% - @tim_harrap (Tim Harrap)

14.6% - @talakem (talakem)

14.7% - @kimmolehto (Kimmo Lehto)

14.8% - @IzanCoomonte (Izan Coomonte Suarez)

14.9% - @markjenniskens (Mark Jenniskens)

15.0% - @slackerninja (rishi alwani)

15.1% - @RamziD (RamziDziri)

15.3% - @sonicnights (Neil Ramsay)

15.4% - @kaienmy (kaien)

16.1% - @thompabompa (Thomas Strindberg)

16.2% - @chip_mk (Petar Chichev)

16.4% - @spurcola (philip bland)

17.0% - @Rhymo (Raimo van der Klein)

17.1% - @adrahon (Alex Drahon)

17.5% - @zahidtg (Zahid Ghadialy)

17.6% - @mauricioiwata (Mauricio Iwata)

18.5% - @laowaijoha (joha)

18.6% - @verydeepsleep (Wyn)

18.7% - @msantoni82 (MS)

19.4% - @simon_staffans (Simon Staffans)

19.6% - @theovalich (Theo Valich) - said 15.1% WP7 and 4.5% WP8

19.8% - @Hari0o7 (Hari Gupta)

19.9% - @hephail (Werner Egipsy Souza)

20.0% - @autiomaa (Daniel Schildt)

21.6% - @RussB (Russell Beattie)

25.0% - @vincente @Vincent everts)

25.1% - @aape (Aape Pohjavirta)

25.2% - @teppohudson (Teppo Hudson)

27.7% - @barneyc (Barney Craggs)

28.2% - @tkoola (Timo Koola)

29.3% - @tjytweets (TJ)

35.0% - @hardeep1singh (Hardeep Singh)

43.2% - @snagdragon (ihatesheeps)

There are also guesses entered by the following people, who had selected a number which was already taken (and had not yet sent their next requested number):

@albertcuesta (Albert Cuesta)

@Ew4n (Ewan MacLeod)

@KenLittle (Ken Little)

@miusario (Omar Moya)

@pvesterbacka (Peter Vesterbacka)

@stephen_oman (Stephen Oman)

@ZecaJacintho (Zeca Jacintho)

The prizes? The person who has the nearest number will get three free ebooks of their choice from my ebooks series as published by TomiAhonen Consulting, ie my Pearls ebooks and my statistics volumes the TomiAhonen Almanac and TomiAhonen Phone Book (and any other similar ebooks published by the time the contest results are finalized)

The two nearest guesses who just missed, will both also get one free ebook as the runners-up.

The actual formal 'official' number will be based on the following formula - the total smartphone unit sales of Q4 will be the average of the four analyst houses reporting regularly smartphones sales per quarter ie IDC, Gartner, Canalys and Strategy Analytics. The actual units sold/shipped (no distinction to be made) of Microsoft OS based smartphones will not be the number reported by anyone else except any of those four analyst houses so any mysterious measurements by for example Microsoft or Nokia (like Google announcing its 'activation' numbers) will not bring any subject of controversy. Not all of the 4 analyst houses report OS market shares, but we'll take Microsoft market share as the reported unit number of those of the four analyst houses who actually do report it either in units or as market share percentage (calculating the unit sales out from that). Again, the average of those reported.

So it won't be 'Tomi's number' haha. it will be the mathematical average as reported by those big 4 analyst houses.

Now what 'did' we learn from the votes. The lowest vote is 0.4% and the highest is 43.2% but the average is only 10.1%. Remember the 'conventional wisdom' by many analysts and press seems to expect Microsoft in the 20% and above ranges. Out of all who guessed only 6% felt comfortable Microsoft would exceed 20% by the end of next year, so this very unscientific (and no doubt skewed) result seems to suggest a nasty 'realty check' to the Nokia and Microsoft watchers sometime after Christmas next year haha..

