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« How Many Lumia Sales? As Nokia (and Microsoft) ashamed to reveal number, lets count - and compare to N9 MeeGo sales | Main | Gutenberg is a moblogger, Martin Luther is coding and the Medici are using MPesa »

January 27, 2012

Comments

Hoista

The numbers maybe accurate to within 100K, but the insight is misleading. 92% is only correct if the Lumia was available for the whole of Q4 to those 7 countries in question. Otherwise a % of those sales would have been made when Lumia was not available.

Peter

why do the 45% of nokia previous consumers refuse to take any nokia phones?
it is not because of the bad features or tastes of symbian^3 but because nokia CEO told the world they are obsolete and will stop service within a few years.

this CEO Elop is NOT an idiot but simply a WS criminal on secret mission to destroy nokia from inside.

cycnus

i think we might see a suspend in nokia share after the next quarter ending (Q1 2012)

Vikram

Tomi...lets assume that Nokia didn't have Elop and made the transitions in the manner that you described. Do you really think that Nokia wouldn't have tanked anyway?

My point is that Nokia's marketshare that you pointed to before Elop's burning platform memo was a mirage. It wasn't going to hold up.

This is the exact same issue with Blackberry. If you looked at their numbers in late 2010 or 2011 at the same time Elop made his switch, you would think that everything was ok...when in fact it wasn't ok. Their platform was inadequate and so was Nokia's Symbian and Meego platforms. It was going to crash anyway.

Put it another way...if Nokia acted the way that you wanted them to, what do you think would have been the differences in sales between what they did and what you wished they did?

I expect that it would not have been much different...their technology platform was inadequate, as was their content and developer ecosystem. The same thing would have happened - as it happened with Blackberry.

jo

@vikam blackberry is holding up and blackberry have terrible hardware anyway
now nokia with android ir meego it would have more chances than with windows phone

elm70

@Peter

Elop is a Criminal, Jorma is his first partner in the crime, and the board is also supporting the criminal path. The owner of the crime are the american funds that control Nokia since a while.

@Tomi

The Elop criminal act is visible since 11.2 ... why nobody in Finland move a finger ?
I know you are stating since June (maybe earlier) that Elop need to be fired ... but you are the only Finish voice that is shouting from far east ... in Finland, is looking like people still believe in Santa, and whatever no sense is said by Jorma or Elop is believed by the mass.

Anyhow ... FIRE ELOP IS TOO LATE ... it was already too late in March 2011 ... he immediately outsource Symbian, drop QT, and leave MeeGo .... there is no way back anymore for Nokia.

Only hope is that finally Microsoft can make a decent OS for a smartphone, it never manage to do anything in the mobile world, even if Microsof is there since day one, since 2002 Microsoft is failing to sell their terrible mobile OS, so for Nokia is needed a miracle for survive

Not only Microsoft was bad in the mobile world, but even Palm was easily able to make better OS for PDA, compared to the Windows CE stuffs ... so their track of bad OS for PDA, Mobile device is since ages ...

Tchuss

e_lm_70

Alex

Your article needs a 'tweet' button :)

cycnus

@Elm,

I also think it's already too late for nokia for turning back if they fired elop now. First Sendo, now Nokia, Microsoft is really criminal.

Sander van der Wal

Wouldn't it be possible that most of Nokia's remaining customers simply found the Lumia 800 too expensive?

Nokia has always been selling more cheap Symbian devices than expensive ones. So, if you want to compare the Lumia succes with Nokia's customers to that of earlier high-end Symbian devices, you need to check whether the proportion of high-end sales to low-end sales is now very different with the Lumia combined with the remaining high-end Symbian and MeeGo devices, compared to the cheaper Nokia smartphones.

In other words, following this line of reasoning, Nokia's old communicator range was also a disaster, because most, almost all of, Nokia's smartphone customers bought something much less expensive.

I agree that Lumia did not capture the mind of a large proportion of the high-end buyer market, but that was to be expected.

Artem Marchenko

Lumia has big troubles, indeed, but it's 8% of Nokia smartphone buyers in *whole Q4* who bought Lumia. If you take into account only the weeks when Lumia was actually available, percentage will go higher. Not to N8's 22% probably, but maybe to some 12-15%?

