Nokia posts $834 million quarterly loss, smartphone share down to 35%
By Thomas Ricker 
posted October 15th 2009 8:12AM
posted October 15th 2009 8:12AM
Nokia just posted a net loss of 559 million euro (834 million dollars) for the third quarter -- its first quarterly loss in a decade according to the AFP. The loss comes after a reported 20% drop in sales and 1.17 billion euros in write-downs, mostly for impairment charges on Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia also said that its smartphone market share dropped to 35% versus 41% in the previous quarter. With fierce competition from Apple and RIM, and Palm just launching its Pre into Nokia's European stronghold, well, it's a good thing Nokia's branching out into untapped markets like single-core Atom-based netbooks.
Read -- First loss in a decade
Read -- Nokia Q3 statement
The biggest problem Nokia has is their User interface in their phones.
Symbian OS doesn't seem to be a popular OS among many users.
Maybe things may change with Maemo, but will users like it?
If Nokia can hit a homerun with a new User Interface on their Smartphones
they will gain marketshare.
my opinion
Robert
I think the N900 could be Nokia's saviour.
I'm on my second iPhone (3G) and like many upgraders, about to reach the end of my second contract. I for one, will not be upgrading to the 3GS because - well I guess i'm bored of it!
After almost 2.5 years of using the iPhone, the only significant change for the 3GS is the compass. Whilst I'm excited for the augmented reality apps, the stifled and restricted OS (which has hardly changed) and cocky monopoly that apple have landed themselves is slightly grating on me.
Enter stage right, the N900 that I think many many upgraders will consider. Similar price tag and size (bar its depth) to the iPhone but with stupid amounts of power and functionality and the Maemo OS could drive iPhone upgraders back to Nokia.
Bring on the release date already!
+1 for a Fire Sale. I hope.
Wait, you mean selling phones that they don't advertise for half a grand+ on their website without a carrier subsidy isn't working for them?
I'm shocked that this strategy for America has failed.
I wonder if fistfights break out at Engadget (if nerds have fistfights) over who can spin these kinds of news.
Had this been Apple, they would have written "Handset sales growing, recession affecting network sales".
For the love of god, Engadget, acknowledge Nokia's biggest competitor for once. Samsung is the one that is pushing competing models segment by segment and eating away Nokia's marketshare. For every single model of Nokia's, there's a competing samsung product with better hardware specs. I personally hate Samsung's software, but apparently, there are a lot of people in this world who don't mind it.
Translation: The "Fierce competition" that you speak of comes primarily from Samsung.
Not Apple.
Not RIM
Not Palm.
North America =/= the rest of the world.
P.S. I don't particularly care for any of these companies. Just thought I'd set the record straight.
So u saying 40 million iPhone smartphones sold have nothing to di with 35% smartphone market share loss? Wake Up n smell the coffee. Nokia CEO would gave u shot.
Go away, troll.
@Truth,
Go back to school and learn to read, iMoron.
Nokia needs to get US carriers on their side period.
/Booklet on at&t is a start
Your iPhone's on-screen keyboard doesn't seem to be working too well. Perhaps, you should try an N97.
Well, I'm not surprised judging by Nokia's recent offerings. They produce shit and it's finally mirrored in their sales figs.
I wonder if by the iPhone having the highest customer satisfaction rating
of any smartphone ever.(by jd powers) has anything to do with nokia 35% decrease in smartphone share,??
the loss was 6%. they are AT 35%
still in the lead in smart and dumb phones
Sad part is nokia blind to see that $700 nokia models like n900 will not save the company. Unless it sells 40 million n900 like iPhone has sold.
In 3 months they sold 108,5 million cellphones and pulled 741 milion EUR (1,1 billion USD) profits. According to Kallasvuo they would have sold more, but there was some lack of components.. Looks to me like they're doing just fine. ;)
I used to be a nokia fanboy. In 1999.
But I stopped when nokia put a halt to their innovation.
I mean come on it took them 2.5 years to come up with a browser
that might be as good as iPhone browser.
Basically on June 29, 2007 apple took nokia and all of 16 years of manufacturing cell phones n schooled nokia. Sad I even owned a nokia monitor.
I've always loved Nokia's hardware.
But even after spending two years working with Symbian phones (as well as phones running WM, PalmOS, and BB), I find very little to like about their OS. Symbian's interface needs to go the way of PalmOS.
