Communities Dominate Brands

Smartphone wars.. panic at Apple? Panic at Nokia? Google stumbles?

I am awaiting the final Q1 numbers from Gartner, and when I receive those, will do the first quarter full review of the 'smartphone bloodbath' covering all major smartphone brands and what they've been up to in this very volatile first quarter.

APPLE PANICS

But we see interesting tidbits for some of the big names. First a strange reaction by Apple. They seem to be rattled by Android rising. NPD released numbers of a very broad survey of US consumers and their phone habits, and found that Android has overtaken iPhone in the USA (Apple's best market) now becoming second biggest smartphone platform in the USA behind RIM's Blackberry. So Reuters runs the story where Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison has been rolled out to refute the NPD numbers and to spin the story.

First, this seems bizarre for Apple to react to such an end-user study. Its almost like they are delusional. Its clear the study was US based, and its very clear - and totally consistent with other news and data from other sources - that Android is growing very strongly in the US market where Apple is not growing (Apple's Q1 growth was in China, AT&T reported iPhone USA sales declined from Q4 by 14%)

But there is a sense of panic in the response. Some silliness in it - 150,000 survey size is ENORMOUS. For Apple to suggest that is not relevant is very poor form. When the survey is about smartphones - then iPhone is to be counted, but iPod Touch and iPad are not phones, and cannot be counted. Its like French carmaker Peugeot suddenly crying 'foul' and asking that its bicycle sales should be added to Peugeot car sales numbers haha.. And iPod is a media player and WiFi web device, it is not a smartphone. An iPad is a tablet PC, it is not a smartphone. There is no point is counting them when reporting smartphone numbers. The iPod and iPad are indeed of interest to Apple developers and Apple investors, but its silly to suggest NPD in a survey of smartphones should have then gone and measured microwave ovens and toasters and CD players and iPods and iPads.

Then there is also a dangerous point in what Natalie Harrison draws attention to - that Apple's iPhone still in Q1 outsells Android overseas (she does not dispute the fact that Android already outsells iPhone in the USA). Yes, thats true for Q1. But by the start of Q1, of the world's 6 largest handset makers, only one - Motorola - had launched its Android phones. SonyEricsson, Samsung, LG and ZTE - were in the process of launching their Android phones. And Motorola did so only in the US market, as Motorola is retreating from overseas markets. But combining full Q1 sales of Motorola Android phones in the USA, with HTC selling in the USA, and Google Nexus One selling in the USA, plus the introduction of Android phones by LG, Samsung, Dell etc to the US market - Android has grown bigger than iPhone in the US market.

Now consider the rest of the world. SonyEricsson's big market is not the USA, it is Europe and Japan. So as SonyEricsson now has its Android phones for Q2 available in Europe and Japan, they can take advantage of their sales channels, strong brand and marketing push for Android in those markets. Google had its troubles with its sales channel for Nexus One in the USA and underperformed, but is only now launching in Europe and Asia. HTC is gaining in Europe. LG and Samsung have very strong presences in far more markets than Apple has overseas. In China, ZTE and Huawei are domestic competitors with very large market shares, Motorola sells particularly well and Lenovo has already promised to sell 1 million Android phones just in China. Apple can expect in Q2 to see a similar Android invasion in most markets as it saw in Q1 in the US market. Except that Apple's best market is the USA where it sells about a third of all iPhones sold. So the Android vs iPhone battle is now in Q2 shifting from Apple's strong ground to Android's strong ground. And the 3GS model is already 9 months 'old' where almost all Android models are fresh current models. Expect the rest of the world see a bigger imbalance Android vs Apple in Q2..

But lastly, Apple is fudging with the numbers. They are pointing to cumulative sales. That is silly. No way are all 85 million iPhones plus iPod Touch's plus iPads in use. AT&T's numbers from late 2009 reveal that only 75% of all sold iPhones were in use. That proportion is declining every quarter. Apple know fully well that not all old iPhone 2G models are still in use, and even some early iPhone 3G models are being replaced as customers upgrade their contracts and get newer models with their contract renewals,. So its silly to suggest there are 85 million users of Apple iPhone compatible digital devices. If we use the 75% ratio from AT&T, the maximum is 64 million. In reality that is far below 60 million by now. Out of specifically iPhone models, out of 51 million sold so far, less than 38 million are in use (using same AT&T ratio). Yes, Natalie Harrison is truly spinning the story like the best of politicians after a disasterous defeat in the polls haha.

PS there always are those Apple fan-boys who claim Apple doesn't care about market share. Here we have official Apple spokesperson passionately arguing on Apple's behalf. Obviously Apple does care about market share haha.

NOKIA PANICS TOO

The more sad story comes from Nokia HQ. They really cannot catch a break. Out of the classic big 6 global phone makers (Nokia, Samsung, LG, ZTE, SonyEricsson and Motorola - this obviously before RIM crashed into Top 5 and kicked Motorola out of Top 6) - Nokia invented the smartphone space. It invited all its rivals to join to build a common smartphone OS platform (Symbian) which Nokia later turned into an open source foundation. Compared to the other classic Top 6 giant phone makers, only Nokia has pursued an aggressive smartphone strategy - and even today outsells the total smartphone output of the other classic Top 6 makers, Samsung, LG, ZTE, SonyEricsson and Motorola - combined - by 3 to 1. The classic Big 6 makers are not even viable rivals in smartphones where RIM and Apple are ranked number 2 and 3. Even there Nokia towers over its major smartphone rivals outselling RIM and Apple combined.

And how is Nokia's smartphone performance doing? For the past 6 months, two quarters, RIM's market share has been flat, Apple's market share has declined - and while Android has emerged to challenge all, Nokia's market share has grown. Currently Nokia's market share is between 39% (Canalys) and 40% (Strategy Analytics) - up from 38% six months ago.

Nokia has aggressively pursued a global domination plan for its smartphones - pushing very hard to bring smartphones to mass market customers at lower prices. Consistently, every single quarter ever - Nokia's smartphone market share has been better than its dumbphones market share. None of its classic big 6 dumbphone maker rivals has even for one quarter managed that - where its smartphone market share would be better than its dumbphone market share. But Nokia has done so, quarter after quarter, for more than a decade! It has never ceded its position as the world's largest smartphone maker.

And Nokia's handset unit - including smarpthones - has produced profits every single quarter since Nokia first made a smartphone. None of its Big 5 dumbphone maker rivals (Samsung, LG, SonyEricsson and Motorola - I have not been trackingn this measure for ZTE) - has produced profits every quarter in the past decade.

In my book, Nokia is FAR outperforming its true rivals, Samsung, LG, ZTE, SonyEricsson and Motorola. The new 'pure smartphone' makers like RIM, Apple and HTC play in a far smaller market and even there Nokia utterly dominates them. But that is not where Nokia's revenues, profits and markets are made. Nokia (mostly its dumbphones) is the world's most widely spread technology brand - of all time - by a huge margin.

So does it get respect for any of that? No. Nokia reported strong profits this past quarter (Motorola's handset unit did not, LG barely made a profit as for the first time in a long time did SonyEricsson, a miniscule profit. Palm continuned making losses and was bought by HP)
 
But most of Nokia's investors are in the USA. They see Nokia in the context of the US market. Before 2007, US investors never thought of smartphones as a consumer opportunity (before the iPhone) even though Nokia invented that space and was selling true superphones in the rest of the world at that time, like the N93. US investors felt that a business-oriented smartphone had to look like a Blackberry, not recognizing Nokia's E90 Communicator was another superphone, but aimed at the luxury end of the enterprise (and not sold in the USA). Having no experience with consumer smartphones, when US investors saw the iPhone, they of course felt this was the ultimate smartphone. When Google releases a Nexus One or Motorola its Droid, those look 'proper' to the US investors. They seem 'similar' to the iPhone and thus acceptable. Why can't Nokia do that.

The US investors remember the N95 from 2007 as the last major attempt by Nokia to do its own boxy slider form factor that seemed a reasonable rival to the iPhone. Then they remember the N97 failing in the US market. Now its time to panic. It seems that every maker from HTC to LG to Palm to Dell making 'correct' form factor (ie iPhone-like) touch screen smartphones and Nokia utterly failing to copy the iPhone. Nokia gets no respect that it outsells both Apple and RIM, and nearly matches the total sales of Apple, RIM and HTC combined. Because there is no iPhone clone, Nokia management are idiots and the Nokia share price takes hit after hit. Now Nokia's N8 is its clear step to show it too can make an iPhone clone, but because it is not selling in the USA today, Nokia's investors are very nervous.

The matter is far worse personally for 'OPK' ie Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo the new CEO of Nokia who replaced the long term well identified Jorma Ollila. When he took office, OPK promised to dedicate most of his time to re-establish Nokia's position in the US market. In his time in office, Nokia's market share in the US market has crashed - down to less than half what it was - and its even worse in the top end of the smartphones, where we find that pesky iPhone again. OPK has very clearly failed his biggest US specific promise, and he is doing this in the time when the US market itself has finally awoken to understand the smartphone (Europe had discovered this opportunity years earlier) and now major US tech brands like Apple, HP, Microsoft and Google are very strongly visible in the smartphones space. Even the walking dead Motorola is seeing a US surge in its smartphones. But Nokia singularily fails the US market.

So the US investors panic. And they were even suggesting OPK should resign. So what does management do in this kind of situation? It makes a big management reshuffle of course. Nokia is truly performing FAR and AWAY a better job than any other dumbphone maker, so for a second generation era mobile phone handset maker, who foresaw the emergence of smartphones - Nokia has executed its transition to smartphones better than any other rival who also comes from dumbphones. Now that ignorant US based investors insist on comparing Nokia to far smaller pure-smartphone manufacturers like Apple, RIM and HTC (whose combined annual sales of all of their products and services is dwarfed by Nokia) - luckily OPK and his team has not abandoned its strategic plans. But to satisfy investors, they reassigned Rick Simonson and gave Anssi Vanjoki the most visible post of leading the smartphone battle. Rick is not leaving the company, which to me also suggests this is mostly a cosmetic move.

But Nokia does reorganize to new business units, plays musical chairs with several top managers and it is already the second major reorganization in only a year. That suggests it is not a planned reorganization, but rather forced by the circumstances. Its thus a reaction to the investor panic.

The handset business is very much a function of 'how good is your latest handset'. We saw Motorola return with the Razr and then rapidly vanish with the same Razr. For Nokia it is very much now the question of how with the N8 do when it is released. I would expect Anssi with his long history in sales and knowing the distribution channel very well, will give the N8 every chance to become a market hit, sales support materials, big promotion push, distributor and in-store sales force incentives, etc. Using Nokia's strongest asset to support the iPhone clone device. Yet Anssi also remembers that the N-Gage failed most of all being a bad phone handset (as well as near-total rejection by the operators). The N8 has to be a good Nokia phone, in the style of say the original N95, rather than a rushed and disappointing phone like the N97.

It does pain me to see how totally divorced reality and facts are from how Wall Street reacts to various companies in our industry. So RIM grows unit sales and holds market share. Nokia grows unit sales in smartphones and takes market share. Both see dramatic decline in their stock market evaluation on these news. Then Apple reports flat unit sales and loses market share, but sees its stock market price shoot up dramatically. I am happy I am not in the investment analysis business and I do not envy those with top jobs in the handset business. Its a cruel world out there. But talking about cruel, lets move to Google.

GOOGLE BURNED AGAIN

So we hear from Google. Its Nexus One 'superphone' was supposed to be sold by Verizon and Sprint as well as direct sales by Google. Because it had more than one exclusive carrier deal, many pundits suggested Nexus One could outsell the first year performance of the iPhone (I did not think they'd do that well). So, first we heard that Verizon has decided to not offer the Nexus One, and sell an HTC Android phone instead. Now today we hear similar news from Sprint - also abandoning plans to sell Nexus One and they have their own HTC Android handset they prefer, HTC Evo.  

Google's plans to make Nexus One a big global hit are hurt very severely by this. HTC laughs, it wins either way (as it is the manufacturer of the Nexus One). I did tell you in the Bloodbath Preview that the likely winner out of Google's smartphone entry was HTC, not Google haha.

LENOVO IN CHINA

Meanwhile in this corner. Remember how we saw stunning smartphone sales explosion in Q1 in China due to gift-giving of the Lunar New Year, explaining surprising surges in smartphone sales specific to China Q1 for Apple, Nokia and Motorola? I estimated that about 1M extra iPhones were sold in Q1 in China above the normal rate of about 200,000 iPhones per quarter as Apple sold in Q4 in China.

Now Lenovo the Chinese maker who bought out IBM's PC division and the world's 4th largest PC maker, who has announced plans to launch Android based smartphones - is making its first statements of its intentions in actual numbers. They say their goal is to sell 1 million Lenovo Android smartphones this year in China alone. Note that Lenovo only now is launching their smartphone, so we are looking at the three remaning quarters. Lenovo initially sells on the China Unicom network (which is iPhones's exclusive dealer in China) but Lenovo also will release models compatible with both of the other two networks, China Mobile and China Telecom. Note that China Mobile is more than three times the size of China Unicom.

Lenovo's handset is designed to match the iPhone 3G more or less feature-for-feature in specifications, add the typical Android and normal GSM smartphone abilities and features WiFi which is crippled from the China Unicom version of the iPhone. Lenovo is a well trusted domestic brand in China and its smartphone is priced to about half that of the iPhone. Can it match the sales level of the iPhone in China for the remaining 9 months of this year, I think so. So yes, another big player is now getting serious about the bloodbath. Lenovo aims to be in the top 10 by end of this year globally, and be one of the biggest smartphone makers of the Chinese market.

AND VERIZON ? CHARGES 70 DOLLARS PER MONTH FROM YOUTH FOR KIN

Oh, one really bad indicator of the greed in our industry. Remember the Microsoft Kin QWERTY phones (formerly known as their Pink project)? Youth oriented phones for texting mad addicted users? Now we hear that Verizon is going to charge 70 dollars per month for the two year contract to sell the Kin phones. That is abusive. I am really disappointed. I cannot believe that Microsoft would be happy about this either. I am thinking this very high cost of ownership will hurt the chances of Kin to take major market share - as it is clearly aimed at the youth segment. And yes, even for the very expensive US market (world's most expensive or second most expensive mobile market - Japan being the other. Yes, the US cellular industry, highest prices, worst value to customers, where average monthly contract per subscriber is about 50 dollars, ouch ouch ouch - this for the worst networks in the industrialized world, crippled phones, SIM-locked phones, domestic USA roaming fees, charges for incoming calls, charges for incoming messages, and all sorts of punitive charges etc - and the worlds' worst quality customer service etc. At least for their high monthly fees, the Japanese get to enjoy the best networks, fastest speeds, best phones, best quality of customer service, etc)

I am hoping sincrely that Verizon recalculate and find ways to offer the Kin phone for the youth with more reasonable price plans. 70 dollars per month, that is criminally abusive and greedy.

But yes, its getting ever tougher in this space of smartphones. I have the data from IDC, Canalys and Strategy Analytics on Q1 smartphone sales. I am waiting for Gartner to release their numbers and then will do full review of the bloodbath, per brand. Its a very intersting race indeed.

All Quiet on Western Front - Smartphone battle update: RIM is NOT in trouble

Time to do update for the'Bloodbath' ie smartphones market war for 2010. I wrote the first major update for how 2010 was starting to form, after the Mobile World Congress: Dispatches from the Front Line. And I also wrote my scolding rant about who is rival to whom:Repeat after me, Rival to Blackberry is not iPhone. If you are new to the blog and want to understand the smartphone market and why this market does not obey normal 'free market' rules, I explained the smartphone market in great detail in this blog Smartphone Realism.