The biggest pity though is that Nokia isn't willing to sell N9 in many countries. Even if it's an experiment not to be continued (as Elop pushed and he seems to be extremely uneasy reversing the decisions) why not to run the experiment on a larger scale if it brings good money?

janne

Where did you got the number of N9's sold? You are telling that 1.75 million N9 is sold in Q4, which doesnt sound possible, it is way too much. Any RELIABLE source for that?

Bob Shaw

It would be interesting to find out how much was the cost of Symbian to Nokia. Market share is important only when a company can extract some acceptable level of profits out of it. Nokia had 6000 plus employees supporting Symbian. I don't know if so many employees are needed to support an OS. Some benchmark with iOS and Android would be useful.

Having said that, a large company like Nokia should also be able to support multiple OSes provided they are profitable. I think Nokia should create a separate unit for Symbian within itself similar to Maemo and support it to the level of its profitability.

cycnus

@Sander van der wall

there might be a couple of scenario:
1. the nokia user that using nokia because it believe nokia rule, already left. the one who doesn't want the symbian because already accustom too.
2. Nokia think that lumia 800 were the high end, but when user see the specs, they think other phone were better in that price range.
3. WP7 phone sucks, and user know it.... as easy as ABC.
4. Microsoft need to triple their advertising money. Perhaps giving as much as US$ 50 to the sales person who manage to sell the phone.

cycnus

@Lee

Samsung is not coward because it's not in big denial. Nokia Elop is coward because he's in denial and has something to hide.

vladkr

I read Nokia Q4 report, that was a bit painful as I'm not an economist, but there is one little sentence I particularely appreciated on page 4 :

"Nokia believes it is currently not appropriate to provide annual targets for 2012 mainly for the following reasons: (...)"

Is captain lost in the middle of the ocean? He doesn't know where to go, does he?

I remember a training program I made in Finland in 1999, where Nokia presented it's view of Nokia (and mobile technology) for the next decade; not only they did the effort, but most predictions appeared to be actually right. What's happening now?

I'm not a fan of MS, and even less of Windows Phone, but I can undestand WP can be a part of a strategy, not the ONLY strategy.

That's as if McDonalds decided to promote salads (Windows Phone), over their best selling Big-Mac (Symbian). Both can be offered, but salads won't ever replace big-macs.

zlutor

@cycnus: pro or contra? :-)

cycnus

@vladkr.....

agree with you. Instead of transforming symbian user to WP7, elop should capturing those android/iOS user with BOTH symbian and wp7.... in other word.... what elop did is for microsoft best, not for nokia best.

@zlutor
Lee were trying to discredit tomi when he said samsung were a coward too because tomi said Elop doesn't give actual number on lumia and N9.

I said it's different. In nokia, elop were changing the course of nokia and want nokia only to serve salad (i mean Windows phone). Therefore, he need to show how's he's strategy effecting Nokia.

In Samsung, the CEO were trying to sell anything they could. So, if the WP sales were bad, it won't affect samsung, as samsung still have the galaxy line up, and the CEO doesn't say the galaxy line up were burning on fire.

It would be great if samsung open their number, but samsung is not in denial/problem. So Lee argument is invalid.

Joe

For those curious about the 'Der Stern' article that Tomi keeps referencing, check the link below or run it through the translator of your choice in case you don't speak German:
http://www.stern.de/digital/telefon/smartphone-nokia-n9-exotisches-one-hit-wonder-1770646.html

ej victor

How do we account for deversions? As a U.S. customer my Q4 purchases were an E7 and an N9 - neither were USA variants (All Symbian phones stopped being sold in USA by Nokia before Q4)... My point is that a TREMENDOUS amount of N9's were devireded from "poor" countries and sold to the technorati in developed countries.

sovatar

Vikram wrote: "...lets assume that Nokia didn't have Elop and made the transitions in the manner that you described. Do you really think that Nokia wouldn't have tanked anyway?"

Many here agree that Nokia pre Elop was extremely poor in execution, it took too long to bring new devices to the market, integration was bad, etc, etc. However, their QT strategy was sound (Something what no one can proof, but there are very string indications that I am right).

Many here agree that Elop was brought in to fix that execution. What he did was changing the strategy, betting the horse on a proven dud (WP phone has what, 1% market share after more tha a year and extreme promotions?). And Elop's execution of the change is beyond bad.

Pre Elop:
Nokia did the right things wrong.

With Elop:
Nokia does the wrong things wrong.

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