Obviously one has to point out that the sample is skewed in two ways - first, that most who read my Tweets tend to be rather seriously interested 'mobilistas' and very interested in mobile. The more the Nokia+Microsoft partnership results in pure 'mobile-like' and non-USA patterns of sales and adoption, the more this group might understand the likely future, but if the Microsoft partnership pushes Nokia products more to an 'PC-like' (Microsoft legacy) pattern and perhaps business users and USA success, then my followers will perhaps be biased against that kind of pattern.

Another obvious bias is me - my followers have heard my repeated vitriol against the Nokia Microsoft strategy and some may have had their minds 'poisoned' or at least influenced by me. A random sampling of mobile experts who do not follow me or read my blog would very likely score an higher expectation of Microsoft's chances, on average.

Yet it is very interesting. Over 150 guesses made and the vast majority expect Nokia and Microsoft combined to be somewhere in the 6% to 14% range of market share - well well below the total of what Nokia and Microsoft had independently just nine months ago, before Stephen Elop put Nokia in its death-spiral and abandoning most of its market share.

If you want to make your entry and join this fun game, send me a Twitter comment in the open (not a private Twitter message) ie start your Tweet with @tomiahonen and send in your number you'd like to take - please check in the above list that your intended number is not already taken. I will accept entries until the end of November 2011. Then we have to wait a bit over 13 months to find out who was most accurate in forecasting Microsoft's smartphone market share for Q4 in 2012.

 

Lumia Lumia Lumia, what are you doing Nokia?

So we have now seen the Nokia World announcements and news. I am sorry for this blog being almost a week behind but its again that time of heavy travel.. But anyway, so now we can see what is in new CEO Stephen Elop's magical 'secret sauce' for Nokia's future, not just in smartphones, but also for featurephones.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

And some of the top-line news does seem promising. The first Windows Phone based smartphone will ship this year. It starts to sell in two weeks for example in Britain. There was considerable fear that the first Windows Phone by Nokia might be delayed till early next year, or only come out in tiny numbers right on the last days of December. Now the first phone will be out well in time for the Christmas shopping season in several of Nokia's biggest European and Asian markets.

The even better news was that Nokia was ready to announce two Windows Phone based smartphones not just one. There were other good tidbits, the moronic decision to turn Nokia's naming scheme to 'only numbers' by Stephen Elop a few months ago has now smartly been dropped and instead Nokia announced two new sub-brands of Nokia named phone series - the Lumia smartphones running Windows Phone - ie the first phone is now a Nokia Lumia 800 and the second phone is a Nokia Lumia 710. And a series of low-cost featurephones by Nokia were introduced under the Asha sub-brand. This is far smarter than the earlier decision to abandon the N-Series, E-Series, X-Series etc and only sell the Nokia 600 etc.

And on first glance, the Lumia 800 looks almost like a clone of the highly desirable (but nearly impossible to buy in most markets) Nokia N9 (which came out a few weeks ago and runs Nokia's last proprietary OS called MeeGo). The N9 had the strongest market reception of any Nokia phone ever launched and a huge buzz - creating a 5% jump in Nokia share price in just the first day of tech buzz (until CEO Elop bizarrely announced in public that no matter how well the N9 would sell, Nokia would not release any further MeeGo based phones). This new Lumia 800 has the same form factor, the identical outside dimensions in size, the same build materials, the same curved glass, and comes even in the same three colors. On quick view if on the same table, you'd be hard-pressed to tell them apart. That is certainly smart packaging by Nokia, to use some of hte buzz and good will of the N9 to help sell the new Lumia 800.

So Tomi is happy then, with the new Lumia and Nokia news? No.

THEN THERE IS THE MOUNTAIN OF BAD NEWS

So lets get real. After the rozy top-line headlines, this is now perceived as the official Nokia flagship phone. Elop refuses to let most big smartphone markets for Nokia to sell the N9 - and the Lumia 800 (which is significantly cheaper) then becomes the supposed flag-bearer for the Nokia brand for the next half year or so. It goes agains the iPhone 4S and latest Samsung Galaxies, Blackberry Bolds, HTCs, Sony(Ericsson) Xperias etc. And lets take a quick look at the Lumia 800 now that we have its specs.

