A Nokia Oyj executive said yesterday that a drop in the company's smartphone market share isn't unusual and that products will be revamped before the Christmas and Chinese New Year holiday periods.
"I don't see this as a trend, but rather as a seasonal fluctuation," Anssi Vanjoki, head of sales, marketing and logistics, said in an interview at Nokia's head office in Espoo, Finland, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. "I have no reason to believe that we wouldn't at least keep our current position."
Smartphones from Research In Motion Ltd, with the BlackBerry, and Apple Inc, with its iPhone, have taken market share from Nokia. The Finnish company, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, estimates its global market share in so-called converged devices that allow users to surf the Web, download music and send e-mail dropped to 41 percent in the second quarter from 51 percent a year earlier.
Revamps in model lineups have brought more seasonal variations to market share figures as more companies have entered the competitive fray, said Vanjoki, who ran Nokia's multimedia unit before taking his current post at the beginning of the year. Nokia, whose shares have lost 33 percent this year in Helsinki trading, had a 41.1-percent global market share for all mobile phone segments in the second quarter, according to Boston-based researcher Strategy Analytics.
Nokia introduced two new smartphones this week, the N85 and N79, which start shipping in October. The company's new flagship model, the N96, will be available "any given day," Vanjoki said. Nokia, which had no major new devices shipping in the second quarter, started selling its E71 e-mail phone with a full keyboard in July to compete with the BlackBerry.
"As we are heading to the festive season of Christmas and Chinese New Year, we've got to make sure our offering is at its best," Vanjoki said. The company still plans to introduce "certain' new devices this year, including a model with a touchscreen user interface, he said.
