Samsung’s sales of mobile phones have overtaken ailing Nokia, the one-time dominant player in the market, in another sign of the dramatically changing fortunes in the mobile market.
South Korea’s Samsung was once thought of as a discount operator that produced cut-price, cheap imitations but it has raised its game with premium products. First-quarter profits smashed records at £3.2 billion as it notched up 93.5 million handset sales — equivalent to one million a day.
In contrast, Finland’s Nokia has suffered repeated problems with clunky devices and shipped only 83 million in the same period. Nokia had been market leader since 1998 when it overtook Motorola.
Samsung was bullish about its new third generation Galaxy S device, which is being launched next week in London, where it is a leading sponsor of the 2012 Games.
“We anticipate very strong demand for the Galaxy S3,” Robert Yi, said Samsung’s senior vice president.
In another sign of Samsung’s dominance, it sold 44.5 million smartphones against Apple’s 35.1 million iPhones.