SHEEP IN WOLF'S CLOTHING

We've had 3 months of drooling after the N9 with many loyal Nokia customers in leading countries hoping against hope that they can buy the N9 somewhere (apart from say Kazakhstan). And the N9 is an impressive package indeed, the 3.9 inch screen is far bigger than the iPhone's 3.5 inch screen (while the iPhone 4 and 4S have a sharper picture due to greater pixel density). There is NFC as a new Nokia premium phone offering, as well as several of Nokia's recent tech leadership items from HD TV-out to the full USB memory stick connectivity etc (ie allowing you to connect an external USB memory device to the N9 'like a real computer', not just using the phone as a memory stick). And in its style the N9 is very slick-looking using tapered design abilities to make the N9 seem even slimmer than what it really is.

Now take the Lumia 800. So it looks the same. But lets examine. The outwardly size of the handset is identical to the N9. The clever curved glass on the capacitive multi-touch touch screen is the same as the N9, so you'd of course think it has the big 3.9 inch screen.. but no. The Lumia 800 only has a 3.7 inch screen, barely noticeably bigger than the iPhone.

Then it gets worse. There is no NFC (and why?) The N9 is pentaband (5 band) GSM, the Lumia 800 is quad-band (4 band) so it connects to less networks. Then Nokia really lost it - there is no front-facing camera anymore! (Wot?)

Nokia is now regressing. The contemporary of the original iPhone 2G (ie that original iPhone from 2007 what was commonly called so radical in many markets, was actually called the 'jesusphone') by Nokia was the N95. While the iPhone 2G was slick and sexy and slim, and obviously had a far bigger screen and was touch-screen - the Nokia was years ahead on almost anything else you might want in a smarpthone. The N95 had 3G, the N95 had GPS, the N95 had a 5 megapixel camera, the N95 had MMS, the N95 shot video, the N95 was a true smartphone (yes, the original iPhone 2G was not classified a smartphone, it was only a featurephone as you could not install apps to it), the N95 had a huge app store with what back then was by far the world's biggest library of thousands of apps on Symbian, the N95 did multitasking, had a LED flash, etc etc etc.

Its not that the original iPhone 2G was a bad phone, it was a specialist ultra-cool ultra-slim featurephone that did some things the best in the world - touch screens obviously, and internet browsing, the music player, picture viewing etc. But Nokia could at least easily claim that the N95 was 'superior' on several technical fronts (every one of which Apple has since adopted to the iPhone line, so Nokia's claims would also have been justified). I am not saying one was better than the other, but its like comparing a Porsche to a Land Rover, very different types of specialist automobiles, one is better for something but the other is definitely better at something else. And for those keeping score - the Nokia N95 outsold the iPhone 2G in the first year they went head-to-head.

Same was true of each of the contemporaries of the iPhone updates. When Apple did the iPhone 3G in 2008, Nokia had the magnificent superphone, the E90 Communicator - which trumped the iPhone 3G still with many of what the N95 had introduced, but now added such improvements as the 4 inch screen size, the full QWERTY keyboard in the folder-palmtop form factor, and typical Communicator features (2 screens, 2 keyboards/keypads, 2 cameras etc). But equally, the iPhone 3G was touch screen (E90 not) and the iPhone was significantly thinner, lighter and .. far cheaper. But the E90 Communicator was the last Nokia flagship phone that was regularly rated as a better smartphone (in Europe and Asia, but obviously not in the USA where it was not sold) than the contemporary iPhone model.

