Kantar November Numbers: Suggest Decline in Windows Phone and.. Increase in Symbian? Nokia is so doomed

A very accurate predictor of the current Quarter smartphone sales trends is a population-weighted average of the most recent Kantar numbers of the current quarter, compared to the previous quarter. We've now seen the pattern for many quarters and Kantar's numbers foretell very accurately what is the global reality on a very short term view, ie now in late December, with November sales data, we have a good view to Q4 (October-December) quarter sales.

Windows Phone 8 was supposed to excite the world and restore Microsoft and Windows to smartphones (yeah, when have we heard that before, and before, and before, and before). Nokia's brand new Lumia 920 and 820 were supposed to be the best Windows Phones ever made and somehow magical in restoring Nokia's past glories from America to China. With the parallel launch of Windows 8 for the PC environment, the Microsoft powered ecosystem was supposed to be on a big comeback. Well, I don't specialize in the PC world but rumors from that side suggest Windows 8 has been far worse in its early adoption than say Windows 7 was. This does not suggest a glamorous Christmas Quarter for Redmond on its main business. Well, at least we have the new Nokia Lumias and the HTCs and Samsungs and others doing the 'magnificent' new Windows Phone 8 smartphones, right? Enter Kantar. 

KANTAR SUGGESTS WINDOWS PHONE SALES ARE DOWN FROM Q3 !!

Kantar always gives us some of its markets it studies, not all. This time from the November 2012 stats they published, we have a good comparison to September Kantar data (both before Windows Phone 8 launched, and data that was reported in Q3). The regions that Kantar reported both in September and November are the European big 5 countries ie EU5 (Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain), plus the USA, Australia and Brazil. When we take the population-weighted averages of those four regions, and calculate the Windows Phone market share then and now, we get this finding:

Kantar numbers population-weighted average for these 4 regions in Q4 suggested a global average market share for Windows Phone to be 5.3% (don't worry that the reality was only 2%, remember this is not a 'globally representative' sample of Kantar data, this sample strongly over-samples Windows OS's best markets, USA and Europe, and ignores the huge smartphone markets where Windows is negligable, such as China, India and Japan. The point we want, is to compare Kantar last quarter vs Kantar now.

What does Kantar measure for those same four regions now, for November? The weighted average of those same four regions says Windows Phone new sales market share has fallen to 3.8%. Yes, a drop of one third! So what was 1.9% global Windows Phone market share in Q3, these Kantar measurements suggest that after Windows Phone 8 was launched, the global market share for Windows Phone is now crashing to 1.3%. We rounded it to 2% last quarter (was almost 3% in the previous quarter) and Kantar numbers suggest we will round off the Windows Phone market share for Christmas at 1%. That is catastrophic.

Now, remember, the Christmas Quarter, Q4, October to November, does always feature a big jump in smartphone sales. I am modelling a 30% jump from Q3 data. So while the Windows Phone market share is down by a third (according to Kantar measurements) the actual sales are not down by much. If the global smartphone market grew 30% for Christmas, then the total global Windows Phone sales (both platforms, old Windows Phone 7.x and new Windows Phone 8) would be about 2.9 million units.

By The Way.. I did warn you, that the new Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 sales will underperform at Nokia compared to the first Windows Phone launches a year ago. I explained what factors were wrong, mostly in the executive management by Stephen Elop the CEO, who raised prices, not lowered them - raising prices means less sales. Who also limited his carrier relationships, limited distribution means less sales than broad distribution. Etc Etc Etc. I told you so...

ANY OTHER CONTRADICTORY DATA?

But wait, how about China! Yeah, Nokia's Lumia 920T that will launch for China Mobile on the Chinese proprietary 3G standard, TD-SCDMA, will not launch until January. So no help there. What of other Chinese smartphone sales on Windows? Informa has just reported that Windows Phone market share in China is 1%. When Analysys, Gartner and IDC have given China numbers for their latest reports, none mentioned Windows Phone at all, it is that small.

So don't expect miracles out of China. What other news? HTC is so disappointed in Windows Phone 8, it is withdrawing its lowest-price (best-selling) Windows Phone smartphone, the 8C from many markets including the US. And Samsung? Is focusing on its new Tizen devices for next year, don't expect Sammy to waste too much of their marketing efforts on the undesirable Windows platform right now.

Kantar numbers suggest Windows Phone, after Windows Phone 8 has launched, will still sell less than Windows Phone did in Q3? That is very bad news for Microsoft and for Nokia. But now lets look at the shocker.

