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— Kamal Narang

Touch devices: Mr Vineet Taneja, Director Marketing, Nokia India, with Ms Tuula Rytila-Uotila, Vice-President, Category Management, Live Category, during the launch of the new touch devices — Nokia 5230 and Nokia 5530 Xpress Music, in the Capital on Tuesday.

Roudra Bhattacharya

New Delhi, Aug. 25

Nokia has decided to revise its strategy for the rapidly growing smartphone market in order to gain back the market share it has been losing in the segment over the last year. Under the new plan, the company will add value to a host of newly launched high-end products, with services such as messaging, a music store and maps.

The company, which remains strong in the low-end volume market, has launched a number of smartphones in the last six months. These include the N97, N86, E75, 6700 and 6208. On Tuesday, it also announced two new touchphones, the 5230 and 5530, both at a very competitive price point of around Rs 10,000.

“We have a different approach. We want to be the leaders in all price segments,” said Ms Tuula Rytila-Uotila, Vice-President, Category Management, Live Category, while speaking to Business Line.

According Ms Rytila-Uotila, the company is also in talks with Microsoft to integrate MS Office into the Symbian user interface, used in many of its phones.

Nokia has also said that it is launching many new services to go with its smartphones. This includes the Music Store, to be launched on Wednesday, besides a messaging service, Nokia Maps, and various applications under the Ovi platform.

“Our focus for the coming year will be to scale up with our services offering such as the Ovistore. Consumers in India want to do a lot with their phone and we want to bring them choice,” said Ms Rytila-Uotila.

The Finnish company, a market leader in the Indian mobile phone industry, has been losing market share in the smartphone segment to newer players such as Apple and Research In Motion (RIM). While Apple’s iPhone competes with Nokia’s N-series and XpressMusic phones, RIM’s BlackBerry, a business phone, is a direct competitor to Nokia’s E-Series.

According to Gartner, the global market share in smartphone sales for Nokia had fallen 16.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2008 at 40.8 per cent from 50.9 per cent in the same period in calendar year 2007. In the same period, the market share for Apple rose 111.6 per cent to 10.7 per cent of the market, while RIM increased its share 84.9 per cent to 19.5 per cent of the total pie.

On a year-to-year basis, Nokia grew by only 0.8 per cent from 2007 to 2008, while Apple grew by 245.7 per cent and RIM rose by 96.7 per cent. However, Nokia remained the overall market leader with a 43.8 per cent share of the pie in 2008, down from 49.4 per cent in 2007.

In order to target the fast converging world of computers and smartphones, Nokia has also announced its foray into the netbook market.

At a media interaction in the Capital last week, Mr Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, President and CEO, Nokia, had also mentioned a tie-up with Intel for the netbook.

More Stories on : New Products & Services | Market Shares | Telecommunications

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