Redefinition shrinks Nokia's mobile market share

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 14 March 2010 14:29

IT Industry - Market

Nokia is revising its definition of the industry mobile device market that it uses to estimate industry volumes, and hence its estimates of the size of the market and its share of that market.

This revision, it says, is the result of improved measurement processes and tools that enable it to have better visibility to estimate the number of mobile devices sold by certain new entrants in the global mobile device market.

"These include vendors of legitimate, as well as unlicensed and counterfeit, products with manufacturing facilities primarily centred around certain locations in Asia and other emerging markets." Nokia has, however given no details of its revised definition.

Applying the revised definition and improved measurement processes and tools, Nokia estimates that industry mobile device volumes in 2009 would have been 1.26 billion units, as opposed to 1.14 billion units using the old definition.

Applying the revised definition retrospectively to 2009, Nokia estimates that its mobile device volume market share would have been 34 percent, as against 38 percent based on the previous definition.

The respective quarterly volume market shares would have been 32 percent during the first quarter of 2009 (37 percent based on the 2009 definition), 35 percent during the second quarter 09 (38), 34 percent during the third quarter (38 percent) and 35 percent during the fourth quarter (39 percent).

Applying its revised definition to 2010 forecasts, Nokia expects device volumes to be approximately 10 percent up on 2009. It is aiming to maintain, but not grow its mobile device market share by volume in 2010 and to increase its market share by revenue slightly.