SYMBIAN SALES GROWING SUGGESTS KANTAR

And this second bit of data must be devastating for Espoo and anyone near Nokia strategy. It is now 9 months from the last new Symbian based smartphones released by Nokia. The model range is obsolescent. The customers are being peddled new Windows Phone based smartphones instead. Yet those old pesky Symbian based Nokia smartphones have many of the features and abilities that Nokia owners want - like great cameras, like real physical QWERTY keyboards, etc. And what does Kantar data suggest? Those 4 Kantar-reported regions, weighted average suggested Symbian sales in Q3 of 7.7% in these four regions. And now? They suggest 7.5% market share for the same four regions. After we factor in the growth in sales for the Christmas quarter, the data suggests Nokia Symbian sales have jumped from 3.3 million to 4.3 million !!!

KANTAR NUMBERS SUGGEST 6.8 MILLION TOTAL NOKIA SMARTPHONE SALES

Like I said, the Kantar numbers are very accurate in short-term forecasting smartphone OS platform performance for the current quarter. And these findings suggest total Nokia smartphone sales of 6.8 million units for Q4 which they also suggest, would split 4.3 million on Symbian (and MeeGo), and 2.5 million on all Lumia, old and new, on Windows Phone. So compared to Q3, when Nokia only sold the 'undesirable' and suddenly 'obsolete' early Lumia smartphones, and now when the new Windows Phone 8 has launched, Nokia Windows based smartphone sales would be down by 13% while the industry grew 30% in the same period (real effective loss in unit sales of 43% in a 3 month period, after the new platform had launched). I call this a disaster.

And the customers? They refuse Windows Phone but they still accept Symbian (and MeeGo). So Symbian/MeeGo sales would be up - based on the Kantar numbers - from 3.4 million in the last quarter to 4.3 million now - an increase in absolute terms of 27% in Symbian sales from 3 months ago, but after we factor in the market growth, its slightly less than the 30% growth of the market, so Symbian would only lose 3% of its share in this past 3 months - with utterly obsolete and uncompetitive phones! (and zero management support of any kind). Incidentially, my recent spot-check of Chinese online sales of handsets found two Lumia devices as Nokia's bestselling smartphones in China. And two Symbian devices - the 808 Pureview and ... the N8 !!! (Why does moron-CEO Stephen Elop not give us a Lumia with 12mp camera, if the N8, at two YEARS of age, still is a top 5 bestselling smartphone in the biggest smartphone market on the planet? Hello?)

And do you really want to cry? Nokia' second best-selling smartphone in mid December online sales in China was.. the N9 running MeeGo. A smartphone that is 15 months old, but still outsells all Lumia smartphones except one and outsells all Symbian smartphones by Nokia. Why is idiot Elop not fully supporting the N9, selling this magnificient smartphone in every market, and launching its sister phone the N950 to the world? What is wrong with the brain of the CEO? And why is the Board still allowing the clueless Microsoft Muppet to run Nokia. He should have been fired long ago. The worst CEO of all time! (PS the continued very strong sales of the N9 and MeeGo suggest very promising starts for two new smartphone operating systems that launch next year - Sailfish the MeeGo next version that will power Jolla smartphones from Finland; and the Tizen alliance which will see first smartphones launched by Samsung and Lenovo in 2013. Tizen is what Samsung too of Nokia-discarded MeeGo and its partnership, and transformed now as a Samsung-led Tizen alliance. With such partners - PARTNERS - as NTT DoCoMo, Sprint, Telefonica, SK Telecom etc - some of the biggest mobile operators/carriers in the world)

If Nokia smartphone overall number is 6.8 million for Q4, that would be slightly up, 8% up, from Q3 and no doubt, the snake-oil-salesman ultimate spin-doctor-in-chief Stephen Elop of Nokia would proudly celebrate that his smartphone unit had growth. Don't be fooled, as the market grew 30%, it means effectively Nokia lost more than one fifth (in mathematical terms, the competitive decline is 22% of its market share last quarter) of its feeble remaining market position just over the past 3 months. Not 'grew by 8%' but rather, lost one fifth of what remained. Nokia's market share in smartphones - which was 29% just 24 months ago - would now fall from 3.7% in Q3 to 2.7% now in Q4. This, if Kantar's numbers are accurately indicating the total global market reality. Do remember, that Brazil is included in this data, so its not just the rich world markets we are looking at.

WINDOWS PHONE EVEN WORSE

And Windows? The Kantar numbers do suggest Windows Phone sales collapsing from Q3 to Q4. Market share falling from 1.9% to 1.3%. Total global Windows Phone sales falling from 3.3 million in Q3 to 2.9 million now in Q4. What collaborative data do we have? We hear that in most markets the Windows Phone based Nokia Lumia smartphones have been selling out. Selling out sounds good. Until we see what trick Nokia CEO has now been playing. The Next Web quotes Elop and runs a story on 20 December explaining that Nokia has deliberately run low initial rates of Lumia 920 and 820 unit production for Christmas, to help create buzz and demand and a feeling of success. Elop admits in his CNet interview on 21 December that "there's frustration due to limited supply. Our focus is on broadening distribution."

