Nokia Q2 Results: Bad bad and will be even more bad

So Nokia Q2 results are out and the earnings season gets into gear. We heard the carnage. Looking at it from the Digital Jamboree angle (smartphones market share bloodbath, year 3) we get the following findings

Nokia unit sales of all smartphones fell from 11.9 million in Q1 to 10.2 million now in Q2. The decline is 14%. This while the industry is expected to grow this quarter. My preliminary market share for all Nokia smartphones is 6% now, down from 8% just three months ago.

We heard right at the top of the Q2 results, that Nokia had shipped 4.0 million Lumia smartphones in Q2. While that is not the same as sales, lets not be picky, it is clearly doubling the sales of Lumia from Q1 when the level was 2 million. And so did we have a monster AT&T powered USA surge of Lumia? ...No. The total Nokia USA handset sales in units last quarter (Q1) was 600,000 total handsets which was dumbphones and smartphones, and smartphones both on Symbian and Windows Phone (Lumia had launched on T-Mobile). Now how much more do we see in Q2? Try none. Yes, the total sales of handsets by Nokia in the USA, in Q2 was.. 600,000. The only thing the AT&T massive launch marketing blitz achieved, was some transfer of previous Nokia dumbphone and Symbian smartphone sales to Lumia. Even if somehow all Nokia dumbphone sales had ended, the absolute maximum Lumia sales in the USA would be that, 600,000. Not the millions many analysts were expecting when they ooh'd and aah'd over the Amazon sales rankings haha. And this should put an end to the hype about AT&T PR people spinning the story that Lumia sales were somehow good. No they weren't. Not unless you think Nokia's recent Symbian and dumbphone sales in the USA have been 'good'. 

Lumia was designed to be US consumer-friendly. It is on two networks, carriers. Last month I did some price/sales modelling and estimated Lumia 710 sales on T-Mobile at 290,000. Now how has AT&T managed with the more expensive Lumia 900, adding definitely not more than 310,000. That is your 'success' right there. And now, after the Lumia series is Osborned by Steve Ballmer not letting the Nokia smartphones be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, we see the prices slashed (and some carriers already refusing to sell any more Lumia like T-Mobile Germany which cancelled the Lumia 900 launch altogether).

Well. But globally Nokia doubled Lumia sales (shipments) in one quarter, from 2 million to 4 million. And that migtht seem good, if you are growing organically from a clean slate, like say Apple did early with the iPhone. But Nokia is not a newcomer to smartphones. It is migrating its massive existing loyal customer base of smartphone users from Symbian to Windows Phone (Symbian's installed base - that is yes, customers currently using a Symbian based smartphone was - get this - 300 million at the start of this year. That is the customer base we are dealing with). How's that going?

I said last summer, before we had seen Lumia, that I expected Nokia to produce such a good first series of Windows Phone based smarpthones, that all during 2012, Nokia would be able to migrate customers 1-to-1 from Symbian to Windows Phone. How did Lumia fare? Not so well. All along its existence, the ratio has not been anywhere near that, Nokia is bleeding customers to rivals when Nokia attempts this transition. And again, in Q2, we have 3.7 million lost Symbian sales in exchange with the 2 million gained Lumia buyers. That means that still Nokia is losing customers and the 'exchange rate' is 1.85 to 1. So yes, two customers walk in to a store, holding old Nokia Symbian smartphones. The sales people do their thing, and in almost half of the cases, the customer won't take the Lumia, but goes to Android or iPhone or whatever rival smartphone they prefer over the Lumia.

This is disaster. And this was before the Osborning now of the whole Lumia line. But yes, lets be clear, the non Windows smartphone sales at Nokia (Symbian and MeeGo) fell quite dramatically from 9.9 million in Q1 to 6.2 million now. That is a fall of 37% in just three months. And yes, for Nokia to just have been competent in the transition, 4 million Lumia sales now is nowhere enough. Just to cover the loss of Symbian customers, Nokia should have now sold 5.7 million Lumia - and note, that would not be any kind of gain for Nokia, only holding steady. Elop's Lumia series, on the Windows Phone platfrom, is now underperforming at 30% from where it should be for an 'ok' performance level !!!

