Nokia might be very happy with its decision of choosing Windows Phone as a platform instead of Android, they might even be right when Elop said that Samsung would take over the market and make competition difficult, that might all be true, but sales number show the opposite with Nokia reporting that it sold only 500,000 phones in the U.S. during the second quarter of the year.
This number is obviously very low when you compare it to the numbers of other OEMs like Samsung, but it seems even lower when you compare it to Nokia’s last year which was 100,000 units above that mark, and that was supposed to be Nokia’s bad year with Symbian and Windows Phone 7. To makes things worse, this year Nokia and Windows Phone have more options for sale with Verizon and AT&T carrying some devices, and some networks like Walmart and the Home Shopping Network among others also offering phones.
This really has to be a low point for both Nokia and Microsoft, and it only shows that U.S. carriers and customers just don’t seem to go for the OS and instead they keep going to Android and iOS for their devices. Everyone selling Nokia devices reported selling out almost immediately after becoming available, but until now, we didn’t know why was that happening, it could be either the demand was very high or the amount of available devices was very low. The report from Nokia proves that the latter is the correct one, even with Verizon selling the Lumia 928 or AT&T with the Lumia 1020 and it’s amazing camera features or Walmart having the Lumia 521 for the low price of $130, even with all of those options combined, Nokia sold just half a million devices, while all of these companies reported their respective phones sold out within the hour. The only possible conclusion is that these companies are making extremely small orders to Nokia, showing their lack of faith in the platform. We know that everyone loves Nokia hardware, their cameras, their design and the materials they choose, and yet Microsoft and Windows Phone has made everyone skeptical of the devices coming out of Finland.
Maybe it really is time for Nokia to think of an alternative, and Android seems to be the best option, with 1.5 million devices being activated every day, a good Android phone made by Nokia, with good materials and design, a great camera like PureView’s technology and an ever-expanding ecosystem like Android’s could breed new life into the Finish company, while giving Samsung some tough competition and improving both the ecosystem and the quality of devices all at once.
As for Microsoft, they really need to step up their game with Windows Phone, with Nokia being the only OEM still making devices and HTC and Samsung both stepping aside of Windows Phone 8, their only chance for keeping the platform alive is to attract carriers and customers in Europe or Asia, since the north american doors seem to be closed to them.
Come on Nokia, give us a Lumia 1020 but with Android, just to test the waters, at this point you don’t have too much to lose and you could win a whole new set of customers.