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Samsung Passes Nokia As Biggest Handset Manufacturer

Posted by Soulskill on from the changing-of-the-guard dept.

rtfa-troll writes "Tomi Ahonen reports that Samsung has become the largest manufacturer of smartphones (overtaking Apple) and of mobile phones (overtaking Nokia). During the first quarter of 2012 Samsung sold 93.5 million phones, with 44.5 million (48%) of those being smartphones. Apple would still lead on 'smart mobile devices' with 52 million sales including iPads, but not iPods. The last time the lead in mobile phone sales changed was in 14 years ago, in 1998, when Nokia overtook Ericsson. Ericsson never recovered and began leaving the mobile phone market three years later, creating Sony Ericsson, later Sony Mobile. It looks like the mobile phone market is going to be brutal, with Apple and Samsung crushing everybody else except possibly HTC, which is still rising, and Motorola (which has Google to look after it)."

3 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. no huge surprise .. nokia is engineered to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    thanks to the microshit idiot in charge, nokia will fail and microshit will pick up the remains for pennies on the dollar.

  2. Re:Meego by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And, despite the lack of marketing, way more N9s have been sold than Lumias. It's a realy pity because Harmattan's swipe interface is lightyears ahead of anything Android has to offer.

    --
    Sundar Pichai is the asshole whose incompetence has resulted in the closing down of the Atlanta engineering office. Great work!

  3. Re:Already warming up my "I told you so" dance. by Jeppe+Salvesen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nokia was doomed several years ago. They ridiculed Apple while they failed to streamline Symbian app development, while they failed to research and develop touch-screen mobiles, while they failed to build a proper app store that was easy to use, while they failed to build.

    Making a deal with Microsoft was just an act of desperation. They were already bleeding profusely from the consequences of all their dumb-ass decisions made around 2005-2007 when mobile internet was beginning to take off. The Ovi store could have been launched in 2005-2006 with over-the-air app downloads. Had Nokia remained on the leading edge and focused on making their products better from a consumer-point-of-view, then Apple would have had a much harder job in invading the mobile phone market.

    But Nokia was not focused. Apple and Google had them for lunch.

    --

    Stop the brainwash