And again, this is the peak of Lumia, in this current edition. Nokia already warned that Q3 will be bad. We already hear from all kinds of markets that the early buzz around Lumia is over and the series is turning into a dud. Not to mention Nokia halving its prices etc.. So going forward, we won't see significant growth in Lumia sales into Q3, we may very well see a decline already!

To understand the context, when Elop took over, in the first full quarter he was in charge, Nokia's smartphone unit sold 28 million smartphones and had 29% market share. Nokia was twice as big as Apple and three times bigger than Samsung. Nokia's smarpthone unit was growing sales strongly - the year 2010 Nokia had seen bigger growth in units sold of its own smarpthones than Apple had with the iPhone! And Nokia's smarpthone unit was profitable, and again, the first quarter Elop was in charge, Nokia's smartphone unit generated a Nokia-record jump in its profits.

Now the unit sells 10.2 million smarpthones, the market share is down to 6%. While the industry grows strongly, Nokia's smartphone sales shrink. Nokia is now one third the size of Apple and one fifth the size of Samsung in smartphones. Nokia's smarpthone unit just generated the biggest loss Nokia has ever seen, and the guidance for Q3 is that the handset unit will have as bad a quarter if not worse!!!

I told you last summer that Nokia would hit 6% market share in Q2 of 2012 and that Nokia's Lumia series would only sell 4 million smartphones this quarter. I have since actually made a more pessimistic forecast (and luckily things weren't quite that bad) but remember - last summer many big analyst houses were promising you that Nokia and Microsoft would become the third ecosystem and have over 20% market share this year haha. That won't be happening. I said in that forecast that Nokia ends this year, in Q4, at 3% market share. Now with the sudden and totally unexpected Osborning of the whole Lumia line, I am certain Nokia's market share will be 2% at the end of the year, not 3%.

Needless to say, the fall from 29% to 6% in 18 months is a world record in collapse of a market leader of any global industry leader, ever. Nokia has thrown away 4 out of every 5 loyal customers it held only a year and a half ago! Yes, we are witnessing history being made - history of the worst CEO of all time (And it will only get worse in Q3). Pay attention to this, this is the classic case study for MBA's of the future to study how not to destroy your company, using methods like the Elop Effect.

I will be returning with more analysis later, I now gotta go catch my plane.. 

UPDATE 20 July - I have just posted the follow-up blog, with deep analysis including regional splits of smartphone vs dumbphone sales, average sales prices, an estimate of AT&T USA Lumia sales, the regional split of Lumia etc. See the deep analysis for more. 

Comments

[CN]

@note

Thanks for the link. Now, I hope all will read it through carefully since already now there are news talking how Nokia shipped 330,000 Lumias to US, as stated by Timo Ihamuotila, the CFO. That's nonsense, he never said anything like that, but TechCrunch, PhoneArena, SeekingAlpha, WMPoweruser etc are efficiently spreading this one.

I guess, Matt Burns (TechCrunch) gets the credit this time - I feel he tried to tell the truth, but has been misunderstood.

[Roman]

@Baron95 Will you also congrat another 10k nokians who will be fired soon?

[zlutor]

@Baron95: are you just kidding, aren't you?

Since Symbian is a burning, dead platform, designed and implemented by stupid, lazy non-california based idiots, so it should not ship at all.

So, maybe the rest of the 10 million was all N9s... :-))))

Jesus Christ... :-(

[Vinicius]

Actually, N9 sales being 100k is very impressive.

It is no longer sold in 50%+ of the few countries it was launched at.

And I don't think it did too badly overall. I don't have any data to prove this (nor anyone else outside Nokia), but I think N9 may have outsold the entire Lumia series until now. I don't think it is currently being produced anymore.

[Sam]

@Baron95 The sales lf N9 are truly amazing compared to the fact that Elop (worst ceo ever) has made all thing imagined to kill the whole product... And basically no marketing for N9 as well.

The sales just clearly show how great N9 is. Go Jolla with Meego! Definately my next smartphone!

[zlutor]

@Baron95: Just about 100% percent increase...

There is an urban legend:
Where: Albanian Parliament - well, parliament in a communist dictatorship...
When: the middle of previous century
Stalin's 70th birthday is coming and Albanian communist were thinking what present they should sent to The Generalissimo.

