Forbes: Nokia’s Phone Volume Mystery

An interesting article from Tero Kuittinen at Forbes. He postulates the Q2 numbers for Nokia’s feature phone segment, which has been in a vulnerable position since Androids continue to claw deeper segments where Nokia was once strong. This was the initial problem Nokia faced with Android during Symbian’s reign. For a while, it didn’t matter that the usability of Symbian was questionable or it didn’t seem as flashy. The iPhone was just too expensive for most and as were the rare and few Androids. The moment Android crept in to Symbian price range territory, that’s when we saw a lot of harm to Nokia’s numbers.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/07/03/nokias-phone-volume-mystery/

Nokia’s rearmed their fight using Windows Phone and for Tero, the numbers here isn’t what’s concerning him at the moment. It’s the ‘feature phone’ segment. More so since the Asha 501 which aims to stem that decline has only been released in June with limited availability. He says that might mean a good Q3 2013 but not so much for Q2.

Another worry is the rumours that Apple will announce a cheaper budget iPhone. Apple has worked long and hard to be the ‘aspirational lifestyle brand’ that didn’t compromise on price but even they need to do something about the cheaper Android devices. Nokia’s entry level Lumias have been praised for being some of the best entry level smartphones available, getting recommendations to the tune of being precisely what entry level smartphones should be – low price, high end experience. With Qualcomm’s new processors, we might expect that to continue for Nokia as they push Lumia to lower and lower price points. How long until Lumia can fully take over the region of Asha series? Would that ever happen? It would certainly help in terms of the ecosystem bit. I think ‘disposable’ secondary handsets like the candybar 1xx/2xx series are safe for a little while though.

Cheers jiipee for the tip!

Category: Nokia