Quick Posts 2 - Microsoft Results Show Worsening Misery at Lumia Unit - Market Share All-Time Record Low: Now only 2.3%

Continuing the quick posts about recent news in mobile & tech. Now up, Microsoft Quarterly results and the ongoing trainwreck at Lumia smartphone unit (still run by the most incompetent executive in mobile: Stephen Elop. For how man more weeks or months, who knows but Nadella is gonna remove this guy soon).

So Microsoft reports 8.6 Million smartphones sold in calendar Q1 of 2015. That is down 18% from Q4 when the Lumia unit managed to sell a sad 10.5M units, and its worst Christmas market share in Nokia-Microsoft smartphone history of 2.8%. The past worst bottom market share Nokia-Microsoft smartphone unit aka Lumia had ever reported since Nokia invented the smartphone, was 2.5%. Now the latest quarter sets a new low at 2.3%. The Lumia unit is literally dying before our eyes.

This is the history: Nokia smartphone market share evolution since Stephen Elop was in full charge:

Q4 2010 - 29% (on Symbian and Maemo, profitable and profits growing strongly)

Q1 2011 - 24% (announced switch to Windows)
Q2 2011 - 15% (unprofitable)
Q3 2011 - 14% (MeeGo released alongside Symbian, but unit still unprofitable)
Q4 2011 - 12% (Lumia lilmited release on Windows alongside Symbian and MeeGo, unit still unprofitable)

Q1 2012 - 8.1% (first quarter Lumia sold broadly, unit still unprofitable)
Q2 2012 - 6.7% (unprofitable)
Q3 2012 - 3.6% (Microsoft announces early Nokia Lumia handsets cannot be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, unit reports crippling levels of losses)
Q4 2012 - 3.0% (first Windows Phone 8 smartphones start to ship, unit still unprofitable)

Q1 2013 - 2.9% (unprofitable)
Q2 2013 - 3.2% (unprofitable)
Q3 2013 - 3.5% (Microsoft and Nokia announce sale of total handset business to Microsoft, unit is still unprofitable)
Q4 2013 - 2.9% (unprofitable)

Q1 2014 - 2.5% (unprofitable)
Q2 2014 - 2.6% (Nokia handset unit shifted to Microsoft control, unit is still unprofitable)
Q3 2014 - 2.8% (unprofitable)
Q4 2014 - 2.9% (Microsoft reveals that of all Lumia handsets shipped - and included in the above reported numbers - one in three has not been activated, so the performance literally has been 1/3 worse than even this table of misery indicates. Unit.. is still unprofitable)

Q1 2015 - 2.3% (unprofitable)

That is misery, my dear friends and readers and haters and Microsoft-lovers. The Nokia smartphone unit that reported bigger growth in unit sales in 2010 than the iPhone - yes Nokia was pulling away from the iPhone, not that Apple was catching up to Nokia from 2009 to 2010 and yes, Nokia was doing this with growing profits when Elop took charge, setting a Nokia record for profits out of its smartphone unit in Q4 of 2010. Nokia had over 50% market share in the four large continents by population and only the two smallest continents by population, North America and Australia did Nokia have a lesser position. In China, the world's largest smartphone market, Nokia had a market share of over 70% in 2010 and strong customer loyalty.

Then came Stephen Elop who wrecked all that. He exchanged a growing profitable business that has 29% global market share - and was literally more than twice as big as its nearest rival !!! (such a dominating position that Coca Cola or GM or Toyota has NEVER had). And just four years later, that very same unit, still run by the same moron Stephen Elop the worst CEO of economic history of humankind (now only a Vice President at Microsoft) has 2.3% market share (and one third of those shipments are not even activated). I have told you this is a patient that has died. If you wanted to know why and how, I told you exactly once again, last year, when the Microsoft acquisition of this unit was completed. I explained why this unit is dead and why it cannot be revived. So here we are again. The share of Lumia is only going down, now setting a new low for the once-proud Nokia smartphone unit, 2.3% market share. Incidentially Blackberry had as huge a market share as 2.3% just 18 months ago. This is a dead 'ecosystem' that nobody supports, the app developers are abandoning and Nokia is headed into that same toilet where Blackberry now sits. (Last BB market share was 0.5% haha)

As the unit struggles and shrinks and loses relevance and can't hold any customers or markets, that means also obviously more layoffs in the unit. I know we've already seen two sets of layoffs in less than 12 months since Microsoft took over the business, but this misery suggests that more is to come. Brace yourself...

