Nokia expects lower Q3 shipments

Nokia today announced that it was lowering its estimate for mobile device shipments for 3rd quarter. In July, Nokia had announced that Q3 shipments will be on par with Q2. In Q2, Nokia shipped 122m units according to IDC

According to Nokia, the overall market demand for mobile devices will be tempered due to weaker consumer confidence in several markets. Although, it still believes that the market will grow by 10% in 2008.

Nokia cites several reasons for why it is lowering its forecast including:

Nokia’s tactical decision to not meet certain aggressive pricing of some competitors, the overall market competition, including the entry markets, and the temporary impact of a slower ramp-up of a mid-range Nokia device. Nokia’s strategy is to take market share only when the company believes it to be sustainably profitable in the longer term. Nokia has not broadly participated in the recent aggressive pricing activity – as it believes that the negative impact to profitability would outweigh any short term incremental benefits to device unit sales.

It will be interesting to see whether this downward revision is announced by other device vendors or is it isolated only to Nokia.

Smartphones continue to grow mobile phone market: IDC

IDC today published a state of the mobile phone industry called the Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. According to this report, mobile phones shipments continue to see solid 115.3% growth worldwide in Q2, 2008 despite challenging economic conditions worldwide. This is thanks in large part to the smartphone features like GPS, multimedia and touchscreen. Vendors continue to experiment and provide new functionality even in emerging market. Here is a snapshot of the top 5 vendors courtesy of IDC (shipment are in millions of units).

    Vendor        Q208       Q208      Q207       Q207     2Q08/2Q07
                  Shipments  Market    Shipments   Market     Growth
                                       Share                         Share
Nokia                     122.0       39.9%      100.8      38.0%      21.0%
Samsung                  45.7       14.9%        37.4      14.1%      22.2%
Motorola                  28.1         9.2%        35.5      13.4%     -20.8%
LG Electronics         27.7         9.1%        19.1       7.2%       45.0%
Sony Ericsson         24.4         8.0%         24.9       9.4%       -2.0%
Others                      58.1      19.0%         47.7      18.0%      21.8%
Total                       306.0    100.0%       265.4     100.0%     15.3%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, July 30, 2008