Trefis: Lumia And China Are Key To Nokia’s Future?

An interesting post over at Trefis taking a look at the past events at Nokia and the importance of bringing Lumia to the Chinese market for Nokia.  Something apparently key to Nokia’s future. A date to put down in the diary is March 28th when Lumia is expected to officially arrive to all three national carriers, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. It’s the more value end handset (the likes of the Lumia 610) that would most likely be responsible for increasing Nokia/WP’s marketshare.

http://www.trefis.com/stock/nok/articles/109517/lumia-and-china-are-key-to-nokias-future-6-50-fair-value/2012-03-21

The Trefis team discusses the difficulties that Nokia have been having with their Symbian platform. Marketshare data in several years prior to 2011 can show a steady decline already in Symbian (despite selling more, they weren’t able to keep up with the growth of the market). Most recently a survey from IDC looking at the developer interest shows this too. (Note how developer interest for WP suddenly increased upon news of Nokia joining, though still understandably remain stable due to lack of significant market penetration.

http://www.wpcentral.com/latest-idc-survey…

Trefis attributes Nokia’s inability to stand up to the competition on Symbian. Well, that’s not strictly true. Whilst S60 hindered Symbian, there was just too much incompetence and failure of execution, resulting in so much wasted potential. There was also the amazing Maemo which, as seen in the last post, seems to be a popular point agreed upon that could have changed Nokia’s future if they had just focused and gave maemo the attention it deserved.

With Lumia, they believe Nokia’s prospects in developed market is much higher than before. They note that a month back, T-Mobiles Lumia 710 rose to third best selling smartphone, with more carrier partnerships on the way at North America (AT&T, 900).

Trefis notes that developed markets only count for 13% of Nokia’s revenue. Whilst there is higher margins, much of Nokia’s total value comes from the lower-margin emerging markets where Nokia has a higher market share. Nokia also has plans and continues to develop and implement their strategy for the more affordable sector. This includes continual investment in S40, Smarterphone and possibly Meltemi.

Whilst it does seem Nokia’s focus should be more on low end, Nokia needs some very high quality, high end flagships not just for those high margins but to improve the brand image, usually having that halo effect that trickles down on other products.

Trefis also notes:

We see Nokia’s recent initiatives help it stem the emerging market share loss in the coming years. Since emerging markets account for close to 40% of Nokia’s overall value, this should go a long way in driving the company’s perceived value higher.

http://www.trefis.com/stock/nok/articles/109517/lumia-and-china-are-key-to-nokias-future-6-50-fair-value/2012-03-21

Cheers RGSN for the tip

Category: Nokia