Nokia has reportedly shipped 6.9 million Lumias
Sales numbers and estimates are always a tricky thing, especially when you don’t have concrete numbers to work with. We also tend to boast the good news and downplay the bad so with that caveat we’ll provide you the latest in “market analysis”. Don’t worry, this one is mostly good.
Strategy Analytics is making quite the name for themselves this day if only because they tend to buck the trend when it comes to Nokia and Windows Phone. In their latest report (available here to subscribers), they claim that Nokia shipped (not necessarily sold) 6.9 million Lumia Windows Phone since its launch in Q4 2011 and up through Q2 2012.
Assuming that number is accurate, Nokia Lumia phones are outpacing shipments of the 1st generation iPhone (2007) and Samsung Android devices from 2009. The former only had 3.7 million units and the latter 1.3. The spin that Strategy Analytics puts on this is that Nokia and their Lumia line aren’t doing too bad, especially when you consider their global reach and marketing efforts. As SA’s Neil Mawtson noted:
“Based on historical shipment benchmarks, Nokia’s new Lumia portfolio is performing reasonably well. Some of the pessimism surrounding Nokia and Microsoft’s emerging partnership so far may be misplaced. However, Nokia and Microsoft are clearly not out of the woods yet. With a new Apple iPhone 5 expected on the horizon, and Samsung’s Galaxy S3 selling in huge quantities, Nokia will need to pull something impressive out of the bag for the next-generation Windows Phone 8 launch later this year to sustain its tentative early momentum.”
Of course SA points out that with the iPhone 5 coming and Android plowing straight ahead, the competition is still very real and a daunting task for both Nokia and Microsoft. And as BGR points out, comparing smartphone sales with the iPhone (2007) and Android (2009) is not necessarily fair or accurate as things have drastically changed since that time. In addition, it's clear that the AT&T initiative with the Lumia 900 hasn't exactly been a huge success either with less than estimated 400,000 units shipped.
It goes to show you though that the barrier for success has radically changed from just a few years ago, making it difficult for the new guys to get any credit. Whereas 3.7 million shipped phones in 2007 was an amazing accomplishment, 6.9 million just a few years later is considered to be a failure by some. Hopefully this SA report will put some perspective on things, assuming that shipment number is accurate.
Source: Strategy Analytics; via BGR
Reader comments
Nokia’s cumulative shipments of the Lumia outpaces the iPhone and Samsung…back in 2007
Well thats like saying AMD today ships more CPUs than Intel 1996. That still does not make AMD a more profitable company today, does it?
Of Course 2012 is not the same as 2007 and 2009... The main difference is that competition now us much much more fierce and therefore much harder to find an oppening in the market. Back in 2007 there was nothing even remotely analogous to the iPhone, in 2009 the crappy android filled the spots where iPhones were not being sold. For these reasons I think that these modest sales are more impressive than they appear
@trivor
You underestimate how fickle the mobile space is, people generally buy what is being pushed to them by the carrier. It really doesn’t matter to have the same phone as your friend as the majority of the apps are available on all phones. You are badly mistaken if you believe MS will not stick it out with this. They entered the console business because of a perceived threat to their Windows business by the Playstation. Again, the situation is similar and if MS abandon the mobile space they’ve got everything to lose so there is not a chance that MS will simply give up. Many people mistakenly think this is a sprint to the finish, no its not! It’s a long haul and it will take a number of years for WP to get a meaningful market share. MS have a long-term vision on what they want to accomplish. Will MS buy Nokia if they go down? Nobody knows but I would assume they will buy the patents and mobile business. It doesn’t mean the end of their OEM relationship just as when Google bought Motorola mobility it didn’t stop the OEMs from releasing Android phones. I think WP has a good future ahead and its only getting started.
The King Maker for Windows Phones is not Nokia but Samsung. At the moment its a two horse race between iPhone and Samsung - notice its not Android - the average Joe doesn't care about Android - its the phones and only the Samsung Galaxy line which is competing with the iPhone.
