Nokia mobiles have become expensive after shipments of its mobile phones fell by a third. Its now likely to fall to third place behind the aggressive Samsung!Nokia has been the global leader of the smartphone market in shipments since 1996 but its market share has been under attack ever since Apple launched its phone in 2007. The Finnish company has struggled to compete with Apples iPhone and handsets built on Googles Android platform by makers like Samsung and HTC.
Nokia has failed to develop a mass market device that can compete on equal terms with Apple and the android manufacturers.Nokia is also struggling financially too.
It lost US368 million in the second quarter as sales fell 7 per cent to 9.3 billion. Its total mobile phone shipments fell 18 per cent to 88.5 million, from 108.5 million in the previous quarter. Sales of smartphones also slid 32 per cent to 16.7 million. While Apple sold 20 million iPhones in the same period.For 15 years Nokia has been the favoured choice of mobile phone users. But now faces an uncertain future as it battles to compete with the emerging giants of the industry – Apple and Google.
Consumers favoured Nokia because of its industry leadership, as it progressed from black-and-white screens to now videoconferencing in real-time all from a palm-sized device.Nokia, armed with its Symbian operating system, even led the low-end mobile market for many years, although this segment is evaporating rapidly.Nokia has experienced a rapid fall in market share in recent times.
In the first quarter of last year it held 49.5 per cent of the market to just 24.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year. In any market this is an alarming development.Nokia first came to prominence in the late 1990s, when it ended Motorolas global reign as the leading handset-maker by offering elegant yet easy-to-use devices.In 2002 Nokias main rival was Palm who held a significant market share, in the fourth quarter of 2002, Nokia powered into pole position.In 2008, a year after Apple introduced the iPhone, Nokias mobile footprint dramatically shrank. Nokia held 58.4 per cent and Apple 25.6 per cent with Android coming in at 0.8 per cent market share.
It has been all downhill from there for Nokia.By the end of last year, Nokias market share was down to 38.9 per cent, Apple iPhone had 32.6 per cent, Androids had increased to16.5 per cent. RIMs BlackBerry had 8.1 per cent. Although Nokia regained No 1 position in the fourth quarter last year, it soon lost its crown to new king of mobile Apple.
Today the top-three handset makers were Apple, Nokia and Samsung.Nokia global chief Stephen Elop recently said that all future Nokia smartphones will be powered by only one operating environment, Microsofts. Almost all other manufacturers – Apple, Samsung and RIM have embraced Googles Android operating system.Apple is due to launch its next version of the iPhone, the iPhone 5 in August 2011. We will need to wait and see how Nokia performs after the iPhone 5 release.
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