Numbers, numbers
Apple shipped 14 million iPods in 3 months. Motorola total 44.7 million mobile phones at the same time. It included 13 million thin phones, RAZR. ROKR volumes, hmm, something different. Nokia’s number came out yesterday. 84 million phones. How many S60 phones? That was not mentioned. But Multimedia group made good progress in 2005 and most of the devices are running S60. Sony-Ericsson shipped 16.1 million handsets including 3 million Walkman phones. So it’s very clear that mobile music is hot. Thin phones are almost as hot. Walkman brand is not dead.
It’s also clear that average sales price of phones is still going down. Nokia’s average price dropped to 99€. Average iPod seems to cost 172€. Cumulatively 42 million of them has been sold. During last 3 months Apple sales about iPod devices alone was higher than total sales of Nokia Multimedia. Don’t take me wrong, Nokia multimedia result’s weren’t bad, 59% increase is excellent result in any business.
An average iPod guy generated about 3 €/month revenues about music download services for Apple. If we compare iPod revenue growth YoY and music download revenues growth we see that hardware revenues are growing slightly more rapidly. Anyway iPod growth numbers are impressive and also total number of downloads on last quarter is huge.
This year is going to be interesting. I’m sure we’ll see even higher iPod sales, but everyone wants to have higher share on portable music device market. There have been rumors about Apple’s iPod phone. For me it sounds quite a big step. How about having WLAN and iTunes client in iPod? That sounds more logical step to me. Just cut the PC away from the content delivery chain, like S60/WLAN phone with podcasting client is doing for podcasts.
People want to minimize number of equipment they carry. So yes in a way there is market demand for iPod phone but believe me, it’s easier to make a good phone with excellent music features than other way around. Few decades ago the list of things what people permanently carry with them was a watch, ring(s), purse, keys, eye classes (clothes of course but you change them frequently). I’m talking about big masses here. Mobile phone was added to this list during 90’s. It isn’t easy to join to this group. It seems also difficult to pull out older members. People are still wearing a watch although all the phones have a clock.
The press release says: “Nokia’s own smartphone volumes for the fourth quarter 2005 grew to 9.3 million units”
And: “Nokia’s own smartphone volumes in 2005 grew to 28.5 million units, compared to 11.8 million units in 2004.”
I guess it is not a secret that majority of Nokia smartphones are S60 devices. I hope we’ll catch up with Rafe’s prediction of 75 million S60 devices in 2006:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/2006_Predictions_and_the_year_ahead.php
And about carrying stuff, I still carry my iPod around, but I don’t wear a watch
Interesting article!
I spent so much time reading through Nokia press releases and didn’t notice number of smartphones. I must develop my reading technic.
I know lots of people who don’t have a watch, but big change hasn’t happened yet, maybe never will. A watch is some much more than a device for showing the right time. The real test for iPod is done during next 2 decades. On 2025, are you still carrying the iPod or do you have similar nostalgic feelings about the device like you have about Walkman casette player today:-) Only time will tell.