British market research firm Canalysis reports that Nokia is the world market leader in smartphones with a 28 percent share of shipments in the first quarter of 2004 and 41 percent shipment growth versus the same period last year. PalmOne came in second, with a 16.8 percent share. Over 5.9 million smartphones were sold throughout the world in the first three months of 2004, 1.7 million more than during the first quarter of 2003.
Nokia’s leading smartphone, the
Nokia 6600, is knocking them dead in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa market, but isn’t hot yet in North America or Asia. The palmOne Treo 600 has real strength in North America, but is virtually nonexistent in the EMEA.
Hewlett-Packard is showing amazing strength in mobile device marketshare, considering the fact that they have yet to release a true smartphone. Among their most popular handhelds is the
H-P iPAQ 4355, which has a built-in keyboard, Bluetooth, and 802.11b wireless networking. H-P reportedly plans a series of smartphones, but there has been no formal announcement so far.
Research in Motion is taking advantage of the rebound in business technology spending to build marketshare in Europe. The
RIM Blackberry 7230 Phone has many of the features that business users are seeking, including a color screen and robust email integration. RIM shipments tripled over 2003 levels, rocketing them to number four behind Nokia, palmOne, and H-P.
One of the big issues with Nokia’s recent strategy has been that some analysts and journalists believe that smartphone sales are not expanding quickly enough to justify the investment that Nokia has made in device R&D. This may or may not be the case, but, Nokia’s high end smartphones come to the North American market later than they do in Europe. The Nokia 6600 was only released in the USA in April, while the product was available in Europe in the fourth quarter of 2003. Perhaps Nokia would achieve better results if it released its Smartphones simultaneously in the U.S. and Europe.