Nokia’s Lumia problem

When Stephen Elop, CEO at Nokia, wrote the burning platform letter, it appeared that he might be shaking things up, and shaking is what he did. In February 2011, Nokia announced that it will be abandoning Symbian and Meego OS for Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

At that time, Elop said that during to transition period, from Symbian to Windows Phone, Nokia will sell 150 million Symbian smartphone. Lets consider that transition period is over. The last Symbian handset was launched in February 2012 and Microsoft has since then released a new version of Windows Phone – Windows Phone 8. So how many Symbian Smartphone did Nokia sell since the transition?

77.3 million Symbian handsets. In last quarter, Nokia sold 0.5 million Symbian handsets, I am assuming that number would fall to negligible amount in the next quarter. That is, it’s done for Symbian.

77.3M handsets is only slightly above half of what they had intended. Nokia was under the general general assumption that people don’t care enough or are ignorant about a deal platform. Note that Symbian sales was important for Nokia during its transition period for profits as companies gain higher profit by selling Smartphone than non-smartphone. 

 And sadly for Nokia neither Lumia sales have picked up. 

Besides this, I would put my guess on the number total Windows Phone handsets, besides Lumia, to 10% of Lumias sold. This assumption is based on the fact that not many handset OEMs have released Windows Phone handsets. This brings to Windows Phone handsets sold this quarter to 6.1 million, which is really really low. To compare, Google activates 1.5 million Android devices per day (this includes tablets but excludes devices that do not install Play Store). Still the number is quite huge.

Tomorrow I will discuss, Nokia’s other handsets – Asha and other mobiles.

Btw note that Nokia decision to resign from Meego has also affected Intel. The company still struggles to make its mark in the Smartphone market.

PS: numbers Smatphone in Sep09- Mar-11 also include other smatphone handsets by Nokia.