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Symbian Sells Millions, Despite Nokia Pushing Windows Phone
Nerval's Lobster writes "During the fourth quarter of 2012, Nokia sold 4.4 million Lumia smartphones—a significant rise from the previous quarter, which featured sales of 2.9 million Lumia devices. The Lumia line runs Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, which largely replaced Symbian as Nokia's smartphone software of choice. Despite that shift and Nokia's emphasis on Windows Phone, however, the company still sold 2.2 million Symbian smartphones during the quarter. The question remains whether Nokia should have gone with Windows Phone in the first place, or embraced an alternate platform such as Android; an anti-Elop camp has emerged in recent months, arguing that Symbian was still a viable platform before Elop consigned it to the dustbin of tech history. For now at least, both sides seem to be right: Symbian still sells despite Nokia's attempts to take it increasingly offline, and Lumia phones are selling well. It'll take more time—perhaps a lot more time—before the ramifications of Elop's bet become clear."
Lumia phones are NOT SELLING WELL. Don't repeat astroturfing media BS.
Yes, I believe most of those that bought Nokia's Windows Phones didn't know they were buying into Microsoft's phone OS.
Most of them must have bought Nokia phones because the word "NOKIA" featured prominently on the phones. Not because they featured Windows Phone 8.
All this reminds me of those early Net-book days running Linux, remember?
Just check the graphs here - Nokia is but a walking corpse by now:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/01/second-picture-in-the-nokia-destruction-saga-greatest-individual-management-mistake-ever-made-nokia-.html
-><- no
Didn't you say something similar about 10 or 15 years ago?
Aside from technically literate consumers who might actually care whether their phone is powered by IOS, Symbian, Windows, or Android, would most consumers be able to meaningfully discriminate between these phone operating systems?
Wouldn't most consumers merely want a phone that works and some working apps for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc?
Nokia has given up, but is there still a dev community for it? Are consumers sticking to Symbian for some app that doesnt exist on other platforms?
The anti-Elop camp emerged the moment he has announced the Windows strategy in Feb 2011 and a lot of people predicted Nokia's downfall at that time. And in no way do the Lumia phones sell well. Not by any standard. 4.4 million Lumia phone is just pathetic. The Nokia N8 (Symbian) alone sold almost 4 million in its first quarter (Q4 2010) and the smartphone market was much smaller at that time. It is also a lie that Nokia was failing before the strategy was switched to Windows Phone. The smartphone unit had increasing sales, sold more phones than any competitor, and was profitable.
That was a different Anonymous Coward :)
Windows phones are not user friendly. There user screen cannot be properly configured (as with other mobile phones today). They have no options of setting a background image. They are hard to configure, missing features that have existed for years on Symbian, Android and Apple. It is battery unfriendly by nature (a lot of power usage).
For this reason I am never going to buy a Windows phone. I rather move to Android. But I would prefer to continue to use Symbian. But that is not a option I am afraid of. Since Nokia has almost been destroyed by the Microsoft zetaloid that was hired by Nokia board few years ago. But he did work for Microsoft, so he going for Windows Mobile is no surprise at all.
Nokia is going to be missed if it goes bankrupt. The lesson here is however is that never go into a deal with Microsoft. It is going to ruin our company in a record amount of time. It is a fact and a rule. I did see a list of companies that Microsoft made bankrupt with there bad deals. Too bad I can't find at the moment.
They say numbers about Windows 8 and Symbian, but what about Meego/N9? If a platform that they declared dead and buried basically at the moment of launching it, in just one phone, performed in a not so different way than Win8 phones, that would be a big message. There were some numbers around N9 sales for Q4 2011 and Q1 2012 that could point that it was selling better than Lumias, but not sure how it evolved. What is possible is that if Sailfish or Ubuntu gets ported to it (have a good shape for the swipe gestures used in those incoming mobile OSs) it could be even start selling back.
Anyway, speaking about dead and buried OSs, Microsoft killed and buried the Window OS bundled in most Lumia Phones when announced Windows Phone 8, saying that present and close enough in time Lumias won't be able to run it, and that apps for Windows 7.x won't be compatible with it neither. Is not so amazing that it sells badly, even for being a Windows phones. You had to wait till Lumia 920 to have a Windows 8.
You mean goodbye Apple?
Symbian was popular, but it was a disaster in terms of technology: hard to program with one of the worst mobile user interfaces ever conceived. Nokia needed to change to something else. Windows 8 is actually not that bad in principle, but it was too little too late, and Microsoft has failed to establish it as a viable and popular platform for app developers.
