Late last week, Nokia released its Q2 2008 results, which you can peruse here, and also catch the archived conference call audio here. The best way to consume this, if it interests you, is either by reading it at MobileBurn.com (naturally) or checking out this handy-dandy PDF that Nokia released.

Quite frankly, these numbers reports bore the life out of me, but there are always a few interesting nuggets that I’d like to highlight, and give some thoughts on:

1. Nokia pushed out 122 MILLION handsets in Q2 2008. That’s  over a 3-month period. 15.3 million of those were powered by S60. That’s roughly 1.38 million handsets every day, for 3 months. Holy crap.

2. Nokia’s global market share is 40%, up from 39% last quarter. Which means, despite competitors’ best efforts, Nokia’s market share is *growing*.

3. Even more important than #2 is that Nokia shipped a whopping  9.8% more devices in the U.S. from Q2 2007 to Q2 2008. That means that, again, despite competitors’ best efforts (and despite not having a single high-end S60-powered smartphone on either AT&T or T-Mobile), they’re growing in the U.S.

Now, obviously growth in the U.S. is based on S40 handset sales, which means nothing to we S60 enthusiasts, right? Wrong. If Nokia’s S40 handsets are proving successful in the U.S., it stands to reason that they can use that as leverage when talking with AT&T and T-Mobile about carrying an S60 powered smartphone, no?

That’s something I’m glad to see. While Nokia execs have given lip service to the U.S. for the past 2 years, I’m glad to see that something is happening in this market, at least on paper. Hopefully during the second half of 2008, we’ll see some new handsets, and more marketing by Nokia in the U.S. market.

Were you impressed with Nokia’s performance, or are you still buggered by the lack of presence here, specifically with S60?

Categories: News
Tags: features, nokia