Has Motorola moved ahead of Nokia?

Nokia is still the largest telephone manufacturer out there, but they don’t seem to be as hot as the “burn off your hands” heat that’s being generated by Motorola these days. Motorola had a blowout quarter, based primarily on sales of the Motorola RAZR.

Nokia did very well also. Nokia did especially well by focusing on increasing the numbers of units moved to Asia. The Asian market is growing incredibly fast, but there’s a question of how well the margins can hang tough, when you lower the price.

Motorola is also experience fast sales, but a great portion of it comes from sales of higher margin products, like the Razr. The Razr is moving like hotcakes, with over 50 million sold.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not quibbling with Nokia’s results:

Nokia said it sold 78.4 million phones in April-June, compared with analysts’ average expectation of 78.5 million handsets, 29 percent more than a year ago.

Anyone who sells 78.4 million phones in a few months deserves our praises. But this is pundrity, and when you’re short 100K units, we have to mention it. The two trends that might pose problems are increasing sales of lower priced units at the expense of losing ground in the higher end market. Nokia is very serious about their huge volume strategy, though, and they’re probably right about Asia.

Motorola will be challenged to continue to do the type of product development they did with the Razr. If they can offer people phones that they just love, the rest will take care of themselves. They’re extending further into the Asian market too, so we’ll see if they can make up ground against Nokia.