But yes, time to do update. RIM has reported its quarterly sales numbers for Dec-Feb quarter. We have some other tidbits of news as well for the past six weeks or so. I also am seeing lots of truly moronic incompetent analysis of the smartphone market as the US based pundits and 'experts' and analysts babble about Apple's CDMA 'Verizon' iPhone prospects, and the iPad impact, and now what they call 'disappointing' RIM performance.

I wonder how they will react when Apple reports Jan-Mar quarter market share for iPhone declined from the previous quarter at 17% for Christmas to about 12%-14% (or worse) for Jan-Mar Quarter?. I am sure the pundits will cheer and hail hallelujah, this is perfection (because no doubt, of all those billions of application downloads and the new iPad). Why do you think Apple launched the iPad a few weeks before its worst iPhone annual sales quarter is due? But I am getting ahead of myself.  Lets start with relevant news from the smartphone makers and see how they impact the 'bloodbath of 2010'

NOKIA no major news here. Plugging along as the undefeated world heavyweight champ with no scheduled title bouts on the horizon. Last quarter Nokia posted increased smartphone sales and more importantly, growth in its market share. Nokia related news recently, many analysts reported that the smartphone market is increasingly shifting to low-cost smartphones (big surprise, yeah, haha). They make the point that in the most advanced markets like in many European countries, the growth is all in the low end of smartphones. This we will see ever more in America as well. And who got us there? It was of course Nokia first to drive that shfit. Totally in line with what to expect from the grand master. My forecast holds for modest decline in its market share but still clear biggest maker of smartphones for Nokia this year.

RIM the Blackberry maker reported its quarterly sales for their quarter which ran December to February. Its in other words 1 month ahead of most others, or 2 months behind most others. The first quarter of the year is traditionally the worst sales month for all makers as smartphone sales decline sequentially about to about 90% of the level of quarterly sales reported in the previous Christmas quarter. The Christmas quarter is for obvious reasons the best quarter of any year in smartphone sales. These new RIM quarterly sales include the best month of the year with the 2 worst quarters. Interesting.. But certainly not a 'normal' last quarter of the year. For all those smartphone makers who report Jan-Mar quarters, I expect actual numerical decline in unit sales. A 10% drop (ie sales levels at 90% of the 4th quarter ie Oct-Dec sales) would mean the smartphone maker would roughly speaking hold its market share.

Anyway, RIM reported sequential increase from 10.1 to 10.5 million smartphones. It held its market share at 20% for the Oct-Dec quarter. But it means that when we factor in the Jan-Mar quarter after the major players have reported in by the end of April, RIM will end with between 21% and 22% of the market for this Jan-Mar quarter. Looking good. Very good. This is at a time when RIM should be feeling the full heat of the Motorola Droid and various HTC and Google and other rival Android handsets. And RIM managed to do this while increasing profits. Increased profits in a bloodbath? Thats pretty awesome.

We also received more info about RIM's strong markets. In Venezuela Telefonica says that Blackberry is used by about 10% of its subscribers. Compare that with Blackberry's best market, the USA, where it has about 11% of all subscribers. And Venezuela is obviously not a 'Western' wealthy nation, it is an emerging world country. Ten percent of all phones are Blackberries. RIM also holds a massive 37% of total Latin American smartphone market share, its second best market after North America.. RIM is seriously closing on Nokia which leads smartphones in LatAm. And we heard that RIM is putting up a factory in Brazil to make smartphones locally in that market. All speaks very well for continued growth there. RIM now reported that for the fourth quarter for the first time, nearly half of their revenue is generated outside of North America.

Other big markets for RIM are Indonesia, where there are over a million Blackberry users, and Blackberry is gaining rapidly popularity in India. And repeated stories come from Britain that Blackberry is winning over the youth of Europe. RIM itself reports that the youth market is its strong growth sector.

APPLE As I've warned readers, this is now the 'horrid quarter' for Apple iPhone. Not only will the global market for smartphones decline sequentially from the Christmas quarter, but for Apple, its market share pattern is such, that the market share will dive dramatically in the Jan-Mar quarter. It has averaged a 67% crash in market share for the January-March quarter, because as I have explained, Apple's product line has only one new phone per year, released in June. It is definiite, that in both absolute number unit sales of iPhones, and also in market share, Apple will see a sequential decline from the fourth calendar quarter of 2010. (they will not focus on that, they will probably announce 'annual' growth from the same quarter a year ago)

But as I said in the previous update, the news from Cupertino is far worse, the Christmas 2009 was first quarter ever in iPhone's short history that it did not grow market share sequentially for Christmas, and with all the new Android etc devices which hit Apple's primary target market segment square center, Apple is already on the ropes, and its Jan-Mar quarter will be brutal. What is even worse, there may have been a 'wait' attitude about the iPad hitting iPhone (and iPod Touch) sales. I don't know but that is also possible. If Apple reports iPhone numbers at 6.5 million units sold, - that would be around 12% or 14% market share, down from 17% last quarter. In my picture, that would be 'good news'. It can be far worse than that. My 6.5 million unit iPhone sales assumes only a drop to 75% level of Christmas quarter sales. It could be 67% (5.8M) or even less..

Apple is now doing the full smoke-and-mirrors show, talking up the iPad (which will definitely not sell as many units as the iPhone did in its first year, so this is mostly hype and hope), talking up their iAd platform, and they will be doing tons of stories about iPhone App downloads and iPod Touch sales etc. And a lot of speculation about the next model (some call it iPhone HD) and whether we'll get a CDMA model for Verizon etc. They may well do some 'spectacular' announcement just before or around their quarterly results to distract from poor iPhone sales.

We do know that the next iPhone won't be sold until June. So its misery until then. Apple's wishes to crack the enterprise/corporate market (where they have less than 1% market share in enterprise smartphones, RIM's backyard) were dealt a bad blow when a survey by nCircle revealed iPhone is seen as most risky smartphone platform - by IT security professionals - with Google coming second. Yes, Apple won't be taking enterprise customers any time soon. And as I've said, Apple is completely dependent on the repeated success with their next iPhone model. Its become ever more obvious that Apple will lose market share for the full year.

HTC has been reporting very bullish numbers and market acceptance. While being very steady in market share the perennial little guy locked in fourth place and 5 percent market share when they peddled their Windows Mobile based smartphones, now with Google Android, HTC has come alive. They grew sales dramatically toward the end of the year and currently are looking at 35% to 40% growth in sequential numbers ! And by their fourth quarter they had hit the 6% market share level. If the trends would hold, that would put them in 7% range upside opportunity for the full year.

HTC CEO has been suggesting they'd become the third biggest smartphone maker. Brave words, but I don't see them having any statistical chance to do that this year,  Apple is too far ahead and RIM (and obviously Nokia) untouchables this year. What is worse, Samsung is already nipping on HTC's heels and will soon pass them with their Bada strategy. No, even if HTC manages to growth their market share to 7% - a very very good year for them, in the overall race, HTC would still drop back a slot, and be luckly to hold onto 5th biggest smartphone maker for the full year.

HTC said in its annual report that between 5.5M and 6M of its smartphones in 2009 were sold in the USA. This is both good news and bad news. It means HTC has taken 12% of the US smartphone market in 2009. But remembering that the US is the small market, Europe is bigger and the rest of the world outside of the US accounts for nearly 3 out of every 4 smartphones sold, HTC's non-US market share in smartphones is thus only 3%. They have their work cut out for them. Now, while many of the recetly popular HTC smartphones have not all launched in Europe yet, the European market has three big differences - it is far more mature, the customers have had smartphones for far longer - a third of Italians for example already have a smartphone according to ComScore stats (vs 18% of Americans in same survey). In Europe the carrires/mobile operators have far less influence on the decision of the purchase, compared with America. And in Europe HTC faces strongly entrenched phone makers Nokia, Samsung and SonyEricsson. Samsung and SonyEricsson both dp Android phones so HTC won't have that market to itself. And both Apple and RIM are in strong growth in Europe. Its battle will be tough to replicate US success that HTC had with the Android platform. SonyEricsson and Samsung are far more competent rivals than Motorola was in America for Android smartphones.

Still, Google's Nexus One is likely to see better success in Europe due to how Europe's phone market is not stiffled by the four big carriers/mobile operators of America. In Europe phones are sold far more often directly to consumers or through independent intermediaries like Carphone Warehouse, Europe's biggest phone retailer. I am projecting HTC to grow sales definitely, perhaps even grow market share with a target annual market share in the 6% - 7% range but falling from fourth place to fifth.

SAMSUNG keeps to its strategy of supporting every platform under the sun, so even though it launched Bada, Samsung has since also released Android and Windows Mobile based smartphones. This all helps Samsung cover all bases but it means that for Bada developers there is somewhat a lost opportunity here of 'why the other platforms' and it must be costing Samsung considerable development costs. I would expect that as Bada phones come to the market, we'll see most new announces on Bada. But still today, Samsung seems to support 4 different smartphone operating systems (fourth being Symbian). But since we last looked at the smartphone bloodbath, we now have Samsung's official target number. Interesting. They said they want 18 million smartphones this year. That would put them solidly in 4th place with about 8% to 9% market share for the full year.

As I've said, if they convert their touch screen feature phone line to Bada, they will outsell the iPhone overnight. This will definitely happen, the only question is timing. If Samsung says 18M this year, then the expect something like 19M to 20M this year, but because this is organic growth, each quarter expect bigger sales by Samsung, growing from under 3M sales per quarter now to over 6M per quarter by the fourth quarter 2010. Roughly speaking Samsung would be running well past HTC levels and approaching sales levels of Apple per quarter by Christmas 2010 (and then rocket past them in the first quarter of 2011 when Apple sales again decline in the first calendar quarter of 2011). Samsung on target for my forecast of strong growth in 2010.

MOTOROLA did not get the surge it had hoped for with the unfortunately short 'honeymoon' it had with the Motorola Droid/Milestone. I think it is turning now into the Motorola Turd/Millstone, adding to Motorola's massive operating losses but not bringing its market share back. Motorola is damaged by HTC and Google at the 'desired' end of the Android market, and ultra cheap Android makers like ZTE and Huawei on the price end as well as Samsung and LG at the feature-overpacked 'Asian' model end of Android devices. Remember as the market for smartphones expands, especially beyond wealthy Northern Europeans, Americans and some wealthy Asians, it is ever more driven by price. In its home market, both LG and Samsung are now bigger handset makers, so their Android strategies in North America will hit Moto hard. And in the rst of the world in the past year Moto fell from 3rd biggest to 6th biggest handset maker. It means Moto is behind LG, SonyEricsson and ZTE in the rest of the world by sales volume of all types of handsets - and these three are all 'pure' Android makers. Motorola won't be seeing a strong gain in its overall market share due to its Droid/Milestone, and within smartphones, won't reach 5th largest maker even for one quarter.

PALM reported it gave its staff extended New Year's leave in China. As I mentioned on Twitter, that was a harbinger of very bad news and it was. We heard their quarterly results. Ouch! Another loss-making quarter in a row, and now they have oversupply in inventory, meaning for the current quarter, Palm won't be able to sell even to meet demand, as there is excess inventory of Palm smartphones already with their retail channels, awaiting customers. The total sales are down, market share in tailspin. Nobody wants Palm. It is truly doing a death-dance in front of our eyes. 
 
SONYERICSSON rumors are growing stronger of a PlayStation Portable type of smartphone. A SonyEricsson executive all but promised that type of device before the end of the year. I think this is inevitable. Lets hope its a good phone too, so it won't be as daft a device as Nokia's N-Gage was. What is hurting SonyEricsson is the delay now. They need to get the buzz going and they should formally commit to the plan and announce it, to make the PSP phone the 'wait for the phone' device for the summer months. The longer it takes, the more other makers get to solidify their markets. And SonyEricsson smartphones tend to be irrelevant outside of Europe and Japan. So SonyEricsson really needs the European market or find its gobbled up by new smarpthones by Samsung, LG and HTC, as well as the European hunger for Apple and Blackberry (all while Nokia dominates in its home market). Other than the PSP phone, SonyEricsson is lauching new Android phones.

FUJITSU was very absent in the news. I had been expecting them to do some big announcements at least for the CTIA but nothing really anywhere. The Japanese IT giant and its biggest smartphone maker seems to have had second thoughts about the smartphone market. Perhaps we won't see a return of hte Japanese?

LG was making a lot of noises and announcements at the CTIA about their smartphone aspirations. Part of that may be 'me too' aspirations of the 'second' phone maker of South Korea, so as Samsung does big announcements, so too will LG need to do some. I am not yet convinced LG will become big in this space, but they are doing a lot of Android phones - they had 7 so far, so as Android goes, LG can well be part of that party, and do it possibly at lower cost. LG is America's most loved 'dumbphone' brand (Apple being most loved smartphone, by JD Power customer satisfaction survey). LG should be able to convert some of that love to smartphone market share in the US.

DELL is one of many newcomers to smartphones. We won't see their sales levels at anything worth mentioning yet in this quarter.

OPERATING SYSTEMS

SYMBIAN is steady, the world's biggest smartphone operating system biggest on all continents except North America where it is miniscule. Symbian will gain from Nokia's refining of Ovi and Ovi news have been trickling in that it gradually improves. Symbian as an open source foundation is also expected to evolve to more user-friendly and popular smartphone platforms from developer and user points-of-view vs closed smartphone operating systems like its two nearest rivals, RIM and Apple. Symbian is still almost half of hte market and Symbian phones sell as many as RIM, Apple, Android and WIndows Mobile put together. Nokia's (and Intel's) open source Linux based MeeGo is the future for Nokia's top end smartphones. Symbian will be rolled down to ever cheaper smartphones as the main battle will be in the lower price points, not the top end.

RIM is continuing the push of Blackberries beyond the enterprise market and in this quest is adding lots of consumer apps and especially social networking oriented solutions. RIM's operating system is on one out of every 5 smartphones sold in the world, and roughly half of those sold in the USA. Its global footprint is very sporadic, for example in Europe, Blackberries have 20% of the UK smartphone market but only 5% of the French market. As mentioned in the above, Blackberries have been far more successful in the emerging world markets and are particularly strong in Latin America (RIM's second best market after North America). Sometime this Spring-Summer we'll hear from RIM that they've shipped their 100 millionth cumulative Blackberry device. Not all are in use, obiously as this counts from 2001. Still its a big milestone to celebrate.

APPLE OS/X is the strange fish among 'smartphone operating systems' because it is the only one with major added market out of non-phone devices. When it comes to considering smartphones, we cannot consider the iPod Touch or iPad in the race, they are not phones. But the iPod Touch and iPad both offer a significantly greater reach to the operating system. So any developer should know that the Touch market is about two thirds as big as the iPhone market, and already at the end of the year, while iPhone had 43 million cumulative sales, when adding iPod Touch the number hits 75 million. Now from April we see iPad sales adding to those numbers as well. The iPhone 'and compatible' devices platform will pass 100 million cumulative sales by the summer of 2010. Also bear in mind, not all of those are in active use. Morgan Stanley reported the iPhone and iPod Touch have a 2 year replacement cycle, so we're of course seeing older iPhone 2G and 3G models and early Touch models being replaced by newer models. I am modelling the installed base of iPhone to be at 80% for end of year 2009 so out of 43 M iPhone smartphones ever made, 34 M were in use. Nonetheless it is fair to count the cumulative sales and we'll be hearing from Apple during the summer months that their cumulative shipments of iPhone compatible devices will pass 100 million sales.

GOOGLE ANDROID has been in strong growth in America, and now about to see similar growth in Europe. Several factors drive Android's rapid growth. It is a new OS, built recently for smartphones, rather than the Windows Mobile, Symbian, RIM (and Palm) OS's that trace roots to a decade ago. Android is open source. Android is not closed like Apple's iPhone OS. So when major handset makers wanted to pick OS platforms to develop new desirable handsets, numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 of the top 10 biggest handset makers have all launched Android phones, and numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 have essentially all now focused all development on Android. Note these top 10 makers do not include the world's biggest Android manufacturing phone maker, HTC, but when counted together, currently Samsung (2nd biggest handset maker), LG (3rd), SonyEricsson (4th) and Motorola (6th) outsell HTC in total Android devices shipped.

