While Nokia (NYSE: NOK)
showed strong Q2 sales of 122 million devices, its days of being the
largest mobile device maker might be coming to an end. Given its
current 40% market share, it'll stay on top for some time to come, but
with pressure from other "open" mobile platforms, and the ever looming
iPhone making ripples around the world, they need to step up their
game, and make themselves stand-out from the crowd once again.
Read Write Web has a different take on the subject
saying in an article about Nokia's dominance on the iPhone; "Even if it
hits Steve Jobs' target of 10 million iPhone sales by the end of 2008,
it will still be less than 1% of the mobile device market." While this
is true, the iPhone has only just begun its worldwide invasion into
Nokia's territory, while Nokia has been enjoying dominant success for a
long time now. That is, until Apple changed the game by introducing the
iPhone, and again when it took the 3G device worldwide.
Nokia still has a healthy lead over almost all other competitors in
every category, except for one; the internet mobile device market. In
this area, where Apple is now the largest threat, Nokia reported that
its "converged mobile device" options, which are the N Series and E
Series, have 41% of the market. However, the same time last year they
had 51%. Its no secret the iPhone can be contributed 100% to their
situation. At this time last year, while the iPhone was still a
revolutionary internet device, it wasn't offering 3G to compete with
Nokia, and wasn't being offered in key Nokia markets like Asia and
Europe. This time around, Apple has fixed those two problems, and Nokia
is feeling the burn.
Where Nokia is planning its revenge, is in their upcoming open initiative
that stemmed from its recent purchase of Symbian. By going the route of
Android, it's hoping to stop the iPhone in its tracks and try to battle
on the "open" front. While this is the right way to go, I still have to
ask whether they're up to going head to head withGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG)'s
Android, which will undoubtedly make huge strides in the "open" market,
once it's actually introduced. On the other hand, Nokia has been in the
game for a long time, and knows what their doing. With the purchase of
another long-time mobile player in Symbian, they've created quite the
"open" powerhouse. Now, whether or not they use that experience and
know-how to build a better platform than Android is up for discussion.
In my opinion, it's going to take a lot to beat what the Open Handset
Alliance has been brewing for what seems like forever now.
I'm also still not convinced the "openness" of mobile devices in the
future will have such a huge impact on the iPhone. The iPhone has
already, and always will have, a large following where people won't
care what features it doesn't have, etc. I'm not saying the open
initiative in mobile is a bad thing, it's certainly not, but when
compared to the iPhone, it's a totally different breed of animal. Now
that the iPhone has made its way worldwide, there's really no stopping
it, no matter the effort from the big boys.