Just wait and watch for the new Symbian launch in 2010. I guess, you are now aware of the re-vamped Symbian in the works, are you?
www.symbian.org
Sounds like 6.5. We all know how that worked out.
Symbian is the new WinMo.
I have seen people carry around a bb or pre or android or nokia in left pocket. And in right pocket they carry iPod touch , hilarious to think their Nokia smartphone can't fully replace an iPod.
Sometimes, it can also mean people don't know which Nokia smartphone, they should buy. Lot of them want a business phone and an mp3 player separate, since iphone/ipod touch couldn't replace their business phone or since they want a good battery life on their smartphone, which they can replace anytime with a spare battery, which i-phone/ipod touch are known to not give a good battery life.
Hope this clears your doubts. ;)
you can't clear a troll's doubts. This noob still thinks the phone is +$700.
it's not about function. it's about can you do what ipod does with the elegance it does it. i don't have an ipod mind you. but the iphone is a better interface for somethings and the market doesn't like. Nokia share is falling. there is no dispute.
From a consumer pov, isn't obvious why the profit margins are down? They haven't been keeping up with the consumer trend of capacitive touch screen smart phones (Seemingly, the fastest growing market). Even microsoft has tried to revamp their WindowMoblow line.
Hope Nokia will bring some much needed awesome with their N-series with a capacitive screen. S60 has to survive.
thank you for the picture showing blood on nokia hand set.
i hope nokia releases more smartphones in the US on carriers (that or i get a better job and can afford them off contract LOL). and personally, i like the booklet 3g. ill be getting one at best buy thursday (keeping my reciept tho just in case LOL) and will see how it works out.
test - why can't Engadget have a simple loin-password profile setup!?
it all started with the iphone.......
test again test again for the length of words
You know why Nokia sucks? This coming from the owner of E61/71/75, N95, N73, N85 who has cracked every firmware release, used them 24/7 as primary phones for at least 6 months each. These phones are some beasts - hardware wise.
Nokia is the Ford/GM/Chrysler of Europe. They are dying but they still think they are great. The fan-boys and reviewers are egging them on into their egg shelled ego slipping onto a irreversible slope of doom while the audience sits back to enjoy the big picture.
However when we talk about Nokia - it's a classic fail! Read on their background story...
You say Nokia launched the next big phone in the market? I say nae. What use is a power-horse if can't do portrait!? Linux-fan-boys will say - but there are a million coders out there one of which will write a 'hack'. At $600 and an accelerator I think I would expect that out of the box. What good is a power-horse that comes with a GPS and an accelerator but no recourse for the lowly digital compass - there goes your chances at building the best AR experience for want of $10. I will hand in the glove if Google makes a Latitude application among a list of others already out there for this yet new entrance.
Digital compass revealed how clueless you are.
Its about the most useless thing you can put into any portable device. It's power hungry, not very accurate, and hardly ever used. Even most standalone GPS receiver dont have it.
Digital compass is added to a device when the designer can't think of adding anything else.
If you don't believe me think about how many people used to carry analog compass. If they didnt have any need for analog compass which is hundred times better than digital, they wont be getting any use from digital compass.
Specific rants:
1. Ditch the cheap plastic cases - seriously! They are obvious and cheesy - N85 is a big fail because of it.
2. Use capacitive touch - I don't care what the hell your engineers say. Spend one hour with the iPhone and you will see how effortless capacitive is versus resistive. Let's face it Nokia's CEO, Oli-pekka-whatever-the-fuck his name is - has no smarts compared to Jobs. And when Jobs picked capacitve - he did it for a very good reason. There are some aspects that are not too hard to figure out.
3. Promote a standardized look and feel for apps through your SDK. Maintain customer expectation/experience and quality across all apps - created by Nokia or by a third-party developer. Does it even occur to you that this is one primary reason the iphone is so popular?
4. E71 - the camera is a joke compared to N73, which is three years older. This is not the precedent you want to set. News to you - technology should move forward - not backwards. The iPhone with a 2MP camera without flash takes phenomenally better pictures in daylight – that even after 3 E71 firmware updates. Get it? Fire the e71 camera division. It’s even worse when Nokia does not even accept they screwed up. And you wonder why Nokia has no market share in the US (hint the 5800 launch fiasco).
