Nokia Mobile shipped 15.5 million phones in Q4 2020
The year 2020 is behind us. In the history of 21st century it will be remembered as the most disruptive year yet on a global level, with a pandemic forcing the world into accelerated digitalization, changing the habits of most of the population and unfortunately increasing even more the financial inequality.
Anyways, January is always the time to reflect on results that were achieved in the last year and for companies, in the final quarter of the year – in this case Q4 2020 that is the period between October and December. Counterpoint Research, as usual, released a great report about the state of the smartphone market in Q4 2020 and the whole year 2020.
In Q4 2020, Apple shipped the most smartphones, followed by Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Huawei. On the whole year level, Samsung was the biggest brand, followed by Apple and Huawei. Interesting to note, the combined shipments of BBK brands Oppo, Vivo and Realme in 2020 surpassed Samsung’s shipments, thus making BBK world’s biggest smartphone maker.
Nokia Mobile (HMD Global) didn’t make it into top 10 on these lists, but Counterpoint did provide us how the Finns performed in Q4 in terms of smartphones and feature phones. In the feature phone world, Nokia Mobile had a 26% increase in shipments compared to previous quarter, shipping in total around 12.7 million feature phones in Q4 2020. That makes Nokia the second biggest feature phone brand in Q4 with 16% marketshare, after the No.1 iTel with 22% marketshare.
In terms of smartphones, Nokia Mobile recorded shipment increase of 35% compared to Q3 2020, which means the Finns shipped 2.8 million Nokia smartphones in Q4 2020. That was enough for capturing 0.7% of the global smartphone marketshare in Q4, making Nokia the 15th biggest smartphone brand.
Statement from Counterpoint:
Nokia HMD’s shipments grew by close to 30% QoQ with featurephone shipments increasing by over 26%, helping it capture around 16% of the featurephone market and ranking at no. 2 in Q4 2020 after iTel (which enjoys a market share of over 22%). This growth was fuelled by its strong performance in Europe.
Smartphone shipments also increased by around 35% QoQ, making it the 15th biggest smartphone brand globally. HMD holds a share of close to 0.7% of the smartphone market. Its relatively low market share in the smartphone segment may be attributed to its dated design.
Thanks to Counterpoint’s number, we are able to calculate Nokia Mobile’s yearly performance and compared to 2019 or 2018 it doesn’t look that good. The shipment of smartphones and featurephones nearly halved in 2020 compared to 2018, which is concerning to say the least.
| Nokia (in millions) | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
| Feature phones | 64 | 53.2 | 38.6 |
| Smartphones | 17.9 | 14.5 | 8 |
| Total | 81.9 | 67.7 | 46.6 |
Last year was a challenging year for all industries and we will see how the smartphone industry, mainly Nokia Mobile will do in 2021.
Thanks Counterpoint for the info. Do check their report here.
