Samsung dethrones Nokia in featurephone sales (in Western Europe)

Florin  By on 05 Jul 10

Samsung has threatened Nokia’s leading position in Europe since last year, and now things are getting really serious: in the first quarter of 2010, Samsung sold more featurephones than Nokia in Western European markets.

The South Korean company managed to sell 12.2 million featurephones in the region in Q1 (a growth of 18%), while Nokia sold only 9.1 million units (18% less than the previous quarter).

However, Nokia still performed well when it comes to smartphones, selling 4.9 million units in Western Europe and remaining the market leader with a market share of 40.8 %. Apple (with 3 million iPhones), RIM (2.4 million units) and HTC (0.9 million) follow. Samsung only sold 0.3 million smartphones in the region in Q1 – yes, the company is still struggling in the  smartphone market, although new models (like the Galaxy S and the Bada-based Wave handsets) will likely be hot sellers.

Overall, Nokia is still the leader in phone sales (smartphones plus featurephones) with 14 million units sold. Samsung follows closely with 12.5 million units, while LG is on the third place with 4.1 million units.

Overall phones sales in Q1 2010 (Western Europe):

Smartphones sales in Q1 2010 (Western Europe):

More info can be found here at IDC.

Should Nokia be afraid of Samsung? Yes, definitely, but I don’t think there will be major changes in the phone sales hierarchy in the next few years. Nokia plans to sell 500 million handsets this year, and it can certainly do it, especially since an important part of these phones will be cheap device with attractive features (like the Nokia C5 or Nokia C3). The N8 is also well-priced (and has tons of features), so it, too, has considerable chances to becoming a hot seller.

Of course, we must not forget that Nokia has disappointed many Symbian fans (some officially announcing they’re ditching Symbian for Android), and its once great platform is now generally considered obsolete. But MeeGo is on its way, and I’m pretty sure Nokia will try to fix all the mistakes it made in the past with this new platform. Time will tell if it succeeds or not.

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  • Kev

    a very misleading title, plus Nokia aren't ditching Symbian as you already know, just for the N Series. Stop panick reporting and scare mongering

  • http://www.unwiredview.com Florin

    How's the title misleading, when it's a fact that Samsung sold more featurephones than Nokia in Western Europe?

  • nyilae

    The report is based on actual facts,how is that misleading? lolz,

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