Nokia out of top five league of smartphone vendors

Overtaken by Blackberry manufacturer RIM

Finnish manufacturer Nokia has dropped off the world’s top five list of smartphone makers for the first time, latest figures from research firm IDC indicate. It says that while the overall phone market grew 2.4 per cent in Q3 compared to the same period in 2011, it was Korea’s Samsung taking the lion’s share of sales closely followed by Apple. Handset makers shipped 444.5 million mobile phones during the three months with, perhaps surprisingly, Canada’s Research in Motion beating Nokia to the No.5 slot with the rest of the leading vendors made up of Taiwan’s HTC and China’s ZTE.Nokia boss Stephen Elop has closely allied the future of the company with Windows Phone 8 along with the user interface and services Microsoft is tying its products together with.

But with its Lumia smartphones so far failing to make much impression and news of the company’s latest slide down the league of top manufacturers, it doesn’t leave much room left for manoeuvre if Elop’s Windows gamble doesn’t succeed.

Comments Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker: “Nokia’s share losses have meant gains for competitors.

“The company’s transition away from Symbian-powered smartphones to ones shipped with Windows Phone has left ample opportunity for rivals to steal share away from Nokia over the past 18 months.”

But Resitvo reckons the war is not yet completely lost for Nokia. “The smartphone market is still relatively nascent which means there’s room for multiple vendors and operating systems to flourish, including Nokia,” he adds.

* One of the few bright spots for Nokia is India where, according to a study by CyberMedia Research, it came top of the vendors’ league with a 22.2 percent share of total shipments.
Some 102.4 million mobiles were sold during the first half of 2012 with sales of feature phones growing faster than smartphones, helping Nokia stay ahead of Samsung. Smartphones accounted for 5.5 million sales during the period.

Dave Evans is a long established commentator on both the IT and cellular industries. His current focus is on share price trends within the sector. You can email him here

View the original article here