Canalys stats are another important data point for the smartphone industry, they usually bring out something of interest. Here, in their 2009 summary, (mirroring Tomi's numbers and our analysis), they give Symbian-powered smartphones 47% world marketshare for the year, with RIM in second place on 20%. With their press release focussing on touchscreen numbers, Canalys points out that 55% of all smartphones sold in Q4, 2009 had touchscreens, with Nokia being the leading touchscreen smartphone manufacturer.
Read on in the full article.
Look again: They also added that Nokia surpassed Apple in touchscreen phones in the last quarter, but that Apple still sold more over the whole year. Considering that Nokia just introduced its touchscreen phones in the beginning of 2009, that seems quite a feat...
For the lazy..
Apple 25,103,770 (2009); 13,727,740 (2008). 2009 Share 33.1%. 2008-2009 Growth 82.9%
Nokia 22,364,000 (2009); 536,210 (2008). 2009 Share 29.5%. 2008-2009 Growth 4070.8%
Nice growth for Nokia 😊
More competition is a good thing, I like Nokia, and I'm hoping they sort out their mobile OS problems out, but let's not pretend that they're some sort of come-from-behind-underdog that's taking on Apple.
Nokia has been at this game for a long time, and honestly, it's their fault that they didn't see the market changing underneath their feet. They missed the fact that it's not just about hardware anymore, where they had the advantage. Software is just as important, if not more so. It's the reason why Google, a software company, entered the market out of nowhere, and the reason HTC's 'Sense UI' has been praised.
Nokia's challenge is that of any large, bureaucratic corporation with many division heads. They're so big that it's hard for them to move quickly. It's like turning an aircraft carrier. It's the essentially the same issues Microsoft has.
Personally, I think their future lies in Maemo and the N900. We're moving away from smart phones as just button-based cell phones, and it'll be smart phones as pocket friendly personal computers.
The report also mentions the neccessity of attracting developers to a platform. In that respect they have missed a trick. iPhone OS also powers the iPod touch and will power the iPad. Developers will look at the total device sales for a platform, not just the smartphone sales. In device sales, Apple is almost twice as big as is stated in this research, because of iPod touch.
Much of Nokia's growth in the touchscreen market was from the strength of the heavily-discounted 5800XM. It's sold unsubsidized for $259 in the US (IOW, really thin margins). It will be up to Symbian^3 devices like the rumored N8-00 (and beyond) to compete in iPhone/Android territory. So far the N97/mini hasn't been quite up to the task.
Anyway, it is good to see Nokia catching on to the trend. For all the apologists who claimed back in 2007 and 2008 that touch screens were inferior, it turns out they make perfect sense for the internet and navigation-centric devices that appear to be defining the future of the smartphone.