If Lumia market share is 2.3% then total Windows Phone market share is now far below 3.0% also the lowest level since the original launch of Microsoft smartphone software more than a decade ago which one did peak at 12% market share. Nobody takes seriously any claims by Microsoft that there is - or can be - a recovery from this market failure.

Windows 10 will not rescue Lumia. The Nokia N1 tablet on Android is already damaging Lumia - in particular in China - and the moment Nokia announces its first Android smartphone, that is the final nail into the coffin of the smartphone dream at Microsoft. Nadella should shut down this loss-making disaster (or sell it to anyone for whatever price he can get). Oh, and fire that moron Elop.

More short stories in just a moment...

Comments

[chithanh]

@Leebase
Nokia had four sales events, on the first they sold 20,000 N1 devices and on the second 32,000. Numbers from the following events I could not find.

For comparison, the now discontinued Lumia 2520 Windows tablet is estimated to have sold-through not much more than 30,000 in its entire lifetime[1].

The Samsung deal is mostly about pre-installing Microsoft apps which you can download in the Google Play store anyway. And they already ran into carriers who refused this sort of thing[2]. And Cyanogen OS (*not* CyanogenMod) is too insignificant to matter at this time.

The phone division being on pause due to Windows 10, possibly. Though it would make little sense. Why hold back product launches if you could promise buyers a Windows 10 upgrade?
Or maybe it is because the top talent stayed with Nokia and now designs high-end Android devices.

[1] http://www.xda-developers.com/nokias-n1-tablet-cooked-up-success/
[2] http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/04/15/verizon-and-att-wont-pre-install-three-microsoft-apps-on-samsung-s6/

[baron99]

Great news and many thanks for the analysis Tomi. This is exactly what your statistics have been saying for years (you always have it correct before anyone else!) ...and it is what I have been saying too :-)

NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

.....except maybe those astroturfers still waiting for Moore's law Lol!

[baron99]

More people wanted WP than wanted Nokia tablet. How sad given that

NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

Don't believe the astroturfers

[abdul muis]

@baron99

http://www.fudzilla.com/news/processors/37583-arm-10nm-and-16nm-finfet-cortex-designs-leaked

The FASTER ARM chip is comming, whether you ready or not.

[chithanh]

Paul Thurrot reports that Windows 10 is going to run Android apps on PCs, tablets and phones.
https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/android/3174/windows-android

While this is nothing new for PCs and tablets (Google ARC will allow this, too) the ability to run Android apps on Windows Phone would destroy what little incentive was left to develop Universal Apps.

(If true, this probably means that Microsoft found out that nobody was going to develop Universal Apps anyway, and sacrificed them for to ensure the survival of their mobile operating system)

[charly]

It is also the game plan in embrace, extent, extinguish. True for Microsoft and as a counter move to the killing by Google of ASOP

[baron99]

NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!
Now Microsoft tries to turn their phones into PCs.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8513519/microsoft-windows-10-continuum-for-phones
The Moore's law reached them but they forgot that NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PC EITHER!

[adi purbakala]

@baron99

Symbian & android also able to be computer. Use HDMI and usb keyboard and mouse on n8. And become computer. Android is the same. Use screen mirror, usb otg on mouse/keyboard.

Windows just playing catch. Its no new tech.

[AndThisWillBeToo]

@adi
Symbian was still stuck to its minimal screen resolution and could only run Symbian apps. In Microsoft vision your phone expands to larger resolution and can run Win32 apps.

Will they pull it off? Maybe.
Will it make Microsoft big in Mobile? No.
They do this to protect their desktop business from slipping to phones and tablets running Android and iOS.

[John A]

Windows Phone 10 will run Android apps with some tweaking and minor code changes.
Project Astoria, if it will "save" Windows Phone its to early to tell.

Well if the normal user get Snapchat and other applications to the platform maybe it will get some userbase after all.
I guess Microsoft have the money to keep it alive a long time if they want.

It be two flagship models in the autumn. Lumia Cityman and Lumia Talkman.

[baron99]

BTW, some of these baron99 posts are not mine. But at least these fake baron99 posts get the main point correct

NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

[abdul muis]

Just a quick post....

Before the WP (Windows Phone), the Microsoft OS named Windows Mobile (WM)
and a few hours ago Microsoft just announce their new OS will be named Windows 10 Mobile (WM-10?)

From WM to WP to WM again?
LOL

[RottenApple]

... sounds like a despeate attempt to distance themselves from failure. :D

But this only makes sense if they provide a fully working Windows for ARM, not the same castrated garbage as previous WP and RT versions. That'd be the only option to ever have successs, i.e. offer something profound the competition does not.