In one point in time, Nokia was the top-selling smartphone vendor in the world by a wide margin. It wasn’t even that long ago, in fact. But when Nokia failed to respond quickly enough to the industry’s shift toward touch, the Finnish giant lost its footing and toppled spectacularly. Just how bad have things gotten for Nokia? Market share numbers paint a pretty frightening picture, but a single tweet from Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis might do an even better job of putting things in perspective.
In the past two years since Nokia announced that it was switching to Windows Phone as its mobile platform of choice, the vendor has sold just over 20 million Lumia phones. During the same period of time, Apple has sold 248 million iPhones and Android phone sales have topped 800 million units, led by Samsung.
It looks like the platform may still be burning.
Windows Phone’s market share is inching upward but it is still eclipsed by iOS and Android. As Nokia leads the charge against BlackBerry for the No.3 spot in the smartphone platform race, the question of whether or not the vendor made the right choice in backing Microsoft’s mobile efforts remains.