Nokia sold 2.2 million Lumia smartphones in Q1, analysts say
Nokia is stubbornly refusing to give us exact numbers on the Lumia lineup, but the analysts from IDC have stepped in to provide some guidance. According to their calculations, the Finns managed to move 2.2 million WP-powered smartphones in the first quarter of this year.
There are two ways to look at that number. The first is by realizing that 2.2 million units is an absurdly small number for a company that has WP as its single hope to get out of the hole it has put itself into. With Symbian doomed and MeeGo abandoned, the WP sales are the only ones that actually count for Nokia in the long run and 2.2 million is barely enough to put the company on the map, let alone suit its world"s leading status.
However, you should also keep in mind that Nokia only shipped 1 million Lumia handsets in the first three months of market availability of the series. And that was during a holiday quarter, when overall sales are typically much higher than those in the first three months of the year. So an over two-fold increase is quite the achievement and shows that things are at least moving in the right direction.
So while the start is encouraging, Nokia is still far from safety and the Finnish company still doesn"t have their work cut out for them if they want to make the smartphone market a three horse race, as Elop promised last year. The platform itself is currently going through a pretty tough time as its hardware limitations put it some way off the dominant forces on the market. The multi-core chipset-enabling Apollo update can"t come soon enough too, as Android owners are already enjoying their Tegra 3s and Exynos Quads.
Here"s hoping that Nokia actually announces the number of Lumia smartphones sold in the second quarter in their upcoming financial report, and that they are good.
