Nokia has revealed that its US sales have crashed to just 600,000 handsets for the second quarter, down from around 486,000 handsets per week in 2006, with only around 300,000 Windows Phone 7-based Lumia smartphones sold.
TechCrunch reports the figure represents a year-on-year decline in sales of 60%, with the Finnish phone giant also reporting year-on-year declines across all regions.
In May, SmartCompany reported that Nokia’s US president Chris Weber was claiming US demand for Nokia’s Lumia 900 smartphones had been strong, despite an earlier IDC report showing a year-on-year fall in Nokia’s marketshare.
At the time, Weber said: “Demand has been outstripping supply for the first couple of weeks, and we’ve been working hard to rectify that.”
“The demand for cyan [phones] is significantly outpacing supply. When you give people something different from a design perspective – colours, etc. – it really stands out, and consumers want that.”
The weak sales figures come just weeks after Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was attacked in an explosive 29,000 word open letter from a former Nokia executive. Meanwhile Jolla, a start-up comprised of former Nokia engineers and executives signed a deal to supply a major Chinese phone store chain with MeeGo-based smartphones.
According to TechCrunch, Elop believes Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Phone 8 smartphone platform will help turn the company around, pointing to the close relationship Nokia has developed with Microsoft.
“One signal [of what is coming] is that on the number of occasions when Windows Phone 8 has been demonstrated it has been on a Nokia device. We have a close relationship that is unlike what anyone else has with Microsoft,” Elop said.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
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