Is Nokia doing the right thing? Will they be able to face this challenge?

[Uday Sodhi]

During Nokia’s annual shareholder meeting this year, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo seemed to change the direction of the entire company. “Our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an internet company,” Kallasvuo told his shareholders. “Companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not our traditional competitors, but they are major forces that must be reckoned with. Make no mistake: We are taking on these challenges seriously and aggressively.”

Do you think Nokia is doing the the right thing? Will this make them a stronger company or take them into stuff they are weak in?

[Sanjit Chatterjee]

Nokia is on the right track when it says that it is all about "experiences" and not the handset type any more..so it is trying to bundle experiences along with the phone. Mobile Internet is the next big thing - we already have feedback that people like to browse Youtube on the iPhone amongst the other things, so usability is the key feature. Hence the strategy of Nokia being rechristened as a Internet and Software company. My thinking is Nokia will not be able to keep it's market leadership position around the world ( noticably in China/ India, where it is clearly the leader) in the years to come as Innovation will eat into their share..

[Shad Zaman]

In the era of convergence, i think nokia is thinking on the right track. I recently went to the market to buy a handset. The features i wanted in my handset were: WIFI, mailing solution, high speed download capacity, fast responsive operating system etc.

Since the other features like, camera, Bluetooth, mp3, fm etc have become almost default features.
Now I realize that all the features I was looking for belonged to only one platform, 'the internet'!! This is my personal experience. I am sure many other users will also be looking for similar features in there next handset.
So today what we are looking for is not specifically the hardware features but the software features in our handsets and more or less on a triple-play platform where we have access to voice (phone call), data(email), video (You tube) !!

Although India is still a land of masses and there is still a lot of untapped potential to acquire first time cell phone users from the semi-urban and rural market, but in addition we are seeing a healthy growth in the high end segment also.
In recent times, we have seen number of high end handset manufacturers; making a beeline to enter the Indian market as well as existing players introducing advanced models, lead by HTC, ASUS, Imate etc.

Nokia was enjoying almost 80% of market share at the beginning of 2007, which came down by more than 5-8% at the beginning of 2008. The reduced difference in market shares is mainly eaten up by Sony Eriksson’s walkman series and Motorola. Samsung and LG are also doing a lot of result in the high end segment.

Hence this is right time for Nokia to pull up socks, and start focusing on the high end segment before it gets lost in Indian villages!