Nokia should have gone with a dual Android (cash cow) and Meego (risky bet, high payoff) strategy. Nokia could have made fantastic Android phones. By now, they have lost their sales channels and their brand name, and lots of other companies have figured out how to make good hardware, so they are basically toast.
I think everyone loves to hate some company or other. Since this is Slashdot (and not Backslashdot) it's perfectly normal.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Having betted the company on Windows Phone 7, he cannot have a success with anything but Windows Phone 7. That means that any success N9 had, Elop would have taken steps to kill it. Likewise the Symbian continued sales are a bit of an embarrassment to him, given, as he did, talk the phone down, both in a public presentation and in private burning platform emails to employees.
It's very easy for a CEO to make failure, one swipe of a pen is all it takes. So it's very easy for him to make Symbian and N9 fail enough to make Windows Phones 4 million units seem good.
So, never mind he's basically killed the company with a non selling phone, he will ensure that no other phone succeeds from the company and then point to the failure of those [a failure he created] to say, well at least we did better than symbian.
Welcome to management 101, it's not about the company success, it's about the boss ego.
So wait a second here. The submitter is pointing out an anomaly or fluke in the statistics, and you assume he's a Microsoft hater? Submitter says he'll wait awhile to see what happens before passing judgement. And, he's a hater?
Sounds more like you're a fanboi, and anything that doesn't praise Microsoft is "hate" in your book.
Stop sniveling - there are many ways to do things, without relying on Microsoft. It's not OUR FAULT that your junior high school only has Microsoft products. Maybe when you get to high school, they'll have something different for your to play with, giving you the opportunity to learn something new and different.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Any new nokia phone out there is either windows, or series 40.
There are still older phones out there running symbian, and they are most certainly smart phones. In some ways android and iOS are only just catching up.
That betng said, my next phone will be Android, after Elop killed the symbian ecosystem.
This is terrible, and Nokia is on its way to bankruptcy.
Mobile analyst Tomi Ahonen: "Nokia preliminary market share for Q4 is 2.8% (on my target market total unit sales number Q4 of 240 million smartphones). This is down from 3.6% in Q3 and 12.4% one year ago."
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/01/nokia-surprises-us-by-releasing-q4-smartphone-results-early-so-3-for-q4-and-5-for-full-year-2012-and.html
1/10th the sales of iPhone, and 1/30th the sales of Android phone is now considered "GOOD"? MS has lowered its standards, it would seem. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57549482-94/smartphone-sales-up-47-percent-as-android-increases-its-lead/
your average joe didn't think a tablet would be 'good' enough 10 - 15 years ago...
shame all those tablets don't run Windows
THAT is the difference.
To sell 6.6 million smartphones on Q4 XMAS quarter is a disaster.
Even if you add two OS's together Windows/Symbian competitively it looks like Elops strategy of choosing a Windows Phone OS *only* over *any* other strategy looks stupid. In real terms it has taken the smartphone unit from being 2x as large as Apple and 4x as large as Symbian, and relegated Nokia to 10th largest smartphone manufacturer.
wp blows android and iPhone away.
Posted ac as I can't be stuffed logging in.
Its not true. If it was you would have been able to make a logged in post.
Didn't you say something similar about 10 or 15 years ago?
...I doubt it. Ironically in the context of this article Android the Os that Nokia did not choose is set to overtake Windows in Market share this year to become the dominant OS...and Sells 1.5million daily. Windows Phone sold 4.4Million...and is already expecting to sell less next quarter in its own release..
MS pays Nokia 1B/year in much needed money to aid in the transition.
...and I suspect that is personally why everyone is currently going along with this madness,if they break the agreement with Microsoft now...Microsoft will want there money back. In real terms however the last figures I saw of costs of transition to Windows Phone was 10Billion...the cost in terms of staff, output, brand obviously make this figure a lot higher.
You actually want Symbian?
Eww.
BTW, MeeGo had already flown the coop. You do know that, right?
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
They are selling that well in the benelux countries that Nokia is dumping Lumia phones on aldi, a discount supermarket chain. A model that sold for 499 euro six month ago for 199 euro. I still wouldn't want it for that price to be honest.
One small problem: GP never mentioned any such thing, and never performed any "frothing at the mouth". The anomaly is that Symbian was (according to Elop) supposed to be dead by now, yet it sees increasing sales.
It's people like you that necessitate a "-1 Miserable Astroturfing Shill" mod so, so badly.
WP 8 and "usability in the same sentence? Honkey please...
