A report by Gartner Research says that the free fast rising smartphone software developed by Google, and the Symbian software used by mobile phone giant Nokia, will together have 60% of the market by 2014.
Symbian now runs on about 47% of the smartphones sold and dominates the lower end of the market. iPhone and Android have cut into Nokia smartphone sales severely and its sales are expected to drop off to as low as 30%. Nokia has just replaced their CEO with Stephen Elpo in an effort to stop their slide in the up scale smartphone market.
Android sales however are expected by Gartner to blow by both iPhone and Blackberry and become about 18% of the market this year. Manufacturers like HTC, Motorola, and Samsung have jumped on the Android bandwagon and flooded the market lately with a wide range of smartphones boosting Android’s share.
Android in 2009 only had about 4% of the market and Blackberry had about 20%. Gartner expects RIM’s sales to drop to about 18% this year and for Android to about match that. In 4 years he sees Nokia and Android running neck and neck each with about 30% of the market. He expects Apple to have about 15% of the market in 2014.
Stephen Elop is leaving Microsoft as president of its business software division to take over as CEO of Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia Oyj starting September 21.
The Canadian born and educated Elop will take over as CEO from 30 year Nokia veteran Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and will become the first non Finn to run the company. He has a technical background mainly in software but has also been active as an executive with companies other than Microsoft.
As CEO of Macromedia Inc. he moved the company towards Internet flash applications and away from other products and then struck a buy out deal with Adobe.
He was chief operating officer at Juniper Networks and was able to boost profits against top competitor Cisco Systems. He was expected to take over as CEO at Juniper when he abruptly quit and joined Microsoft.
At Microsoft he worked hard at convincing others around him to work for better relationships with competitors and pushed to get online versions of the Office product going so as to fight off other online software offerings like Google was producing. The profits from his business software division have been increasing year over year.
At Nokia he will have to grapple with the problem of both Apple & Android taking away Nokia smartphone sales. Nokia share prices have dropped more than 60% since 2007 when Apple introduced the iphone.
Nokia’s response has been to reduce prices in an attempt to retain market share rather than improve or replace the Symbian based software their smart phones use .
Nokia hopes with Elop’s technical expertise and proven history of being able to increase profits against tough competitors that he will be able to work his magic there also.