Android is only in the early stages of a strong growth year. Many of the exciting phones that have been announced have not yet been released. Many of the phones that have been released, have only been done so in a few key markets like the USA or UK etc. So as the Android 'invasion' gets to full steam around June of this year, we should see Android in anywhere from 12% to even 20% of all smartphones sold. It does, however, also introduce that perennial pain of smartphone OS platforms - fragmentation. We are seeing a lot of diversity already now in Android devices as the platform is only about a year old in commercial terms.

WINDOWS MOBILE is putting on a brave face. They promise Windows Phone 7 to be on time and then they try to hide from any facts about WinMo until then. WinMo is bleeding market share from quarter to quarter and that pattern holds with all news from Microsoft and its smartphone makers. Microsoft OS's are still losing market share quarter-to-quarter and no light is in that tunnel, at least until the fourth quarter of the year, if even then.

BADA is not yet selling in meaningful numbers

LIMO Other Linux Mobile phones tend to be relevant in Japan only and in very modest numbers elsewhere.

PALM is toast.

There is the update to smartphone US market shares. During April we will hear the big handset makers report on their sales, and we'll also hear the big market analysts report on the quarterly results of the market share battle. It is getting brutal with so many new makers and so many of the legacy major players adding focus to smartphones. I would say two things - on the one hand, we'll see more variety and 'excitement' in that way, but more than that, we'll see a lot of damage to profits and very many smartphone makers to struggle as the bloodbath moves into spring sales. Is an interesting time to be monitoring the race. Stay tuned.

Final 2009 mobile phone market numbers as all have reported: we have big news

Now as RIM has been the last of the significant mobile phone handset makers to report quarterly sales numbers that relate to the 2009 calendar year, we can close the fourth quarter of 2009. We can also close the year 2009 and we can close the decade. RIM came in as expected in market share, did not cause a major surprise to readers of our blog, but I do have a 'bombshell' in the big picture mobile phone handsets market share picture. We have a new entrant into the Top 5, and obviously one of the global brands that for ages has been thought of as a 'big 5' is no longer a big 5 handset maker. Obviously Nokia, Samsung and LG are too big so they are safe. We have one of SonyEricsson or Motorola dropping out of the Top 5. And who is the newcomer?

Its a decade gone by. Wow. When I joined Nokia in 1998 we were not even the world's biggest handset maker haha. Now the world has seen not only the mobile phone decade, but also the Nokia decade, as today Nokia is the world's most widely spread brand. Not just tech brand, any brand. Has bigger market share of global population than Coca Cola, Levi's or McDonalds haha. (just in case, for those random readers who don't know me, I left Nokia HQ in 2001 to start my own consultancy, so I've been independent since then. This is not a blog of a current Nokia employee haha.) So yes, lets do a bit of a look back. Don't worry, this is not 'another long Tomi blog' haha.

TEN YEARS AGO

Ten years ago as 2000 started, for the year ended, ie the full year 1999, the mobile phone handset industry sold 280 milllion mobile phones. Many so-called 'experts' and analysts suggested mobile phones were at near saturation. The world had half a billion mobile phone subscribers. There was no 3G, there was no mobile internet apart from some ultra-expensive gadgets or Japan. Smartphones sold a couple of million units and most PDA makers felt a smartphone would never pass PDA's in sales. And apart from Scandinavia essentially nobody thought that phones would be used (at least by 'normal people') for anything else except voice calls. And yes, a mobile phone was not seen as a teenager thing (outside of Scandinavia). Ten years ago for the full year 1999 the world's largest handset maker was Nokia with 27% market share, about 50% bigger than its number 2 rival, Motorola at 17%. Ericsson was third biggest at 11%, Panasonic fourth biggest at 7% and Samsung had just become the fifth biggest handset maker at 6% passing Siemens.

Since then in the past ten years, the mobile phone industry grew to five times its size. The global mobile phone subscriber base grew to 9 times its size. Out of the top 5 biggest makers ten years ago, Panasonic fell out of the Top 5 at the start of the decade. Ericsson struggled, joined forces with Sony and the combined SonyEricsson gradually fell towards the bottom. Meanwhile South Korean LG joined the top 5 in 2004. As we went into 2009, for the end of 2008, the top 5 were in order: Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG and SonyEricsson. And as we have learned from Nokia earlier this year, the world' sold 120 million 'unlicensed' ie pirated phones. I have adjusted the annual sales figures (for all years in the past decade) to reflect the pirated phones as well.

MOBILE PHONE FINAL MARKET SHARES 2009

So, now we have the final numbers. And it looks like this for the top 10 biggest mobile phone handset makers for 2009. Note that these numbers (including last year's market shares) have been adjusted for the unlicensed ie pirated phones, so note, 'last year' numbers have also been adjusted. So I am not 'fiddling with the numbers' where earlier reports had Nokia 2008 market share at 39%, Samsung at 16%, Motorola at 9% etc. All have been adjusted to include the pirated phones.

Here are the final market share numbers for all top 10 biggest mobile phone manufacturers for 2009 including the 2008 market share in parenthesis:

1.   Nokia .............. Finland............432 million.....34%  (36%)
2.   Samsung..........South Korea.....227 million.....18%  (15%)
3.   LG....................South Korea.....118 million.....  9%  (7%)
4.   ZTE..................China.................60 million.......5%  (4%)
5.   SonyEricsson....Japan/Sweden....57 million......5%  (7%)

6.   Motorola............USA..................55 million.......4%  (8%)
7.   RIM...................Canada..............35 million......3%  (2%)
8.   Huawei..............China.................31 million......3%  (2%)
9 .  Sharp................Japan.................27 million......2%  (3%)
10. Apple.................USA..................25 milllion.......2%  (1%)

All other branded phones....................74 million.....6%  (6%)
Pirated 'unlicensed' phones..............120 million.....10%  (8%)

Total sales for 2009........................1,260 million (=1.26 Billion) (was 1.31B in 2008)

We knew to expect it, but still this was big. ZTE out of China did surprise us by how quickly they did it, and how they not only passed Motorola for 5th place, which we were expecting about now, but also passing SonyEricsson to become world's fourth biggest handset maker for the full year 2009. They sold a very impressive 60 million handsets and are already bullishly promising 80 million level sales for this year. Congratulations ZTE ! They also become the first handset maker from the Emerging World markets to become a top 5 handset manufacturer. They are also the first newcomer in the Top 5 since LG displaced Siemens seven years ago.

The players moving up in market share, compared with 2008, were Samsung, LG, ZTE, RIM, Apple. The ones going down were Nokia, Motorola, SonyEricsson and Sharp.

Otherwise in the chart, RIM is of course the biggest 'pure smartphone maker' in the world while Nokia of course makes more smartphones as part of its total mobile phone portfolio. Of the others in the top 10, only Apple joins RIM as a 'pure smartphone maker' coming in at tenth.

And very demoralizing news for Motorola, which has now fallen out of the top 5 for the first time in their history. How total has been their recent market failure. Since their brief Razr-powered 'surge' - they hit a peak of 21 percent global market share as recently as 2006 - they now are down to one fifth that peak at 4% and crash-diving (their market share fell by half in just one year, they were third biggest at 8% in 2008).

Hey, while we're on the topic, check out Nokia in 2009 compared to a decade ago. Their rivals have all bounced positions, former number 2 is now number 6, current number 2 was once number 5. Nokia held market share all decade as number one, at every time, every single year, they were at least 50% bigger than number 2 and every year as big as number 2 and 3 put together, often as big as numbers 2, 3 and 4 put together. Thats not bad performance in an industry that was so volatile, that it grew 5 times in size in only ten years.

TOTAL DECADE SALES

I want to mention an interesting view to the decade as well. We now can count the total decade-wide sales, the ten years January 2000 to December 2009. The top 5 are worth menitoning (the others are far smaller)

1. Nokia................................2.8 Billion......34%
2. Motorola............................1.1 Billion.....13%
3. Samsung...........................1.0 Billion......12%
4. SonyEricsson.......................600 million...7%
5. LG.......................................500 million...6%

other branded......................1.8 Billion.....22%
unlicenced..........................   500 million...6%

TOTAL sales 2000-2009........8.3 Billion

Some stunning numbers there..  And there is an interesting pattern. Moto and Samsung running very close to each other. SonyEricsson and LG also running very close. huge jumps between those groupings. oh, and for the full decade? Nokia more than twice as big as number 2, and as big as numbers 2, 3 and 4 put together.. not bad for the little Finnish company that once made rubber and paper as its main products.

SMARTPHONE FINAL MARKET SHARES 2009

I know you want the smartphone picture. Remember, smartphones are only 14% of the total market. The real battle today is on the top of this blog posting, not the bottom. but yes, this is the 'hot' story part. So lets get to final end-of-year 2009 numbers in smartphones.

1. Nokia...........Finland........68 million.....39%  (41%)
2. RIM..............Canada.......37 million.....20%  (16%)
3. Apple............USA...........25 million.....15%   (7%)
4. HTC..............Taiwan......... 9 million......5%   (5%)
5. Samsung......South Korea...7 million......4%   (2%)

For the full year from 2008, RIM, Apple and Samsung grew, Nokia declined and HTC held steady. Motorola's high-stakes gamble into smartphones did not see them climb into the top 5 of smartphones (and did not reverse their catastrophic decline in total handset market). SonyEricsson's long history in smartphones also did not get them back into top 5. Palm keeps losing market share (a decade ago they were second largest smartphone maker). Fujitsu lost its number 5 position to strongly surging Samsung. Nokia has better market share in smartphones than mobile phones overall, and is almost twice as big as number 2, and as big as its two biggest rivals put together.

While looking at the race by operating systems, we get this picture

1. Symbian (mostly Nokia).............80 million.....46%  (54%)
2. RIM (Blackberry).......................37 million.....20%  (16%)
3. Apple (iPhone)..........................25 million.....15%   (7%)
4. Windows Mobile (mostly HTC)... 11 million......6%  (12%)
5. Google Android (mostly HTC).......7 million......4%    (1%)

The big gorilla, inspite of all the Admob stats and US centric tech pundits, is Symbian, bigger than Blackberry, iPhone, and all Windows Mobile and Google Android smartphones put together, in 2009. But which tech analyst even remembers to mention the biggest smartphone operating system on the planet, Symbian? But yes, it took a big hit in 2009 as it moved to Nokia's ownership and many of Nokia's rivals who used to be part-owners of Symbian and had been making Symbian smartphones shifted away to mostly Google Android. The big winners RIM, Apple and Google Android. The big loser is Windows Mobile which lost half its market in 2009.

Note that this picture is changing dramatically in 2010, because during 2009, the main handset maker of Windows Mobile smartphones, HTC, switched to Android. Most of Android sales were in the fourth quarter, so Android is already outselling Windows Mobile now in 2010. Meanwhile Samsung - which offers smartphones on Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android platforms and continues to support all those - has launched its own operating system Bada, and its fair to expect that Samsung will put primary emphasis to Bada. So expect some of Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android market shares that in 2009 were attributed to the fifth biggest smartphone maker Samsung, to shift to their new operating system in 2010.

There you have it, the full year picture in market shares, in mobile phones and smartphones.

Revised mobile phone global market shares for 2009 after we add counterfeit phones number

Nokia announced Friday that it is revising its measurement of its market share in mobile phones, based on better insight into the size of "counterfeit and unlicensed" production of mobile phones. Nokia's total market size measurement tells the story loud and clear - with the old way of measuring, 2009 produced total sales of 1.14 Billion mobile phones. But adding the unlicensed and counterfeit phones, the market size becomes 1.26 Billion. Yes, 120 million or almost 10% of all phones sold worldwide are counterfeits or unlicensed production. And Nokia is hit particularly hard, its top line models are regularly counterfeited here in Asia. I've seen for example several 'pirate' versions of the Nokia E90 Communicator which claim very loudly to be 'Nokia' and 'E90 Communicator' but are even on superficial outwardly appearance not the right model..

 

Nokia is not alone hurt by this. Apple iPhone was cloned and counterfeited right from the start and many Blackberry models are also regular victims of counterfeiting.  Still, 120 million unlicensed and counterfeit phones sold per year. Thats roughly speaking of similar magnitude as all mobile phones sold in France, UK, Italy and Spain, combined, per year; or nearly as many as sold annually in the the USA. A big part of the industry indeed.

 

But for all of our readers who are into their mobile statistics, this is reason to recalibrate our stats and revise the end-of-year market shares for 2009. As 10% more phones were sold, it means that the actual market shares of the major phone makers need to be revised (down). So here is the new market share measurement, courtesy of TomiAhonen Consulting (based on numbers in the TomiAhonen Almanac 2010, which did not include the counterfeit and unlicensed phones, obviously)

 

Top 10 largest mobile phone manufacturers in order of market share size

 

Nokia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432 M . . . . . 34.2%

Samsung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 M . . . . . 18.0%

LG . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 M . . . . .    9.3%

SonyEricsson . . . . . . . . . . .  57 M . . . . .    4.5%

Motorola  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  55 M . . . . .    4.4%

ZTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  50 M . . . . .   4.0%

Kyocera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  45 M . . . . .   3.4%

RIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35 M . . . . . .  2.8%

Sharp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   29 M . . . . . .  2.3%

Apple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   25 M . . . . . .  2.0%

Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  68 M . . . . . . . 5.0%

Counterfeit & unlicenced . . 120 M . . . . . .  10%

TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1,260 M (=1.26B)

From now on we will be using this measurement so don't be alarmed if in the next quarter, Nokia's market share is 34% or Samsung's 18% or LG's 9% etc - that is not a decline in market share, it only reflects these better numbers we now have. I will also indicate when there is 'real' change in market share if and when that happens.

I Hate Bad Reporting - now usually reliable Guardian messes it up totally about mobile

I really hate bad reporting by any major publication. And now the Guardian - usually excellent in reporting about mobile - has totally goofed it up with their article "How the Smartphone made Europe look Stupid"  by Richard Wray. This is gonna be one of my 'rants'...

Richard Wray the Communications Editor for the Guardian, has a long history of studying mobile. He used to be with the publication The451 all those years ago and had several posts with media reporting on technology. Now he seems to have been drinking that West Coast cool-aid and gotten all drunk on the hype. He starts his article writing "The European giants that pioneered the mobile telecoms industry are now stumbling in the wake of American and Asian rivals."

Richard then goes on to add "For two decades, Europe's mobile telecoms sector has considered itself a world leader. It had the biggest names, the technological knowhow, the most customers. Over the past year, however, the hegemony has been smashed." Richard adds that Europe is now a flyover region not worth stopping at, because of how much it has fallen behind. He then points to where the innovation is happening: "All the service innovation is being done on the West Coast of the US, and all the manufacturing and technical innovation is being done in the Far East."

He then mentions that "access to Google, Facebook, and Twitter" on phones, is the services customers want; and the devices they "covet" are the iPhone and the Blackberry. Richard then adds HTC at the top end and Huawei and ZTE at the low end of smartphones as the global leaders. Richard points out that Microsoft is its "latest attempt to break into the market".

In the Guardian article he then mentions that Greece is one of the PIGS nations (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain), suggesting that because Greece's economy is in trouble with the Eurozone economic rules, that means apparently also that Greece (and the other PIGS) are struggling with mobile telecoms? 

Richard takes a historical comparison point from the 1980s mentioning Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson. He also brings networks clearly as 'valid game' in his argument, as he points out that US carrier/operator giant Verizon is going to be switching its technology from the CDMA evolution path to the 'European' GSM evolution path later this year. He says the future is the internet on mobile, and claims 'The (European) industry did not see it coming". Richard accuses (European) operators of limiting customers to 'walled gardens'. 

