Nokia tops Q1 worldwide smartphone stats, ahead of booming Blackberry

[slitchfield]

Gartner have released figures for worldwide smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2008 - about as up to date as you and I get to see. There are no real surprises - Nokia top the table with 25% year-on-year growth of its S60 smartphones, with Q1 market share of 45%, healthy by any standards, but the biggest surprise is RIM's Blackberry range posting 107% growth, up to 13.4%. Apple's iPhone is already up to 5.3% of the smartphone market, somewhat ominously given their next-gen launch tomorrow (Monday) evening, UK time. The full stats/table is shown below the break.

Read on in the full article.

[viipottaja]

RIM/BB success is no surprise given their consistent and constantly improving offering. What will be interesting to observe is whether Apple can move beyond the 5% mark. Then again, they have been "content" with similar market shares e.g. in PC for a long while so their strategy may be to just stay "marginal" but with huge margins..

Nokia is doing great and hopefully with E Series getting more serious with each iteration, their market share in the real business segment will also finally increase to what it should be (IMO). And with S60 being pushed down, up, and sideways the future seems bright indeed.

[fidolatry]

I know Sharp makes Sidekicks for T-Mobile, but Fujitsu...?

Fujitsu = MOAP-S and although closed (but then again so is Apples effort for the moment) it is Symbian OS and I guess would be included.

[jah]

Looks like SE 'have lost the plot'. They seem to have wasted the Symbian/UIQ inheritance. Shame on you SE!

[krisse]

I'm a little bit surprised that none of the other top phone makers are even in the top 5 for smartphones. Where's SE? Moto? Samsung? LG?

Perhaps these figures tell us that the secret of high smartphone sales is aiming your smartphones at a wider audience. Most of Nokia's smartphone customers probably don't even realise they're buying a smartphone, they just see a phone they want and buy it. I think it's fair to say Apple has taken a similar non-techie approach where the device itself does the talking rather than its tech specs.

Every time I've seen a Windows Mobile device on sale it's always promoted in connection with its raw computing abilities and specifications. This may be a big mistake.

Then again, they have been "content" with similar market shares e.g. in PC for a long while so their strategy may be to just stay "marginal" but with huge margins..

Yes, I agree. Apple's historically preferred high margin low sale products to low margin mass market stuff. It's a sort of "sports car strategy", really.

[ares]

Jah, i think krisse explained it...only now with G700 and G900 will we see SE finally embrassing the mass market with its Smartphones

[snoyt]

RIM seems to do well in the USA. I wonder if the new E71 of Nokia is upto the challenge of RIM. How about a shootout ;-)

Cheers,

Snoyt

[jah]

@ares, as you know I have owned every UIQ2 & UIQ3 device except the W960. My point is that historically SE have not performed. In the future they may or they may not. The past can be measured the future is unknown. SE have not done enought in my view to secure a good share of the Smartphone market - their lack of investment is obvious in the offerings they have available this year. The picture next year may be different, it may be too little too late. Let us wait until next year at this time to see what % market share SE have with the G, P and X range.

[JimH]

The iPhone isn't a smartphone in my book, but if it's included in these figures can I also assume Nokia and Sony Ericsson's big selling midrange (S40, Walkman etc) feature phones are also included?

[pintofale]

Surely HTC is the elephant in the room? One day HTC will release one of their decent products (which are still getting better) with a Windows software build which a user can tolerate for more than two minutes, and maybe even for a day or two, and when that happens I think Windows/HTC are placed to blow everyone else away in a very short space of time.

There was an excellent Reg article about how Psion's legacy was pissed up the wall (I'm allowed to say that, it's in the bible) and how all these years later PDAs are still rubbish. Alas, the same might happen to Nokia/Symbian - imagine the horror when your long-obsolete E98 finally lets go, and there are no more on eBay - you have to choose between the HTC Mogul and HTC Cuckoo (both running the latest Windows Vista Mobile release 71) to replace it!!! The HORROR!!

[ares]

Jah, my point his, judging by the first reactions of G900 users (in Sweden, Germany, Singapoure, etc), SE has nailed it, people are raving about the phone, in general...and also, it seems, there is alot of G900 users that are moving from SE traditional feature phones (t610/k750/k700/k800/k850), i.e., the ones that normally got the biggest SE sales.

So...if this really proves to be a success all over the world, i see SE moving more from feature phones to smartphones on the mass market segment (not counting with P series). If the g900 sells has good has k800 or even k850 did before, we will see some changes next year.

[Ratkat]

I think the scary thing is that Apple are in third place with basically one device, whereas the figures for both Nokia and Rim are for multiple device models.

If Nokia and Rim reported separately for each device, ie N95 and Blackberry Pearl, where would Apple be then? second at least I would imagine.

I think the way this table is presented isn't really good. It's probably done to make the iPhone look good.

Where's Sony Ericsson? Where's Motorola? Where's HTC?

I think they've buried the figures for these companies in 'other'.

[pintofale]

@Mr-X

The table implies that the constituents of 'others' have all shipped fewer units than fifth-placed Fujitsu.