Nokia has announced its Q4 2010 results and to say that they do not look good would be an understatement. The last quarter was when Nokia undertook several new initiatives on its senior management front. The erstwhile CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was replaced by Stephen Elop from Microsoft. Ansii Vanjokki, who was thought by many to be the heir apparent to Kallasuvo resigned – reportedly unhappy with the treatment meted out to him. On the handsets front, the company launched the Symbian^3 laden N8 and its little cousin the C7.
As for the overall stats, Nokia currently claims 31% of the worldwide smartphone market share. This is down 9% from the figures from a year back. Simply put, Nokia is losing market share and its happening very fast. In North America where they company hasn’t been traditionally strong, it managed to sell just 2.6 million devices in the last quarter. This number is down 32 percent over the past year when Nokia sold 3.8 million the year before. In Europe, which is Nokia’s hub, sales were down by a marginal 2 per cent.
There were some good bits as well.
In China, Nokia continues to be the biggest player, and it increased its sales figure from over 17 million units to over 20 million. Surprisingly, Nokia’s smartphone division has managed to show decent growth even though its growth has been fast outpaced by newer platforms like Android and iOS. “Converged mobile devices” (these are nothing but smartphones!) sales were up to €4.4 billion ($6 billion), a rise of 13 percent on the year-ago €3.9 billion ($5.3 billion). And volumes were up, too: 28.3 million units, a rise of 36 percent year-on-year.
Nokia has admitted that it has several significant challenges to overcome in the months to come. “Nokia faces some significant challenges in our competitiveness and our execution. In short, the industry changed, and now it’s time for Nokia to change faster.”
Would that change include dropping your ego and jumping on to the Android bandwagon, Nokia?
Wishful thinking, eh?
