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Nokia is Off to a Good Start in Europe

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If you live in a big city, you could probably walk the streets and find a Windows Phone in the wild eventually. In Alabama, I could walk the streets for weeks without seeing a Windows Phone in someone’s hands. I have seen a few Zunes and used to see some Pocket PCs on occasion back when people still used them. Nowadays, all I see are iPhones and low-end Android phones. I am sure other cities might have better odds, but you get the point. Even Brian Chen from the New York Times said you would have a better chance seeing a leprechaun riding a unicorn than seeing a someone actually using a Windows Phone.

Brian goes on to talk about the odds of seeing a Windows Phone in Europe is much better.

Recent signs suggest that Nokia’s Lumia handsets with the Windows Phone 7 software are doing reasonably well there. In Austria, the European carrier Orange lists the Nokia Lumia 800 as a best seller. And in London, sales of Nokia’s Lumia 800 drove Windows Phone 7’s market share up to 2.2 percent, from 0.4 percent a year ago, according to estimates by Kantar WorldPanel, a research firm. The largest number of Lumia shipments — about 200,000 units — went to Germany in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the research firm Canalys.

According to the same report, in the UK, Symbian dropped from 15.5% in January 2011 to 2.8% in 2012 and in that same time, Windows Phone went from 0.4% to 2.2%. That’s a huge drop for Symbian and a respectful gain for Windows Phone.

Just today, I had some conversations about Nokia and how their marketing has to be helping Windows Phone out greatly. The consensus was they were without a shadow of a doubt with one person pointing out how well Nokia’s Windows Phone models were selling in Europe. We have very little to go on as far as sales in the US since Microsoft isn’t sharing sales figures and the Nokia Lumia 710 on T-Mobile being the only model ready for public consumption. We’ll have to wait for AT&T to release some Lumia love to the masses. I also think that Verizon and Sprint definitely need to be on board for Windows Phone and Nokia to do well in the US.

Nokia has had some real nice smart phones over the years, but in the US, Nokia is known for their feature phones. Sure, geeks have gone out and bought unlocked Nokia smart phones at full retail, but the masses are buying subsidized phones from carriers. AT&T sold the Nokia E71 with some success, so I believe that the Lumia lineup can do well here. The trusted name in feature phones might equate to trust in the smart phone game. I don’t know how many consumers are still buying feature phones, but I am seeing more low-end Android phones out there than cheap dumb phones.

Bottom line, Nokia is doing well in Europe and the jury is out on the US. I would love to see the same over here personally.

Source: New York Times and The Guardian

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Rakesh Patel

    02/22/2012 at 8:31 pm

    Could not agree more with this article.  I am waiting on Lumia 900 on At&t dropping my iphone 3GS.  

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