Then in 2009 we had the iPhone 3GS and Nokia's unfortunate N97. The N97 was Nokia's first serious attempt at a touch screen on its flagship phone (with QWERTY slider) but the phone was seriously flawed, delayed, buggy and honestly - as Nokia VP Anssi Vanjoki admitted very candidly, they screwed it up with that model. Meanwhile this 3GS was Apple's first complete iPhone that had its birth-flaws fixed and was finally accepted in the most advanced mobile markets like Japan and South Korea and sold massively worldwide. So we know how great the 3GS was, but compare what Nokia's flagship was at least in its intended design and 'on paper' ie on its specs. The iPhone 3GS upgraded Apple's camera to 3 megapixels, Nokia had its 5 megapixels with Carl Zeiss optics and LED flash. The 3GS had 32 GB of internal storage as did the Nokia N97 but the Nokia added as usual the microSD slot with 16 GB of additional removable storage. The Apple iPhone App Store was now the world's run-away bestselling smartphone app store, but Nokia did add the N-Gage gaming platform compatibility to the N97 so at least on paper, they had access to a large catalog (or relatively old) videogames from the N-Gage portable gaming platform.

Yes, the N97 was a dog of a phone. Its touch screen was on the resistive tech, while Apple's was on the far better capacitive tech. The iPhone 3GS was as near perfection for its time that Apple had managed (bearing in mind, that the next model would bring us Antennagate to ruin an otherwise fantastic iPhone 4 launch) and the N97 was Nokia's worst flagship attempt ever. Even so - the N97 could arguably claim at least on its technical specifications dozens of areas where it 'exceeded' those of the iPhone. If that was Apple's pinnacle moment, it was Nokia's darkest moment at its flagship model stage and almost universally the N97 was crucified as a bad phone. And I have not even mentioned how horrid the first Symbian touch screen version ended up being.

Then we have the iPhone 4 vs the Nokia N8. The N8 finally did capacitive multi-touch on the finally well-performing Symbian S^3 touch screen optimized version of its software. This was the first honest attempt by Nokia to do a pure iPhone clone (ie clear touch-screen thin device with often near identical form factors and sizes to the previous iPhone 3 series, whereas Apple just conveniently moved the goal-posts with the super-sexy iPhone 4). The iPhone kept a 3.5 inch screen size but went super-sharp with its retina display. Nokia's N8 3.5 inch screen was same size but standard pixel density so the iPhone was visibly more vivid in images, videos and website pages. The iPhone 4 had upgraded its camera to 5 megapixels with LED flash and finally added the second front-facing camera, but Nokia blasted past most conteders with its 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss optics based camera and.. yes.. the real Xenon based flash. And in the 'normal Nokia features' race, could still claim all sorts of tech leads over the iPhone 4 in supporing Java and Flash, offrering the microSD slot, FM radio etc etc etc. And arguably the E7 was the sister to the N8, so with the E7 you have again the QWERTY variant and now a 3.9 inch touch screen and HD TV out etc, so again some things the iPhone 4 clearly doesn't have etc. While the N8 did not match iPhone 4 sales in the first quarter of each phone, the Nokia N8 did set a Nokia internal record for best launch of its new phone ever - and helped boost Nokia to its best quarter increasing unit sales, increasing average sales prices - and most astonishingly - also increasing Nokia profits for Q4 of 2010 (this was also Elop's first full quarter as CEO - imagine what a wonderful gift your new employer gives you, when first quarter in charge, you witness a record-setting premium phone power your company sales, revenues, average prices and profits. No wonder the shareholders loved this and rewarded Elop and Nokia with a 5% increase in the Nokia share price from when Elop had taken charge). 

FIRST FLAGSHIP THAT IS LAME

If Nokia were willing to sell the N9 globally today, that would be once again a Nokia flagship that has abilities the latest iPhone 4S doesn't - like NFC etc. But now, look at the Lumia 800 vs the iPhone 4S. The iPhone camera is upgraded to 8 megapixels. Did Elop put the 12 megapixel camera from the N8 into the Lumia 800. No. The Lumia 800 is a step down - to 8 megapixels and abandoning the Xenon flash too, the N8 is back to LED flash. What has consistently been a Nokia advantage over any current iPhone, the camera, is voluntarily abandoned by Nokia.

What of the screen size, the E90 did 4 inches, and the E7 and N9 did 3.9 inches. While the iPhone 4S is still stuck to what now seems very modest sized 3.5 inches, the Lumia 800 screen has shrunk to 3.7 inches. Yes, its marginally bigger than the iPhone but the iPhone has its brilliant retina display screen.

