Mary McDowell on the next billion

Nokia’s Executive Vice President, Mobile phones talks “The Next Billion”.

This is about bringing the modern mobile experience to ever more affordable prices.  50 euros, 75 euros, perhaps even lower. Nokia sees that people are aspiration – they want high end smartphone features but are constrained by ability to pay for it.

Note that for 2010, Nokia sold over half a billion phones, more than 100 million smartphones, but over 440 million mobile phones. The next billion isn’t that far of a reach if you’re Nokia. That’s like a decade’s work for someone like LG or SE. This isn’t just about the selling of phones however, but the integration of services. Bringing the next BILLION people to the internet, of which the mobile phone might be the first port of call.

What’s Nokia going to do as part of this new mission.

Apparently, they’re in the middle of a portfolio revitalization. You’ve seen the success of the C3 QWERTY, great messaging with that device (over 50% activating that service) touch and type, the natural evolution, dual sim and other capabilities coming. But then going beyond that, entertainment, navigation, more messaging, proxy browsing technology. The goal is to get people on the web very affordable and easily with minimum network bandwidth. It’s not a new goal for Nokia. They’ve always targeted all segments, though as you might say, have left themselves open for attack at the high end. At mid and low, Nokia has shown commitment of bringing value for money to its consumers. Of recent years though they’ve also been coming under attack by very low priced local manufacturers and cheap knockoff handsets.

What does this mean for S40 developers?

Developer store for S40 is about Java and Nokia’s been working on improving Java. S40 platform is the highest development platform…*cue Jeremy Clarkson voice* in the world!

How important is services to consumers in growth markets?

We’re seeing high attach rates of services. We have attach rates of 50% or more with the C3 device which is unusual. Normally something seen in Eseries or a blackberry device, not something so low in the price range. It shows the appetite is there. If we can get the right combination of attractive services, well integrated in the device and the right plan from the operator, we need all those elements to come together to really boost the adoption of services.

What are the opportunities for Nokia given the reinvigorated mission?

Nokia mobile phones team is pretty energized by the reinvigorated mission.  I think it’s one that’s personally inspiring to people. No matter where you are in Nokia, the heritage of connecting people in all markets and all price points is something that a lot of us take a lot of pride in. This is about rekindling that inspiration. Great devices, great services and really targeting, bringing people in range of cell phone towe (80% of the world) but aren’t actively part of the web community. That’s really the core of the mission in mobile phones.

The video is new and part of a recent post on Nokia conversations but this one from a couple weeks back talks about it in a little more detail:

http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/02/11/mobile-phones-the-next-billion/

Category: Nokia, Nseries, Video