Speaker #1: Comrades, we should send him a main battle tank.
Speaker #2: Comrades, The Soviet Union is the greatest nation, The Generalissimo is the greatest leader, we can not send him just one single tank!
Speaker #1: Yes, my comrade, you are absolutely right, we can not send him just one tank. Let's send him all of our two tanks!

So, that's all about 100% increase...

Minor hints to whom are not so familiar with European issues. At that time Albania was one of the poorest country in Europe, lead by a dictator (and the Communist Party)

[kkk]

100k isn't bad from a one year old product, which was killed before birth by it's creator. And I still would't be so happy about lumia sales considering that ONLY one Meego phone sold around 2 million units, comparing one phone to whole lumia lineup is ridiculous.
In any case It's fun that now even I can play with 10000 Nokia shares, and benefit from the fall. Thou it's quite risky.... in any case.... Nokia Lumia sales aren't still good enough.... I mean some marginal product like samsung galaxy note sold in north america more than whole lumia lineup....njaa...

[Roman]

@Baron95 Are you teen?

[khim]

@Baron95: Do you guys not know how to read the earnings release/conf notes?

Of course we do!

@Baron95: Please let me know if I need to explain it further for you.

Sure. Start with line number three: "Symbian Sales: 6.1M". Open the original document (link was helpfully provided on the previous page), look on it and try to find out this number.

Hint: it's not there. 6.1M number was produced by allaboutsymbian.com site as 10.2M-4M=6.1M (low estimate to be 100% sure) to show that WP7 is real burning platform - and of course this number includes both Symbian sales and N9 sales (I guess allaboutsymbian.com guys just wanted to see as many symbian sales as possible).

IOW: 100K N9 sales you've pulled from your ass is just a rounding error and has nothing to do with real sales! Elop is STILL afraid to say how many N9 Nokia was able so sell - and this fact says something about these sales.

[Bob Shaw]

In this sole focus on smartphones particularly Lumia, the other important items out of the Q2 earnings release as below are overshadowed.

1. Stabilization of the feature phone business with the arrival of the new Asha range.

2. Decent overall performance by NSN.

3. Growth of the location based services (Navteq Mapping division).

This shows that even a reduced Nokia without the smartphone business would just do fine.

[N9]

@Baron95 ??? how old are you ?

[chithanh]

Asymco has posted a new analysis. He says that cumulative Lumia shipments (not sales) to the US were between 400k and 1M, most likely around 630k. He assumed that no dumbphones were sold and Symbian:WP7 split of 20:80 in Q2.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/07/19/how-many-lumia-phones-were-shipped-in-the-us/

[Former Symbian Evangelist]

Is there any fact based report on how many markets still officially offer a Nokia N9? Is there even a confirmation whether the phone is still in production? There is no use looking at how many N9s are sold now; it is dead and buried. The interest for me is only how fast Lumia can replace Symbian in sales figures (or not).

[Heh]

A year old N9 sold 100k is quite impressive, as Nokia doesn't sell it in any of the major markets.

And it is sold at about same price as unsubsidiced Lumia 900, or 25% more than Lumia 800, or twice as much as Lumia 710, which means that those phones had a big impact on Nokias average smartphone selling price.

Wouldn't surprice me if N9 sold more units than Lumia 900.

And wouldnt surprice me if N9 sells still when current Lumias are in the bargain bin,

[Heh]

"That mean that Nokia can't sell as many Meego-N9 devices as they planned/intended."

If that were true the N9 would have gone into deep discount bin. But N9 has held its price high, 25% higher than Lumia 810 which is similar in hardware. Nokia makes a bigger profit from N9 sales than Lumia 800.

What is more worrying is that they had to write down on Lumia inventory, which is only about 3 months old, and prediccted sales to be higher than they were. Q3 will be all about giving away Lumias before WP 8 hits the selves. Probably late as is the habit of Microsoft.