The Apple recently went from one back-ward facing camera to two, with the second forward-facing camera to allow videocalls. Nokia has had forward-facing cameras on practically all of its 3G phones since 2005, but now.. the newest - FLAGSHIP - Nokia Lumia 800 - abandons the front-facing second camera! Wot? This is a '3G cameraphone' that doesn't do videocalls? Hasn't Elop done enough to anger his carrier community. Now he actively destroys their installed base of video-calling enabled 3G phones. What madness is this? A VGA-standard camera module is something dirt-cheap, a couple of dollars - and remember, this Lumia 800 has REMOVED components from the inside (smaller screen size, no NFC, lesser radio frequencies etc) so its not a question of being cramped in the handset casing.

Again we have the instance of Mr Outsider-Guy CEO doing something blatantly silly, that has been done BEFORE by Nokia (the early Nokia 3G phones did not have forward-facing second cameras, and the carriers hated them and forced Nokia to put them on from the 6880 model on). Had Elop not caused the exodus of Nokia executive talent, he might have learned this from the veterans. But as he encircles himself with his Microsoft Mafia, he is clearly falling time and again to group-think, severely mis-analyzing and misunderstanding the industry where his company is supposed to be a leader. This will be yet another costly mistake Elop will have to correct soon.

What else do we see on the Lumia 800? A ton of those 'West Coast' so-called 'brilliant' innovations we witnessed so far in Elop's reign at Nokia are repeated here too. No more support of microSD cards (what a dumb move). No more removable batteries (who of us hasn't run out of juice on our phones). Meanwhile, while clearly the iPhone 4S has been a rush-job at Apple after they had to re-design the intended latest iPhone (after the carriers torpedoed Apple's initial plan to do the iPhone without a physical SIM card), the iPhone 4S does more radio frequencies now, as its a dual standard phone on both GSM and CDMA networks; and adds cool new tech like Siri.

BURNING PLATFORMS NOW BURNING FLAGSHIPS

Nokia announces proudly its latest flagship. It is not just weaker than the world's bestselling smartphones - Samsungs (I won't even go to the latest Galaxy specs here) but of the standard comparison - this is the first Nokia flagship ever, that is on essentially every spec no better than - and often worse than - the contemporary iPhone. Let me put this in a car analogy. You Nokia are Mercedes-Benz. Apple is BMW. BMW announces the newest 7 Series. And what does Mercedes do? They abandon their S series, and celebrate that their top phone is the C-Series instead. The C-Series can compete against a BMW 5-Series rather well specs-on-specs and prices etc - but come on, the true rival of the 7 Series is the Mercedes S-Class, not the C-Class.

And the Lumia 800 is a far cry from the best that Nokia can do today. It is a mid-price smartphone, not a true flagship. Now, some of our readers may understand that kind of 'instinctively' but the average consumer will not. They will walk into the store, and say could you show me the newest Nokia. And then probably want to compare it with some phones from rival makers like Apple, Samsung, HTC, etc. And as most operators have stopped selling the N8 and E7 (which also are quite old, and are obviously part of 'burning plaforms' Symbian OS, so any salesguy will feel they are instantly obsolete) and in most of the world you can't even see an N9, the sales rep in the next 6 months or so, will be showing the Lumia 800, and next to it, the contemporary rivals.

At the very least, this will further damage Nokia's image in supposed 'leadership'. Almost inevitably the Lumia 800 will fail in head-to-head comparisons against the top flagships from rivals. And if the reviewer then writes that 'well, but the Nokia is a bit cheaper' - that will NOT help Nokia's failing brand image either. If it was the other way around, Nokia was seen as better but 'more expensive' at least that would help restore some of Nokia's lost market leadership position and industry tech leader position it is now completely gifting to Apple, Samsung etc.

USERS WILL DECIDE..