The OS doesnt matter. it is the UI that matters.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Aww, that's so sweet. The Microsoft shill said "Android 4" on his Kindle Fire.
I still have a symbian phone. It works fine.
Of course I'm a bit old school, I prefer my phone to be functional rather then stylish.
I wonder, what apps did you download for it, what do you use it for, apart from calling people and taking some casual snapshots? What does it make it worth more than a feature phone for you?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The real developers of Meego and everything around it, left Nokia the very day, the Elop trojan horse infected Nokia, to form Jolla.
Sailfish is everbody you should look for now. Hell, they even provide Sailfish support for the N9!
The only thing I hope, is that they make a powerful smartphone with an actual keyboard, that isn't just available in China. Because then they will swim in our money!
Same here, still using my 5630. I don't want these huge phones nowadays, with a battery life of a day or two.
I've got the last Symbian phone; Nokia 808 - works perfectly. And of course the camera on it is truly excellent, truly decent optics, and image quality thats resulted in my DSLR being used quite a lot less.
Their intention several years ago was for Symbian to become entry level, and to a certain extent that was happening with devices like the 5230/5530. The 808 is a truly excellent device, with a camera that I doubt anyone will get close to for a few years (as the N8 has yet to be bettered by anything other than the 808).
Recently my samsung galaxy note had some accident, so until it was repaired i was forced back to use my old nokia e63. Funny story: for email and podcasts (which is what matters to me on a mobile) i found that actually more productive, even after 2 years of using android phones/tablets, especially taking into account the battery life. I then checked in a store for the current symbian phone models, and i can honestly say: There is nothing in the smartphone world which matches the price/performance ratio of these.
They are cheap, well designed, have an os where the bugs have been fixed. The UI is sensible, i can take one in my hand and still use it without thinking.
I would rather buy a new symbian phone as a second cheap reliabe outdoor phone for sports etc. than a nokia lumia (even if these are no bad either).
If nokia would not have bragged so much about changing the platforms, the best thing they could have done would have been to put a decent kernel below and keep the API stable.
Different phone, same OS...
Downloaded non-game Marketplace apps that I use at least semi-regularly, from the top: /.).
Adobe Reader (sadly, the best PDF solution for WP7 right now).
Amazon Kindle (constantly).
Amazon Mobile (somewhat infrequently, but it has the cool features like barcode scanning to look up pricing).
AuthenticatorG (Google Authenticator implementation).
EveMon7 (EVE Online character tracking tool).
Flashlight (uses the extremely bright camera flash LEDs).
Forward Contact (not built in, sadly).
GeekByte (feed reader for various tech sites, including
Headshot (cool app that uses facial recognition and spoken instructions to help you take self-portraits using the back camera).
HTC YouTube (better than the default one, though these days I mostly use HTML5 in the browser).
ICanHasCheezburger (my daily dose of silly cat pictures).
IM+ (multi-network IM client).
LinkedIn (the phone has some integration, but the app is much more complete).
Look n Type (text messaging app that uses the camera to show what you're about to run into).
Mango Transit (get bus routing, sadly the built-in maps app only supports car and foot navigation).
MTG : Helper (Magic: The Gathering life tracker / card lookup / etc.).
OneBusAway (shows real-time ETAs of buses).
oPenGP (OpenPGP implementation, since we use encrypted mail at work).
RemoteDesktop (Windows terminal services client, not built-in but the this third-party implementation is excellent).
Shazam (music recognizer, works slightly better than the built-in feature).
SkyDrive (the built-in one only supports document formats).
Skype (sadly not integrated in WP7, unlike WP8).
SnowMinder (ski conditions, snow day tracker, etc.).
Speed Tester (Internet speed test).
The SSH Client (exactly what is says on the tin, and works well).
TouchDevelop (scripting IDE and runtime for the phone).
Trailhead (hiking trail info, maps, etc.).
User Agent Switcher (for sites that don't like the IE user agent).
Vimeo (Internet video site, if you were somehow unaware of it).
WarDice (polyhedral dice rolling app).
Weather (The Weather Channel app).
Xbox SmartGlass (access and control an Xbox 360 from the phone).
XDA-Developers (read and respond to PMs and forum posts).
Yelp.
Ztitch (build panoramic photos).
Games:
7cave (good old fly-through-a-cave game).
Chromatic Pro (bullet-storm game, shoot falling enemies with various weapons before they reach the bottom).
Civilization Revolution (soooo much civ...).
Fruit Ninja.
geoDefense (great tower defense game)
Hearts.
Mars Runner (obstacle course racing, basically).
Minehacker (free Minesweeper clone).