Deutche Bank analysts have severely downgraded their Lumia sales numbers saying their market checks reveal far lesser actual sales than initial hype suggested. And remember, if the mix of Windows vs Symbian phones is now reversing to more Symbian, it means Nokia average sales prices would plummet for Christmas, and likely loss-making in the smartphone unit again increase. Last Quarter the Windows Phone unit made a 49% loss per every Lumia smartphone sold. How much worse can it get? 

Then the other Windows Phone partners? I mentoined HTC reducing its Windows Phone 8 offering, including pulling the HTC 8C from many markets and not launching its large screen Windows Phone smartphone. HTC is focusing on where the profits and customers are - on Android obviously.

We'll see soon enough in January, but yes, I am now quite confident in my previous early gut-feeling forecast number that 6.8 million is roughly the level of Nokia total smartphone sales for Q4. The mix of Lumia on Windows Phone vs Symbian is very likely to switch to more Symbian!! So I expect Nokia to have about 63% of its smartphones now in Q4 running still on Symbian/MeeGo and only 37% running on all variants of Windows Phone. 

Meanwhile, globally, Windows Phone would have something in the order of 1.3% market share for Christmas and sell 2.9 million units. It would still remain smaller than Symbian now 22 months after Elop decided to sacrifice Symbian and MeeGo instead of Windows Phone. When Palm - once the world's second biggest smartphone platform - had fallen to about 1% market share (and very unprofitable), it had its mercy killing, being sold to HP and ended. How long will Ballmer keep the massive-losses-generating Windows Phone platform even alive? It will soon go the way of the Kin and the Zune and Microsoft will shift its focus only on the PC and tablet side of the Windows 8 operating system.

How long does Nokia have as a company? I said a year ago it was a dead-man-walking. I expect Nokia to be sold any day now.. In reality, lets see how the US fiscal cliff is sorted out, some sanity and stability is restored to Wall Street, and perhaps all those giant tech and consumer electronics giants sitting on billions of cash, will finally feel it safe enought to start the bidding war on the corpse that is Nokia, mostly obviously for its rich patents portfolio - did you notice again, Nokia picked RIM's pockets again on a patents fight, like it did with Apple about a year ago, etc. So realistically? Lets say a good time frame for when the Nokia take-over battle will happen could be around February-March'ish of 2013.

For those who took part in our Crowd-sourced forecast, remember, a little over a year ago, I asked my Twitter followers to suggest what market share Microsoft Windows Phone would have now at Q4 of 2012. The forecasts ranged from 0.4% to 43.2% with the average suggested at 10.1%. Haha, if Kantar numbers do foretell a reality near 1.3%, then currently the nearest guesses are with Gibson Tang, Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Josie Fraser and Ben Fletcher. Good luck to all contestants. See the full contest and all entries here: Crowd-sourcing a forecast for Windows Phone.

Note: an early edition of this blog posting mistakenly identified the HTC handset as 8X when it is the 8C that is being pulled. The blog is now corrected.

One plug - For anyone who needs data and numbers on the handset industry, remember my TomiAhonen Phone Book with all the charts, numbers, data you would ever need to know, in a convenient pdf eBook formated for small screens so you can carry all the data right on your tablet or smartphone.

 

Comments

[EmmanuelM]

Hi Tomi, very interesting, but I think you made a small mistake.. this is the HTC 8S that has been cancelled in US not the 8X
And btw SFR the 2nd largest mobile service provider in France is not selling the new Lumia 920 and 820
Merry Christmas !
Emmanuel

[Spawn]

Maybe time to ask John Pope at Nokia for a statement? Could give some more good xmas laughts when he explains that Kantar is lying to harm Elop :-) "Time to call them out!" John Pope?

[Wayne Borean]

Elop was right in his Burning Platforms menu that something had to be done. Nokia needed to replace the Windows Phone OS with Symbian!

Pardon my sarcasm, I just woke up.

It would be hilarious if Symbian/Meego kept increasing in sales. Night of the Living Dead Smartphones.

[Vinicius]

Nokia (and other makers) lose great opportunities by not selling their devices in Brazil.

Lumia (and Windows 8) have HUGE marketing budgets in Brazil. By FAR the biggest of all mobile companies.