5. Firmware updates across the board!? E61 – just 3 years old – is a business phone. The browser sucks. It crashes all the time or runs out of memory. It’s an older version. UPDATE it! I paid $450 for that. You can’t leave it in the dirt after two years of half-hearted support. Why are your firmware updates 6 months apart? It’s unacceptable. The market and internet is evolving too fast for you to sit on your butt; either reduce the number of devices per service line (that’s another story) if you can’t handle them or hire more/smarter people.
6. EMEA, NAM, etc f/w update versions. Based on the updates you shoot out every 3-6 months, your QA guys are probably smoking crack. Even obvious fails slip through them. I can understand that hardware may differ over region-specific phones but it doesn’t warrant 3 month gaps between the region specific updates. Learn from your competitors – because these things will eat you if you don't acknowledge them. The end of your domination is already here – accept it to maintain ground. The 5800/N97/N96/N86's of the world will not save you and based on your price-range for N97, I won’t count on that device either (LED instead of Xenon for a $600 phone? Maybe you're giving the wrong kind of porn to your product gurus - it's turning them into sludge).
7. Widgets. Do you remember; 2 years ago, at an announcement – you mentioned that there will be widgets, which will let users input their flight details and in turn the widget will alert them about flight arrival or departure delays, airport conditions, etc? The services to offer this information are already here – e.g. FlightStats.com. But I don’t see the widgets anywhere?! What happened? Good idea/selling point but sounds like someone fell asleep. This should have been one primary focus of multitasking capability in a phone.
8. E-series. Aah… the award-winning phone that no credible reviewer had the balls to take a pock-shot at. Instead, pussy-arsed reviewers sounded like they were done a favor with a review handset when they justified the poor camera performance, ‘oh, it’s a business phone; its primary function is not to take pictures.’ If that’s the case, then why the hell has it packed a shitty e-mail client for 4 years; even on its newest iteration? Oh, and why does the phone not recognize calendar invites!? Even gmail has worked that shit out. Inexcusable! Do you guys even test your own devices in a non-Nokia-fanboy environment at all? I didn’t think so. BTW, Nokia email is a paid-for-app eventually. It is not a replacement for the inbuilt messaging client. A client and -service are two different entities and should be maintained so if you want people to use your devices anywhere. That new slick updated client should have been a free update for EVERY phone out there. For e.g. your browser is not designed to just work with your servers correct?
9. RAM. Even today, why do your phones have minuscule amounts of RAM – usually just enough to get by - whereas RAM prices have dropped exponentially?
9. RAM. Even today, why do your phones have minuscule amounts of RAM – usually just enough to get by - whereas RAM prices have dropped exponentially?
10. Call log – how did you manage to screw this up even more? Call log used to work fine on the E61. But with the FP1 / E71, every incoming call is shown as a ‘cell phone icon’ even if the number is associated with a land line. Also, why are you not using different icons for work, home, cell phones? Is that rocket science? BTW, what’s QA been up to – at this point you might want to call a narcotics raid on them. Don’t get me wrong, you had it working right a few years back. I know you’re new to the concept so repeat after me: technology should move forward - not backwards – with time. Also, try to use your own devices once in a while -
11. Call log 2 – Where does all the information related to the call log get hidden? Because when I used synble, I noticed that it was able to extract a hell of a lot more information from the call log than the phone's client. This is just sick. Winmo phones allow you to store THIRTY days worth of information. Not only that, I can go into a contact, and view my call history for that contact including durations for every call as long as it was all within the 30-day limit. Obviously synble has managed to pull a lot of it out from my E71. But shouldn't this have been part of your phone? So tell me, do you use any phones from your competitors at all? It might be wise to make a few purchases; right about now. Plus, if you want to learn from your competitor, you have to use it as your primary phone for 30 days and then go back to a Nokia and see what you can improve. This is the EASIEST way to improve/add features without investing into any 'smart' people for R&D/UI testers and probably should have been your first step.
12. Call log 3 – You know how right after you’ve called a contact or received a call, you want to try to call that contact again but but maybe at another number from the contact profile? Well guess what – you have to go through the address book to look at the other numbers. Yes, you can’t open the contact profile or alternate calling numbers from the call log itself. WTF? Talk about basic UI workflow/routing design fail. At this point, I’m beginning to think you have someone on the design/QA team with a mild narcolepsy problem.
Didnt bother to read your other points, the RAM just cought my eye.
Cellphones 101 Spottest
1. Why the phones are RAM limited even thought RAM is cheap?
Answer: RAM is cheap, but powerhungry. To retain data RAM uses power, and the bigger RAM is the more power it needs. SO big RAM means short standby time.
