“When Stephen Elop announced his surprising Windows strategy on February 11, 2011, he promised a 1 to 1 transition from Symbian, and that Windows would also start to take sales from featurephones. Now we have seen 6 quarters of Eloppian management execution of that new strategy and four quarters of Lumia sales using that new promised Windows platform,” Tomi Ahonen writes for Communities Dominate Brands. “Some so-called experts promised this would be a ‘third ecosystem’ (haha) and some so-called experts promised Microsoft-powered Nokia would have over 20% market share in smartphones. Now we can see what the reality is like.”
“First the top-line info. Nokia reports Q3 smartphone sales of 6.3M units of sales which is down 38% (in just one quarter!) from 10.2M in Q2,” Ahonen writes. “The Nokia smartphone revenues are 976M Euros (1,279 M US Dollars), down 37% from Q2. Nokia average sales prices of smartphones are 155 Euro (203 USD), up from 151 Euro (198 USD). Nokia’s market share in smartphones has fallen from 7% in Q2 of 2012 to 4% now.”
“How is that promise of the third ecosystem doing? Lumia sales are DOWN and massively, 27% just from the quarter before (how’s ’em apples, then? The promise of AT&T success and ‘outselling Apple in China (haha),” Ahonen writes. “Yes, Lumia sales down from 4.0M in Q2 to 2.9M now. Bear in mind, the market is GROWING. Lumia ASP is collapsing, falling 14% in just one quarter (who wants an obsolete phone after all?). Meanwhile – Symbian prices are up! Yes, its that 808 Pureview etc powering Symbian price climb.”
Ahonen writes, “In very early rough draft, assuming roughly same proportion of Nokia vs rival Windows Phone sales, this suggest Windows Phone global market share fallen from 3% in Q2 to 2% now! How’s that for your ‘third ecosystem’? Windows had 12% market share five years ago in smartphones. It had 5% before Windows Phone first edition launched. Windows (all versions) had 4% by the time Elop selected Windows Phone for Nokia. Windows was down to 1% by the time Nokia finally released its first smartphone. And last quarter, Windows Phone – after 3 quarters of Nokia-fuelled growth, had just managed to hit 3% (with some rounding off). Now they are falling again, and will be around 2% this quarter. This is Elop’s saviour-OS. This is what he staked all of Nokia’s future on. A platform which in 2010 was declining, in 2011 was declining more, and now, in the latest quarter is once again declining in market share. 2%.. Two percent and falling. Two YEARS after Windows Phone launched”
“I think we can safely say, this strategy is a colossal failure, as is the lunatic who exchanged growing profitable sales of smartphones for this madness. This is a world-record fall in market share by any market leader in any industry, ever,” Ahonen writes. “This is yes, a world record in management failure. This is far faster than the collapse we saw of Siemens in mobile phones (they sold their business). Or Motorola (who went bankrupt). Or Palm (who sold their company to HP, which then put them out of their misery). This is FAR worse than the troubles over at RIM of Canada, who make the Blackberries… No wonder increasingly Elop is being called the worst CEO of any company.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Elop, with a capital “F.”