Richard then mentions "the runaway success of the iPhone" as if it had somehow become bigger a rival to Google's interests in smartphones than Nokia is. Richard argues that the 3G version of the iPhone in the summer of 2008 "proved that consumers will do much more than use their phones to make calls and send texts."

Richard points out that Nokia is still the largest handset maker in the world but says Nokia has been "sideswiped by by the success of Apple and the encroachment of Google's Android platform." He then claims that this has forced Nokia to Symbian free to developers, and to make the "desperate decision" to give satnav services to Nokia smartphone users. Richard claims that Nokia is in crisis (?) and pushed into bed with Intel because of it (??). Richard suggests that this crisis-collaboration is to have new devices to counter HTC.

Then Richard takes aim at Ericsson. He says Ericsson's market share had been cut in half in three years form 10% to 5% today and that it is because of Apple and Blackberry.

Richard does point out that European mobile operators (carriers) ie where he lists Vodafone, Orange and O2 (which is owned by Telefonica), have apparently the ability to get back in to the game. Ah-ha. Richard mentions networking of Huawei out of China. Richard mentions as the Google Nexus One as a new way to sell phones directly to consumers and clearly thinks this was both a success and an innovation. Richard does mention that AT&T had customer service issues related to that launch.

He then claims that "In the race to increase revenues, mobile phone operators have the chance to claw back money from the likes of Apple and Google" and refers to their apps stores. Clearly Richard Wray feels that the initiative is with Apple and Google and the European operators have to try to re-take that initiative. Richard ends with the claim that European mobile operators/carriers have to become "great at customer service" to get a fight-back.

WHAT A BUNCH OF BALONEY

That is utterly absolutely comprehensively faulty reporting, Richard Wray of the Guardian. You have taken some facts and twisted them beyond any reasonable interpretation, ignored far more relevant facts and made many false claims. You wrote a story that was not the truth, nor the whole truth, and everything but the truth. Shame on you Richard Wray! Lets take these claims one by one.

FIRST THE FACTS

First, lets be clear. There are some themes and some points which Richard refers to which have merit. Lets be very clear about this. First Asia. It is true, that the global leadership in innovation in customer service in mobile telecoms for the mobile operators/carriers is indeed very strong in Asia, starting with Japan, South Korea and Singapore. As to handsets, the South Koreans have been innovative in handset design recently for handsets designed for global markets (Japan's innovation has only been for the domestic market on usually non-standard technologies like 1Seg and SuiCa/FeliCa etc). Taiwan and China are not particularly innovative, more being powerful at copying quickly and offering lower price alternatives when it comees to handsets. With major network infrastructure providers, there is no significant innovation coming from Asia. And with applications and services, these are not typically Asian strengths with the exception of gaming in South Korea and Japan.

So yes, I agree with that part of the premise that the Guardian article has, that there is global leadership in Asia, especially with mobile operator/carrier business and also with handsets. That, however, is not much even mentioned in the Guardian article, which focuses on USA-West Coast based supposed 'leadership". Mr Wray never mentions the biggest Asian mobile industry innovators NTT DoCoMo or SK Telecom or KDDI or Softbank or Singtel etc. He also never mentions Samsung or LG in the article, but does mention HTC twice, as if HTC was the biggest handset innovator of Asia (it is far from it).

Then lets turn to America. It is true, that the North America based mobile telecoms industry has been revived, thanks in part to the iPhone, Blackberry and Google Android. These three companies however, represent only smartphones, a tiny fraction of all phones sold on the planet, where all phones form only part of the hardware side of mobile telecoms, and the services side of mobile telecoms is far greater than all hardware. Mr Wray makes the mistake of looking at an ant and thinking it is as big as an elephant. But yes, it is undeniably true that the US and Canadian mobile telecoms related industries are better off today, and more competitive today, than in the recent past. That is true. But does that mean that they have overtaken Europe? No.

And I also want to make it clear, that Europe is by no means perfect, and Nokis is not perfect and its smartphones or its operating systems or its apps stores ie Ovi etc are not perfect. There is room to improve of course.

So lets be clear. I am not arguing against some Asian players being big and powerful in mobile telecoms - but those big and powerful players like NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom, KDDI, Softbank, Singtel, Samsung and LG are never mentioned in the article. None of the Asian companies Mr Wray mentions (Huawei, ZTE, HTC) are in any way considered innovators except perhaps for offering ultra-cheap technology. If price leadership is your definition if 'innovation' then that is all that these three companies can represent currently to mobile out of Asia. The true Asian mobile industry innovators are all missing in the article

I am also not against admitting that the US has recently woken up to the mobile industry and its opportunities. It has however, so much ground to try to catch up, that it will take years for it to reach parity with Europe, far less to 'overtake' Europe and somehow make Europe "look stupid". So, lets go over each silly statement and compare it to the facts.

"The European giants that pioneered the mobile telecoms industry are now stumbling in the wake of American and Asian rivals."

Ok, Richard Wray only mentions HTC, ZTE and Huawei among handset makers, and Huawei among equipment makers out of Asia. HTC and Huawei do not even register among 10 largest handset makers of the world. ZTE ranks as the 6th largest handset maker. These three companies together make about 6% of all mobile phones. He ignores the big Asian handset makers of Samsung, LG, Kyocera and Sharp, which combined make 37% of all mobile phones. If you want to claim that European makers - like Nokia - are 'threatened' by Asian handset makers, then if you count these four giants together, its still less than the 38% that Nokia alone sells.  

In the article Richard Wray focuses on the North American players. He mentions Apple, RIM, Google (as already apparently successful) and also Microsoft (as coming back) and Motorola as a past giant among American handset makers. Yes. If we add together all phones made in 2009 by Apple, RIM, Google and Motorola (the actual handset makers of the five, Microsoft only makes mobile operating systems) we arrive at 105 million total handsets. Yes, and Nokia alone sold four times as many as these four 'powerful' American manufactures all put together. Nokia sold 432 million handsets. This is Europe 'stumbling' in the wake of American and Asian rivals. I have not even added other European handset makers. Just Nokia alone is four times as big. Oh, and how about the only one of the North American handset makers who is big enough to be a "big Five" handset maker - Motorola? It is perennially making losses. Motorola had 22% market share a couple of years ago and today has 5%. It has shrunk sales to a quarter of what they were, and in that process went from being profitable to making losses. Economists suggest that should not be possible. If anyone is stumbling in the industry, its a US based former giant handset maker, not the giant from Europe. Meanwhile Nokia is the only handset maker to post a profit in every single quarter of the decade. Every single quarter of the decade (in its handset division). Even currently profitable Asian giants Samsung and LG were not able to post every quarter of profits in the past decade. And Richard says Europe is "stumbling"?

Maybe he means smartphone operating systems? The world's biggest smartphone operating system is Symbian. Out of all smartphones sold last year, Apple iPhone, RIM Blackberry, Google Android devices and Microsoft Windows smartphones - sold less than Symbian alone. Europe is stumbling... where? Microsoft - which by last count was still a West Coast based company - is the one stumbling. Microsoft had almost 30% of the market for smartphones a couple of years ago and now has a quarter of that.

Now lets be very very clear. Handsets are only part of the hardware side of the mobile telecoms industry. Mobile network infrastructure forms another major part of hardware and then we have the telecoms traffic. But you can't make a blanket statement of 'European Giants' and only talk about a tiny corner of the industry like smartphones. The world's largest telecoms networking infrastructure vendor was earlier in the last decade a company called Lucent. Based out of North America yes. Today that company is owned by Alcatel, out of France. Europe 1, North America 0. Then who is now the biggest mobile networking infrastructure vendor? It is LM Ericsson out of Sweden. Europe 2, North America 0. And where is that former Canadian infra maker giant, Nortel? Bankrupt thats where. Europe 2, North America -1. Yes Chinese Huawei has recently gained market share but whether they are second or third largest NokiaSiemens Networks is far larger than the last remaining North America based network infrastructure provider of mobile networking gear, Motorola's networks division. Europe 3, North America -1. European giants are 'stumbling' where, Richard Wray, where?

HEGEMONY SMASHED, HAHA

"For two decades, Europe's mobile telecoms sector has considered itself a world leader. It had the biggest names, the technological knowhow, the most customers. Over the past year, however, the hegemony has been smashed." 

But Mr Richard Wray, the facts to do not support your claims. Two decades ago, four of the world's ten largest mobile operators/carriers (ie the ones who have the 'customers') were USA based. They owned vast empires in Latin America, in Asia and even parts of Europe. What happened and whose hegemony was 'smashed?". Have you counted any customers recently Mr Wray? The biggest USA based carrier group by cellphone subscribers is AT&T, which barely fits in the global top 20, not in the top 10 anymore. Yes there is a "North American" carrier group that is in the Top 10 but that is America Movil, out of Mexico. You never once mentioned Mexico in your article. And what of those Europeans who so suffer in their hegemony being smashed? The top 10 has no US or Canadian carrier groups anymore, but has now Vodafone of the UK, Telefonica of Spain, Telenor of Norway, T-Mobile of Germany, TeliaSonera of Sweden and Orange of France. Yes, six of the top 10 biggest mobile operator groups are from Europe, Mr Wray. And of those Europeans? Vodafone owns 40% of US carrier Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile owns all of US T-Mobile. The tables have totally been turned, Mr Wray. European hegemony has not been 'smashed' - the exact opposite has happened. US based carriers have withdrawn from almost all of their international holdings, it is clearly that US hegemony has been smashed.

And where the industry is growing the fastest, in Asian markets such as India, Bangladesh, Thailand etc, we find Vodafone, Telenor, Orange etc growing strongly, while in Latin America we find Telefonica and Italy-based TIM (also a Top 20 sized player). If anything, European players are growing and expanding their holdings and US based players are withdrawing. This is exactly opposite to what you claimed.

INNOVATION

Richard says that Europe is now a flyover region not worth stopping at, because of how much it has fallen behind. He then points to where the innovation is happening:

"All the service innovation is being done on the West Coast of the US,"  He then mentions that "access to Google, Facebook, and Twitter" on phones, is the services customers want.

Yes, Mr Richard Wray, Communications Editor of the Guardian, how do the facts stack with these claims? Access to Google is what customers want, eh? Well, I had a Vodafone account in your native Britain, on a Nokia phone way back when in 2004 and used Google search happily on my service (yes, using WAP). Was this Google access invented by Apple or Blackberry (or Google) now in 2008/ No. So, why is Google search access today by some American company an innovation, but when European operators and handset makers offered it as a first years ago, that is not "service innovation"? Who leads and who follows? We have far more advanced mobile search solutions now such as AQA there in the UK, an idea being copied in.. America..

Facebook and Twitter are so new, that they have been launched in very close proximity by operators/carriers and handset makers globally so its hard to prove one way or another who was 'first' but years before Facebook or Twitter even existed, the Three operators in Italy, Austria and UK introduced a social networking service for 3G mobile video called SeeMeTV (which is making them tons of money). UK based Flirtomatic the award-winning social networking service that is among the most popular mobile internet services in the UK and launched in Germany, Australia and the USA, was on mobile phones before there was any Google Android or Apple iPhone of any kind - and they are profitable on mobile, whereas Facebook and Twitter still are not. Where is the 'innovation' Richard Wray? Who is copying who and who was the true inventor and innovator. And did you forget Skype? Another European invention that was also deployed on mobile first - in Europe. What of Habbo Hotel that invented the monetization of internet content and social networking, via the mobile phone? Not invented in America, invented in Europe.

But if you mean 'real internet' (non WAP non i-Mode) access that allows us to access any internet content like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Bebo etc - that was not invented by Apple iPhone in 2007. The real unrestricted access to the real internet (not WAP) using cellular telecoms mobile phones was invented by Nokia with its 9000 Communicator - a DECADE before the iPhone in 1997.  Why is 'all service innovation being done on West Coast' if Apple is copying Nokia from ten years before? If you mean the all-you-can-eat pricing, that is not an AT&T iPhone-related invention from 2007, it was first done by KDDI in Japan at the start of the past decade and the first European carrier/operator to offer all-you-can-eat mobile data services was DNA of Finland four years before AT&T launched the iPhone. Europe is behind the West Coast, as in where?

You Richard Wray are saying 'all service innovation is being done on the West Coast'. Ah yes, what of Layar the Augmented Reality Browser, out of the Netherlands? What of Mood Music, a new (money-making) mobile music format invented by Dada of Italy? GiffGaff the Scotland based service provider that lets users do its marketing? Scotland is somewhat to the West Coast yes, but West Coast of Great Britain, not West Coast of the USA. How about the mobile stamps of E-Mobile in Germany etc.

Or lets turn it the other way. Recent big news in America has been that now over half of Americans send SMS text messages. That threshold was passed in 2008 in the United States. Europe reached that point in 2001. Who leads whom in services? President Obama is the first US president to use SMS? Wow, Tony Blair was using SMS in government in 2004, the Slovenian Prime Minister in 2001. Who is leading whom? SMS alone is worth over 100 Billion dollars, Mr Richard Wray, Communications Editor of the Guardian. You know this. And you know fully well that its a recent 'discovery' of American telecoms to join the family of SMS text messaging. They are a decade behind.

So its now the 'amazing' solutions around SMS that they are 'discovering' like paying for parking - whoop-te-doo - invented in Norway ...in 1999. In Estonia today all parking payments are paid for by SMS. Americans are 'experimenting' with mobile parking. Or mobile phone check-in, invented by Finnair in 2001. Today over half of passengers on Finnair's frequent routest use mobile check-in. American airports are gradually joining in this, even Canadian airlines got to it before the USA did. Those SMS contributions to Haiti that made all the news? You know this Richard Wray of the Guardian, the UK has had SMS charity contributions for years.

MMS? About half of British users, over 80% of Norwegians use MMS based services, either in sending person-to-person picture messages or consuming ads and media content on their phones. Essentially all European-made phones and networks have supported MMS from 2005. The Apple iPhone was not even supporting MMS in its first two years but finally do so today. This is the world's second-most-used data application with 1.7 billion active users, MMS is. Its bigger than email. Yet Apple didn't add MMS to its 'innovative' device until 2009. Who is the service innovator and who is the follower?

No, Richard Wray, the West Coast 'innovators' are not making European mobile industry giants 'look stupid'; this article makes you look stupid, Richard Wray.

WANT iPHONES AND BLACKBERRIES?

Then Richard Wray says that the consumers 'covet' the iPhone and the Blackberry. Now it is true, that the consumers do covet the Blackberry. But where is the evidence they covet the iPhone anymore? Don't you do the simplest of research, Richard Wray? For the Christmas season, iPhone sales were flat, Blackberry sales grew market share and faster even than that, consumers snapped up more Nokia smartphones. So Nokia branded smarttphones are being coveted, iPhones not. The evidence does not support your position, Mr Wray. You should know this, it is widely reported in statistics by IDC, by Gartner and by Strategy Analytics. All showed exactly the same trends. What is this nonsense you say of consumers 'coveting' iPhones and Blackberries - ahead of Nokias? In fact for your home market, the UK, the Mobile Youth survey out at the end of last year said the most desirable phone brand was now Nokia, followed by SonyEricsson, then Blackberry. No, Mr Wray, European smartphones are not falling behind the iPhone and Blackberry. You are patently wrong.

PIGS VS WEST COAST

In the Guardian article Richard Wray mentions that Greece is one of the PIGS nations (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain), suggesting that because Greece's economy is in trouble with the Eurozone economic rules, that means apparently also that Greece (and the other PIGS) are struggling with mobile telecoms? 

