Nokia Lumia's Quarterly Sales and Comparison To iPhone Figures

Hi firstly, I’d like to introduce myself, my name is Chris Wright, and following Lenny’s kind invitation to write for Nokia Innovation, I am forwarding my latest blog post from Wright On N9 and Lumia

I made a post on my own blog (read it here) where I estimated that sales of Nokia Lumia smartphones for the first quarter of 2013 would be between 6.5million and 7.5million. Well, the actual numbers turned out to be 5.6million (of which 3.8million were Windows Phone 8 powered phones). So I was a little bit out, but apparently these sales numbers where higher than forecasts (the professional ones, I mean) had predicted. They also marked a 27% increase in sales of the Lumia range.

I think these numbers are still good, even if slightly less than I was expecting. One comparison I have seen made before is the numbers of Lumia’s sold in their early quarters compared to how many iPhone’s sold in their equivalent quarter. For example, in the Lumia’s first quarter, which was Q4 2011 they sold 1 million handsets. While the Apple iPhone in their first quarter, which was Q3 2007 sold 270,000 phones. In fact, I drew up this graph below to demonstrate what I mean. It doesn’t mean a lot, other than a bit of perspective on how a smartphone currently selling huge numbers performed in its earlier months.

My graph shows that in their first 5 quarters of availability the Lumia range sold more handsets than the iPhone did. And as history has shown, you can say what you like about the iPhone, but one thing which can’t be faulted is its popularity.

Between July 2007 and December 2008 Apple sold 13.2million iPhones. While Nokia, between October 2011 and March 2013 have sold 20.2million Lumias.

I would like to point out, that the Lumia range of smartphones were available in more countries than the iPhone during these stages. Also, while Nokia Lumia phones came out at a variety of price points, generally the iPhone release just one high end device a year, although when a new iPhone model is launched, the previous model does remain on sale at lower price points. Also, it could be argued that more people were buying smartphones in the last 18 months than back in 2007/08. Perhaps a fairer comparison would be against Samsung’s Galaxy range, but then you are including tablets.

Well, make of my comparison what you will, I would be interested to hear your views. Please feel free to leave a comment below. Also, you can find me on Twitter here.