And this is all without touching the phone and using it. We have only seen the launch and some videos and pictures. We do know this was a rush-job at Nokia. So the testing has not been as thorough as it was with the N8 for example. It may be that the Lumia 800 exhibits some of the development problems we saw with the rushed Nokia N97. We certainly know that many loyal Nokia users - who have used Symbian for years and over many Nokia models - will find the Windows Phone 7 experience 'different'. Some will welcome it as new and refreshing - but that type of thinking is more of a young mind. Nokia of recent times is not the young person's phone. So if the user base is more adult and elderly users, they are more likely to react to ANY changes as 'inherently bad' ie 'this is not like Nokia used to be'. There will inevitably be more returns just because the Windows Phone OS will seem unfamiliar and often then perceived as unfriendly or counter-intuitive, regardless of how good or bad the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango version and its implementation on Nokia actually is.

How well will this phone capture iPhone or Blackberry or Samsung or HTC users? Not well. The iPhone 4S is clearly in a better class now. The Blackberry users want their QWERTY and silly Nokia didnt' include a slider-QWERTY variant among the first Lumia models (again, illustrating how incompetent Elop is in not understanding the industry or the core customers of Nokia - or pigheadedly refusing to listen to Nokia veteran management in helping him understand - remember, he expressed surprise in how strongly QWERTY phones sell in the featurephones segment for Nokia in Q3).

Samsung and HTC on Android have their better specs (bigger screens, microSD slots blah-blah-blah) and obviously for any current Android users looking at the Android app store space at near half a million apps, and comparing to Microsoft Windows Phone at some tens of thousands of apps - will find it quite silly to switch (today, maybe some day).

NO SAVIOR HERE

I am not saying nobody will buy the Lumia 800. We are certain to see the biggest marketing PR blitz combining the efforts and budgets of Nokia and Microsoft. The Lumia 800 will certainly sell. But no matter how much of that lipstick you put on the pig, it is still a pig. What I am saying, that there are going to be Nokia Symbian owners who will be disappointed in anything from the lame specs (who would abandon the 12 megapixel camera of the N8 or the 3.9 inch screen and QWERTY of ther E7 for example) to the unfamiliar user experience. This existing customer base will NOT transition 1 to 1 from existing top-line Nokia phones to the Lumia 800 - not even on those networks/carriers who fully market and support the Lumia. So on the networks that fully commit to Lumia 800, the transfer will be less than 1 to 1; on other networks Lumia will get weak or no marketing support and most consumers will ignore the 800 pretty much like they're now ignoring the other Symbian devices by Nokia.

And what of recapturing lost Nokia customers from iPhone and others? The N9 would have been 'THE' phone to convince lost Nokia users to 'come back' but the Lumia 800 is definitely not the phone to try that. Anyone now deciding to try a return via the Lumia 800 will be severely disappointed and that will be in the press and the salesreps will know the stories and steer existing Non-Nokia users to consider other choices.

And yeah.. the USA? It is not having this brand new Microsoft-awesome Nokia-return 'superphone' offered for Christmas - on ANY of the USA networks! This was supposed to be one of Elop's reasons why he selected Microsoft. He even appointed a Microsoft sales dude to run Nokia's USA sales. So where are the big carriers and their support of Lumia 800? Nokia went as far as (again Elop madness) ending all Symbian sales and support in the USA this year, in preparation of the big come-back of USA return of Nokia. Not one carrier will sell the Lumia 800 this quarter. Wot? Elop had 8 and a half months to land one carrier deal - with the full 'weight of Microsoft support' with him. Not one carrier deal ! Bear in mind, that only days before he made his crazy 'Osborne Effect' annoucement in February, Nokia HAD a confirmed launch deal of then the hot version of Symbian, S^3 and its next iteration called Anna, on what was Nokia's next 'superphone' after the E7 - the X7. And on who? No less than AT&T the primary carrier of the iPhone! But it was not AT&T who cancelled X7 launch - that confirmed deal was cancelled by Nokia (ie Elop) days before he wanted to announce his marriage to Microsoft. Nokia would have had X7 sales for 3 Quarters on AT&T this year - with full carrier subsidy - and now Elop has ZERO carrier support of Symbian and of the Lumia 800 - and all this with the backdrop that the US carriers and consumers wanted the N9 but Elop refuses to let them buy it..