Now, do you Richard mean to suggest, that the US and Canada are 'ahead of' the PIGS ? That while yes, Greece had trouble with its economy (I recall that a year ago the USA economy was so badly in trouble it needed the biggest bail-out in economic history.. but I digress). Lets stick to mobile telecoms shall we? So PIGS vs USA and Canada? Hmm. Yes, lets examine. The mobile phone penetration rate per capita - one of the most-used measures of a country's leadership in mobile, of the United States is 96%. For Canada it is 79%. This is the most widely used metric to indicated a nation's leadership or lack thereof, in mobile technology. The national penetration rate per capita.

Yes, now lets see how poorly the PIGS do with this most-used measure of mobile industry leadership, shall we. Spain has a national per-capita penetration rate of 121% (yes, that is better than the USA and better than Canada). Well, maybe its a lucky member of the PIGS? What of Portugal? 139%. Italy is at 146% and that maligned Greece - is at 148% mobile phone penetration rate per capita. Yes nearly twice the penetration rate of Canada and almost exactly 50% better than the USA. By the most used metric, all PIGS countries totally trash North America in mobile telecoms leadership. Every PIGS country does so.

Or if you don't like the penetation rate as a measure, lets take 3G adoption rate per capita. Taking of course the real definition of 3G ie that approved by the ITU (whereas CDMA2000 EV-DO is 3G, the lesser CDMA2000 1X RTT standard is not 3G). The USA has a 3G subsription for 31% of its total population at the end of 2009. That ranks it only 22nd among all countries (Japan and South Korea are world leaders). Yes, Greece is a bit behind the USA at 27%, but the rest of the PIGS are far ahead of the USA - Portugal has an active 3G subscription for 47%, Spain for 48% and Italy for 52% of its population. (Canada is so low its ranked with Third World countries in 3G adoption). Yes, what was it about the PIGS countries somehow struggling with mobile telecoms? Spain's Telefonica is the world's third largest mobile operator/carrier group, bigger than the two largest US based carrier groups combined. Italian Buongiorno is the world's largest mobile application developer. These PIGS were struggling in mobile exactly how Mr Wray?

GSM VS CDMA

Richard contradicts himself several times in the article. For example he points out that US based Verizon is abandoning the US based technology evolution path of CDMA2000 to the 'European' (actually 'international') standard of GSM. If the US is the leader and Europe the follower, this evidence goes diametrically against his argument. Richard also says the future is the internet on mobile, and claims 'The (European) industry did not see it coming" but then contradicts himself in the next sentence pointing out that the European players tried many times to create that mobile internet, including WAP and iMode. And as I pointed out earlier in this rebuttal (and Richard well knows this), it was Nokia who deployed the world's first phone to do the real (non-WAP) internet a decade before the iPhone.

Richard accuses (European) operators of limiting customers to 'walled gardens' as if this was not how North American and many Asian operators also do today. But again, the European operator/carriers are far more customer-friendly than US based carriers/operators. Europeans generally as a rule tend not to lock their phones to one network - this is illegal actually in many European markets. European customers usually have the chance to use their SIM card and switch networks easily. And European carriers/operators do not force handset makers to 'cripple' phones and eliminate features such as WiFi and Bluetooth as American carriers tend to do. Who is the leader and who is the follower. Who is better at customer service and who is pushing openness in mobile Mr Richard Wray? Europeans or Americans? And obviously Europeans had unlimited mobile data plans years before AT&T brought it to the iPhone in 2007.

RUNAWAY SUCCESS OF WHAT?

Richard then mentions "the runaway success of the iPhone" as if it had somehow become bigger a rival to Google's interests in smartphones than Nokia. Now, I am not going to argue that the iPhone has not been a tremendous success as a smartphone, but its not a runaway success and its actually severely suffering right now. Richard knows this. The Apple iPhone grew market share into the Christmas quarter of sales in 2007 and again in 2008 but for the first time last year, the Apple iPhone sales stalled in the Christmas quarter - obviously the best-selling quarter of the year. Meanwhile that 'maligned' Nokia picked up several market share points for the Christmas quarter. No, Apple is a success yes, but its definitely not a runaway success and all analysts tend to agree that for the first quarter of 2010 Apple will automatically lose market share gains due to its model being obsolescent, until the next iPhone is released in June of 2010. Apple may well have peaked. And no evidence suggests 'runaway' success. The only handset maker with a runaway success in smartphones currently is the Blackberry, not the iPhone.

Richard argues that the 3G version of the iPhone in the summer of 2008 "proved that consumers will do much more than use their phones to make calls and send texts." Now, the one thing and only one thing, that the iPhone proved in the summer of 2008 that consumers would do, which they tended not to do before, was to download apps to smartphones.

First, Apple did not invent the Apps Store, that was NTT DoCoMo of Japan nearly a decade earlier. Secondly, Apple did not launch an App Store before Europeans. Nokia's first App Store was with N-Gage games four years earlier. And still today, the majority of paid apps on the iPhone are games, so Nokia's N-Gage store was more of the original (gaming app store) and Apple's App Store (gaming app store) is more of the copy. I don't argue that Apple did it 'better' but Nokia was there well before Apple. But app stores were not the point, Richard Gray said Apple proved "consumer do more than make alls and send texts." How much is that App Store busines worth? Morgan Stanley told us that its worth 780 million dollars - under one billion, globally. Lets see what else those consumers do that is not voice calls or texts, shall we.

MMS is worth 27 billion dollars in 2009 said Juniper. 27 times bigger than app stores. If all Apple iPhone users downloaded apps, thats 35 million people. The active user base of MMS is 1.7 billion. Thats 51 times more than all possible App Store users. Now, in the summer of 2008, with the 3G iPhone, did Apple teach us that we could use MMS multimedia messaging to consume video clips, sounds, pictures and long texts, ads, coupons and share pictures? No, because Apple's iPhone 3G did not support MMS (they do today). But every Western European network and essentially every cameraphone handset made by Nokia, SonyEricsson, Alcatel, Sendo, etc of European handset brands did support MMS. So who taught us that consumers would do more than voice or texts? Not "Apple in 2008".

What of Ringing Tones? Ringing Tones were worth 5 billion dollars said Juniper in 2009. This, the first basic form of music on mobile phones was not invented by Apple in 2008 - at that time Apple still did not support ringing tones (they do today). But it was Nokia which first enabled the downloaded content to phones, in the form of ringing tones, back in 1998. So who taught the consumers they can do more than voice or texts?

What of the YouTube Videos? The first phone to show videos was not the iPhone. It was the 9210 Communicator by Nokia in 2001. Videos on mobile are a multi-billion dollar global industry. And it was brough to us by Apple in 2008? No, not Apple, but by Nokia seven years earlier. Who is the one who showed consumers they can do more than voice or texts on a phone?

And videogaming? The biggest part of the paid apps on the Apple iPhone App Store is games. Who was the first phone maker to offer a gaming phone? Not Apple in the summer of 2008. Nokia released its N-gage five years before that and taught consumers to load game apps to a gaming phone. Or to go back further, the first videogame preloaded on any phone was the Nokia Snake a decade before that. The global videogaming industry for mobile phones was worth 4.5 billion dollars in 2008 according to Gartner. Who was it who showed consumers they can do more than voice or texts on a phone?

Richard Wray, you have made patently silly statements. In the summer of 2008, with the 3G model of the iPhone, Apple was playing catch-up with Nokia and its N95 model of a year earlier, on most of the announced 'improvements' in the 3G iPhone when compared to the original 2G iPhone, such as the 3G network speed, the GPS location positioning etc. The App Store was not invented by Apple, that was invented in Japan by NTT DoCoMo. And for the really popular mobile services used on the planet - MMS and ringing tones expressly, Apple did not even support those in the summer of 2008 when essentially all other European and major Asian handset makers already did so. And even today, the latest model iPhone 3GS still does not support multi-tasking, is not an open-source OS, does not have a flash for the camera, a memory card slot, etc. The 2009 (and 2010) model of the Apple iPhone is a still playing catch-up with a Nokia model... from 2007. Who is the leader and who is the follower?

SIDESWIPED ?

Richard points out that Nokia is still the largest handset maker in the world but says Nokia has been "sideswiped by by the success of Apple and the encroachment of Google's Android platform."

What proof does there exist for this? Sideswiped? If he means the touch screen - Nokia had released its first touch-screen phone almost two years before the original iPhone. If he means the applications, Nokia's first app developer community was set up a decade ago and had 400,000 application developers signed up by 2001. And Apple's original iPhone 2G did not even support user-installed apps! Nokia's smartphones have all supported user-installed apps for a decade already. If he means that Apple sold 25 million smartphones last year but RIM sold 35 million Blackberries - then yes, Nokia did pay attention - much more so - to the rapid growth of Blackberry. Very differently from Apple, RIM did grow market share into the Christmas quarter. That is where the real rival is coming from in Smartphones to Nokia. Not from Apple and certainly not from Google Android phones. RIM sold more smartphones than Apple and Google Androids put together!

How badly has Nokia been "sideswiped"? They are the biggest handset maker on the planet, as big as numbers 2, 3 and 4 counted together. But in smartphones they have a BETTER market share than in all types of phones, and are as big as numbers 2, 3, 4 and almost 5, counted together. That is really being 'sideswiped' indeed. And remember, Nokia is profitable whereas in both overall phones and in smartphones, there are rivals among its biggest 5 competitors who are not profitable. Sideswiped, I can tell you what you can swipe, I'll get you some toilet-paper Mr Richard Wray, Communications Editor of the Guardian and you can go and have a wipe.

FORCED NOKIA?

Mr Wray then claims that this 'being sideswiped' by Apple and Google has forced Nokia to make Symbian free to developers. Oh? And what was the 'free model' that Apple OS/X used on the iPhone? No, its not available to anyone other than Apple, is it? But Nokia was right from the start of the Symbian partnership - partnership mind you Mr Wray, partnership - willing to let its rival handset makers join in co-ownership of the Symbian operating system. There with then-biggest handset makers like Motorola and Ericsson, co-owning the Symbian OS. Thats Nokia mind-set, cooperation, not the 'only my way' style of Apple. And Nokia has been preaching open systems for this whole decade from network APIs to open standards in service platforms. The Symbian partnership was headed to an open system well before there was any - haha -  sideswiping by Apple, or gosh - Google Android ! Android only took to steam this last quarter, long after the Symbian foundation was announced. What is wrong with you Mr Richard Wray?

As to a "desperate decision" to give satnav services to Nokia smartphone users? Richard claims that Nokia is in crisis (?) and pushed into bed with Intel because of it (??). Richard suggests that this crisis-collaboration is to have new devices to counter... HTC.

This is so baloney I don't know where to start. Whats wrong with giving navigation services for free? Google does it? Nokia was earlier already giving the maps for free? I think this is perfectly logical in their evolution of their services and apps platform. They have a strength and are playing that card. "Pushed to bed with Intel"? Now this is simply silly. Intel powers many devices in the Nokia portfolio from the original fixed telecoms switching equipment and Intel and Nokia have had a long and fruitful partnership. But to counter HTC ? You gotta be kidding ! Nokia sold 50 times more phones than HTC, Nokia sold 8 times more smartphones than HTC. If Nokia bothers about someone, it is RIM who is nearly half of Nokia's size in smartphones, not HTC. And the company Nokia needs to be aware of is Samsung who sell a little over half of the number of total phones as does Nokia. Samsung is a bigger rival to Nokia than Apple, RIM, HTC, Motorola, ZTE, Huawei, Microsoft and Google branded phones all added together. "HTC causes concern that Nokia needs to counter" - what utter rubbish Mr Wray. How incompetent are you?

NEXUS SALES MODEL IS NEW?

Its not just Nokia vs Apple in his article of Europe's doom. So Richard Wray finds that the way Google sells its Nexus One, bypassing the carriers in the USA, via the web, is an innovation? Now I wonder where they got that idea? The Nokia N97 a year earlier was sold on the exact same concept. But that is not where Nokia debuted the idea - no, its not a 'North American' innovation, Nokia - and most handset brands - have been selling directly to consumers in Europe for most of this decade. Why in Europe, because of the freedom of the SIM card of course.

Then Richard takes aim at Ericsson. He says Ericsson's market share had been cut in half in three years form 10% to 5% today and that it is because of Apple and Blackberry. That looks pretty on first glance, as the two market shares of RIM and Apple conveniently add up to about 5%. But first, RIM was selling Blackberries already three years ago before the iPhone launched, so actually the math does not add up. And then, what of Motorola? Motorola went from 22% market share to 4.9% market share in the same time. And recently SonyEricsson has been climbing a little while Motorola continued its crash-dive. No, if the article is that US based giants are strong and Europeans weak, then clearly SonyEricsson is far stronger than Motorola, and again the evidence does not support Mr Wray's bewildering conclusions.

Lastly Richard Wray says that European operators/carriers have to 'claw back money' from Apple and Google (???) to re-take the initiative.

First. The valid Europeans vs Americans comparison in the case of operators (carriers) is Vodafone, Telefonica, Orange etc vs Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc, not vs handset makers or operating systems. Its as dumb as saying British Airways competes with Boeing or American Airlines competes with Airbus. Wrong industry comparison. The handset makers like Apple iPhone and Blackberry (and Motorola, Palm etc phones from North America) are correctly compared to other handset makers like Nokia (Sony)Ericsson, Sendo, etc. And the operating systems like Windows Mobile, Google Android, RIM/Blackberry OS and iPhones OS/X, are correctly compared to European operating systems like Symbian and Maemo. You can't pit mobile operators (carriers) against handset makers or operating systems.

So right from the start, for Richard Wray to suggest that somehow Vodafone, Telefonica (ie O2) and Orange are losing ground to Apple and Google is plain silly. If you want scale, the total global apps store opportunity was worth 780 million dollars, the only part that could be considered to have some overlap with the operator business. But how is that operator business? The European operators/carriers earned in Europe alone (excluding their Asian, American etc subsidiary income) 265 BILLION dollars in 2009. Just the mobile data portion of that is 80 Billion dollars. The mobile data services generated PROFITS of more than 60 BILLION dollars last year. So what? That global income of under one billion by Apple and Google is somehow now crippling this European juggernaut that is called the mobile operator community, and European operators have to somehow 'claw back' the 'money' out of what? FREE apps delivered on the App Store? Where most app developers are losing money? You gotta be kidding.

And one more point about those operators. Richard Wray mentions that AT&T was having service troubles and dissatisfied customers in America. Yes, how bad is it? Sprint again lost customers in America. It was recently voted not just the worst telecoms company in customer care, the worst company in all of the United States. That is the 'standard' that Richard Wray wants European operators to 'emulate' for regaining their leadership? Ridiculous. Any professionals who have had work-related phones within the past 5 years in both Europe and North America will say in unison that European operators have better customer service than the American carriers. American carriers still today charge for incoming calls, incoming text messages etc.

What a stupid silly moronic article. What cool-aid have you been drinking Richard Wray? That is utterly incompetent reporting!

IN SUM

He says that Asia has taken some leadership from Europe. That is true, but he does not list any of the companies doing so, and only lists briefly four companies that are NOT doing the leadership.

He says that the USA and Canada (and specifically West Coast) has taken a leadership position over Europe. That Is patently not true. The Mobile industry is worth 1.07 Trillion dollars. 80% of that is service revenues. Where in the 1980s US based mobile operator groups were the 'hegemony' and controlled much of the mobile operators/carriers and dealt directly with the customers, today not one US or Canada based operator/carrier is even in the Top 10. But today 6 out of the top 10 are Europe-based operator groups. The vast majority of this industry and its revenues, are controlled by Europeans, not Americans. Europeans also own major parts of the carriers/operators in America, but none of the American carriers/operators own major shares of European major operators. In the big picture, Mr Richard Wray is totally off.

The handsets and network infrastricture form the remaining about 20% of the Trillion dollars in mobile telecoms. What happened to Lucent, Nortel? Motorola's networking division is a shadow of its past greatness. But three of the world's four largest mobile telecoms network infrastructure vendors today are Europeans, Swedish LM Ericsson, Finnish NokiaSiemens Networks and French Alcatel-Lucent.