Picross 7 (WP7 picross game).
Plants vs. Zombies.
Puzzle Quest 2.
Rise of Glory (biplane combat flight sim).
Sudoku.
Wizard's Choice (fantasty-themed choose-your-own-adventure style of game).
Wordament (incredibly addicting free word search game where everybody around the world plays on the same board at once).
ZOMBIES (on the ph0ne) (twin-stick top-down shooter with fun flavor).
Note that I'm excluding a lot of apps that other people probably have, like Angry Birds, Facebook, Netflix, and such, as well as excluding apps that I don't use much (OpenTable, iHeartRadio since the phone has built-in radio and music streaming, etc.) but have installed anyhow. Most significantly for my phone in particular, I'm also not including sideloaded homebrew apps, like Advanced Config (customize all the device sounds, etc.), Bazaar (think Cydia), BlueManager (full Bluetooth file transfer), lockWidgets (dynamic lockscreen info), Marketplace Config (bypass marketplace regional or device restrictions), Metro Theme (advanced custom theming), Orientation Lock (not built in, sadly), phonemander (Midnight Commander-like file browser), SMSBackup (also not built in...), TouchXperience (alternate shell + connection to a PC app for remote administration), USBModeSwitch (wired tethering; wifi is bui
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Sure, I installed Jelly Bean on the 'Fire. If that's beyond you, perhaps you're reading the wrong site.
Now, what makes me a shill for saying I enjoy using my Windows Phone?
Android 4. It's Jelly Bean. You may have heard of it? Now, pray tell, what makes you think I'm "shilling"?
Well, I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I honestly don't think the overwrought expressions of WinPhone's inferiority common on this thread come from anyone who has seriously (or even actually) used the product. The press reviews are almost unanimously very positive and that matches my experience.
There has been quite a few ex-engineer discussions here in Finland, especially now that some employee NDA are expiring
Long before Elop Nokia board realised they are screwed in Smartphone market. They hired him with full understanding of his MS history.
For background:
All their options were pretty bad:
Not sure if Elop's burning platform mail was a clear blunder, or actually required to get Nokia research & development focused (it was technically just internal memo).
You can read more from techiical arcticle based on interviewing Nokia (ex)engineers : http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego
-Lasse
lav : Not for ourselves but for the world we have been born into.
I think everyone loves to hate some company...
Curse and damn Betty Crocker...
What's a BlackBerry?
I'm in EU...
Amazon isn't even in the Open Handset Alliance. They take the source from AOSP, and then customize the interface beyond recognition. So, yes your post is a bit misleading and disingenuous and reeks of shilling.
So, let's see how many mod points you've got on your 10 other accounts yeah?
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
And here I thought this was going to be an article about the vibrating thing that chicks sit on to get off. .
Have you actually used a Symbian device recently, or is this just a knee-jerk reaction? I have an E6-00 with the latest release of Belle on it, and I like it a lot. It's stable, the battery life is great, and it has a physical keyboard. It does everything I need a smartphone to do, which is why I thought we bought the things to begin with.
Well, I don't know about you, but I don't have a phone. I have a 700 +MFlops computer on my pocket, which I use way more for other things than calling, something I do less and less.
I consider the battery tradeoff acceptable.
It is about the old saying: "fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you".
Slashdot has a very specific audience, and one that has had to live with all shit microsoft spat on our faces for the last 3 decades. There was hardly a moment where their product was better, more stable or faster than the competition. I will not even mention how many companies microsoft destroyed just because they wanted to, either by releasing half-baked software, or by just announcing vaporware. The would-be competitor would come out of market without microsoft ever releasing anything.
The combination of, for the most part, low-quality software, competition strangling, FUD, plain lies, and press bribing made the software market stall as a whole pretty much the same way church made europe stall in feudalism during the middle ages or the patent system is starting to do to american economy today. It was a drag, and a lot of people are happy to see them lose importance.
May I ask you what you are doing with your pocket computer? I am always wondering if people do somethying with their smartphones that I can't do. The only thing I have seen so far is watching videos, this does not really work on my old one. Checking emails and listening music are working fine. The webbrowser is not comfortable on that small screen, but it works for all important pages. This model does not have GPS yet, which can be useful sometimes, just Ovi Maps (free offline world map).
My battery life is still 3-4 days if I don't do internet surfing or listening music for a long time. I think it was not much more when it was new, 5 years ago.
