
Nokia sold 4.4M smartphones in Q4 2017 - Nokinside
http://www.techradar.com/news/nokia-sells-44-million-smartphones-in-q4-2017-surpasses-oneplus-google-and-others
======
russellbeattie
Ex-Nokia employee here - I used to work directly for the CTO of Nokia. It's
amazing, but unsurprising, to me the strength of Nokia's phone brand after all
these years. There's a lot longer of a story to Nokia's decision not to use
Android than most people realize. For example, Intel figured prominently, the
Symbian vs. Maemo debate raged internally, discussions with Google were marred
by _massive_ cultural differences and arrogance on both sides. I'm surprised
no one has written a book.

For what it's worth, Windows Phone was actually an amazing platform for both
users and developers, and shows a fundamental rule of technology: There Is No
Third Ecosystsm. The most dominant hardware maker (at the time) and
software/os maker teamed up with a really great product, but couldn't break
the established smartphone duopoly, even though it was only a few years old by
that point. I wasn't a Microsoft fan by any stretch (the opposite actually),
but even I agreed with the decision at the time, especially after using
Windows Phone. First mover advantage is huge, and developers only have so much
bandwidth.

Edit: Heh. Apparently someone did write a book. See comments below. Wow.

~~~
toast0
> For what it's worth, Windows Phone was actually an amazing platform for both
> users and developers, and shows a fundamental rule of technology: There Is
> No Third Ecosystem

I don't think this is fundamental. Microsoft really dropped the ball on
Windows 10 Mobile. Building a third ecosystem is very hard, and it's a long
term commitment. Microsoft had made good inroads on cheap phones with
reasonable performance, and they didn't follow through with that for W10M;
instead they were focusing on flagship phones. Flagship phone buyers are a lot
more discriminating about everything including OS polish, app marketplace, and
upgrade experience (edit to add, and a browser that doesn't suck).

~~~
jpalomaki
I owned Lumia 920 and 930. Hardware was good, I liked the OS. I eventually
switched to iOS due to 3rd party app support. It was annoying when the apps
you wanted to try were either not available or were lacking features.

In my view the app support killed the platform. It would have been impossible
to fix. Even if Microsoft had paid for the development it would not have made
sense for companies to spend time with WP versions for just a few users.

~~~
toast0
App support was problematic, in part because Microsoft kept coming up with
new, incompatible ways to develop apps. Apps for WP7 could work on WP8 and
W10M (except sometimes, when the app compat didn't work right on upgrade, and
users had to wipe their phone and try again, and Microsoft never fixed it);
but there was also a 'new way' to build apps for WP8 that was required for
some features, and a new way to build 'universal' apps for W10M that didn't
work on any of the other versions of Windows Phone. To say nothing of the apps
for Windows Mobile 6 that were thrown away (despite WP7 still being Windows
CE, but with a fancy skin).

It's one thing to build an app for a platform with not very many users; it's
another to build three similar apps for three similar platforms that don't
have very many users. This is something Microsoft should have done better, and
falls in the camp of if you're going to be a third ecosystem, you have to be
consistently good.

~~~
digi_owl
And that was basically what allowed iOS and Android to flourish. Microsoft
already had an established platform with the PocketPC lineage (damn it, Opera
Mobile originated on such devices!) and yet they dropped that like hot potato
once the media started yakking about iPhones.

You would have thought that Microsoft of all companies understood the value of
platforms, having maintained Win32 compatibility for a decade already at that
point.

Similarly Nokia bought Trolltech for their Qt UI toolkit, because it would
allow software to be developed that could be compiled for both Maemo and
Symbian. But before that could be put into effect, the board panicked and
brought in Elop (in large part because of American pension funds, apparently).

------
romwell
For what it's worth, my phone now is a Nokia 6.

I was choosing between that and a Moto G5 Plus in the price bracket. Perhaps
the Moto has better features, but the Nokia has a solid steel plate running
through its entire body[1].

So, I could have had a better camera and battery on a Moto, or I could get the
assurance that if I end up in a Star Wars garbage compactor scenario, I'd have
something I could wedge into the damn doors to avoid being crushed completely
flat.

I went with the Nokia.

[1] [https://youtu.be/0M3Budnl3aI?t=186](https://youtu.be/0M3Budnl3aI?t=186)

~~~
StudentStuff
Nokia has been the timeliest about pushing out updates too, beating Google to
the punch by a few weeks for the December Android security patches recently.
Realistically, the Nokia 6 will probably have modern Android updates longer
than any of the Nexus or Pixel line.