Of handsets 85% of all handsets are not smartphones. In that market the biggest player is Nokia with 38% marklet share, bigger than all North America-based handset makers including all smartphone makers rolled together. Nokia's rival is not North America based basket-case 'giant' handset maker Motorola nor the tiny RIM, Apple, Palm or Google etc. Nokia's true rival is South Korean Samsung and if you want a second, 'dark horse' rival for the next few years if all goes really really REALLY badly for Nokia, that would be LG, also out of South Korea. America-based tiny smartphone makers will not bother Nokia just like an ant won't bother an elephant. That is the scale we are looking at folks. Nokia sells more handsets every three days than Palm sells in a year.. Please understand the scale.

In smartphones the rival to Nokia is not Apple, Apple was unable even to grow market share in its latest quarter and will definitely lose market share now in the January-March quarter. And Google's phones or HTC's phones are irrelevant to Nokia's market share. The only rival to Nokia's dominance in smartphones is RIM and its Blackberry, given minimal mention in the article by Mr Wray. Still, Nokia's smartphone market share is bigger than what it has in normal phones, and as big as numbers 2, 3, 4 and almost all of number 5, put together. No, Nokia has not been "side-swiped".

In smartphone operating systems the battle is even more lopsided. You can take all smartphones manufactured on the planet that have any of the North America based smartphone operating systems, RIM Blackberry, Apple iPhone OS/X, Windows Mobile, Palm, Google Android; and European Symbian outsells them all. That article is so full of baloney its not funny.

But what of apps stores. Yes what of them? They are worth less than a billion dollars in total revenues. They were invented in Japan not by Apple, and Nokia had its own developers and its own dedicated app store long before anyone had seen Steve Jobs showcase the first 2G iPhone. App store income at less than a billion is 0.4% - one fourth of one percent - the size of the global mobile data services income and yes, a little bit more than one tenth of one percent of all service revenues in mobile telecoms. Totally meaningless for anyone except some windbag journalists who want to make hype stories based on press releases.

App stores may become relevant later in this decade, they are not so now. But that change in consumer behavior that Mr Wray talked about, it was not caused by the Apple iPhone 3G in the summer of 2008. No, the changes to consumers, using a phone for more than voice and SMS, can be traced more than to any other company, to Nokia. Ringing tones ie mobile music, video gaming, TV related video clips etc. Nokia Nokia Nokia.

And of Europe? The world's largest handset manufacturer is not North American, it is Nokia of Finland. The world's largest mobile equipment maker is not North American, it is LM Ericsson of Sweden. The world's largest mobile operator group is not North American, it is Vodafone of the UK. The world's largest mobile smartphone operating system is not North American, it is Symbian of the UK. The world's largest mobile application developer is not North American, it is Buongiorno of Italy. The world's largest SIM card maker is not North American it is Gemplus of France.

Europe? The customers are there. The 'giants' of the mobile industry are there. The revenues of the industry are generated there. The profits are generated there. The innovations are generated there. In Europe. (Did I mention Motorola is making losses, Sprint is making losses, Palm is making losses, Nortel went bankrupt etc). 

What annoys me, Mr Richard Wray, Communciations Editor of the Guardian, is that I was compelled to waste all this time writing this reply to your idiotic article. You KNOW better than what you wrote. Shame on you Richard Wray! Correct your article now!

Mobile Phone Market Shares for year of 2009 and last quarter 2009

As we head into the bloodbath of 2010..  So the final numbers are out for the 5 biggest handset makers for 2009 and for several smaller players as well. Some manufacturers like RIM (Blackberry) and ZTE report their quarters on 'odd' months ie they do not end their quarter in March/June/October/December, so with them we still have to wait a bit to know for sure, but the big picture is now clear. We know the full numbers for the full year 2009. And there have been changes. (Poor Motorola)

In order of size. Nokia did not suffer a 'Motorola moment' last year and as we've patiently explained at this blog, the market for mobile phones (and smartphones) is not 'fair' and 'open' and does not work with the same rules as say the PC market or the home electronics market. If you want to read the full explanation, hope over here but do pack a lunch, its a long blog story (Smartphone Realism part 2)

ALL HANDSET MAKERS TOP 10

1 - Nokia . . . . . . .   432 Million 38  %
2 - Samsung . . . .    227 Million 20  %
3 - LG . . . . . . . . . . 117 Million 10  %
4 - SonyEricsson . . . 57 Million   5  %
5 - Motorola . . . . . . . 55 Million   5  %
6 - ZTE . . . . . . . . . .  50 Million   4.5%
7 - Kyocera . . . . . . . 45 Million    4  %
8 - RIM  . . . . . . . . .  35 Million    3.5%
9 - Sharp . . . . . . . .  29 Million    2.6 %
10 - Apple . . . . . . . . 25 Million    2.2 %
Others . . . . . . . . . .  56 Million    5%
TOTAL . . . . . . . . 1,130 Million (1.13 Billion)

So yes, lets review the year 2009 in mobile phone sales by market size. First we have of course Nokia. During the year many wrote all sorts of dribble about Nokia in trouble. But the big picture is quite clear. Nokia ended the full year selling 432 million mobile phones with a market share of 38%. And of its rivals, Nokia is now as big as the next three biggest handset makers all put together. And while two of its top 5 rivals reported losses in their handset divisions last year, Nokia ended the decade with a perfect record - the only one of the top 5 that reported consistent profits in its handset division every single quarter of the decade. Impressive results. Meanwhile, how did the year end? On a high note - Nokia's fourth quarter market share was 39%.

Then comes second place Samsung. Samsung grew strongly in the year and sold 227 million handsets for a market share of 20%. That reflected a solid growth in market share from 16% in 2008. Samsung also reported consistent profits for the year. And Samsung ended its year with a high where its fourth quarter market share was 21% also one percent better than the average for the year, like Nokia.

In third place we have LG. A year ago LG was neck-to-neck within a percentage point slightly ahead of Motorola and SonyEricsson. Now LG has cleared the two older rivals and stands alone at the 10% market share level selling 118 million handsets. LG also was profitable in its handset unit every quarter but the fourth quarter was not very promising, as LG's market share for the last quarter was the same 10% as it had for the year. Thus LG made gains early in the year but its growth seems to have stalled somewhat toward the end of the year.

Next we have SonyEricsson, which with sales of 57 million handsets for the year has overhauled Motorola and taken fourth place, SonyEricsson has not been profitable for the year. The bad news is that a year ago their market share was better than 8% now it is 5% for the year. SonyEricsson has been going backwards and doing it unprofitably. The worse news is that their market share for the fourth quarter was only 4.5%, so they are still shrinking in market share. But the silver lining is, that once again SonyEricsson is (at least briefly) the fourth biggest handset maker on the planet. At least when measured for the full year. Still its not really good news when the company just ahead of them - number 3 LG - sells twice as many phones, and number two (Samsung) sells four times as many and market leader Nokia sells over 7 times as many phones as SonyEricsson. Still. they are now technically the fourth biggest handset maker and they may perhaps even hold onto that position. But the sounds from China are not good for SE.

Fifth place in annual sales of handsets is (probably) Motorola with 55 million handsets. The reason I say 'probably' is because we do not have final numbers from ZTE, but my modelling suggests the lead Moto had over ZTE for the full year was too much and ZTE will still end up 6th biggest. But we will have to see when ZTE reports. However, the news is all bad for Moto. A year ago they had 8% market share, now they have under 5%. That is bad news. They made losses in the handset division every quarter, which is of course also very bad news. But their fourth quarter was so miserable, their market share had slipped to 3.7%. In the fourth quarter they have definitely fallen behind ZTE and for the quarter were for the first time in the company's history not even in the top 5 biggest handset makers globally. In absolute numbers Motorola lost 45% of their sales in one year, while ZTE grew 30%. I think we can see rather clearly how this will end up in 2010 for the full year..  And while Motorola had its 3.7% market share of handsets sold in the fourth quarter, they have one more indignity heading their way soon - RIM out of Canada had a quarterly market share in the fourth quarter of about 3.5% (again, we don't have RIM final numbers until their next fiscal quarter ends). RIM are so close, within a couple of tenths of a percent, to catch up and pass Motorola. At that point Moto will no longer even be the biggest handset maker of North America. That is likely to happen in the first or second quarter of 2010 by current trends.

Sixth place is ZTE. I am modelling ZTE to have shipped 50 million handsets for the year give or take a million. That gives them 4.5% for the full year 2009. ZTE is benefitting strongly from the enormous growth in the Chinese domestic market where it has gained now a leadership position among the domestic Chinese handset makers. And they have offered often very low cost handsets to the rest of the world. For the fourth quarter ZTE is definitely outselling Motorola and if they have been very successful, they may even have outsold SonyEricsson for the Christmas sales quarter, but I am modelling them to have fallen a little behind SonyEricsson for the quarter.

Kyocera comes in seventh place. Kyocera has been struggling as the CDMA networks are diminishing in scope and relative subscriber base and Kyocera's strong suit is shrinking. They shut down their Chinese factory for example as they no longer had the demand out of China. I have Kyocera at 45 million handsets and 4% global market share.

Eighth place sees RIM (better known for its Blackberry brand) with 35 million handsets sold for the year. That gives them a market share for the full year of 3.1%. RIM has been growing strongly and their fourth quarter will come out at about 3.5% market share (Like ZTE, RIM reports at a later point in time). RIM should be celebrated also as the biggest pure smartphone maker so all of their handsets were smartphones. While that does not mean they were the biggest smartphone maker per se (Nokia is) but RIM leads the pack of those handset makers who do not make traditional basic and 'feature phone' type of phones.

In Ninth place we have Sharp, which primarily focuses on the Japanese domestic market (sells only 20% of its phones outside of Japan) and sold about 29 million phones last year for 2.6% market share.

And in tenth place for the first time passing the impressive two percent market share level annually, is the youngest handset maker, Apple, who sold 25 million iPhones last year for a global market share of 2.2%

Thats our top 10 in handsets and out of the 1.13 billion handsets sold in 2009 (the industry shrunk 5% in total handset sales from 2008), these ten makers account for 95% of all handsets sold on the planet.

SMARTPHONES

1 - Nokia . . . .  68 Million    39%
2 - RIM . . . . .  35 Million    20%
3 - Apple . . . .  25 Milllion    15%
4 - HTC  . . . . .  8 Million    5%
5 - Others . . .  35 Million    21%
Total  . . . . . . 175 Million

And then what of smartphones? Its really a battle only of 3 players, Nokia the giant challenged by RIM and Apple. For all that hype last year about Google for example, their sales are still modest even among smartphones and such former major players as Windows Mobile and Palm are all but vanishing from the scene. So lets take them by size. I am modelling the year at 175 million total smartphones sold, it may be up or down a million or two when the final numbers are done.

First again we have Nokia. They sold 68 million smartphones in 2009 and end the year with an annual market share of 39%. They are one percentage point shy of being as big as the next three smartphones makers put together. A true giant. And as I keep reminding, Nokia's market share in smartphones is better than their market share in phones overall. And Nokia's fourth quarter? at 40% they ended the year on a strong note.

Then we have the world's second largest smartphone maker, often in the shadow of Apple's big PR blitz, but RIM of Canada with its Blackberry have grown from 16% a year ago to 20% for the full year 2009. They sold about 35 million smartphones for the full year. And the fourth quarter? I am projecting RIM to reach 22% for the Christmas quarter (but their quarterly results won't be out until later in the Spring). It is clear RIM has grown more, it is only not sure how much more.

Third place goes to Apple who grew very strong from 7% of all smartphones sold in 2008 to 15% for the year 2009. Very impressive growth. However, Apple's sales cycle is peculiar due to their strategy of releasing only one phone model per year, and that strategy may now have reached their peak, as their market share from the third (calendar) quarter to the Christmas quarter held steady at 17%. It is certain that Apple's market share will decline in the January-March quarter as it always does as its model range seems outdated compared to rivals and now we may see Apple forced to re-think its one-model-per-year strategy to get more growth. For the full year Apple achieved 15% and for the Christmas quarter they did better at 17%. Now don't be shocked when the January quarter market share 'crashes' for the iPhone - that is the normal pattern for Apple. For the full year they sold 25 million iPhones which is a respectable number and they are very strongly entrenched as the third biggest smartphone maker, far bigger than their fourth place rival HTC - in fact three times as large as HTC.

Yes, in fourth place is Taiwanese HTC (best known now as the manufacturer of Google's Nexus One). HTC sold 8 million smartphones and command a market share of 5%. 

The rest of the world is full of very small smartphone makers. Motorola, Samsung, LG each sell in the couple of million range. As do many others like ZTE, Fujitsu, Kyocera, Sharp, Panasonic, Sendo, Huawei, etc. If you want to find Palm, they sold about 3 million smartphones so their market share in nsmartphones was about 2% and in all phones about one quarter of one percent (0.26%).

SMARTPHONE OPERATING SYSTEMS

1 - Symbian . . . . . . .  45%
2 - RIM . . . . . . . . . . . 20%
3 - Apple . . . . . . . . .  15%
4 - Windows Mobile . .  6%
5 - Google Android . . .  4%
Others . . . . . . . . . . . 10%

Finally about the operating systems. Here we do not have enough data yet to give full numbers for the year, but this is my best guess at this stage (in many cases one handset maker offers smartphones on several operating systems, like Samsung which offers smartphones on Symbian, Windows Mobile and Google Android). But the big picture is clear and the rankings are clear. Their exact final market share may still need to be adjusted.

Symbian is the obvious global giant, with about 45% market share. The vast majority of those are Nokia branded smartphones but there are many others who make Symbian phones from SonyEricsson and Samsung to Fujitsu. Also do bear in mind that now it is no longer true that every Nokia smartphone is on Symbian, as Nokia introduced its top end smartphone OS, the Linux based open source Maemo. Maemo has currently far less than one percent market share.

RIM ie Blackberry is the second largest smartphone OS by market share in 2009 with 20%.

Apple's iPhone OS/X has 15% market share. It should be noted that the Apple iPod Touch has the same OS, so from a developer point of view, the actual installed base of iPhone OS devices is larger, and while Apple does not provide the exact breakdown, it is estimated that iPod Touch devices sell about 50% of the level of hte iPhone. It is not appropriate to count non-phones (like iPod Touch) to smartphone market shares, as the device is more like a stand-alone PDA or media player, but one needs to remember that they do exist and form a meaningful number in particular for any applications that are sold.

Windows Mobile totally crashed last year and across a dozen manufacturers achieved a cumulative market share of about 6%. Just four years ago they had more than a quarter of the total market. They are marginally bigger than Android but about to be overtaken.

Google's Android is the most difficult to measure at this stage as so many of the handsets were by smaller makers or added to a mix, but I am projecting Android at 4% of the total year sales. I will be monitoring the reports that may add some detail to especially some of the smaller players in this field. It should be noted that Android the Linux based open source OS is growing very fast with dozens of devices released and many more in the pipeline by many manufacturers.

Palm OS has about 2% of the smartphone market share in sales of new smartphones last year and are becoming totally marginalized, being relevant barely only in the US market.

Bada is the new OS by Samsung but has no devices out yet so its market share is zero.

Then there are the others totalling 8%. This includes mostly various Linux Mobile based smartphone OS's which have a small market share, in particular in Japan.

So there you are, the mobile phone market situation at the start of the new decade, January 2010. We sold 1.13 billion new mobile phones last year and 175 million or 15% of them were smartphones. If you want to quote the numbers all of the above is analysis by TomiAhonen Consulting and the data is from the TomiAhonen Almanac 2010 (to be released shortly), based on company data and public sources. 

And if you want to read my preview of the smartphone wars for this year 2010, that essay is at this link: Tomi Ahonen predicts bloodbath in smartphones 2010. 

