iPhone, Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia fight for the honors
By Gareth Powell
Who is leading in mobile phone sales and, more important, profitability? IPhone, Blackberry, Nokia or someone of whom we have yet to hear. The answer, truthfully, is no one knows. You cannot put accurate figures on it.
Naming the losers is not that hard. Naming the winners is not that easy.
This is no way casts aspersions on any figures or suppositions which have been published.
Yes, Blackberry owns a lot of the senior business market — and will own a lot more now that Barack Obama has cast his vote. IPhones get most of the publicity. Nokia struggles with coming to the market late. Microsoft does not make phones. And the rest? Not a happy scene.
Perhaps we need to do is to think of mobile phones in sections, in strata, in layers. There is no overall winner although for journalists that does not make for an easy story.
Apple disclosed sales figures of the iPhone for the holiday quarter. That is 4.4 million iPhones sold which is an increase on the last quarter but down from the 6.9 million of the previous quarter. Or is it? What is never accounted for here is the huge black market that exists.
There are well over one million iPhones sold in China and 3G, just coming in, will boost that figure. Not all of those sales come directly from Apple. In truth, very little. So the figures which are published need to be kept in perspective.
Microsoft says 2008 saw 20 million Windows Mobile smartphones sold and this is probably true but this is not a market where Microsoft is making serious money.
Nokia sold 113 million phones, which is probably more than they sold of wellington boots, which is where it first started. (This is a bad joke which will not appear in these pages again. Nokia sold out of the boot business some years ago. And at the same time they were possibly making ice-breakers. But that was then and now is now.)
Nokia is mobile phones. But is the Nokia a smart phone in all senses of the word ’smart?’ No it is not. You do not swank — the phrase in Australia is ‘big note’ — that you have a Nokia.
Nokia sold 113 million mobile phones in the fourth quarter. It shipped approximately 8 million Nokia N series and more than 3 million Nokia E series devices during the fourth quarter of 2008. Both the N and E series phones run the S60 operating system, which, at a stretch, could be called ’smart.’
So Nokia sold, say, 11 million smart phones in the fourth quarter.
A guess which has been made elsewhere, Information Week is that Nokia’s smartphone sales for 2008 totaled more than 18 million. Depending on your definition of smart phone.
Microsoft is not really in the running here because it is not making phones. At a guess, for seriously smart phones, Apple is in the lead with Nokia doing its best after losing significant market share. For Apple to have moved so fast as to have Nokia snapping at Apple’s heels (in a technological sense) is an amazing performance.
Blackberry is not really in this bun fight. Electronista Information Week noted that although it has sold somewhere around four million of them, the profitability of the ‘push’ technology is very high. And the Barack Obama effect, which will be huge, has yet to take effect.
In mobile phones we live in interesting times.
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January 25th, 2009
This may possibly be the worst article on smartphones I have seen ever. I expected more from tech.blorge.
The short version is that all S60 phones are smartphones, and can do anything most other smartphones can, depending on the skill of the operator. That includes things like push e-mail and multi-tasking.
That means Nokia outsold everyone else by multiples likely.
Secondly, apple’s 4.4 million are their shipped phones. The Black market can not sell phones Apple did not ship, so it is all accounted for.
Next, MS sold 5 million licenses to smartphone OEM’s in 2008. Whether these went out in shipped phones from OEM we do not know, but one may as well assume so.
Lastly, Blackberry and RIM is already well established, and probably holds the second position. They did not release Q4 shipments yet.
In short, you do not seem to understand the situation, but the ranking is Nokia, RIM, Microsoft and Apple.
January 25th, 2009
In fact, no it isn’t. True Blackberry had not released its Q4 shipments so that will have to wait.
Your definition of smart phones is plainly not the same as mine.
Microsoft does not make phones – it has created an operating system
I am very close to the Nokia people in Asia and they lament their absence of true smart phones which are seen as such by the public.
While I will happily accept I do not understand the situation all of the phone people I have interview in the last two days – it is the Apple launch in Bangkok – tell me that you are not correct.
Let us wait from the Blackberry figures and then I think the order will be Apple and RIM with its Blackberry. In fairness, I do not count Microsoft nor yet Google Android for they are operating systems not phones.
The contentious point is Nokia. I think they are smart phones, you think they are smart phones, I do not believe the users think they are smart phones. It is possible they will. It will take an immense effort for Nokia to do that. I think it possible, even probable. It has not happened yet.