~~~
Spare_account
Is this reliable? My choice of next phone wad going to be Pixel due to the
importance I place on timely updates.

Has Nokia committed to beating Google on terms of handset support lifetime?

~~~
Nokinside
Nokia phones have two years of Android updates guaranteed.

~~~
nikanj
And how do you enforce that guarantee? I remember when they guaranteed years
of updates for the Lumia 800, and then the Lumia 1020.

If they stop the updates, you can participate in a class-action lawsuit, and
get a Nokia ballpoint pen (ink not included) after eleven years.

~~~
Nokinside
Microsoft is not good at keeping promises.

Google + HMD Global seems more credible combination.

------
ironjunkie
Every single time there is an article about Nokia I cannot believe how little
people actually know about Nokia, the company.

* The cellphone division was entirely sold to Microsoft ages ago.

* The cellphones coming out today is just a branding agreement with HMD.

* The Nokia of today is a huge company (more than 100.000 people) that focuses on backbone networks and telecom services. Almost every single ISP and provider in the world is using Nokia tecnology. Every other core router or service router on Internet is a Nokia router (or Alcatel-Lucent router that was bought by Nokia couple years ago).

I know the Name Nokia is not Hype like an Apple or Google, but there is very
cool stuff happening in the Backbone telecom business.

~~~
jpalomaki
Nokia Bell Labs [1]. I think that's something.

Pretty well done considering that they were in very deep troubles before
selling the (worthless) mobile phone business to Microsoft for quite a nice
price.

[1] [http://www.bell-labs.com](http://www.bell-labs.com)

------
petepete
My next phone will be a Nokia, having exclusively bought Nexus devices since
the Galaxy Nexus.

Google's last few phones have been plagued with problems, and them withholding
software from their niche hardcore fans was the last straw.

If only Nokia had got in on the Android action earlier and realised that
Symbian/Ovi wasn't up to it.

~~~
nextos
They should have also stayed with Maemo. A dual Android and Maemo strategy
could have been very successful. IMHO the Nokia 770-900 series is the best
mobile saga in history.

I would still carry out that strategy. Android for the masses, and a real
Linux as a different product aimed at enthusiasts, privacy aware and
governments. That market is growing. Even Apple is focusing on privacy-aware
people.

My Nokia N9, which is inferior to the N900 in some ways, is still ahead of
many smartphones of 2018 in a few key aspects. The UI is incredibly elegant.
Furthermore, its a real Linux machine, with a real terminal and a regular
userland. And offline navigation is amazing.

I still use it often. The hardware is beautiful in a way very few products
are.

~~~
underwater
Every competitor that has tried to kickstart their own OS has failed
(Microsoft, Palm, Mozilla, Ubuntu, etc.)

Maemo might have been a great OS, but Android and iOS have sucked the oxygen
out of the room. There’s no way Nokia could build and support an alternative
OS just for enthusiasts.

~~~
hsivonen
The successor of Meego, Sailfish OS is still alive when Ubuntu Touch, Firefox
OS and Windows Phone have been discontinued.

~~~
vesinisa
Yes, and one should recall that Android is just a Linux usermode abstraction
layer. You can have Android apps within a traditional Linux distro, and
Sailfish are already doing that. My understanding is it can be technically
made work pretty flawlessly, but bundling the proprietary Google Play
libraries is a legal hurdle. So you are stuck with an Amazon Fire OS type
"Android-clone".

~~~
digi_owl
And this is why we see Google shift more and more development resource out of
AOSP and onto the Play platform.

The OS you get out of the repo today is very stale and bare bones compared to
the early days, before Amazon Fire and like.

------
cwyers
For perspective. Apple shipped 77.3 million smartphones in Q4 2017. Samsung
shipped 74.1 million. Huawei shipped 41.0 million. Xiaomi shipped 28.1
million. OPPO shipped 27.4 million. And everyone outside the top 5 shipped
151.3 million. So these figures mean that Nokia shipped roughly 3% of the not-
top-five-brands in Q4.

[https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS43548018](https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS43548018)

------
hsivonen
Nice to see people choose phones that get security updates.

I've had an opportunity to try Nokia 8 and Nokia 3. Basically go for the
highest model number that you can afford.

Nokia 8 is very good. No complaints that wouldn't apply to Pixel, too.

Nokia 3 is remarkably good _for its €150 price_ (camera underwhelming, screen
blue-tinted and unreliable wifi [at least with November software] compared to
flagships, but in Europe unreliable wifi doesn't matter since you can stay on
mobile data all the time, so better choose the security updates than a
competitor with better wifi).

------
samfisher83
Nokia used to be where apple is today. They had a majority of the smartphone
market share. It was a smaller market. They also dominated the feature phone
market. It just shows you how fast things can change.

This graph is pretty awesome in showing how big Nokia was:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8GCu9SVwAE_n4N.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8GCu9SVwAE_n4N.png:large)

~~~
srcmap
I remember the old "cool" cell phone platform cycles are 3-5 years. StarTac,
Moto Razor, Nokia, Blackberry, etc.

