Telecom Lead India: Nokia Lumia, the Finnish phone major’s first Windows 8 smartphone, is still trying to find pace in phone space.
In Q3, Lumia volumes decreased quarter-on-quarter to 2.9 million units. Nokia claims that its new line of Lumia products will do well in the mobile phone market. The current holiday season will be the spring board for Nokia to take off.
Nokia’s strategies to sell Nokia Lumia 920T at RMB 4599 without contract through China Mobile is likely to assist the company to establish in China, the world’s largest smartphone market, in coming quarters, according to telecom analysts.
During the third quarter, Nokia China clocked at 78 percent decrease in sales. The decrease in Greater China net sales and volumes were primarily due to Symbian.
America, the second largest smartphone market and the foothold of Samsung and Apple, and Europe will resist Nokia’s aggressive efforts to regain market leadership in smartphone space in 2012. In Q3, Nokia reported 29 percent decline in devices revenue in Europe to 985 million euros.
Recently, Nokia admitted that decreases in net sales and volumes in North America were primarily due to lower operator and distributor demand for Lumia as well as its efforts to prepare distribution channel for the upcoming sales start of new devices.
TelecomLead.com reported that Nokia’s strategies around Symbian OS and Lumia phones contributed to decrease in revenue — 19 percent dip in Q3 revenue to 7.24 billion euros.
Revenue from Nokia’s devices business division was down 34 percent.
Mobile phones volumes increased quarter-on-quarter to 77 million units. Asha full touch smartphones touched with volumes of 6.5 million units.
Dip in sales in Asia Pacific was 18 percent.
The decrease in North America net sales and volumes was primarily due to mobile phones.
Thanks to Nokia Lumia, the phone major clocked year-on-year increase in its Smart Devices ASP in Q3 2012. This is due to a positive mix shift towards sales of Lumia products which carry a higher ASP than Symbian devices, as well as a positive impact related to deferred revenue on services sold in combination with devices.
It’s time to re-think
Currently, Nokia is not in top 5 smartphone vendor list. Samsung, Apple, Research In Motion (RIM), ZTE and HTC are the top 5 smartphone makers in Q3 2012.
According to IDC, phone vendors shipped 444.5 million mobile phones in Q3 compared to 434.1 million units in Q3 2011.
Smartphone vendors shipped 179.7 million units in Q3 2012 compared to 123.7 million units in Q3 2011.
Nokia lost out due to aggressive selling by Chinese phones vendors such as ZTE and Huawei. Nokia could not make any headway in China.
“Nokia’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. However, the smartphone market is still relatively nascent, which means there’s room for multiple vendors and operating systems to flourish, including Nokia,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC.
Can Nokia bounce back? Will the current Nokia CEO continue to steer head the survival strategies?
Note: TelecomLead.com’s editors have selected this news based on the impact it created on the industry and the sector.
Krishna Arvind
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