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Nokia Sells 101M Mobile Phones In 2Q07, Including 1.5M N95s

In case you forgot, the N95 "multimedia computer" sells for $750. In addition to its brisk N95 sales, Nokia also sold 2 million E series devices, which are its business-class smartphones, and another 7.5 million of its N series multimedia devices. Turns out there is an appetite for expensive phones, after all.

Remember all the hot fuss when Apple announced the iPhone? People were astounded that it wanted $499 and $599 for the converged device. "Too much!" cried analysts and journalists alike. But then came June 29th and legions of the Apple faithful lined up to buy it.

While Apple may be on track to beat its initial forecasts and sell 1 million iPhones by September, Nokia hit a home run during the second quarter of this year. It batted 100.8 million phones out of the park across the globe, and increased its worldwide market share to 38%. Granted, most of Nokia's volume growth came from emerging Asian and African markets, but it still sold a solid number of high-end devices on its home turf in Europe. Disappointingly, Nokia's share of the U.S. market slid even further into the doldrums.

One of Nokia's best sellers for the quarter was the E65 smartphone. The E65 is a slider that combines the Symbian S60 platform with a device that's appealing to the more style-conscious user. It goes for about $450 in the U.S. Similarly, sales of the E61i, a full QWERTY smartphone, also rose. The E61i retails for about $420. On top of the improvements in its enterprise-class device sales, which were up 94% compared to 2Q06, it signed up an additional 300,000 customers to its Intellisync wireless email product.

Even though the average selling price of Nokia phones increased only marginally (from $121.65 to $123.02), the solid sales of its high-end devices show quite clearly that users, both business and consumer, are demanding more sophisticated handsets that perform more advanced tasks.

The big question in my mind is, why is Nokia not connecting with U.S. buyers? With the sale of 270,000 iPhones (most of them the $599 model) the last weekend of June, it's obvious that price is not an issue for many. Is it the limited availability and distribution channels? Does Nokia have an image problem in the U.S.? Or are the bulk of Americans simply interested in cheap-o, do-nothing, basic phones?

By the way, Nokia sells plenty of those, too.

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