The current smartphone platforms probably will last a lot longer - probably
because of the App ego systems. I was thinking that IPhone might drop off
around 6 years after it was introduced.

------
addicted
Who would have guessed that pairing the most popular mobile phone brand, with
the most popular smartphone OS in the world would have led to success.
Especially if they maintained the hardware quality the brand was renowned for?

Clearly what they should have done is paired with a new OS with basically no
base from a company that had failed in almost every consumer venture it
embarked upon.

~~~
Nokinside
.. financed and manfuactured by the largest smartphone manufacturer in the
world: Foxconn.

HMD Global is essentially Nokia - Foxconn partnership.

Nokia never sold it's R&D division or patents to Microsoft. HMD global has
full IPR access to everything from Nokia Research and all patents.

Foxconn wants to reduce its dependence from Apple. 46% of Hon Hai's (Foxconn)
revenue comes from Apple.

------
yalogin
The shocking thing here is that Google sold less than 4.4 million smartphones
in a quarter. Why is that? I thought with Google's brand name, they should be
selling a good number of them. Don't they have affiliations with carriers? Can
people only buy them on their site?

~~~
hsivonen
Dunno about Pixel 2, but Pixel 1 was remarkably hard to buy, since Google
shipped it only to a handful of countries.

~~~
vesinisa
Same story, unavailable in all but the biggest markets.

------
monkeydust
If Nokia could come up with a flagship competitor to Samsung s9 I would switch
over in a heartbeat.

------
ZenoArrow
I bought myself a new Nokia phone on the weekend, wanted a second handset so
got myself a Nokia 3310 (the new model). Maybe some of that decision was based
on nostalgia (my first phone was the original model), but I haven't regretted
it. The funny thing is I found a new use for it after I bought it... it allows
you to use a 32GB SD card in it, and has an MP3 player app. No big deal there.
However, the battery life when just playing back MP3s is allegedly 51 hours!
I'm pretty lazy when it comes to charging my devices so I was pretty happy to
find that out. :-)

~~~
abawany
I bought one too. It is a very nice device and the ability to import contacts
from Android is very cool. If they ever got some tethering/hotspot ability, I
would make a real effort to make it my daily driver.

~~~
ZenoArrow
They are nice devices, I agree. With the tethering/hotspot ability, I think
that may only be practical after a hardware refresh, as it's a 2G-only phone.
Perhaps in future revisions it'll support 3G (or 4G).

~~~
abawany
I believe the US version has 3G support [1].

[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/29/16384526/n...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/29/16384526/nokia-3310-3g-announced-
us-compatibility)

~~~
jack1243star
The Chinese 4G version is advertised with WLAN hotspot support.

[http://www.nokia.com/zh_int/phones/nokia-3310-4g](http://www.nokia.com/zh_int/phones/nokia-3310-4g)

~~~
abawany
This is an exciting development. On reading more, my enthusiasm was a bit
damped when I learnt that this model is running a forked version of Android
(YunOs) - I am still going to check it out as the appeal of a barebones phone
with some of Android's functionality might actually be a pretty cool
compromise.

------
diggernet
Former Nokian here... If there are any HMD/Nokia folks reading this: Dedicated
two-stage camera button. Bring it back. Please.

------
noureen
They took "Never quit trying" to heart

~~~
romwell
Must be that Finnish Sisu[1] at work.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu)

~~~
rdtsc
First time I heard about. I like that they have a word for it and its fairly
short, I might just start using it myself. I speak almost 4 languages and
always fascinated by concepts that can't be directly translated.

Also like that there is a scale applied to it and it can be a negative thing:

\---

[...] there can be too much sisu, and according to the survey answers this
leads to bull-headedness, foolhardiness, self-centeredness and inflexible
thinking.

