Compete: Nokia & Sanyo Joint Venture and Razr's Undulled sales

In the latest Wireless Vantage newsletter from Compete, the firm looks at the Nokia and Sanyo joint venture and the continuing demand for Motorola Razr's.

Compete writes that "in the wake of Nokia and Sanyo’s announced partnership, Compete analyzed actual shopping behavior across all major carriers to determine the other manufacturers’ handsets that shoppers tended to compare against Nokia." The firm found that "Nokia shoppers were least likely to cross-consider a Sanyo handset - only 9% of Nokia shoppers also evaluated Sanyo phones. In contrast, nearly half of Nokia shoppers also considered a Samsung phone."

Compete notes that "Sanyo’s exclusive carrier partnership with Sprint naturally limits its overlap with Nokia, since Sprint only offers one Nokia handset. Still, Nokia’s VI-3155 is more likely to be compared to LG’s PM-225 and Samsung’s A560 than it is to be shopped against a Sanyo device."


Compete also looked at how the Motorola Razr is faring and finds that the "RAZR series continues to lead U.S. consumer handset demand, a first place ranking it has held since Thanksgiving (and for 12 of the prior 15 weeks)." According to Compete, of the top five performing devices over the period, "the RAZR series saw a more pronounced impact from the increase in holiday shoppers than any other device. After a lull in January, demand for RAZRs bounced back to almost pre-holiday levels in early February with the roll-out of the pink RAZRs at Verizon Wireless and Cingular."

Compete aslo noted Motorola success with the "launch of the SLVR with Cingular. In the first and second weeks of its launch, the SLVR was the second most popular device series overall and the most popular device to be offered exclusively on one carrier."

Compete concludes that "it appears that different colors and other line extensions will be the key to maintaining the RAZRs’ popularity, as the pink RAZRs successfully did heading into February."