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Cellphone Market Fall Ended In Third Quarter
Published Nov 13, 2009
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Nokia, the Finnish mobile device manufacturer, aims to have 300 million users of its services by 2012, its head of corporate strategy said in Helsinki.
The company is going ahead full force to gain customers as it takes a different approach to customer needs. Its current number of users is 73.1 million as of November 6 and growing steadily.
Heikki Norta, head of corporate strategy at Nokia, said that target of users is an "important target, useful target and a demonstration of quality user satisfaction".
He said that it is also important from a monetary and business aspect.
Nokia services users will be measured through registration. "These are people we know of and have used our services in the past six months," Norta said.
The company, taking a step forward from its "connecting people" strategy to connecting them with a combination of devices, services and access to data that is contextual and meaningful, will be rolling out an array of services in the coming years.
The core focus will be on messaging, maps and navigation, music and applications through its portal, the Ovi store. Aside from these primary services, the company will also be focusing on smaller services that are currently in test phases.
Current services include Nokia Tools, a service that provides data to customers in rural areas in agriculture, education and entertainment.
The manufacturer will make available the tools so that users who don't own a Nokia can benefit from it. While the primary goal is not to drive the sales of devices, the services will increase users and boost revenues.
The fall in the handset market stopped in the third quarter, helped by clearing of inventories of unsold phones and booming sales on the so-called grey market in countries like China, research firm Gartner said yesterday.
Handset sales saw sharp drops earlier in the year as consumers around the world cut back on spending in the economic downturn.
However, most of the top handset vendors are missing out on growth as around 150 million phones this year will be manufactured on the grey market, by Chinese manufacturers without production licences, Gartner said.
This compares with the 117 million phones that LG Electronics, the world's third-largest handset maker, is expected to sell this year.
Most of the grey-market phones use chips from Mediatek.
Some of them are copies of models made by top vendors, using brand names like Mokia, but many are not, Gartner said.
After a 0.1 per cent growth in sales volumes in the third quarter, Gartner said it expected to see stronger growth in the fourth quarter, with 2009 phone sales roughly on par with 2008.
"Many devices will reach the market in time for Christmas, and mobile carriers will run incentives for consumers during the holidays," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.
"As many vendors and industry watchers call for a decrease in sales into the channel, our sell-through data is showing that 2009 performance will be flat rather than down over 2008."
Gartner had previously forecast a fall of around 4 per cent this year.
Milanesi said she expected global handset sales volumes to grow 5-8 per cent next year, but mostly boosted by the continuing growth on the grey market.
Posted by
VMD - [Virtual Marketing Department]
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