Will Samsung comit to bringing cutting edge hardware to their WP line? Or will we get handed the left overs from Android? At the moment why should Samsung even care? They are having a huge success with the Galaxy's. Do they want to canibalise their own market? I hope every new model will have its parallel release on WP8.
I bet the "Omnia W" would sell much better if it was called "Galaxy W" and got any promotion. Over here there were Samsung kiosks setup in malls demoing the new Galaxy S3, and the Galaxy Tab and cheap poop like the Galaxy Ace was piggybacking along. Of course Omnia W was not invited to the party. Probably cause its mature and clean look would intimitade the colorful shiny android UI toys.Anyway the android "demos" sucked, since there was no real demo content in them - no contacts, email or anything to show how the phone works poeple that have lives.
I love windows phone period that's it and I wish all of the wp8 oem partners all the success not just Nokia. im so sick of seeing iPhones ironically I don't mind seeing the over saturated android phones. We need a new perspective one that doesn't have a half bitten apple on it.
To clarify...i own a windows phone. I have a titan and love it. This comparison takes out the fact that smartphones were still a new thing in 2007. The pace of sales should be faster now,period.
While most people on this forum are WP fans you have to realize (which Daniel just stated on Podcast 145) that MS and Nokia have a very tough road to hoe. And don't think this is the XBox where MS can stick it out forever and EVENTUALLY build market share. It is a much different mobile world than it was when iPhone (2007) and Android (2008) were released. WP7 has been on the market for 2 years and currently has less than 2% market share. iPhone sold 35.1 million iPhones in quarter 1 and Android is activating 1 million devices a DAY. From now until WP8 is released (presumably Nov 2012) there will be approximately another 35 million new iPhones (new or repeat customers) and 100 million Android phones (new or repeat customers) THAT WILL NOT BE LOOKING FOR A NEW PHONE - WP8 or otherwise. Daniels point was that WP is still waiting for the big sales jump and it still hasn't had it. For those of you thinking there wasn't enough marketing Nokia, MS and ATT put a HUGE marketing push behind the Lumia 900 and ATT only sold 300,000 units in the US and Nokia sold 4 million Lumias worldwide (all models - 610, 710, 800, 900) out of 73 million worldwide sales. People assume that if Nokia goes down MS will prop it up or buy it. That may or may not be true since it would be the end of the other OEM relationships if they own Nokia (and while all (Samsung, HTC especially) have expressed support for WP8 I believe you will only see repurposed GS3s and HTC One series phones with WP8 software on them (I believe Samsung and HTC have put too much engineering resources behind those models to just abandon them for the sake of WP8 - the hardware specs are the same). And the idea that WP is that much superior to iOS or Android didn't work very well for WebOS (which I still have a soft spot in my heart for for any other mobile OS - it's too bad it didn't make it onto first rate hardware - too bad RIM didn't pick it up instead of going with BB 10 - they might have had a chance). For those of you looking down on iOS you are just as biased as Apple fan boys - DO NOT UNDER RATE HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO HAVE THE SAME mobile OS as your friends/colleagues. Right now iOS/Android have almost 85% of the mobile market and they continue to refine their OSes and people have to have a compelling reason to leave their OS to switch given a considerable amount of time, money and energy spent on learning whatever OS they decide to purchase. Anyone thinking that WP is so awesome that people are going to switch just because YOU (current WP7 owners) think it's great is naive at best. While I don't think Android is awesome it does what I need it to do, I have a a state of the art new phone (Verizon GS3) that I had to purchase in order to get my last subsidy w/o losing unlimited data and I am one of many people OUT of the MARKET for a new phone for 18-24 months (maybe longer since the specs of this phone should hold up for quite a while - 720P screen, 2 GB ram, 32 GB storage, 1.5 GHz CPU - looks great, runs great). It will be interesting to see how much support VZW, ATT and TMo put behind WP8 (it looks like Sprint isn't even interested given their investment in iPhone). While I am sure many (like talk the talk above) want to dismiss my opinions all you have to do is listen to Daniel on the most recent podcast (#145) to see what a WP fan thinks of it's chances. I listen to podcasts of all the phones (BB, WP, Android, iOS) because I am a tech enthusiast and always looking for new ideas.
