Nokia-Losing Ground?

Recently one of my friends wanted to purchase a low end phone, so I went with him to the one of the mobile stores in my locality. My friend, like many of us, has great faith in Nokia as a brand. So he straight away asked the shop keeper to show only Nokia models. You know what was the shopkeeper’s reply?-he said, “Arrey sir, No one buys Nokia now, have a look at Micromax, Karbonn & Samsung mobiles, they are value for money, with so many features at such a low price” At first I thought he might get some sort of commission by selling the cell phones of the above mentioned brands. But keeping the commission part aside, there was definitely some truth in his statement. A research published recently confirms this. According to the data collated in the research about the performance of Telecom firms in India-Nokia has lost a big chunk of market share from 2008-09 to this fiscal year [i.e. from 64%, its market share has slipped to 52.2%]. Nokia’s loss has been the gain of rival companies like Samsung and other local firms like Lava, Karbonn & Micromax. Other established players like Sony Ericsson and Motorola have also severely lost out on market share.

Other way of looking at the results of the research is that no telecom firm can boast of holding the majority of market share for such a long time. Also Nokia can be accredited for "introducing" mobiles in the Indian market back in the late 90’s and the early 2000’s. After all who can forget the 5110-brick model with the antenna sticking out! In those days 'a cell phone' and 'Nokia' were almost used synonymously. It brings alive those nostalgic memories...!

The major problem that Nokia is facing now is that it is facing severe competition from the low-end and high-end segment; it is squeezed like a sandwich in between. As far as the economical segment is concerned, local players give the customers value-for-money as many of them import cheap parts from China [In this way they can give more features at a lower price]. So many, local companies have emulated Blackberry and QWERTY keypad model types now, which was previously available only at a high price. In the high end segment, a lot of customers prefer iPhone and top Blackberry models to its Finnish counterpart.

The second problem is that Nokia has not been able to come with a revolutionary product in recent times which would suit the pocket and would provide superior customer satisfaction. It has been taking cues from the market and following the trend. Take for example, Blackberry’s QWERTY keypad phones were a hit, then Nokia thought of coming with its own version of the phone.

Now let’s see what the future has in store for Nokia, will the co. be able to bounce back, what do you think?