Thursday, April 17,2008 @ 9:30am
Nokia sells 115.5m phones, sees 39% share
Nokia today set a reference point for the cellphone business in 2008 by publishing results for the first quarter of the year. The Finnish handset maker says it sold approximately 115.5 million phones during the quarter, or 27 percent more than it sold in the same quarter a year before. The results represent a drop of 13 percent compared to the last quarter of 2007 but are seen as characteristic of the post-holiday seasonal drop.
Actual sales income was 12.7 billion Euros, up 28 percent year-over-year. The increase is seemingly modest relative to actual unit growth. However, this is compensated in volume by "very strong" sales in developing-world countries such as China and India, according to Nokia chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. The company has regularly targeted these regions with very low-cost phones such as the 1680 classic with expectations of selling to a larger population base. Average selling prices for Nokia's phones dropped from 83 to 79 Euros since the most recent quarter.
Nokia also makes preliminary estimates for its position in the industry and estimates that its latest sales should provide it with about 39 percent of the world's marketshare for the quarter, up three percent from early 2007 but down one percent from an all-time high 40 percent in late 2007.
The tally points to a total of 295 million phones sold by all companies in the first three months of 2008 and represents a 17 percent climb over the year before, suggesting that Nokia is ahead of the market but also that the market as a whole will grow significantly for the year. Roughly one billion phones were sold in 2007.
By contrast, relative newcomer Apple has sold roughly four million iPhones between the device's launch in mid-2007 and the start of 2008, though its high selling price and limited availability are believed to have a major impact on the American company's reach.