I wonder how long your list will be if you start using iphone? I guess, engadget will have to host a new website for you then?
Yes, because following the crowd and buying a phone based on how people look at you is the smart thing to do.
wow out come the nokia boys. Hey bottom line is the companies not doing good. the shares have plummetted while the sector has risen. revenue is down, sales are down, smartphone sales are down. Any way you cut it Nokia is doing poorly. ANY way.
I told you guys in everyone one of my posts, you can't just keep cranking out handsets during a recession.
Unless we are talking about 3 year recession you cant stop cranking out new phones in recession.
How do you think Nokia is able to release 20 cellphone models a year? They have several phones in various stages of development. The development cykle is probably about 2 years long, from consept to the start of massproducing. If you delay current generation you'd have to delay next generation too, and the end products would be outdated when the upturn comes.
It's better to bring new models than take a break because you never know how long the recession is.
Dude, they sold more handsets than last quarter and still sold 16.4 million smartphones.
Apparently they can keep cranking out handsets.
I think the Nokia N900 is the start of a new Nokia with phones that compete well with the competition out there. If they continue to update their models in this way adding features that customers really want, I think they will do well. Also they need to improve their dumbphones as well as competitors such as LG and Samsung are doing just that and they are stealing profits from those markets as well. Nokia also needs to start making devices as it did before that offer the first of something. Just like the iPhone strategy of being the first multi touch device with a nice internal keyboard and an app store, etc. If they are going to compete they need to have their competitive advantage. The Nokia N900 has grabbed my attention due to how nice the interface works but I would like them to look into using Tegra and Snapdragon processors and making great touchscreen and combo touchscreen + qwerty phones as well as phones like the e72. The Nokia N95 was such a great phone because at the time it really had a lot of features that the competition did not. Nokia's new phones just don't usually have that or are difficult for many to purchase at unsubsidized prices.
Nokia, fix you bloody N97 applications that would be a great start for us frustrated customers.
Nokia is doing just about everything wrong that you can possibly do. If their still even making smartphones in two years I will be amazed.
Nokia = future business case study for confusing market share with marketing excellence.
Let's face it, Apple caught Nokia, RIM, Motorola, Microsoft, Palm, and Dell along with all the telco's with their collective heads up their @sses. Whether they like it or not, they're all Apple's bitches now, every step they take scrutinized in the context of Apple, the iPhone and the App Store.
Google, ahead of the game with a steady stream of iPhone insight via Schmidt due to his former board position with Apple, will soon capture the market share position formerly held by Nokia, as hardware relevance is supplanted by software dominance. Soon after, Nokia will be reduced to just another hardware manufacturer, then it will be off to oblivion as cheaper handsets armed with the free Android flood the market.
Time to head for the exits!
In short, you actually have no idea what you're talking about do you? The only reason why every phone is being scrutinised against the iPhone is because dumb American journalists can't shut their mouth about it. Noone talks about it in Asia. Only the Americans. Over here, the hot phones are Blackberries.
Android is still single digit market share and is incomplete. If you knew anything at all, you'd know that Nokia's handsets are typically priced quite competitively even against a "free OS" android handset. Do some homework.
I don't think we need to head for the exits. The Iphone likes to die before I reach the exit anyway with its revolutionary battery. Everytime I read an Ifan's comment, I get the distinct feeling they are trying real hard to make up for some kind of personal deficiency.
There's a revelation – the iPhone has sucked all of the air of the room because of US journalists. Face the fact that US innovation is the tail that wags the dogs – if you believe for one second that every global telecommunications professional isn't up at night wondering how they are going to stop the iPhone because it is a transformative product that has forever changed consumer expectations and related behavior, then it is simply because you cannot rise above your anti-Apple/American biases. You know, the usual I'm all for anything invented anywhere but the US because I can't get a visa to work with Apple/Google/Microsoft so I'm going to sing the praises of every two-bit knockoff invented elsewhere. Whose deficiency is driving the thread now?
Nokia needs to put some money into convincing carriers that having their hardware will increase profits.
Having an awesome handset is slowing losing out to availability, can't find a Nokia anywhere.
Ok, so here's the toll for Q3FY09:
Nokia: 20% drop in sales.
HTC: 18% decrease in profits.
SE: 40% drop in sales.
On the green side:
Apple: $8.2 billion of revenue
Samsung: $31 billion revenue