End 2011: Nokia From No.1 to No.3

Between now and the end of the year, prolific Samsung could take Nokia's spot as no. 1 worldwide mobile marketplace. Nokia could also lose a place on the smartphone market to find itself third behind Apple.


This is according to the Japanese analyst, Nomura, a prediction which is in line with those of Gartner, Canalys and IDC.

On the competitive and constantly moving terrain of mobile phone manufacturing that is always in search of attractive innovations, Nokia is on shaky ground. After suffering a net fall in profits (though turnover is up) in the first quarter of 2011, the current mobile phone market leader is continuing to lose market share in the smartphone segment - the overall proportion of which is set to double this year to 472 million units (IDC). While awaiting the arrival of the first phones running on Windows Phone 7 - not before the first quarter of 2011 - Nokia is trying, for better or worse, to perfect its in house OS, Symbian.

From the other end of the world, Samsung, using the steamroller strategy that has proved so effective on numerous consumer electronics markets, continues to assert itself with a series of weighty advertising campaigns and smartphone releases (Samsung is betting on a multi-platform strategy: Android, Bada, WP7), from entry level to high end. The company is already no. 1 in Western Europe and there's no obvious reason why this phenomenon cannot be repeated in the rest of the world.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Apple, with its iPhone, it's AppStore and its 425,000 applications, continues to gain ground. iOS, the Apple operating system, is reported to be running on 200 million devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). According to Nomura, Apple could soon move into second place and relegate Nokia to third.

Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO: "Android is an open box, but it remains to be seen how open and how long for?"

Still according to Nomura, HTC could well be on a par with Nokia in 2012.

The Android operating system should count for 39% of the world market in 2011 and reach 44% in 2015. The question is, by choosing Windows Phone 7, will Nokia be able to regain its position as market leader?

At Uplinq - the annual Qualcomm conference that DigitalVersus attended at the beginning of June -  the CEO Paul Jacob passed the mic to his partner (forthcoming Nokia handsets in WP7 are equipped with Qualcomm processors), Stephen Elop. Ex-Microsoft and now at the controls at Nokia, Elop went back over the Nokia strategy to reassert itself on the smartphone market.


In a jokey tone, Stephen Elop first reviewed the market's star operating systems, though without mentioning BlackBerry. Apple iOS? "A closed box." Google's Android? "An open box but... for how much longer?" The right choice? Windows Phone 7, of course, as this is the OS that will enable Nokia to "develop an ecosystem which will allow us to differentiate ourselves".

The OS will very probably soon be used in a Nokia tablet: "The first thing I say is that I don't just want to be tablets number 202. Because, really, if we cant differentiate from that pack... then we're not going to be successful. So as we look at it, we believe we have to do something that is fundamentally differentiated."


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