UPDATE Feb 10, 2010  - The TomiAhonen Almanac has now been released, it has 180 pages, 84 charts and tables (13 more than the 2009 edition). The Almanac has a whole chapter dedicated to mobile phones and smartphones plus a new section on Apps Stores. In addition to info like in this blog, the Almanac tells you the installed base of major features and abilities of phones (how many have Bluetooth or a camera or a memory card slot etc) and has the history of the global installed base of smartphone operating systems, etc. The release story with sample stats, first opinions and ordering info at this story TomiAhonen Almanac 2010 Released.

A Bloodbath for 2010: the Smartphone market preview

The big battle this year in mobile will be in smartphones. Not because of reasons many pundits and analysts now suggest, that somehow this is that everybody caught the iPhone fever or that Google somehow energized the field with its Nexus phone. No, those are overhyped views with an overly US-centric view. Remember that differing from most high tech and media industries like computers, TVs, air travel, advertising, military spending, music, movies, rocket science etc, where the US tends to reflect about half of global spending of the given industry. That is not so in mobile telecoms. US cellphone users (about 285 million subscriptions) represent only 7% of the global subscriber base of 4.6 Billion. While Americans are now getting heavily into smartphones, Forrester just today reported that the total installed base of smartphones in the USA is only 17%. The EU projects that for the EU region, smartphones will be half of all phones this year.

While the American pundits, journalists and analysts obsess about the iPhone, Palm, Google etc devices, that is not the main battle. Its a side-show in the big global fight for smartphones. And while some North American players are indeed quite strong - RIM is the world's second largest smartphone maker behind Nokia - this battle is now heating up considerably for 2010. Some very powerful players are bringing in their A-game. And both market leaders, Nokia and RIM have refocsed very hard for this upcoming battle to be able to respond to the challenges. Most other smartphone makers have not caught on. The battle will be brutal this year. It will not be pretty.

NOKIA

The reports of Nokia's demise were premature. Even Nokia's own analysis got it wrong for the third quarter of 2009 when they reported a serious decline in their market share. After all numbers came out, turned out that Nokia had had only very minor 1% fluctuation in its smartphone market share, and as is usual, Nokia's smartphone market share remained well above its global handset market share, itself the best in the world.

Last year analysts were not impressed with the N97 and then there was confusion about Symbian vs Maemo and what of Nokia's Ovi store for apps and various smartphone content and services. So where do we stand? Nokia's market share in smartphones is as big as number 2 and number 3 combined, and more importantly, Nokia's smartphone market share is better than its overall handset market share. And they are doing this with a mobile phone manufacturing juggernaut which has been profitable every single quarter of the decade, while each of their big 5 rivals has struggled and posted numerous unprofitable quarters along the way (the last quarter Nokia posted a loss, but not with its handset unit, the loss was due to its infrastructure unit NokiaSiemens Networks). Typically at least 2 of the rivals are unprofitable and in some quarters all four have been so.

Do not put any credibility to any "Admob" stats or pay too much attention to Nokia 'failing' in the US domestic market for smartphones. If the choice is to be the desired smartphone brand in the 93% of the world's phone market that is not the USA, or the 7% that is the USA, Nokia has certainly made the right call to its strategy.

But it won't be easy going. A couple of years ago, the Symbian operating system was owned across several giant handset makers (Nokia part owned with SonyEricsson, Samsung, Motorola etc) and had over 60% market share. Now being only Nokia's owned operating system, its installed base is about 50% of the world's smartphones and currently sell a little over 40% of the world's smartphones. Note that most of that decline was various non-Nokia phones shifting away from Symbian. Nokia's own Symbian sales level is very stable. But it is not growing, it is in slight decline. So don't mistake Motorola and SonyEricsson and Samsung (and others) shifting away from Symbian as somehow a 'Nokia decline' in Symbian. Nokia Symbian is still very healthy at or about 40% on an annual sales level.

What is Nokia doing? While it introduced Maemo to power high end smartphones, Nokia is aggressively pushing the Symbian system down to mid-price phones where 'feature phones' used to be. It is expanding its proportion of touch screen devices (to position more against the iPhone) and more importantly, expanding its proportion of QWERTY phones against the Blackberry. Some very promising news came out of the UK this past December, that Nokia is back as the top preferred phone brand among UK youth in the Mobile Youth survey of phone brand preferences.

Most of all, any analysts should keep in mind, that thephone market is not an open 'free market'. There are severe distortions by the enterprise/business segment, and the carrier/operator subsidy model in many countries. I explained these in my blog about smartphone market share secrets last year.

The key point to take away, is that Apple says openly that its best markets are in those countries with strong operator/carrier subsidies. They do not do as well in markets where customers pay full price for the phone (the real price of an iPhone 3G on AT&T is not 100 dollars, even Americans pay the real price of about 600 dollars for their iPhones, but the remaning nearly 500 dollars is hidden payments in the 2 year payment plan). Meanwhile, in every single market that is open, ie carriers do not subsidise most phones and the phone makers get to sell their own phones directly - and which are not controlled by a domestic maker or makers (like in South Korea for example) - Nokia is the run-away market leader in all phones, and in smartphones. For any analyst who suggests Nokia is 'losing' the game against the iPhone, that should give some pause. In all markets where there are no subsidies to distort the picture, Nokia wins hands-down...  And Apple itself admits it struggles in precisely those markets. Who makes the "most desirable" phones when we take price into the equation? Not necessarily the single best phone for internet surfing, but rather a series of phones to suit mass market tastes? Thats Nokia, hands down. As big as number 2 and number 3 combined.

Even with all that, expect Nokia not to grow market share this year in smartphones, and very likely to lose some in 2010. The competition is coming from every angle and the big leaders will likely feel the heat. Nokia has been aggressively moving downstream in price and gets some solace that its price points are difficult for smaller brands to match, but its going to be a very rough year. And whether any newcomer focuses against the iPhone or the Blackberry, they will automatically also then target some part of Nokia.

RIM

The amazing untold success story, far bigger story than Apple, is RIM. Blackberries were nerdy US centric business phones only a few years ago. Europeans and Asians would not take to the flat, wide, weird Canadian phones. Try as they might, even as American conglomerates took to Blackberries by storm, and started to call it the Crackberry - 75% of American business/enterprise smartphones are Blackberries (says Ostermann survey in 2009)

The rest of the world did not fall in love with Blackberries. But RIM plugged along and slowly got traction in many markets in the enterprise/corporate space. They did particularly well in Latin America. But then came the SMS texting craze even to American shores, and whether by design or by accident, the youth of the world discovered the Blackberry. Not your boss's phone, but your kid's phone. And success followed. About at the same time, again perhaps by design, perhaps by accident, RIM expanded its product line of Blackberries to more models and several of these were more suited to consumers. RIM added cameras to these, and what businesses previously were reluctant to accept - cameraphones - started to infiltrate the business phone space. But now the Blackberries were very well suited for consumer use.

First the overall numbers. Today one in five smartphones sold - actually already 21% by the third quarter of 2009 - was a Blackberry. Remember that only 17% of smartphones are Apple iPhones. Why all that hype about the Apple and total silence about the Blackberry? Partly because this success is on strange foreign shores. In Venezuela the bestselling phone brand - not smartphone brand - is the Blackberry. In Indonesia the youth most popular phone is now the Blackberry. In the UK survey of university students, UK is traditional SonyEricsson and Nokia 'back yard' - Blackberry is now the third most popular phone brand, not the iPhone.

On RIM, this is the only brand I can promise you, it will grow market share in 2010. Why? Because first of all, it has a 'lock' on the enterprise/corporate market. The business phone market will not shift simply because there is one hot new smartphone this quarter, like a Palm Pre or Motorola Droid or iPhone 3GS or Google Nexus One or Nokia E72. The business phone market is incredibly stable because business customer IT departments resist any change and any new systems to be added and to be supported. In the big US market, Blackberry can very safely rely on something nearly 75% of all business smartphone sold this year. It may fluctuate a little up or down, but it is incredibly stable.

At the same time, the Blackberry keeps making more inroads to business phone use in all other markets, due to its incredibly well optimized business oriented form factors, solutions and apps and services. The Blackberry is simply the best enteprise phone solution on the planet. Now they have President Obama as the ultimate unofficial spokesman, the Blackberry President. They have achieved such certifications as NATO level quality of security on their device so for any business users, this is really a secure and safe platform. Their non-US global business-oriented smartphone user base will grow disproportionately well, rivalled only by Nokia with its E-Series. This market share segment will be particularly secure from any inroads by any new operating systems like the Apple iPhone or Google Android or Samsung Bada. Not because the phone is bad, but simply because IT departments will fight tooth and nail against any new OS. A survey by TBI Research in 2009 found that 80% of US businesses refuse to have more than one operating system for smartphones - and in most cases that is now the Blackberry. This is an incredibly stable source of revenue and unit sales and subscriptions for RIM.

But its huge growth is that successful transition from business phone to residential phone. And while all the press, analysts, pundits and 'experts' obsess about touch screen smartphones, the truth is that far more QWERTY phones are sold worldwide than touch screen phones. The internet use is not addictive, but SMS text messaging is addictive as proven in university studies like the one at Queensland University of Australia. So while both inputs are of course desirable and have their proponents, the fact is, that QWERTY trumps touch screen. Why is Nokia now rolling QWERTY keypads to its cheapest non-smartphones? Nokia know this, they invented the QWERTY keyboard in the world's first smartphone, the Communicator 9000, and they were the world's first entity to suggest SMS might be addictive, a decade ago. Nokia know this.

But RIM have optimized their phones for mobile messaging. It is a perfect starting point. Then they have the Blackberry instant messenger, which appeals to the youth in particular as it offers free messages between Blackberry users. That in turn brings in a contagion effect, you want to have the Blackberry specifically, because your friends use it. And then there is the cool factor, suddenly the Blackberry is the phone all older teenagers and young adults want to have. RIM is right now in a sweet spot, all things going for them. It is no surprise, that in the shadow of the world's most spectacular high tech launch ever, the iPhone - RIM has consistently outsold the iPhone and grown its own market share.

I can tell you that often analysts and pundits even in the various early adopter markets like say Indonesia, where Blackberries emerged as the youth 'must-have' phone, inspite of their considerable cost differential above typical youth phones; the early experts were dumbfounded and could not explain it. I have heard various RIM experts say the same, that they are not sure exactly how and why, but are trying to learn this as much as possible and then capitalize on this knowhow.

I think it speaks volumes that Nokia is copying RIM not only with E-Series form factors, but now with cheaper non-smartphones adopting QWERTY keypads. Both RIM and Nokia know that the biggest single segment of the smartphone battlefield will not be touch screens, it will be QWERTY phones. And I would hope that at times the operators/carriers would be reminded of this too - that AT&T and O2 and other networks complain about congestion with the iPhone, but QWERTY Blackberries and Nokias do messaging, very profitable services for the operators... So its in the core profitability interests of the operators/carriers to promote QWERTY phones, not touch screen phones.

Anyway, all signs suggest that Blackberries are achieving 'must have' status among the youth. Youth fashions and desires can be fickle so this is by no means a guarantee of long term success, but for this year 2010 this bodes very well for Blackberry. As they are very secure to hold onto business/enterprise customers and see growth in youth markets, they are sure to pick up some market share points even in this very competitive year of 2010.

APPLE

Apple is also growing strong currently. They have been expanding their global footprint but it is a worrysome detail, that out of all iPhones ever sold, 43% have been activated by AT&T (Said AT&T late last year). The iPhone is the darling of Americans but doesn't seem to engender the same level of passion across the oceans. Yet 17% of all smartphones sold in the third quarter last year were iPhones. That is very good news for Apple and they keep growing year on year. Remember that as Apple only introduce one new model per year in June, they have that peculiar sales pattern where their sales grow in the second half of the year, but then always decline stronly in the first quarter of the new year. So don't be alarmed, but be prepared, that when the January-March quarter sales numbers come out in about April of 2010, there will be inevitably a decline in Apple market share. That is not a sign of trouble, it is only because the 3GS will be 9 months old by then - near-obsolete in smartphone terms - and the next iPhone is not due until June of 2010.

But its not going to be an easy year for Apple. The early strongly operator/carrier subsidised markets are all now 'done' and have the iPhone. As Apple tries to bring its ultra-expensive superphone to ever less affluent markets, it finds it hard to sell meaningful numbers. China is a perfect example, Apple was really struggling to get its iPhone to move in any relevant numbers in China. And its strategy of going with an exclusive carrier/network in major markets is backfiring (as I predicted) and they are now expanding networks in many markets. There is continuing speculation that the exclusive deal with AT&T will end as well.

Most of all, Apple faces severe competition in the consumer space. The 3GS was a good phone last summer but now is really showing its age already. 3 megapixels is very modest for a 600 dollar smartphone where other brands do 8 megapixels and in advanced markets like Japan and South Korea 12 megapixels is now the standard for premium phones. A flash? When can we see that? And no removable battery, no memory slot, no QWERTY keyboard, etc. Apple is seeing a lot of business going to near rivals who also offer 3 inch touch screens but in many ways 'better' features. And please Apple fans don't write about that. Yes, the Apple is by far the most user-friendly phone. But that goes only so far. And at some point Apple has to release more than one phone model per year else its market share growth will stagnate. I believe this year 2010 will drive that lesson home to Apple HQ loud and clear.

Anyway, Apple needs yet another hit this June. If they manage once again to do a magical phone that everybody loves, they'll be fine to the end of the year. But in 2007 when there were very few phones of a similar form factor, Apple had this 3 inch touch screen market segment to itself. Today every major maker offers 3 inch touch screens, and the competition is proving rough for Apple.

What is certain, is that for the start of the year 2010, Apple's market share will sink of course, due to an aging model line. Will it recover for the second half of 2010, will depend on how amazing the next iPhone will be (it will definitely be better of course). But now most new rivals are all targeting this Apple area - not the enterprise space where RIM is, and not the low price angle where Nokia is. The new competition will almost all hit Apple square center. Like the Google Nexus One right now.

I would say for the year, if Apple can hold onto its market share - remember the smartphone market itself will explode this year -so there is going to be a lot of organic growth for those who can hold onto market share, so that is still good news. I don't see much chance for strong growth, but it does depend on that one new iPhone model next June. It could be a 'must have' phone perhaps. I'd say the single best tool for Apple would be a QWERTY keyboard but I've been saying that since 2007 and of course Apple don't listen to me haha...

HTC

The fourth largest smartphone maker is not SonyEricsson or Motorola, it is Taiwanese HTC. They manufacture for example the Google Nexus One. But even before there was an Android operating system from Google, HTC was the fourth largest smartphone maker with about 5% of the market. HTC has often struggled with the lackluster performance of Windows Mobile - HTC was the launch smartphone for WinMo early int the decade (after MS suddenly pulled the rug out from under their first-annnounced WinMo launch handset maker, UK based Sendo, if you remember) - and HTC has been WinMo's standard-bearer ever since. HTC CEO said in 2009 that 80% of all WinMo phones ever made, were manufactured by HTC. So now that HTC is shifting most of their smartphones away from the Microsoft operating system to Google's Android, is coming as a very hard hit to Microsoft.

So HTC was already plugging happily along in the fourth place, and now they have been increasing the awareness of their own brand, and then they have the sudden added support of the Google brand. This is sure to bring growth to HTC.  How far can they grow? They are perceived as a small 'built-to-order' maker, and don't have the brand appeal of the Samsungs and SonyEricssons in the eyes of the big mobile operators./carriers or the independent handset resellers in open markets. But they are now on a good growth path. I think they're a pretty sure bet to increase market share in 2010.

