Reasonable Estimate of Scale of Nokia HMD Smartphone Unit Sales in Q3 is between 2.8M and 5.7M (CORRECTED: WAS 2.8M)

REVISED & CORRECTED ON 27 DECEMBER 2017

 

I originally wrote on Dec 21, 2017 a blog posting making some preliminary estimates and analysis of Nokia HMD smartphone market performance, based on an estimate from Nokia Mob website. That was based on interpreting a graphic on global market shares released by Counterpoint for Q3. Now we have gotten the actual numbers from Counterpoint that were depicted in that graphic, via Nokia Poweruser blog. They were at the bottom end of what I had been estimating and for smartphones, Counterpoint had Nokia HMD selling 2.8 million units in Q3, and for featurephones 13.5 million units, and for all phones therefore 16.3 million units. I will leave the actual wording of the original blog as I wrote it a week ago. Please note that the real numbers now have been released and are about 20% below what I thought. PS thanks to Nokia Mob for alterting me to this update in the numbers, and pointing us to the Nokia Poweruser blog.



We have a new and interesting data point on Nokia HMD unit sales performance, and the first global number for Q3. It comes via the analysis by Stipe over at Nokia Mob website, based on the graphic released by IDC of global Q3 handset sales. Nokia Mob calculated out of the graphic, that Nokia HMD total handset sales in Q3 were 20.8 million units worldwide. This number includes featurephones (aka dumbphones) as well as smartphones. The majority of the number is featurephones still for now as in Q2 the split was 14.4 million featurephones and 1.4 million smartphones.

So first, wow. Powerful stuff. Nokia brand is already selling nearly 21 million handsets per quarter which is nearly 5% of all handsets. This is NOT a brand that is dead and clearly the Nokia brand has a lot of love and loyal customers. Now. How much of the 20.8 million are smartphones? IDC doesn't tell us and Nokia Mob didn't want to make their guess (I woulda loved to have seen that haha). But lets do a quick series of scenarios. It could be, that the growth rate of featurephones from Q2 to Q3 was the same as the growth rate the previous quarter. And the rest of the growth (new sales) are smartphones. It is possible that both featurephones and smartphones split the growth (I consider this unlikely). It is possible that the featurephone side only grew by the speed of the overall handset industry and all other growth went to smartphones (as HMD was releasing lots of new smartphones but no longer new dumbphones). I don't see this as the likely scenario either. Maybe the growth in SMARTphones was the same in this latest quarter as it was in the previous period, and the rest of the growth was featurephones. Well. I did the math for you on all four of those scenarios. It ranges from a low ie floor of 2.8 Million and a high ie ceiling of 5.7 million. This much is very solid. We know it is between 2.8 and 5.7.

Nokia HMD (based on IDC numbers) had a great Q3, where in the previous quarter they sold 1.4 million smartphones and their Q3 was between 2.8 million (doubling sales) and 5.7 million (4 times the previous quarter). If you want a number which is likely to be close, then the mathematical average of those four scenarios gives us 4.1 million. If you remember, my previous estimate said 3.4 million haha, so my number is certainly inside the two limits, and pretty close to (but under) the mathematical average of the four ways to estimate the number.

(Note that if you take the average only of the two unlikely extremes, then you get 4.3 million, I did the average of all four, but I didn't weigh the averages even as I think the extremes are less likely than the two numbers more in the middle). What does my gut say? That the truth lies somewhere between 'my' number of 3.4 million and the average I counted, ie 4.1 million. If you want a number now, then 3.8 million seems like a safe number. It is quite likely, that Nokia HMD actual real unit sales of smartphones are near that number by a plus/minus ten percent of that, or about +/-0.4 million. I'm more comfortable saying it is likely a range of between 3.4 million and 4.1 million haha.. In any case, growing from 1.4 million in Q2, that is a MONSTER quarter already for HMD and Nokia. Congratulations to all at HMD and Nokia!

But we know that Q3 was still a ramp-up quarter (as is Q4). What does that scale tell us? It says that my previous estimate for Q4 of about 5.7 million units of smartphones now sold for Christmas is likely at the low end of the scale. Nokia HMD is nearly certain to hit that level, and may do half a million to one million more, possibly even a bit above that. If Nokia does something near 6 million now for Christmas sales, it means they are past 1% in smartphone market share. Note that 2% is the rough entry point back into the Top 10. And remember.... Nokia HMD was not yet selling its full portfolio in all of its target markets at the start of this quarter! So they are STILL in their ramp-up. It means that EARLIEST in the Spring of 2018 will Nokia HMD reach full potential of its initial ramp-up. They are STILL growing. It looks like Nokia HMD is headed to hit 2% market share in the Spring of 2018 (and return back into the Top 10 smartphones globally). THAT IS A MONSTER RETURN for the once-dead brand.

I told you to start to expect some positive numbers from individual markets (as I reported on the Finnish carrier/operator handset rankings charts) and that some analysts may start to report Nokia-positive numbers now around December of 2017. We are JUST hitting that now. Thank you to IDC for the numbers and thanks to Nokia Mob for doing the analysis of the IDC numbers. Remember, we do not KNOW the actual smartphone unit sales but I am very confident that the Q3 sales were in the range between 2.8 million and 5.7 million. It won't be below or above those two numbers. I am reasonably confident, the truth lies somewhere between 3.4 million and 4.1 million and if you want a single number, I'll be happy to say, it is probably 3.8 million. I will still keep my official Nokia Q3 estimate at 3.4 million until we get some other collaborating data, but the IDC numbers are very supportive of that level and suggesting perhaps better than 3.4M...

