Counterpoint: Nokia remains the 6th biggest phone vendor with 23.2 million units shipped in Q1 2018

We already saw a few market research companies publishing their numbers about the performance of Nokia phones during the first quarter of 2018.

Unfortunately, HMD Global doesn’t share the numbers on a quarterly basis (with distinction between smartphones and feature phones), so we are left with different companies and their market reports. One of such companies is Counterpoint Research, that already shared with us that HMD grabbed 1.1% of the smartphone market and 14.3% of the feature phone market, making it a total of 4.3% in shipments of smartphones and feature phones during Q1 2018.

Category	2017 Q4	2018 Q1
Handsets	4.5%	4.3%
Smartphone	1.0%	1.1%
Featurephone	15.1%	14.3%

The good guys at Counterpoint finalized all the counting for Q1 2018, and provided us (thank you!) with the exact numbers of units shipped during the last quarter. In Q1 2018, HMD Global shipped 4 million Nokia smartphones capturing 1.1% of the smartphone market. Compared to Q4 2017, HMD shipped less devices (4.4 million vs. 4.0 million), but captured a 0.1% market share more (1.0% vs. 1.1%). That was enough to place the Nokia brand as No.12 in smartphones during Q1 2018.

In terms of feature phones, 19.2 million Nokia feature phones were shipped during last quarter, which secured 14.3% of feature phone market share for HMD. Unfortunatelly, HMD Global wasn’t the biggest feature phone vendor during Q1 2018, but took the second spot, according to Counterpoint Research. In Q4 2017, Nokia feature phones took the crown with 20.7 million units shipped and 15.1% market share. Considering that HMD’s operations were limited in Q1 2017, we don’t have the numbers to compare the performance on an annual basis.

Category	Shipment	Ranking
Handsets	23.2 million	6
Smartphone	4.0 million	12
Featurephone	19.2 million	2

In total, HMD Global remains the 6th biggest handset vendor on the planet with 23.2 million Nokia phones shipped and 4.3% market share during Q1 2018. Last quarter, HMD was No. 6, too, but with more handsets shipped – 25.1 millions and 4.5% market share.

Counting from the sales start of Nokia 6 (2017) in China, in five quarters HMD shipped a total of 12.7 million smartphones. If we look back just a year from now (Q2, Q3, Q4 2017 and Q1 2018), the number of Nokia smartphones shipped stands at 12.6 million.

In general, handset shipments were down in Q1 2018 compared to Q1 2017, and Q4 2017, as they always are. It’s good to see that the feature phone shipment remained steady, around 20 million, but the lower shipments of smartphones compared to Q4 isn’t something we like to see considering that the shipments of Nokia smartphones are still small. In this quarter, Q2 2018, new Nokia smartphones have made its way to the market. We are talking of course about the Nokia 1, 6.1, 7 plus and 8 Sirocco. A promising lineup that should increase HMD’s smartphone shipments, while the Nokia 8110 4G should again turn the eyes of the world to feature phones.

Keep in mind that this data differs from the data Strategy Analytics posted, but only slightly. They put the number of Nokia smartphones shipped at 4.1 million with 1.2% of market share, ranking No.9 globally. These numbers are fairly precise, considering both companies are inside a 3% margin one from each other. Only HMD has the real info and it will be interesting to see if they are going to share it any time soon. Only info HMD shared until know about sales was that 70 million Nokia phones were shipped in 2017.

Big thanks to Counterpoint Research for providing the numbers. 🙂