Still, people don't want outdated hardware + software. So Lumia sales tank and they WASTE money on ads. If they had launched WP8 in Brazil, my guess is it would net another couple hundred thousand sales, at least.

I personally know many people who wanted WP8 Lumias, but didn't wait and ended up with SG3s and iPhones. I suspect this number is on the tens of thousands of lost sales because of stubbornness on launching on Brazil the same as worldwide.

I, myself, am satisfied with my Symbian-Based 808. And am on the hunt of a Windoes 8 PRO tablet, but very few companies and models launched here. I will ask my brother to bring one from New York in January, since I can't buy what I want because people simply won't sell me.

And all of this is strange, since price is not important anymore. We pay over U$1000 for our smartphones, unlock, in cash, and it doesn't even matter anymore. A lot of Brazilians have cash in hand (myself included), we have a very stable and growing economy. We WANT to spend money on things and companies won't let us...

[Spawn]

@Samsonite

And your point is ... that Kantar is all wrong? Hey, is that you John Pope?

Come on, at least give us your sources to underline whatever your points are. Be a bit more serious, just a bit. Xmas and so!

[winter]

A nice quote from the Register based on Kantar. Lumia's are predominantly bought by people over 35 yoa. In other words, Lumia's are bought by people who were not current on Smartphones. Duped is the word that comes to my mind.

iPhone tops US market, but trounced by Android in world+dog
UK smartphoners prefer Android, but not as much as their EU brethren

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/21/iphone_and_android_global_stats/

On the sidelines of the iPhone-Android battle, the UK is seeing a bit of a rise in Windows phones – but it's rather feeble. "Nokia is managing to claw back some of its share in Great Britain through keenly priced Lumia 800 and 610 prepay deals," Sunnebo says.

Those phones, however, aren't doing well in the crucial young 'n' hip market. "Nokia continues to find it tough to attract younger consumers in Great Britain," Sunnebo says. "Over the past six months, just 28 per cent of Nokia Lumia 800 sales have come from under 35's, compared with 42 per cent of all smartphone sales."

[Sander van der Wal]

Now I am curious where Symbian has been stabilising. Because the numbers (http://regmedia.co.uk/2012/12/21/all_market_shares.jpg) show no stabilising at all.

It does show that Symbian had tiny market shares in some important EU countries like Germany, France and the UK at the end of 2011. It had curiously bigger market shares in Spain and the UK, and it was massive in Brazil.

Now if Kantar is showing market shares in 2012 and 2011, it might also have shown market shares in 2010 and 2009. If it had, this would be a splendid opportunity to look at Symbian's decline in different countries, and the correlating that decline with the availability of iOS and Android in those markets.

[Spawn]

For the Lumia 920T available at China Mobile case:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/12/07/nokias-one-up-on-apple-in-china/

When Meego and Symbian got killed China Mobile was left with Android only. That Lumia deal shows how much they like more alternates to push to keep there profit-margins and control. That's the short opportunity-window Nokia has till Q1 2013 more alternates like BB10 and Jolla hit market (and later FirefoxOs, Tizen, ...). That opportunity-window is soon closed. They will have to compete against much more alternates in future.

That plus the December Xmas sells means that Lumia WP8 has its highest peek right now. After the window closed in some weeks its very likely not getting better. So, enjoy your 3% market share Nokia, its the last time you had such a "high" market share.

[jo]

yeah katar numbers are much worse than i though they would be. why elop is still not fired is beyong me.

but from what i know most of nokia management is from microsoft now.

so even if he fired nokia won't be able to bounce back, and right now there is no one from the old guard that could put nokia into shape.

nokia needed to kill symbian true, but that doesnt mean it would need updated hardware.

[MH]

Vanity, canity, everything is venity...

IMO it's very unblikely that Microsoft will kill WP, no matter how miniscule its market share. Microsft are willing to spend huge amounts on me-too loss makers - e.g. PlayStation-wannabe Xbox, Google-wannabe Bing, and Apple-wannabe WP8.

Then again they did kill Apple-wannabe Zune...

Microsoft loses less face by staying in a market - even at a loss - than quitting. That's part of the 800lb gorilla mentality that made it feared by competitors - the message being that once MS moves into your market, you are going to have to quit and the only question is when.

The Kin was an aberration, an alternative product in a market already addressed by WM - it's quite unusual for Microsoft to permit internal competition, though Kin was very much the Microsoft Works of mobile phones...

[newbie reader]

comScore data on iPhone US market share is 34.3%

http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/massive-differential-in-apple-inc-aapls-iphone-market-share-estimates-33373/

"... 19% differential between the analyses of comScore and Kantar ..."

