‘Shifting to 3G is slow due to lack of awareness’

Handset Market Trends The handset devices market is growing. Genuine brands are consolidating as it is inevitable and the Chinese brands do not have any future. More and more people are buying smartphones and the focus is more on battery life, storage, and speed. There is already a lot of uncertainty in telecom and coupled with economic slowdown, things have become more complicated.

Nokia’s Performance

We are a clear market leader in dual phones. There is a transition to smart devices and we are supporting Windows so the challenge is to grow the market. The uptake of Lumia is more because people are liking the design, big features, tight integration of social media, email, and Nokia drive. It is a new OS so at the end of 5 months we are ahead with the other OS for the same timeframe. In music services, Nokia music store is India’s largest online music store with a catalog of over 4.5 mn songs.

3G Uptake

The shift from 2G to 3G is in slow trickle as the subscribers do not know what they are paying for. The equation in voice vis-avis data is different. For 3G to be successful, simplicity of plan has to come in for data. Focus should be on applications like health, education, and payment. For video calls, infrastructure across the country and linkages are a big problem.

Closing of Nokia Money

In Kenya, the Central Bank was liberal whereas in India, the banking regulation and guideline is tough. The payment is regulated and bulk of mobile payment is either utility payment or peer-to-peer payment. To be profitable one needs to have 100 mn subscribers.

Chennai Manufacturing

The Chennai facility is the largest in the world. We are very strong in exports and are exporting handsets to as many as 50 countries in the world.

Nokia App Store

We are the #1 app store in the country and it has a combination of local and Indian applications. The app store also provides operator billing and the company has tied up with Reliance, Bharti airtel, and Vodafone.

OS War

The war of phones is a war of ecosystem as the application world is changing. We have 4 OS? Apple, RIM, Windows, and Android. In terms of positioning, we are on right track as we have multi-services strategy.

Enterprise Apps

Presently, the focus is on large enterprises but the opportunity is to open it up for SMB segments in a big way as it has big revenue source in future.