The iPhone breaks the mold

It wasn’t until 2007 that a surprise came in the form of an arrogant guy with a vision. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and a business model that Nokia haughtily dismissed as a curiosity, a procrastinatory imitation of a telecommunications device. After all, you couldn’t even send MMS messages on that ridiculous device, let alone search for contacts by full text!

However, it turned out that people want to use their phones to relax, not just to break work records. Apple broke through with the iPhone and the iTunes + App Store duo and rose in the favor of journalists and shareholders. It is somewhat unfair to say that Nokia has been in decline ever since, but nothing could be further from the truth. Until early 2011, Nokia continued to grow steadily in terms of the number of smartphones sold at a rate that gave little cause for optimism that anyone would catch up with them in the near future. It consistently sold at least one million mobile phones per day, a figure that is beyond comparison with its competitors – which is why competitors consistently report figures only for “smartphones” – in Nokia’s financial reporting terminology, [”]{dir=”rtl”}converged devices.”

Nokia continued to grow in the smartphone sector until the end of 2010 and reported profits from this area. Rumors that no one is buying its smartphones are wishful thinking on the part of its competitors and blindness on the part of geeks who found them insufficiently appealing. They continued to sell well in the corporate sphere and in “emerging markets[.”]{dir=”rtl”} The data in the following chart is in millions of units per quarter.

Yes, they were catching up. But at the end of 2010, Nokia was still selling more Symbian-based phones than all Android manufacturers combined.

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The iPhone breaks the mold

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