After Nokia’s 14 year long reign at the top of charts showing global market sales, Samsung, with its vast array of low, mid and high-end devices have toppled them. A study that was conducted showed that Nokia which has survived with sales of low-end phones around the world sold 83 million phones in the first quarter of 2012 as opposed to Samsung’s alleged 88 million given that the official numbers only come out on April 27. Reports have stated that Nokia was securely at the top in a similar study in January but it seems the rapid turnaround in the industry was something unexpected.
Head of Research at the firm that conducted the study (CCS Insight) Ben Woods said, “After 14 years as the largest global mobile phone maker, getting knocked off the top spot will come as a bitter blow to Nokia. In contrast it will be greeted with euphoria by Samsung – they’ll be dancing from the boardroom to the factory floor.” Nokia became the largest mobile phone maker in 1998 after overtaking Motorola. At that time, Samsung had just entered the industry. Nokia reportedly controlled 40% of the market share until Apple’s iPhone was announced in 2007 and it saw a drop but maintained a lead. Although the drop in positions on the global scale would hurt the Finnish company from a Public Relations aspect, it does not really affect their primary problems that they are currently trying to deal with in order to become relevant to the smartphone industry of now.