For one, it's an ARM processor. Those things are more and more prevalent, and there are already servers using them. As we are heading towards exascale supercomputers during the next years, power consumption is playing a bigger and bigger role, especially on this very high-end scope (which is my area of work). I expect ARM supercomputers to appear on the Top500 on the next few years, and making the news as soon as universities start to assemble clusters of Raspberry Pi and the like, or that Parallella machine.
That being said, arm has its own quirks as any other platform has. To have one in my pocket is an asset: I can do quick tests on it anywhere.
Despite the shift from 2.9 to 4.4 million Lumia phones, and despite the fact that those phones sold twice as many Symbian phones, the choice of Windows over Symbian is in question? Symbian has a global reach and isn't going away overnight...
I still have a symbian phone. It works fine..
My last Nokia phone (a Nokia E series phone) could technically do everything an iPhone or Android phone could do but it was a huge pain-in-the-a$$ to actually use. The interface sucked and was never updated. The software to communicate with my PC was horrible to the point of uselessness. We surfing was so bad it was pointless to try and email wasn't much better. Technically it had all the same features as the iPhone of the same period but it simply wasn't worth the trouble. It worked acceptably as a phone but with a smartphone what I really want is an easy to use computer that happens to be able to make calls. Nokia never really seemed to grasp this concept.
Of course I'm a bit old school, I prefer my phone to be functional rather then stylish.
The reason I don't use a Nokia phone anymore is precisely because it wasn't functional. As far as function vs style goes, there is no reason you cannot have both. Saying it is one or the other is a false dilemma. Furthermore having used Nokia phones for about 10 years, their software functionality pretty much sucked. I have no confidence that this will change so Nokia has probably lost my business for good.
Same here, still using my 5630. I don't want these huge phones nowadays, with a battery life of a day or two.
Your mistake is that you are thinking of them as phones. Really they are pocket sized computers that happen to be able to make calls. If all you want is to be able to make calls then I agree smartphones are pointless. Obviously many people want something more than just a telephone, myself included.
So having an ARM based device on you at all times is a benefit for what purpose?
Do you regularly write ARM code directly on the device, and then later target it at a small scale computational problem? Or do you browse the web, take pictures, listen to music and tweet a bit?
Both.
The only OEM that does well with Android is Samsung. HTC, Sony and every other OEM to try to use it have met with disaster.
Yeah, it's really popular with about half the phone using population.
But seriously, a lot of phones in the US use symbian (the OS, not the sex toy). A lot of "feature phones" run symbian. It doesn't get a lot of marketing here.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Curse and damn Betty Crocker...
Yeah, her phones are really really tasty, but get moldy so fast ...
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Allow me to illuminate you.
(1) My point, which I assume was obvious to other people, regarding having a modern version of Android on my 'Fire was precisely that I have it to compare against Windows Phone 7.5 as a small-device OS. You do realise you can replace the OS on a 'Fire?
(2) This is my only account which I've held pretty much since Slashdot started.
(3) Are you aware that your posts are nothing more than ad hominem attacks? Do you accuse everyone who disagrees with you of "shilling"?
(4) If you spoke to people face to face the way you speak on Slashdot you'd get a few good slaps. Which would probably do you a world of good.
All the best.
I used a Nokia 5800 until about 10 months ago. I kept with it for about 2 years. It was my 5th Nokia phone. So no, it's not a knee-jerk reaction. I know what's up.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
My 5230 plays videos just fine and offers a resolution that is exactly half of the 720p, which means no resizing artefacts. It also has Nokia Maps (they rebranded ovi maps back to nokia maps some time ago).
WAIT, there's more than one Anonymous Coward?
I have a Nokia N8. It is a brilliant smartphone: perfect form factor, great camera, the best GPS/Map/routing software by far, plenty of apps, and a built-in FM radio to boot. Stylish too! The downside? It looks like the most recent version of Symbian ^3, Belle, drains the battery in less than a day, even with less than average use (say one call a day, minimal data usage). Very sadly, it has become unusable. At first I thought the battery was just old, so I bought a replacement. It drains the new one too. I don't think it's a specific app, because I reset the phone, removed the old apps, yada, yada. Going back to an old OS version seems unfeasible. I haven't been able to get or find a solution to this yet, from either Nokia support or scouring the web. Too bad, because the N8 is truly marvelous.
ditto, ditto aaaand ditto
bought it in 2007, still a great PHONE
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
Dude, the 5800 is a FOUR YEAR OLD phone. What are you talking about?
Alright, if that's not a good enough example: I bought someone in my family a Nokia 500 with Belle on it last year.
It's an excellent phone (which is its primary purpose), but I wouldn't call it a good smartphone.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?