\---

------
dejv
Any thoughts on Nokia stock? I do own it as a small part of my portfolio and
thinking about expanding my position.

~~~
Nokinside
Nokia has no ownership in HMD Global who licensed Nokia brand for 10 years to
make phones. Nokia gets license and patent fees from the deal.

The future prospects of Nokia stock are tied to 5G network deployments. 5G
deployments start already this year, but they will be slow at first. Things
start move along 2019 when first 5G networks and devices (including phones)
start to appear. 2020-2022 will show if Nokia is the winner in the battle for
market share.

------
bcoates
I have an ailing 1020 that I'm dreading replacing.

Are there any new user-serviceable phones on the market? or should I just keep
doing the Ship of Theseus thing with Amazon greymarket parts until the phone
market shakes out into less of a nightmare for users?

------
dqv
I'm glad to hear they're doing well in the featurephone market. It's nice to
have a phone that has great call quality, long battery life, and can actually
play FM radio. I hope they keep selling in the US market.

------
djhworld
I bought a Nokia 3 a few months ago as a backup phone when my OnePlus-3T had
to go in for repairs.

Really nice little phone I thought, perfectly servicable for light usage and
felt nice to hold. A bargain for the £100 or so that I paid for it.

------
taoistextremist
So will these phones ever support CDMA or is that just going to be ignored? I
wonder how they're doing in the US specifically considering their phones can't
be used on two of the larger carriers in the country.

~~~
kuschku
Considering the Qualcomm monopoly on CDMA patents, why should they?

CDMA is only used in a single country, one where Android is massively
underrepresented, and it binds you to a single SoC vendor.

~~~
taoistextremist
>CDMA is only used in a single country

As far as I'm aware, two Chinese carriers, China Mobile and China Telecom, use
CDMA. China Telecom I believe for everything, China Mobile for its 3G (4G in
general is a bit harder to come by there in my experience, so often the only
option for mobile data is 3G).

~~~
kuschku
You mean WCDMA? That's usual.

But the US uses CDMA instead of GSM for audio and SMS content.

~~~
taoistextremist
I was wrong about China Mobile, it is just WCDMA, but China Telecom is using
CDMA.

------
abimaelmartell
Didn't knew that Nokia still sells smartphones :O

EDIT: added the still

~~~
icebraining
Nokia has been selling smartphones since before the iPhone.

~~~
robin_reala
Way before; the first S60 phone came out in 2002[1] and the original
Communicator was from back in 96.[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7650](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7650)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator)

------
smnrchrds
Is there a good brand of non-smart phones available in North America? Nokia
had some models, but only in India and select other countries.

------
Theodores
The 'Nokia' in this article is a brand, licensed and stuck on some phones made
by some other people.

So this is not 'real Nokia' in my opinion. However, an Apple product or a
Google product that is actually made by an OEM (Foxconn/HTC/LG etc.) is 'real
Apple' or 'real Google'.

The problem with badge engineering is the badge.

~~~
rando444
Is there any evidence these are low quality though?

I bought a Lumia 720 which I used for 3 years and still works perfectly
another 3 or 4 years later, although the Windows OS was lacking in many ways,
the phone itself is engineered extremely well, drop resistant, and doesn't
even require a case.

I've broken more Samsungs than I can count in extremely short periods of time.

If the Nokia quality is still there I would love to go back to Nokia.

~~~
thereau
The Lumia phones were build by Nokia. The Android ones are build by HMD global

~~~
StudentStuff
The quality is still there though, its definitely a phone you can rock with a
minimal case, and if you don't mind it getting a little dinged up, no case is
also fine.

------
digi_owl
Wonder how much is brand recognition, and how much is the promise of firmware
updates...

~~~
izacus
Its say it's mostly really good pricing.

------
Geee
That's quite a surprise giving that Nokia 8 was quite disappointing in my
opinion. I think they would've sold more without the 'bothie' gimmick, and
just marketed their quality and security.

------
agumonkey
Not bad for a dead company. Uplifting :)

~~~
digi_owl
Well this "nokia" is actually a different company wearing a mask.

The part of Nokia that was making Symbian phones was sold of to Microsoft and
is now long dead. The Nokia that remains is focused on mobile and wireless
infrastructure. The company now making Nokia branded Android phones is
actually HMD Global.

That said, HMD is based basically across the road from Nokia and staffed with
many former Nokia people.

~~~
agumonkey
Yes it's not totally the Nokia that Microsoft bought but it's still infused
with legacy Nokia's blood. And also recapturing market share after such an
accident is quite a surprise.

