Getting to know the meaning of sisu

Nokia announced 4.4 million Lumia smartphones were shipped in Q4. That’s about 14 million since the Lumia line was launched a year earlier. It isn’t however nearly enough to replace the lost sales from Symbian. One year earlier Nokia shipped 19 million Symbian phones in the fourth quarter and the year before 28.3 million. The history of smartphone sales from Nokia is shown below:

Screen Shot 2013-01-10 at 1-10-6.23.00 PM

I repeated the forecast I drew up in February 2011 when the platform switch was announced. That forecast was based on the company stating that 150 million Symbian phones would still be shipped. Symbian fell far more rapidly than I (and Nokia) expected and to date only 98 million have shipped. The last quarter’s 2.2 million seems to be so low that it will be hard to imagine the platform lasting more than a few quarters. Continue reading “Getting to know the meaning of sisu”