ANALYSIS: Who's Who in Smartphone Business in 1Q 2011?

It took a while, but we finally have the numbers for all four major analyst houses (Gartner, IDC, Canalys and Strategy Analytics). As always, we calculated the average of their totals to find the quarterly total smartphone sales - which came to 101.2 million, a 2% growth in smartphone sales from the fourth quarter (Christmas-quarter) of 2010. This is also the first time smartphone sales passed the magical 100 million unit mark.

By Manufacturer: How Long Until Apple takes over?
Based on compiled information, here are the top 10 biggest smartphone brands by manufacturer in the first quarter of 2011:

Rank . . Brand . . . . . . . Millions sold . . . . . . Market Share 1Q'11 . . . .(Market Share 4Q'10)

1 . . . . . Nokia . . . . . . . 24.2 million . . . . . . . 24% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (29%)
2 . . . . . Apple . . . . . . . 18.4 million . . . . . . . 18% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (16%)
3 . . . . . RIM . . . . . . . . 14.5 million . . . . . . . 14% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (14%)
4 . . . . . Samsung . . . . 12.6 million . . . . . . . 13% . . . . . . . . . . . . . (11%)
5 . . . . . HTC . . . . . . . . . 9.7 million . . . . . . . . 10% . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 9%)
6 . . . . . SonyEricsson . . 4.9 million . . . . . . . . 5% . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 5%)
7 . . . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 million . . . . . . . . 5% . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 4%)
8 . . . . . Motorola . . . . . . 4.1 million . . . . . . . . 4% . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 5%)
9 . . . . . ZTE . . . . . . . . . 2.2 million . . . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  2%)
10 . . . . Sharp . . . . . . . . 1.8 million . . . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (  2%)

The big movers are Nokia in crash-dive, lost massive five market share points in just one quarter, and Samsung and Apple who both picked up two market share points in the quarter. HTC, LG and ZTE are also growing, with Motorola is slipping back further into the pack. RIM, SonyEricsson and Sharp are roughly holding station.

By Operating System: Android is the New King
I also did some forced math to try to squeeze as close as possible the operating system numbers that are reported, to the above total number and as usual, this is the more difficult bit, but this should be close. Remember, this is Smartphones ONLY, not including tablet PCs or other devices (iOS on iPod touch, Android-powered cars etc.). The market share by operating system as I see it for first quarter of 2011 are:

Rank . . Maker . . . Operating System . . . . Market Share 1Q'11 . . . . . (Market share 4Q'10)

1 . . . . . Google . . . . Android . . . . . . . . . . 35%. . . . . . . . . . . . . . (30%)
2 . . . . . Nokia . . . . . Symbian . . . . . . . . . 25% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (32%)
3 . . . . . Apple . . . . . iOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (16%)
4 . . . . . RIM . . . . . . Blackberry . . . . . . . . 14% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (14%)
5 . . . . . Samsung . . bada . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 3%)
6 . . . . . Microsoft . . Windows Mobile . . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 2%)
7 . . . . . Microsoft . . Windows Phone 7 . . . . 2% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 2%)
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 1%)

First, remember that Symbian also still has Japanese makers who support it in addition to Nokia (that is why the percentage here bigger than in the above). Also very interesting race among the small operating systems is hidden in the percentages. Several sources say Samsung's bada sold 3.5 million (thus almost 4% when rounding off), compared to about 2 million for old Windows Mobile 6.5 and 1.6 million for new Phone 7. So even in first quarter 2011, Microsoft's newest operating system is being beaten even by its older sibling, and Samsung's new OS outsells all Microsoft Windows Phone 7 partners combined, by more than 2 to 1.

A number we should look out for - Samsung has not given a split of bada vs. Android vs. Microsoft handsets, but if those analyst numbers and quoted numbers are roughly right, we should have been at about 8.8 million cumulative bada shipments by end of 1Q and during the second quarter of 2011, we should pass 10 million cumulative bada devices. Expect that kind of noise soon from Samsung PR team...

Tomi February Projection For Nokia Market Share Crash in 2011

In the Nokia-watch... How is my model compared to Nokia reality? When I did my 'Nokia premium smartphone customer give-away sweepstakes' analysis, I  projected the following (which we can now compare to actual figures):

Quarter . . . Market Share . . . . Unit Sales . . . .  ASP . . . . . Total Revenues of Smartphones
1Q 2011 . . 28% . . . . . . . . . .  29 M . . . . . . . . 146 Euro . . 4.3B Euro
2Q 2011 . . 21% . . . . . . . . . .  25 M . . . . . . . . 136 Euro . . 3.3B Euro
3Q 2011 . . 16% . . . . . . . . . .  21 M . . . . . . . . 126 Euro . . 2.6B Euro
4Q 2011. .  12% . . . . . . . . . .  17 M . . . . . . . . 116 Euro . . 2.0B Euro

I said clearly in my analysis that it was my 'best case' scenario, as there was plenty of Nokia doom and gloom at the time, following the Stephen Elop stunning Microsoft announcement of February 11. But there were several competent analysts who came to me and said they felt I was being too harsh on Nokia, that while it would be bad, it wouldn't be quite that bad. Well, now we have the very first evaluation of those numbers. And yes, it is worse. I had expected best case to be and what it actually was:

Quarter . . . . . . . Market Share . . . . Unit Sales . . . . ASP . . . . . . . Total Revenue
My projection. . . . 28% . . . . . . . . . . 29 M . . . . . . . . 146 Euro . . . 4.3B Euro
Nokia Actual . . . . . 24% . . . . . . . . . . 24 M . . . . . . . . 147 Euro . . . 3.6B Euro

So Nokia is already four market share points below, five million unit sales below what I projected. It is almost spot-on on the average sales price drop as I predicted, thus total smartphone revenues are 700 million dollars below what I projected for the quarter. If you thought Nokia's year 2011 was going to be an Annus Horribilis based on Ahonen's doom-and-gloom analysis, it is clearly going to be far worse...

You're free to comment below with your own guesses how much worse second quarter will be than my original projection in the above...

Android Split
Also as many are interested in how the Android world is doing, I am continuing with my best guess of how the Android manufacturer internal market shares are going. I find for Q1 that the Android family splits its 36 million handsets sold like this:

HTC . . . . . . . . . . . 26%
Samsung . . . . . . . 24%
SonyEricsson . . . . 13%
LG . . . . . . . . . . . . 13%
Motorola . . . . . . . . 11%
Others . . . . . . . . . 12%

I will come back later with some gossip and news about the various brands how they are doing now in Year 2 of the Smartphone bloodbath...  But I wanted to post these market share numbers as I know many of our readers have been waiting for them. Enjoy.