THEN MORE BAD NEWS

Ok. The Lumia 800 won't save Nokia but it hopefully will sell better than the crashing sales of Symbian phones. But there was a lower-spec lower-cost 'mainstream' Lumia 710. Sure. Did you see WHEN the Lumia 710 will hit the stores? Not now in Q4. Not in Q1. Nokia says the Lumia 710 will ship in... the 'first half' of next year - meaning Q2. Expect the SECOND phone by Nokia running Windows Phone to be in select stores the earliest in about April of May of next year. That is VERY late. This Lumia 800 is a dog already even without anyone actually using it and perhaps complaining about it. But the cheaper and more mass-market Lumia 710 won't arrive until about six months from now. That is VERY slow.

And then, what of other Nokia news. Where is the Nokia 600?. This was supposed to be first Nokia (Symbian based) smartphone that used Elop's (then) new naming scheme after he killed off the N-Series, E-Series etc naming. And take a look. Several sources like GSM Arena, Phones Review etc report that the 600 has been killed by Nokia - only days before it was to ship! This is not so much that the Nokia ship is taking water and clearly sinking - now the Captain is found punching new holes underneath the waterline. What madness is to kill the phone that was ready to ship? We already know Nokia factories run so idle, Nokia is laying off employees and closing one of its factories already (PS - the Lumia phones are made by outside handset maker Compal of Taiwan - how utterly idiotic management is that, when your own factories run idle - you hire an outside factory to make your phones..)

Elop's other misadventures such as the bizarre choice to seek a new ringtone are not met with happiness either. And underneath the radar, Nokia has been firing the marketing and advertising agencies that have worked with Nokia for years - remember, the problem Elop was hired to do was to fix 'execution' problems, not try to turn premium phone maker Nokia into the mobile equivalent of low-marging PC maker Dell - and what 'execution' issue is helped if while you change your platforms - and your factories - and your naming/branding - and you scare away all competent existing managers from the inside - and you then go fire your ad and marketing agencies who at least knew Nokia and its customers etc - further diminishing any chance that Nokia might retain SOME insights it had gathered in the past 13 years of being the world's bestselling phone brand and the only one who existed over that 13 year period who had reported a profit in every quarter in its phone unit (until Elop took over obviously).

So that is what I think. Nokia has set the world-record for market share destruction in a year by a market leader - not in telecoms or tech, but across every global industry - where literally Nokia's market share in smartphones of 29% in December is 14% today - fuelled by the Elop madness. And now we see his Lumia strategy. One utterly lame mid-priced phone, that most consumers will perceive as Nokia's 'flagship' that is no viable rival to the flagships of the big smartphone rivals. Even with the biggest marketing and PR push of Nokia and Microsoft money, the Lumia 800 will not set the world on fire. It will sell in modest numbers this Quarter and Q1. What Nokia desperately needs is the next Lumia phone. Or no. What Nokia really needs is to sell the N9 globally now as its formal flagship - and also release the MeeGo powered N950 (the QWERTY variant to the N9) to boost its premium image. Unfortunately Elop's ego cannot take that, as this might be seen as showing Nokia's own OS development has been better than what Elop negotiated from Microsoft.

The first Lumia phone could have been a world-contender. In fact, it SHOULD have been. If Elop was in any way competent, it truly WOULD have been. You and I know, if Anssi Vanjoki was in charge and this was the make-or-break phone for Nokia, we would be celebrating the coolest phone ever made (think how excited we were with the N9 all while Elop tried to kill the enthusiasm). At the very least, Elop should have made it a true clone of the N9 with NFC and 3.9 inch screen and forward-facing camera etc. But no. This is a lame phone. The next Lumia is far too far in the future. Nokia will suffer more market share loss in Q4 and into Q1. The losses generated by the smartphone unit will continue. Can Nokia climb back into corporate profits for Q4 depends now on the dumbphones unit. Nokia IS becoming the Dell of mobile phones, and a slave to Microsoft's whims (not unlike Dell there too). Sad.