THE 10M WATCH

Note that we are likely very near (or recently just passed) the milestone of HMD selling its 10 millionth smartphone. If these numbers are close, then the 10 million mark may be hit right at the end of this December (or possibly very early in the new year). It is not definite that HMD celebrates that milestone but I kinda hope and partly even think, that they will. It would be a humongous number and I'd love to see them celebrate it. Because it is likely that the number is just being passed as I write, we may hear of the milestone in a shortly-upcoming next interview or press release from HMD. Lets hope they do announce the moment. It is likely any day now or may just have passed these past few days.

Then to add the featurephones business, that is very likely past 50 million cumulative sales by now and could be over 60 million tot sold at end of December. HMD could be celebrating a set of numbers something like '10 million smartphones cumulatively, 60 million featurephones and 70 million total handsets delivered' within the same press release or in the same interview. Lets monitor that.

Ok more numbers as we find them. Go HMD and Nokia, go! Merry Christmas to all living in the home of Santa Claus and may Santa bring HMD a fabulous Christmas of awesome sales success... (meanwhile we fans of Nokia are eagerly awaiting Barcelona, to see what will be HMD's first proper flagship haha)

See the Nokia Mob article is here.

Comments

[John A]

Will be interesting to see when Nokia got the full portfolio in 2018. A international version of Nokia 7, adding Nokia 9 and so on. A 4G feature phone are probably in the pipeline to.
And I think HMD Global now got carrier/retail partners so they are able to expand faster than in early 2017.

Saw some numbers that Samsungs marketshare in mobile slightly declining. They will still be no:1 of course, but I suppose wee have seen ”Peak Samsung” and they will not be as big as before.

Especially outside the US market.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi John

Yeah 2018 will be exciting times among Nokia fans.

Now about Sammy... that may be, that some silly journalist has again done some ridiculous anti-Samsung propaganda. This is the reality. Samsung is 50% bigger than Apple in smartphones (even more in all phones). Apple is chased by Huawei who will catch and pass Apple in 12 - 24 months. There IS NO race on the top, anyone wanting to rush silly headlines of 'ooh, the sky is falling for Samsung' is trolling for readers. The REAL story is that Apple will lose its second ranking and the real rival is Huawei, and Apple SHOULD start to get serious of will they want to be a Top 3 manufacturer or fall also to more Chinese brands after Huawei.

It is possible that Samsung 'loses some market share' and ends next year with 'really bad' loss at say, 18%. I totally don't see this likely, but lets say, that is a 'big drop'. They will EVEN THEN be DOMINANT over Apple near 14% or 13% and near Huawei at 13%-ish.

Now. Do you trust MY forecasts about the industry's near future or some unmentioned source you read somewhere by some 'expert' who has or maybe doesn't have a reputation? I don't see Sammy dropping below 20% next year. If then the change is within one point of market share, do we 'care' when they are 50% larger than their nearest rival? If Samsung has a trivial drop in THEIR market share, that would be factually true, but irrelevant fact. Compared to Apple who, if they lose a point of market share, will be gobbled up very soon by Huawei who are doing nothing but growing for 5 years straight...

I appreciate the discussion but John, you do see what you did with the Samsung comment. I trust you did read it and am not blaming you for telling us what you saw (I see silly writing like that almost every week) but you should know better. A small drop for Samsung is not going to matter because they have such a huge gap to their nearest rival. Lets see what it is like 3 years from now, when someone serious is chasing them (Huawei) - then if Huawei is at say 16% AND GROWING and Samsung has dropped to say 19%, THEN we can start to consider if there is any 'race' for number 1. Currently, any writer talking about any possible 'market share decline' is just trying to make a big story out of nothing.

We should be able to see through such nonsense by now, shouldn't we, John?

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[John A]

I agree I saw the Samsung article in Phone Arena. Even with a slight drop they still be dominant.
Maybe more interesting it are now many reports that the iPhone X demand are not so high as expected. Not same ”super cycle” in sales as when the iPhone 6 was launched.

Anyway will be interesting to follow the numbers in 2018. And especially how its going for HMD Global. (Nokia)

[Wayneborean]

Whether Huawei passes Apple may be dependent on new Nokia. If Nokia grows fast enough to start taking market share from the other players, it is most likely to take share from the smaller players. Huawei isn’t a smaller player anymore, but is far more likely to loose share than Samsung or Apple, both of which have solid fan bases.

[Jim Glue]

I think Nokia has the opportunity to be the biggest threat to Samsung. Not at the high end. Samsung has the resources like nobody else (not named Apple) to keep pouring into their high end phones. But high end phones are not where Samsung gets most of it's unit sales numbers from. In the low to mid range, I think Nokia's brand has huge opportunity for a comeback.

Nokia putting out OS updates on low and midrange phones will be their killer feature, IMHO. Time will tell if Android 8's new architecture will level the playing field and take this one thing away from Nokia as all manufacturer's should be able to easily add support going forward.

I like what I'm seeing on the uptake of Nokia's phones and think that Samsung has the most to lose from a resurgent Nokia brand.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Everybody

Nokia Poweruser has been able to get Counterpoint to release the actual numbers behind their graphic. It wasn't 3.5 million, it was 2.8 million smartphones in Q3. Still it means Nokia HMD doubled unit sales from Q2. I wrote a correction to the top of this article with the corrected numbers, please read that update (rest of blog posting not changed)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Gang

I've now updated my forecast to reflect the Counterpoint data. Posted fresh blog with the new estimate. Enjoy

Tomi Ahonen :-)