This is the dumbest comparison omi have ever seen.
You must be new to the internet. Welcome. Your gift bag should be arriving soon.
Love the way you participate in the comments. It's one of the things that keeps me coming back to WPCentral.
+1. Daniel seems to say in his comments what I'm thinking. Some bloggers don't say what's on their mind because they don't want to hurt someone's feelings. Daniel's responses are to the point but not rude. Love it!
Ban this loser
I had my first "in the wild" Lumia sighting today at lunch. As I got out of my car at Longhorn, I saw a woman standing outside talking on the phone. The distinctive blue caught my eye and as I looked, sure enough it was the Cyan 900. As I waited for a seat, I commented on it after she got off the phone. She indicated that she really liked the phone, because it was easy to use and "pretty". I laughed and said, "yeah, they're really eye catching." To be honest, she caught my eye before the phone, but I saw the wedding ring, and refrained from saying that to her, lol.
To the point of the article, I'd say this... 6.x million devices shipped, sold, whatever is impressive, yes... especially in a short period of time, but the fact that it's been out how many months now and this is the first I've seen one in the wild is (personally speaking) disappointing. But I do believe that people will see a benefit in the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 approach and things will begin to look up. I still agree with the wild predictions by analysts that suggest WP will exceed Apple by 2015, and I full expect Apple to return to insignificance by 2016.
That's cause you live in the wild west in the middle of nowhere and drive your car everywhere. Here in a capitol city in Central Europe I can spot Lumias every day while commuting on buses, trams and subways. Actually just as often as I see people with Galaxy SII or SIII phones. Despite Microsoft still having a bad reputation in this backwards society and Nokia receiving very bad press lately, cause nerds keep masturbating over android and Samsung. Thank the gods I'm only a geek.
Thanks for this... I was wondering the same thing the other day.
Even as an Apple enthusiast, I am saddened by the sheer arrogance of Apple fanbois today, where everything apart from Apple is inferior, un-hip, whatever. I personally side with Steve Wozniak - where I appreciate technology - whoever makes it.
There actually were A LOT of smartphone users in 2007. There were phones like the Treo, the Motorola Q, Palm, etc. but yes, the dominant phone type were the RAZRs from Motorola. And it took a solid year+ for the original iPhone to gain some traction, and not until the iPhone 3G did it pick up steam.
My take on all this madness is... I think Apple is in for a shock. Phone users can be fickle. REALLY fickle. Not everyone is a tech geek. Some people just like to make calls, take a few photos/movies, and share them online. The app/UI experience with iOS is nearing 6 years old, and with iOS6, it's still essentially the same.
Take that fickle phone user - end their contract with their iPhone, and introduce a newer phone with more features, that are easier to use, and has some cool factor (e.g. "pure view") and Apple's phone base may dwindle withing a year or two.
Thanks for the comment! It's nice to hear an objective viewpoint even though you prefer a different OS. Hopefully, WP will be so attractive that those that just love tech will give WP a chance.
+1 Exactly :)
I agree with most of what you said and I really hope to see exponential growth with wp8, but honestly I don't see apple's phone base dwindling anytime soon. Though I don't see much of an increase, I think they have a pretty solid fan base that will allow apple it's stability.
Because of all the Apple kool-aid people nowadays consider only multi-touch-screen devices with fart-apps to be smartphones. While back in 2007, smartphones had keyboards or styluses and ran on Symbian, WM etc. Heck, even a Nokia E50 with it's tiny screen and numeric keyboard was considered a smartphone. Meanwhile the first iPhone was a dumb piece of... toy. The general public has a really short memory.
