The news that Nokia just handed over its one and a half billionth Series 40 phone was interesting - and impressive - and got me thinking and fact-checking. Just how many Symbian-powered smartphones have been sold, in total, i.e. in the last decade? Turns out it's now well over 500 million, i.e. over half a billion Symbian smartphones have already been sold and are... out there in the world somewhere. Some thoughts below.
Nokia has released its Q3 2011 results, reporting an operating loss of -€71 million, with net sales of €8.980 billion (down 13% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's profits were €132 million. Margins in devices and services were 2.4% (down from 11.3 % in Q3 2010 and up from -4.2% in Q2 2011). Total smartphone device sales were 16.8 million, compared with 27.2 million units in Q3 2010 (down 34% YoY) and 16.7 million units in Q2 2011 (up 1%, QoQ). The results were ahead of expectations and suggest the company has started on the road to recovery.
Nokia has released its Q2 2011 results, reporting an operating loss of -€487 million, with net sales of €9.275 billion (down 7% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's losses were -€247 million. Margins in devices and services were -4.5% (down 14% YoY and down 14.2% QoQ). However, non-IFRS operating profit was €391 million (down 41% YoY and down 44% QoQ), with Devices and Services non-IFRS profit at €369 million, and margins at 6.7%. Total smartphone device sales were 16.7 million, compared with 24 million units in Q2 2010 (down 34% YoY) and 25.2 million units in Q1 2011 (down 31%, QoQ).
Nokia announced today that it will change its service branding from Ovi to Nokia. This will see the services change from Ovi Service to Nokia Service. For example, Ovi Maps to Nokia Maps. The transition will begin in July and is expected to be completed by the end of 2012 and Nokia says that the rebrand will have no impact on planned updates and improvements to the services.
Nokia has released its Q1 2011 results, reporting an operating profit of €439 million (down 10% Year-on-Year), with net sales of €10.399 billion (up 9% YoY). Nokia's device and service division's profits were €439 million, down 10% from last year. Margins in devices and services were 9.8% (down 2.3% YoY and down 1.5% QoQ).
Total converged devices sales (mainly Symbian-powered smartphones) were 24.2 million, compared with 21.5 million units in Q1 2010 (up 13% YoY) and compared with 28.3 million units in Q4 2010 (down 14%, QoQ). Worldwide smartphone market share was 26%, down 5% sequentially and 15% year on year. Read on for more analysis and more details.
Nokia announced yesterday that the Ovi Store now reaches up to five million downloads per day. Ovi Store now contains more than 40,000 content items, representing an eight fold increase in the catalogue since last year, with approximately 1,000 additional items being added every week. Symbian^3 devices (N8, C6-01, C7 and E7) are responsible for 15% of daily downloads (750,000 per day). Read on for charts and analysis.
Please excuse the original story on this address, I was going by item numbers in Ovi Store URLs - it turns out that there isn't a strict one to-one correspondance between URL numbers and actual content items. The store simply now has over 100,000 allocated item IDs, many of which never materialised into content. Watch this space for some fuller Ovi Store statistics.
It’s nice to see that Nokia’s strategy is slowly becoming clear to the mainstream media, as this article in the Wall Street Journal shows. While it does (eventually) get to the point, it starts as many articles do, from a false statement, magnified by Stephen Elop’s new role as CEO. Namely “his first decision was to go it alone and not adopt Android.” A statement that makes for a headline but has no basis in commercial reality.
Let's say you worked in Nokia marketing and had a great idea. Given that the company was sponsoring the X Factor, one of the largest entertainment shows in the world, each year, why not have an X Factor application? One that could be promoted before each ad break, riding the current wave of app-frenzy, showing off what the phones can do and also getting an even wider audience for the content? Fabulous. Meanwhile, back in reality....
Following on from my initial review of Pixelpipe's Send and Share client, I met their CEO, Brett Butterfield, at Nokia World 2010 to find out what was new. Send and Share has had some significant additions that all add together to make the application even more convenient to use.
