This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Russell Beattie.
Original Post: Series 60 Sales Numbers
Feed Title: Russell Beattie Notebook
Feed URL: http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/rss.jsp?q=java,code,mobile
Feed Description: My online notebook with thoughts, comments, links and more.
The one thing that's been really hard to get a hold of is the number of Series 60 phones being sold. Nokia doesn't break out the numbers, so you have to find the mentions of Symbian phones and try to extrapolate numbers. For example, Symbian One has a story which says has this quote from IDC:
[David Linsalata, Associate Analyst with IDC, Mobile Devices in Boston] says IDC estimates that 775,000 units of Symbian OS based devices were shipped into the US market in 2003, with over 90% of these coming from Nokia and the remainder, obviously, from Sony Ericsson. For 2004 IDC is forecasting sales in the US of 1.6 million devices rising to 7.4 million by 2007.
The most interesting aspect of 2003 was that the 4th quarter comprised about 70% of the year's shipments mainly on strengths of the Nokia 3650 and its variants. "Here we see the real strength of Nokia," says David. "It has ability to release a phone and suddenly create a convergent device market approaching a million units."
So wow. Even though the 3650 was launched globally in March of last year, it didn't reach a critical mass of buyers until Christmastime. That's a very interesting lesson. Also, even though smart phones are on the rise here in the U.S., they're still not anywhere near the numbers outside our borders. Check out this story from Cellular-News:
Nokia said that it also sees mobile multimedia entering the mass market phase. Since its introduction in October 2003, the Nokia 6600 has become the world's best selling smartphone with shipments to date exceeding 2 million units.
So wow! In all of 2003, there was only roughly 675,000 Series 60 phones sold in the U.S. but since October more than 2 million 6600s have been sold internationally. There may have been a small number sold in the U.S. too, but since the phone is not generally available I doubt it's a very big number. When the 6620 hits in a month or so, it's going to really be a big seller, I'm sure. By Christmas 2004, the 6620 will be the hot phone to have.
So that is great news for Series 60. The numbers aren't near the 10 million mark that was I was predicting based on sales estimates from last year, but still I'm sure that these phones are beating the hell out of the Treo 600 - as good a phone as that is - and other Symbian variants as well. And now in 2004, Nokia won't be shouldering the S60 burden alone as Siemens, Sendo, Panasonic and Samsung will now finally be shipping their own S60 devices and new licensees like Lenova and others signing deals as well.
It's a good time to be a Series 60 booster. If you're not on the bandwagon already, this would be the time to jump on. :-)
Previous Topic
