Moving towards the year end, it is confirmed that Nokia can no longer be considered to be the leading brand in the market for mobile phones after having lost its position to Samsung for the first time in 14 years.
According to reports from IHS, a market research firm, of all the mobile phone shipments in the year 2012, 29% of them poured in from Samsung. Last year, Samsung’s position stood at 24% with respect to phone shipments. Samsung will be seen occupying the leading position in the market on account of the rising sale of its smartphones on a yearly basis for the first time, reported IHS. As far as Nokia is concerned, from 30%, its market share has dropped to 24% from last year.
By the end of this year, shipments in the global market for smartphones will see a rise to 35.5% and the overall cellphone market will see shipments rise by 1%, resulting in the penetration of smartphones among consumers to increase to 47% from 35% in the previous year. This penetration rate is expected to rise to 56% in the upcoming year, as predicted by IHS. As pointed out by a senior analyst at IHS, the sale of smartphones will make up for atleast half of the total shipments in the market for handsets, laying stress on the fact that the cellphone market swore by the ‘live by the smartphone, die by the smartphone’ agenda through the year.
Nokia and Samsung met with conflicting fortunes in the smartphone market which is reflected in the struggle and success of both companies. Samsung’s approach towards manufacturing and designing of devices is based on the fast follower strategy, allowing the company to churn out a range of smartphones which cater to a wider range of audience, from those looking for high-end handsets to the ones looking for low-end phones. Samsung has in fact moved ahead of Apple as well after smartphones from both the dominating companies accounted for almost half the shipments in 2012, witnessing an increase from 39% in the previous year. Nokia, on the other hand, was too busy with transitioning smartphones towards the Windows Phone platform and this impacted the shipments of the company with sales of older handsets taking a plunge and the simultaneous modest performance of the new handsets running on the Windows Phone platform to cover for these losses.