[Interested to know]

I'd love to read about the faux grassroots marketing that is being done to support Windows Phone. A poster on the Verge website posted this link to show that all of the google searches for "lumia" were being generated by someone in Redmond, Washington:
https://www.google.com/trends/?q=lumia+900&ctab=0&geo=us&geor=all&date=ytd&sort=0

Nokia and Microsoft are constantly projecting this rosy image of Windows Phone but in every case it later comes out that they were lying or manipulating the stats.

[eduard]

@Baron95

You think Nokia is doing wonderfully well, so how about some predictions? For instance, how many Luminas do you think Nokia will sell in the 3rd and 4th quarters, and how many Microsoft phones in all of 2013? What do you think Nokia's share of the smartphone market will be in 4th quarter 2012, and 4th quarter 2013? Make some predictions, and then we can see who turns out more accurate, you or Tomi.

[Kenny]

Over 1 million N9 users have registered the Track&Protect application. See here:

https://twitter.com/TrackandProtect/status/201255630143631360

This means there are more, much more than 1 million N9 sold (not shipped) because not every user register with track and protect and its services are not available in all countries.

[MarcoAustria]

remarks to the Nokia Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript (seekingalpha.com/article/732691)

Elop: "The catalyst becomes the next wave of Lumia devices and the next wave"

So Elop himself means the current models are outdated and can't compete in the market

Elop: "[...] we've obviously had more time to work with Microsoft in terms of the differentiating capabilities. So as you see the next wave and the wave after that of Lumia products [...] In the existing round of Lumia devices, we've been somewhat restricted [...] What you essentially saw is us adopting the standard chassis, the standard capabilities."

It get's better: He says the Lumia line was outdated from start. Only the future models will bring what Nokia needs (again Osborned - or Elop Effected)

Elop: "we were going to be increasingly focused on specific markets and specific operators" " That works far better than broadly going across Europe"

So again he admitts a retail problem. Whereas old Nokia could give phones to operater and they were sold, the new Nokia has to make specific (costly) deals. And only in Elops mind "specific markets and operators" is better than "broadly going across Europe". Also with the bad US performance I can't imagine the advantage of the specific deals

Elop: "[...] operator support for the third ecosystem. And that continues to be a very strong part of the conversation with operators all over the world."

so no news or coming forward there. months come and go but the conversation "continues". and note there is no indication of support in his words. furthermore nokia is doing microsofts job as it is their, the microsoft ecosystem

Elop: "[...] how we're working with Microsoft is [...] we have a very important [...] dependency on them as it relates to Windows Phone. But of course, they have a [...] dependency on us as it relates to the location-based assets. That's an important dynamic in the relationship to ensure that it remains healthy [...]" "our relationship with Microsoft. It's something we've established both the partnership level but also contractually as well. So we have very clear rights and capabilities within the nature of our relationship with Microsoft to maintain that preferred status."

well said: microsoft gets where the money is (ecosystem) and nokia gets the unprofitable rest (location). and he admits its no partnership, as it is build on threads (contractually, dependency on another business = location) - so no mutual benefit. and nokia is investing heavily in the first one. Furthermore they annoy their clients with microsofts ecosystem (demands) aka "constant conversation with operaters"

Elop: "So clearly, we have a very close relationship that is not the same as what anyone else has at this point. So the relationships are good there."

He has to reinforce many times. As did Ballmer, no wait he didn't he mention Nokia now always with other partners (mostly HTC). The relationship is one-sided an observer might think

Overall its as worse as I feared. And if you read the whole transcript and Elops answers you'll note that Elop gives many words, but no clear sustainable answers. Nokia was made dependant from Microsoft and it's captain is clueless and hopes all will be better in the future with the next Microsoft Windows Phone 8.

[J.O. Aho]

@Baron95:

I predict that MS-Windows 8 that will cause computer users to get a bad experience of desktop computing (similar to MS-Windows ME and MS-Windows Vista) and regards of that they will choose other options than microsoft products, going for more iMac, iPhone, iPad or Andriod tablets and phones.

Carriers will continue to resist WP devices and Nokia sales will be falling and we may see Elop go late spring 2013 and the secret fallback plan is activated.

MS-Windows 9 will be released late 2013 or early 2014 which will be more desktop orientated, as microsoft has to try to regain it's loss of desktop market shares.
We may even see computers with preinstalled Android/ChromeOS and easily taking another big chunk of the desktop market.