[chithanh]

Microsoft can continue to subsidize Bing and WP8 almost indefinitely from Office profits. Those won't disappear anytime soon, and Microsoft just raised prices because existing customers are locked into Office file formats and can't go anywhere else.

Microsoft stopped doing the same for Kin and Zune, because these products were not important in the company's struggle to stay relevant.

Xbox business is believed to have reached break-even sometime during 2012. So it obviously has been operating at a profit for longer than that. No reason for Microsoft to kill it.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

About Kantar vs ComScore

Kantar measures new sales. ComScore measures installed base. They are usually very consistent when that distinction is taken into account, ie Kantar is a leading indicator and ComScore a lagging indicator

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tester]

Typical Baron.

The 'third ecosystem' stuff is utter bullshit. To form an ecosystem you need at least some volume, not the measly few percent WP generates.

Most of it comes from Italy alone. The rest is peanuts and can be ignored - just like Symbian and Blackberry. I can tell you that developer interest is extremely low, especially if you factor in what type of customers buy WP, which, according to some reports, largely consist of tech-illiterates that were duped into it. Yes, that's the same people you disqualify as valuable when they use Android but now, that they use something else, they suddenly form the third ecosystem. Nice try, maybe next time you have more success!

As for Apple and the US, yeah, sure, let's wait for data from a quarter when neither Apple nor Android release a new flagship device, then we may talk again.

I consider any number from a time period that fully covers such a release worthless because all it measures is the people replacing their old device with a new one. Sure, that means profit for Apple but little impact on market share and user gain.

Q2 data when the Galaxy S3 was released looked quite different for precisely the same reasons as this one.

>> You need to understand comscore is based on browser data - it completely misses the fact that iPhone user primarily access the web via apps that can't be measured by comscore. It is a useless state in the age of apps. In a sense, the better the ecosysstem (more and better apps), the lower a platform will score on comscore.

Now that one's truly hilarious. No matter what the data says, Apple's the winner. This has to be the most idiotic thing anyone has said so far. But coming from you it's not that surprising.

[Rino]

Read this in Business Insider:
"STEVE BALLMER'S NIGHTMARE IS COMING TRUE"
(Point 5 from 10)
"5. Windows Phone gets no traction despite the Nokia deal and RIM's collapse."

http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmers-nightmare-is-coming-true-2012-11#5-windows-phone-gets-no-traction-despite-the-nokia-deal-and-rims-collapse-5

[bjarneh]

"the latest phone from Nokia is thick and heavy compared to phones from Apple and Samsung"

quote from @Rino's article

yep, the Lumia 920 is embarrassingly big and clunky, and the 'all-screen-display' looks totally horrid when you slap those Windows buttons at the bottom; this was obvious for anyone to see.

so many strange decisions are being taken over at the Nokia HQ, that it almost seems deliberate.

1. releasing phones in Ronald McDonald colors only (did the blue/pink N9 really sell better than the white/black N9?)

2. ultra clunky device despite all other brands going for much thinner and lighter devices

3. focus on camera, despite that fact that cell-phones will always have poor cameras (always!) the size of the lens you can physically insert into these small devices make it impossible to get professional photos, the N8 was probably as good as it gets.. unless you want to digress into the twilight zone with another N93 device

4. throw out Nokia's superb interface created for the Meego/N9 with an untested Windows attempt, when did Windows ever make a good mobile interface?

5. throw in some useless tech like the "wireless charging". is that really wireless when you have to place your phone on top of the bloody wire (or pad connected to the wire)? how on earth do you make a call while charging, scotch-tape your phone to the pad?

it's cool to see Tomi point out the obvious flaws with the Nokia strategy from time to time, but it sure is annoying to see that Nokia never corrects any of these mistakes..

merry christmas! :-)

[How to Use Clarisonic Mia]

You're just reaching now. That is only the European market, and barely outselling a thing which is deprecated and abandoned is hardly progress. According to your own link WP7 has only 2.5% of even that market. That's practically a rounding error.

[TE]

What are the Nokia board doing all this time? How can they have allowed this meritless 'strategy' to have continued for so long? Each and every one of them should have a basic test to see if they even recognise the jargon That Elop seems capable of spouting. Shareholders need to revolt.

[Joe]

The Verge reported yesterday that Nokia are now apparently even creating a tablet on the Windows RT platform with a supposed release date in late Q1 / early Q2. As if the current market performance of everything Windows (8, Phone 8, RT) as showcased here wasn't enough to make Nokia quit that strategy, it now seems they instead want to double-down that path.

[winter]

@Joe
Nokia is a MS zombie shell company. What they do is for the benefit of MS, and MS only. As a company, they are undead.