FUJITSU

So the fifth biggest smartphone maker is Fujitsu out of Japan. What? You never heard of Fujitsu's smartphones? Thats because they mostly focused on the home Japanese market the past few years. In Japan the major smartphone platforms are Symbian and Linux, but most smartphones are 'crippled' by the operators/carriers with standard features and often the user cannot install apps like they could on a similar device in most other markets. Still, as a smartphone maker, Fujitsu is experienced and big. Plus they are one of the biggest makers of laptop computers so they have that synergy in distribution chain, brand and tech support.

What can we expect out of Fujitsu. Last year they said that they are going to refocus on the world market. Expect Fujitsu branded smartphones to appear in selected markets during the year. They are a luxury brand sitting right next door to China, it would sound like a good strategy to push into China. Japan often looks at Taiwan as their back yard, so its another obvious early target market. Beyond that, it will probably be random markets this year as they sample world tastes and see which markets would be receptive to the Fujitsu brand of phones once again.

Fujitsu have the advantage of learning about end-user preferences in the single most advanced mobile phone market, Japan. So they can bring ideas and innovations and technologies that have an advantage. I would expect that Fujitsu will be targeting initially the top end of the smartphone market, nearer to netbooks and web tablets, and going of course head-to-head with the Apple iPhone line. But if they can hold steadily onto about a 4% global market share in smartphones simply by selling in Japan, and now start to expand, expect them to grow organically at least a few percentage points globally.

SAMSUNG

Samsung had been giving smartphones lip service for many years. They had smartphones on just about every platform, on Symbian, on Windows Mobile, on Android etc. Now they have decided that it is a battle they want to enter and to win in it. And they have made that strategic commitment of releasing their own smartphone operating system, Bada. Samsung had previously held something like 3% market share in smartphones, but - in feature phones with touch screens - they already outsell the iPhone. All Samsung need to do, is to switch their touch screen phones from their proprietary operating system to Bada during 2010, and they will exceed the iPhone annual sales in smartphones... 

If executed perfectly, Samsung would seem to appear out of nowhere and in one year leapfrog Microsoft Windows Mobile, Google Android and Apple iPhone. Don't be surprised to see this happening. The South Koreans are nothing if not competitive, and they work day and night and weekends to achieve their objectives. And Samsung says in every market they intend to be one of the top 3, or its not worth competing. They have the scale to do it, and I am very confident within at least 18 months they will overhaul those three, lagging only behind RIM and Nokia. Whether it happens in 2010 remains to be seen how far Samsung is along its diabolical world domination plans. But they will certainly grow every quarter this year once the Bada phones are launched. Grow every quarter, mark my words.

I expect that during 2010 Samsung will push its Bada operating system aggressively to its mid range feature phones, and by converting these to 'smartphones' - they will achieve the most amazing market share growth ever seen in the smartphone space. Yes, in some ways its a bit of 'cheating' with accounting, but it fits the smartphone definition and Samsung will be grabbing headlines. As these will predominantly be touch screen phones, it will be seen as being head-on battle against the iPhone, even though in price it will more appropriately be a battle against market leader Nokia.

SONYERICSSON

A bit player in the smartphones space, SonyEricsson was one of the first major smartphones and has had very high end prestige and popular business and residential phones in that area, but only a tiny part of their total lineup. Since Sony released the Walkman and Cybershot brands to the SonyEricsson partnership, the SE phones have been in the mid-range of excellent dedicated musicphones and cameraphones. But the advent of the iPhone decimated SE's musicphone market and the brand has been struggling severely to find a place recently. SE has been losing global handset market share and its smartphones have suffered in that same process. Even that news out of UK university students preferring SonyEricsson as the second most popular phone brand is actually bad news for SE, as previously SE was tops. They are moving down in preference among even the youth. All news is bad news at SE.

Recently with the Symbian OS shifting to Nokia ownership, SE has little reason to particularly push Symbian in its smartphones and is shifting to Android. But the total shipments are low in numbers and the total brand is in confusion. I don't see SE particularly growing. They have to stabilize their overall handset market share first, and then worry about smartphones. This could be a good year for SE to ignore the wars in the smartphone bloodbath and find attractive niche markets elsewhere and stabilize their profitability. I've been saying dfor years now, that what SE needs is the Playstation phone, which could be a hit product. Remember that most of the paid apps on the iPhone are games. But yes, if the PSP  phone appears, SE could have a sudden surge. Else - and more likely not - I don't see them as growing. They will be in the 'other' category of smartphones and mostly ignored.

MOTO

Poor Motorola. They are so on the ropes. I wrote my open letter to them, that they should do SMS texting optimized phones to save the company (something RIM ended up doing and growing magnificently). But Moto have staked the whole company on one Android phone, the Motorola Droid, and now 'Do no evil' Google has stabbed them openly in the back with the Nexus One. Motorola is doing its best, but their global handset market share has been in total freefall for years - they have gone from 22% to 5% in three years! - and they now are feeling the breath of RIM in their neck, a pure smartphone maker who may overtake Motorola in total phones shipped some quarter this year.

It was a risky move to make a heavy move into smartphones. The Droid is not going to make meaningful inroads into the enterprise space for the same reasons that RIM owns that space and others can't get in. So the Droid has to fight it out in the high end of the smartphones, against the iPhone and high end smartphones from Nokia to Google to HTC to Fujitsu to Samsung to Palm to just about anyone..  But it was a popular move to US based investors, so Moto made its bed and now must sleep in it.

I don't see Moto having much chance outside the US market in this heated contest, to peddle its smartphone to consumers who had grown very tired of the Moto brand the last few years. Not in this year with so many exciting new smartphones appearing in the same price bracket. And the US market is not big enough to give Moto the gains it needs. I see Moto overall losing handset market share and being irrelevant in the numbers of the smartphone battle. Incidentially, ZTE out of China as a non-smartphone basic phones maker is about to pass Moto as the fifth biggest phone maker, so the fall from grace continues in any case, Moto is headed to the waste basket of the industry.

Motorola may appear on the charts for US smartphones with some market share, but nowhere near market leader RIM or second place iPhone. Too little too late. When will Moto close shop? At Forum Oxford we have already a Motorola death-watch... They are certainly already on the ropes

PALM

Palm sells only about 800,000 smartphones so apart from being a curiosity in the US market, they are irrelevant in the big picture. They don't account for one percent of the market and have essentially no chance of growing market share in this bloodbath of a year in smartphones. I would not be surprised if Palm passes onto history during this year.

LG

A more interesting player in smartphones is LG. LG is the third biggest handset maker out of South Korea and like Samsung, they have pretty much ignored the smartphone space. But - remember the original 'amazing' looks of the iPhone? That totally radical one button touch screen flat 3.5 inch screen wonderphone when first shown by Steve Jobs in January 2007?

The looks of the iPhone, exact dimensions, etc, were considered in January 2007 to be a copy of an industrial design winning LG phone - from 2006. Apple designers cleverly copied an award-winning LG design to create the 'wow' factor in 2007, because LG had not brought this phone to the Western markets (we eventually saw the consumer version of it as the LG Chocolate, released in Europe before the iPhone launched in the USA in 2007). So LG knows fully well how to do this type of phones and form factors. They just haven't bothered to do that as a "smartphone" so far. But the LG Chocolate was Europe's bestselling phone at one point in 2007 and in its lifetime has sold more units than all iPhones.

If LG feels like they'd want to have a major market share in smartphones, they could do the same as Samsung, introduce a smartphone OS to the next edition of the Chocolate and having a far cheaper phone of the popular touch screen and 3 inch screen form factor, they could easily outsell the iPhone 'as a smartphone' within about a year - to 18 months. But that 'step' is not even taken yet, as Samsung did announce its Bada operating system and will clearly now fight for the smartphone space, LG has not made any such bold announcements. At the CES this week LG has introduced two smartphones and they made noises that they'd like to get more market success in smartphones. If they so desire, they can become a massive global rival in no time. Remember in scale as a handset maker they already are far bigger than any North American phone makers including Palm, Apple, RIM and Motorola.

OTHER JAPANESE

There are actually seven handset makers out of Japan and several have expressed interest last year in moving abroad, or 'returning' to the overseas phone markets that the Japanese brands (other than Sony/SonyEricsson) abandoned a decade ago. Some of the brands will not be doing it as smartphones but some may. We have powerhouse electronics brands there like Panasonic, NEC and Sharp. And the biggest of the Japanese handset makers is Kyocera. Any of them may find it suddenly appealing to capture part of the limelite in smartphones and do a nice little splash some time in 2010. But I don't see them taking big market shares in smartphones but keep an eye out for the GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February for any surprise announcements.

DELL

Doesn't it seem like every PC maker is suddenly doing smartphones? Dell is also in the game now. They will be releasing their first smartphone in America on the AT&T network. Dell will struggle severely for early years in their entry, in building carrier relationships with the 160 or so significant mobile operator/carriers and the 600 overall; as well as hundreds of national resellers in so many markets. They will find that the smarpthones market is totally different from the PC market and that normal free market rules do not apply. And that to get scale, they have to move downstream and diversify fast - like Blackberry has done. I don't see them being a global powerhouse yet and won't register in the one percent market share range this year, but they are yet another brand doing high end internet-oriented smartphones (against the iPhone).

GOOGLE

Google's entry into the smartphone space is seen by some as going back on their word (that they do not intend to be a phone maker), and by others as stepping severely on the toes of their Android handset maker partners. The Google Nexus One suggests there will be a Two and more, so it seems like Google has made a strong commitment to become a handset maker brand, whether their phone is physically made by HTC or not.

Initially the Nexus One is energizing the US focused tech media and analysts into a frenzy but I would think this will subside. It is a phone positioning at the iPhone end of the consumer market, as a pure touch-screen device and labeled a 'superphone' in the US market, it is already attracting direct comparisons to the iPhone. Price wise its conveniently 10% cheaper. But Google has the advantage of not limiting the Nexus to one carrier only. And quite alarmingly for the iPhone US market aspirations, the Nexus will be both in a GSM and CDMA version (T-Mobile first, but Verizon version to follow). Google also has the Vodafone networks as reseller partners so it will make quite a splash globally as well.

Because it goes against so many other similar Android devices and tries to fight against the iPhone head-on, I don't see them replicating Apple's first year success of 10 million units, so the Nexus will be very low in the single digits even if all goes well. But behind the scenes, many Android device makers cannot be happy and there is probably a lot of lobbying to stop Google from this path. They may find a device maker revolt and be forced to pull out. On the other hand, most of the Android partners have poor options right now - Windows Mobile 6.5 is not much of an option and going back to Symbian means supporting rival Nokia - Google may well be seen as the lesser of all evils (as opposed to 'do no evil')

MICROSOFT

Microsoft once had 30% of the smartphone market share. Yes thats true. Today they are vanishing fast. They have seen many Windows Mobile handset makers shift to Android and Samsung launch their own OS, so expect WinMo to keep losing market share. The worst news, one could say devastating news was that HTC decided to focus on Android for this year, as they won't do WinMo 6.5 devices and await WinMo 7. Microsoft has promised WinMo 7 will be released at the end of this year but so often in the past Microsoft's launch dates have slipped and the WinMo handset community and developer community have no reassurances that Microsoft has woken up to mobile and is taking it any more seriously now as it has in the many years of the past. (My open letter to them has been read widely at Microsoft HQ but they still don't get it).  

Microsoft has to expend a lot of resources to support WinMo 6.5 and develop 7, all while their market share seems to be cut in half quarter after quarter after quarter. One wonders why they bother, and there is a deathwatch for WinMo also at Forum Oxford already. There is no light in this tunnel and one wonders at what point MS simply decides to throw in the towel and not bother to fight for this dwindling opporunity, especially as the fight heats up so much this year with so many fresh new players and far more modern operating systems.

WHAT OF APPS STORES?

Haha, Apps stores are a total non-story. They do not matter one iota in the big battle for smartphones this year, but you will hear all kinds of silly stats and forecasts and billions of downloads. That will not determin the market success. I told you what decides market success globally in smartphones. I also told you the media's silly obsession with app stores is pointless. But I furthermore said that app stores are a good trend, and eventually, in many years from now, we may have real value out of app stores. Whenever you hear 'app store' mentioned in 2010 safely skip the story, it is meaningless to smartphone market success. Don't fall for the app store hype.

IN SUM

What will it look like after 2010 is done? I see Nokia in the 35 to 40 percent market share range. RIM will grow to the 22 - 25 percent market share. Apple may hold onto about 15-18 percent share depending on how 'awesome' the next June 2010 version of their iPhone is. Samsung is likely to grow at least past the others with Bada to fourth place and will certainly eventually overtake the iPhone, but that I see happening more in an 18 month scale than this year. Still they will be a solid number 4. I'd put them around 10% give or take a few points.

HTC will be the biggest of the smaller players due in large part to Google's Nexus and its brand. It will help sell any HTCs. I would say HTC grows but to something like 6% or 7%. At worst they hold fifth place at about 5%. Toshiba is going to push abroad, expect them to battle HTC. LG is a dark horse, depending on if they go full steam suddenly into smartphones or are happy to do touch screen feature phones.

The other brands will be in the roughly 1 percent or less range including Motorola. SonyEricsson, Palm, some other Japanese makers, Google's own brand (double-counted in HTC above), and Dell. Should SonyEricsson do a PSP phone (most likely then as a smarpthone) that would give SE a big boost. And I'm pretty sure we'll see more PC makers rushing to a smartphone near you, like Lenovo, Acer, HP, Toshiba etc.

It will be a bloodbath in 2010 and we will be keeping score in the media often. The only thing I urge you to keep in mind - the US market is totally not symptomatic of the rest of the world. Only one in 12 phones sold in the world is in America, so don't think the biggest battlefield will be on those shores. No, the big battles at the high end of the price range will be in Western Europe and the low end of the smartphone battle will be in Asia. Those are the markets where this war will be won or lost. But it will be an interesting year in mobile.

Addendum - someone commented asking me to explicitly mention my background, that I have been employed by Nokia in the past and that Nokia is still a customer of mine. That is true, and I say so countless times in my books and on this blog and when I speak in public; but perhaps it again needs to be repeated? I left Nokia HQ in 2001 and my last post with them was the Global Head of Business Consulting. Perhaps I should also state that earlier in my career I was employed by a company that was an Authorized Apple Reseller as one of their Apple/Mac trainers, so I probably also have a strong positive Apple bias. Since 2001 I have been an independent consultant. I do not disclose any customers of my consulting who do not first openly acknowledge their relationship with me. Nokia has been kind enough to do so, so yes, Nokia is one of my reference customers. Out of this list of handset makers, so too my reference customers include RIM, Motorola, SonyEricsson and LG. There are others on this list who have not yet disclosed in public that they have used me. Note that in this blog I am positive of some of 'my customers' (RIM and LG) and negative of others (SonyEricsson and Motorola) and am both positive and negative of Nokia. I am known for speaking the truth as I see it, even when this means that I am critical companies that have given me consulting work. The amazing thing is, they do respect that, and keep giving me more work. But yes, if you need to hear it, yes I am a Finn, I was employed by Nokia up to 2001 and they are still giving me consulting work, as do four other companies in this list.

PS - two items may be of further interest to visitors. A video of my presentation of the mobile industry - nicely showing my slides as well, side-by-side, entitled the next four billion (mobile phone subscriptions to the planet that has only 6.7 billion people and over 4 billion mobile phones) has been viewed over 3,000 times already and many seem to quite like it. Its at this link Tomi Ahonen keynote presentation from Picnic conference Amsterdam.

And for those who would like to read about some astonishing numbers of the mobile phone industry - more cameraphones than digital cameras, more alarm clocks used on phone than stand-alone alarm clocks etc, read my essay on The Nokia Decade.

UPDATE Feb 10, 2010  - The TomiAhonen Almanac has now been released, it has 180 pages, 84 charts and tables (13 more than the 2009 edition) including a whole chapter dedicated to phones and smartphones. See sample stats, first opinions and ordering info at this story TomiAhonen Almanac 2010 Released.