Samsung expects to dethrone Nokia as No 1 Smartphone manufacturer this quarter

Samsung will become the world’s leading smartphone vendor this quarter, taking a 15-year crown from Finland’s Nokia according to Investment bank Nomura and to worsen matter, Nokia is expected to lose the number two spot to Apple in the next quarter. Although research firms such as IDC, Canalys and Gartner have forecast falling share for Nokia in the smartphone space over the next few quarters, Nomura’s reported prediction is the most damning for the Finnish company to date.

Despite the negative forecasts, Nokia remains the world’s largest mobile handset manufacturer due to its strong position in basic devices and its wider distribution network in emerging countries but this may change at some point as Nokia is up against so many low end manufacturers from China.

Nokia is hoping things would change with the roll out of Windows Phone platform by end of the year. And frankly I m not sure whether the new product launch will change anything for Nokia as they are way far behind and had lost a great deal of branding over the past years and unlikely customers will jump on a Windows platform Nokia devices. The odds are definitely stacked against them as I could never understand why Nokia had picked up just Windows OS as they should had just picked whichever platform that works and built the best device with great user experience. My prediction by next year around this time, they will realized the mistakes of relying on just one platform and start kicking themselves for not being realistic and pragmatic. By then, its going to be a steep mountain to scale and almost game over for Nokia.

Or I may be entirely wrong on this as Nokia will beat all odds and surpass everybody expectation to continue dominating the mobile devices market. IDC had predicted that Windows platform will be the 2nd most popular smartphone platform in 2015. It expects Microsoft's platform overtaking Symbian, BlackBerry and iOS in the next three years to take a 20.3% share of global smartphone shipments in 2015. Google's Android will remain top dog, with a 38.9% share of global shipments in 2011 rising to 43.8% in 2015.