Nokia thrives, crests 40% world marketshare

Nokia on Thursday reported one of the best fiscal quarters in its history, earning about 47 Euro cents (69 US cents) per share in the October to December period, or just short of 2.5 billion Euros ($3.6 billion US) in profit. The achievement was the result of selling 133.5 million phones in the three-month span and was enough to grow the Finnish company's marketshare even further, pushing the firm's control from 37 percent to an even 40 percent, eclipsing Samsung, Motorola, and Sony-Ericsson in terms of overall influence.

Some of the jump is credited to Nokia's multimedia computer business, which handles smartphones and effectively doubled its own profit to $670 million in the quarter. The company has enjoyed continued success with the N95 and N95 8GB variants and also rolled out key phones such as the N82 in the same period, spurring adoption of the company's handsets. Nokia in the past has suggested that such growth may also stem from an iPhone-based residual effect which makes customers investigate alternatives or consider more expensive phones such as its Nseries instead of a more typical feature-limited phone.

The results may have come at the expense of other manufacturers. While some results are unavailable, Motorola dropped 38 percent in phone sales as it struggled to revitalize its business. Sony-Ericsson noted that a slight gain in marketshare came at the cost of profits as more customers shifted away from high-end phones towards budget or mid-range models.

Apple by contrast sold just 2.3 million iPhones in the same quarter, or less than 2 percent of Nokia sales alone.

Filed under: iPhone, Apple
Other story tags: Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson