The Q3 results of smartphone market sales in the EU show that the supply problems caused by COVID-19 are long gone. There is now a potential problem with global chip shortage, and we are yet to see how will that relate to smartphone manufacturers.
The Q3 sales are already down by 1% in the EU when compared to the same period last year but that is marginal.
Samsung continues to dominate the European market with 30.4% of the market share, but Xiaomi is slowly eating that advantage with aggressive pricing and nice hardware combination, especially its POCO and redmi models. Xiaomi already took second place from Apple and now holds 23.6% of the market.
It is good to see that Nokia finally gained some traction with its latest smartphone announcements and now holds 8th place in the EU market with a 0.9% market share. Nokia grew 26%, which is not negligible, but Motorola and vivo are also climbing rapidly, and Nokia will have to release some pretty darn good hardware to catch them up. While the latest G and X series are nice entry smartphones that can gain some good sales results, there is a need for a true midrange phone that will be head turner because of the price and hardware.
Three years of OS updates, great build quality, durability and design are not enough to keep them going for long. The results for Q4 should be interesting also for the only European smartphone manufacturer.
Counterpoint
Thanks Thomas Verbraken for the tip ?