Welcome to 1997: Nokia's Market Share at Its Lowest in 14 Years

Yet another dismal milestone in Nokia’s long devolution from industry colossus.

Though it remains the world’s leading handset maker, new metrics from Gartner reveal an ugly decline in its reach. Over the past few years Nokia’s global market share has fallen to 25 percent, roughly the same level it was at in 1997. Between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011 alone, the company’s share declined 5.5 percentage points.

This during a period when worldwide mobile device sales spiked 19 percent year over year to 427.8 million units, Android grew its market share to 36 percent from 9.6 percent and upstart rivals like Apple sold 16.9 million iPhones, more than doubling the number it sold during the same quarter last year. A nasty revelation for Nokia, particularly coming as it does little more than a month after HTC soared past it in market cap.