Samsung ended Finnish phone maker Nokia’s 14-year leadership of the global mobile phone market in the first quarter of the year, outselling the struggling handset maker for the first time ever.
It’s another blow for a beleaguered company whose products have become eclipsed by glamorous handsets such as Apple’s iPhone.
The poll showed analysts on average expect Samsung to have sold 88 million cellphones in January through March, surpassing the 83 million which Nokia sold in the quarter.
Nokia had announced the sales total on Wednesday when it warned of losses from the phones business in the first and second quarter.
Samsung is due to release quarterly numbers on April 27.
Nokia has struggled for several years in the smartphone race, but its dominance in the lower end of the market has allowed it to keep its rank as the world’s largest cellphone maker by volume.
The fall of the Finnish firm has been rapid over the last few months as in a similar poll in January it was still expected to stay far ahead of Samsung.
‘After 14 years as the largest global mobile phone maker, getting knocked off the top spot will come as a bitter blow to Nokia,’ said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight, who has followed the industry since the 1990s.
‘In contrast it will be greeted with euphoria by Samsung – they’ll be dancing from the boardroom to the factory floor,’ Wood said.
Nokia became the world’s largest cellphone maker 1998 when it overtook Motorola – at a time when Samsung had just entered the industry – and it controlled around 40 percent of the market for years before Apple Inc’s iPhone was unveiled in 2007, launching the smartphone boom.
Some analysts said losing the top spot would be a blow to Nokia, but would have little impact on its attempt to turn around its fortunes.
‘I think it will hurt them from a PR perspective, but in reality it does not change anything: at the end of the day the problems are the same if they remain the No 1 or become the No 2,’ said analyst Carolina Milanesi at Gartner.
RELATED ARTICLES
- South Korea Issues Order to Assassinate North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un
- EU conservative leaders Meet in Romania for Reelection and Victory lap
- US Includes Nuclear-Capable Assets In Large Military Drills Aimed at North Korea
- Apple sides with CCP: 'We Will Help Chinese Regime Stomp Out Dissenters'
- Lockdown war: Violent protests break out at China's biggest iPhone factory
Loading ...
Okay – but an iPhone is hardly “glamorous”, it is simply a telephone
and may be a bit more for computer-unsavvy people or computer-savvy
ones while they are on the road.
Hard to imagine that those gadgets will develop into “multi media
centers” when serviceable computers never reached that goal.
And I also doubt that movie theaters all over will have to close down
because of those l´il gadgets.
Nokia simply made a couple of wrong moves and I sure understand that
most people will prefer to get a Samsung Galaxy rather than
a Nokia Lumia, whose browsing capabilities are limited and more.
Myself, I am using a simple clam shell phone – smartphones are clumsy
and susceptible to damage, also their battery life isn´t yet
what it should be, also my sub-notebook is never far away…
I hate rather tiny devices full of crappy menus you have to slip-slide away
to get to the heart of the matter. I mean, still most people use them just
for making calls, I am watching it every day.