For an Apple enthusiast you have a poor view of the iPhone. My 3 children and my nephew just replaced 2 Androids and 2 BlackBerry's with 4 iPhones. They weren't looking for a new OS or a phone with cooler features, they wanted what their friends have. They also wanted the OS that's easiest to use and sync to the cloud. And none would ever look at a phone that ran "Windows". That's the reality of today's market. It's not 2007 anymore.
Unfortunately your kids seem to be the ones stuck in 2007. Windows Phone is not Windows Mobile. And iPhone is not the easiest smarthone to use any more.
No, they're firmly in 2012, where all their friends have iPhones and even track by iMessage who else has one. And while iOS may not be the best anymore, the point is that it's 2012 and there's very little room for a new OS to grow. When my son took his new iPhone into NYC for the first time, I told him to be careful walking around with it. He laughed and said everyone has one, no-one's looking to steal it. We can only hope that WP8 gets as popular.
But still their opinion of mobile Windows is outdated. And iPhone is getting old while Samsung's Galaxy is gaining momentum as the next big thing.
Agreed! i have an Android superphone, an LG Nitro HD with 1.5GHz dual-core and a 720p 4.5-inch screen. but my kids and nephew didn't want anything non-iPhone. My nephew even apologized for not getting an Android phone like his uncle, but his wife and all of his friends have iPhones. Again, I hope WP8 superphones coming in November can get people thinking of the alternatives to iOS.
Or people just want the phones they want....
You must not really want WP to succeed at all with that attitude
The first iPhone has only one country (USA) and one carrier (AT&T).
Lumia have tens countries and carriers around the world ...
That's not accurate at all, sorry. The iPhone was made available in the UK, France, and Germany in November 2007, and Ireland and Austria in early 2008. It expanded to 16 more countries 1-year after release in summer 2008.
+1 :D
+2
Ireland and Austria is out of the 1-2-3 Q
The difference is that those phones back then had little barrier in smartphone market. Nokia competing against a bunch
Excellent point. Lets make these numbers better for Nokia and Windows Phone. I will be waiting in line the day first Nokia with Windows Phone 8 comes out.
Hoping for exclusive Sept release for nokia!!
Exclusive to piss the other OEMs off even more? Not sure this is a good idea.
An early launch is crucial though, as the next iPhone is just around the corner.
Piss off who? If samsung/htc gave a crap, they should of supported their phones like Nokia is right now.
Considering that Nokia is provided the test demos used in the developers conference, it wouldnt not be farfetched to think Nokia could get the pre release OS to test now and have something ready sooner.
MS is way behind the competition, got to get a device out there and Nokia is the only OEM to support wp7 thoroughly .
Nokia is late to the game, the Lumia 800 was rushed and full of bugs, and wasn't released globally till 2012.And the 900 wasn't much better. It is HTC, LG, Samsung and Dell who started the WP7 business back in 2010. It is HTC who delivered the relatively cheap Mozart phone, which helped raise worldwide awereness of WP and enabled MS to receive praise for the Metro UI aesthetics. It is HTC (and Samsung too probably) who delivered 2nd gen phones on time and made waves with gems like the Titan. If they didn't, there would be no liferaft for Nokia to jump onto from the burning Symbian platform. Thanks to those OEMs the Marketplace already had thousands of apps when Lumias released. None of those OEMs deserves any bashing just because AT&T gave you a refund credit for your broken Lumia 900. The rest of the world didn't get that kind of primary treatment - we waited several months for Nokia to fix the battery and sound problems, while being ridiculed by android nerds. Sticking to only one OEM is a dead end. Windows Phone, just like the desktop Windows, needs multiple competing vendors to thrive. The merging of the Windows Phone brand with Nokia Lumia is a bad thing in the long run. For the moment the Nokia brand is what pushes sales here in Europ - people get "the new Nokia" when renewing their contracts because they liked their E71, and the Lumias come in white and pink an blue, which makes the consumer pretty happy. But this has to stop with WP8, Microsoft should do a better job at raising awareness that there are other Windows Phones out there.
