Samsung is now officially the world’s biggest company in the phone biz, shipping the most handsets over the past months. They surpassed Nokia to achieve that, according to the figures coming in from IHS iSuppli and Strategy Analytics. It’s been a long run for Nokia, staying on top since 1998, but it’s over now…
Nokia’s sales brought it to a current market share of 22.5% in Q1 2012, while Samsung got 25.4% of the market easily in the same period. Also, the iPhone brought Apple an unthinkable 9.5% of the global market share. Nokia’s low end sales volumes couldn’t face the decline of the Symbian business and it took 14 years for Nokia to become the top name in the biz and stay on top, between 1998 and 2012, but now Samsung is at the top and who know how long they’ll stay there.
As far as smartphones go, it’s been a poor quarter for everyone, as Apple dipped 5% in Q1 2012 in comparison to Q4 2011. Samsung dropped 11%, while Nokia fell 39% and RIM 21%. LG also had a bad 3 months period, with a drop of 19% . Usually at the beginning of the year the people don’t have enough money left after the winter holidays to change their handsets, so that’s why this massive drop takes place. Samsung’s advantage over Nokia is the HUGE amount of phones it releases, covering each and every single niche of the market. Will Nokia be able to take the crown back with the aid of Windows Phone 8?
