Nokia losing ground to Apple and RIM in smartphone market

Popularity of BlackBerry and iPhone impact Nokia's market lead. Image: Tjeerd/Flickr.

According to new figures released by market research specialist Gartner Inc., mobile phone giant Nokia has seen its smartphone market share drop across the first quarter of 2008 due to the increasing popularity of Apple’s iPhone and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry handsets.

More pointedly, Espoo-based Nokia Corp has seen its Q1 2007 market lead of 46.7 percent eroded to 45.2 percent in Q1 of 2008. While the share difference is perhaps not massive, Gartner also notes that Canadian handset developer Research In Motion (RIM) has boosted its position from 8.3 percent in Q1 2007 to 13.4 percent in Q1 of 2008.

Further adding to Nokia’s market subsidence is California-based computer and gadget titan Apple Inc., which managed to secure a 5.3 percent smartphone market share with its iPhone. The iPhone only launched to retail in June of 2007.

While Nokia’s performance may have dipped slightly over 2008’s opening quarter, Gartner points out that total smartphone shipments have increased by a substantial 29.3 percent, rising to 32.2 million units as consumers are drawn by versatile technology, Web browsing, and multimedia features.

In terms of regional Q1 performance, the US smartphone market more than doubled its sales when measured against a year ago, posting 7.3 million units for a total increase of 106.2 percent. Similarly, the combined smartphone sales attributed to Europe, the Middle East and Africa hit 11.7 million units in Q1 of 2008, which is a year-on-year improvement of 38.7 percent.

The Connecticut-based market research company also reveals that smartphones accounted for more than 10 percent of total handset sales in Q1 of 2008.

“Smartphone growth was driven by replacement markets such as Europe, and smartphone sales also benefited from continued growth in the U.S. market, which increased its regional share to almost equal sales in Western Europe,” commented Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi.

“The beginning of the year was marked by announcements regarding touch screens, smartphone usability and application integration,” she added. “These key trends had already emerged in the second half of 2007, and during 2008 we can expect them to mature further and become the focus for more handset vendors and carriers as they expand their current portfolios to include more open-platform devices.”

Unable to match the share increase posted by Apple and RIM, other major mobile phone market players such as Sharp and Fujitsu following Nokia in seeing their performance also tail off during the year’s opening quarter.

Specifically, Sharp’s Q1 2007 market share of 7.0 percent dropped to 4.1 percent, while Fujitsu also dipped from 5.0 percent in Q1 2007 to 4.1 percent year-on-year.