+1 well said. Couldn't agree more!
I'll be getting a w8 phone if ... If Verizon actually gets a decent phone. The HTC trophy was decent enough but it's had it's time and I'm due for an upgrade. Nokia preferably!
While that's true, the volume of smartphones and smartphone buyers has gone up quite a bit. Still useful though imo.
Back in 2007 not many people had smartphones. I don't see the big deal.
That's the point though - these numbers should be normalized to the size of the market when the sales were made (this would make the lumia numbers look much worse).
Back then, if ANYONE could be convinced to buy a smartphone they bought an iPhone. THERE was no choice (the people who were on Windows Mobile weren't really their market), EVERY sale was theirs. They also had "shiny and new" on their side. There's ALOT more competition now with 3 ecosystems. Alot more fair than it looks on the surface...
I find it useful, still hope yet
We are comparing 1st generation with 1st generation.
Whether useful or not.
+1 lumia line is in its first generation so it's a good comparison
Why are we comparing a 2012 phone vs a 2007 and 2009 device?
There's no "we" it's Strategy Analytics, so you can ask them. If I had to guess though by reading the article above, it would seem that relative comparisons based on smartphone sales gives a different impression. That is shipping 6.9 million phones is still a lot of phones.
The author of this article seems to have taken time near the end paragraphs to explain this ;-)
This is similar to comparing the app market growth. the problem with is that it's a different market now. the awareness and desire for smartphones changed after the iphone. they were a trailblazer in marketing these devices to consumers. up to that point only business users had smartphones. I remember when Android came out no one bought their phones, and that was after the iphone, so that comparison is more interesting
What they are pointing out though, is that selling "millions" of anything is still an achievement. Even if it doesn't look that great compared to the stellar sales of Android and iPhone.
It's only mildly interesting. For me, as long as sales are strong enough for Microsoft to stay committed, and app developers creating a WP version of their app - thats good enough for me.
I don't really give 2 sh*ts which position WP7 is in, as for me, its the nicest phone experience out there.
I bet you give at least 1 sh*t. If WP didn't sell at all, It would get Zuned out just like its next of Kin.
I see what you did there ...
Here. Let me quote him for you.
"For me, as long as sales are strong enough for Microsoft to stay committed, and app developers creating a WP version of their app - thats good enough for me."
Numb nuts, you clearly didnt read what I posted, I did say sell enough for MS to stay committed, and developers to develope apps. But actually the "pecking order" that you fanboy people who can't read like to "debate" - I couldn't give a toss pal.
You clearly are a sad and lonely person with no sense of humour.
You make a nonsensical post showing you didn't read his comment thoroughly and then try to pass it off a joke? Hmmmmm
No. He changed his mind in the middle of his comment. First stating that he cares about WP's market position and then saying he doesn't care at all. I only referred to his last opinion on the matter.
its pointless to determine success by number or units sold and market share. What matters more for Nokia and enthusiasts are profitability from said market share. Lets hope this analysis is a sign of profitability in the future for Nokia
They're compared the release of new phones, brands basically. The Lumia is a new brand for Nokia just like the iPhone was for Apple. Sure that's 2011-12 to 2007 but it's an interesting statistic on it's own.
It's also like how they compare how fast a platform reaches x number of apps and so on.
6 phones vs. 1 iPhone. Not very just. Good numbers though. The android comparison is more interesting. Too bad we can't get hardware breakdowns by model on both the Lumia and first android models.
I believe it's actually 4 phones vs the iPhone (unless you want to count all the different colors which would be a lot more than 6). Also, talking purely about phone numbers and not date, I think it's fair seeing as how only certain phones are in certain markets, whereas the iPhone was one product in all of their respective markets (though they were in few at the time). Apple's model is a little different in that they offer one device and that's how they face the competition so that's how they are compared (seems to work out for them). Also, if we wanted to be really knit picky, we could say the iPhone was offered in two different sizes and is hence 2 different phones.