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More Simon on Nokia:
>> Nokia Explains Its New Handset, Infrastructure And Service Strategies And Targets
Simon Buckingham
Mobile Lifestreams
5 December 2000
At Nokia's annual global analyst meeting today, several interesting announcements were made. Here they are from Nokia's press release with Mobile Lifestreams' counter comments:
NOKIA:
Nokia is set to benefit from new functionality such as messaging, imaging, other digital services and applications, by providing the required technology to consumers as well as operators and other service providers.
MOBILE LIFESTREAMS:
A clear indication that multimedia messaging will be key in 3G markets. Notice that consumers are listed ahead of operators.
NOKIA:
Nokia is also expanding "Club Nokia", a value-added platform for Nokia handset users to further leverage the Nokia brand, increase customer loyalty and offer new phone related services.
MOBILE LIFESTREAMS:
One of the key trends for 2001 is Nokia's new strategy of going direct to the end mobile phone user by using Club Nokia as a trojan horse to bypass their principle current customer group. Nokia will be offering services starting with ringtones direct to end users, irrespective of what network they are on. How the network operators respond to this will be very interesting to see.
NOKIA:
Management confirmed the company's objective to target an approximate 35% share of the WCDMA markets.
MOBILE LIFESTREAMS:
This is an ambitious target in view of Ericsson’s entrenched infrastructure position and Nortel’s aggressive 3G/ WCDMA contract wins as explained on www.mobileumts.com. Siemens has indicated at least two dozen UMTS network trial and commercial contracts and Lucent has been winning business too- announcing today a contract in Germany. Lets not forget Alcatel and Motorola and others too.
NOKIA:
Nokia's mobile phone growth has continued to exceed market growth. The company believes it now has a market share in excess of 30%,
MOBILE LIFESTREAMS:
Mobile Lifestreams expects Nokia’s share of the global handset market to decline as the Korean and Japanese manufacturers take market share in Europe on the back of 3G rollouts. Nokia is already late with GPRS and is not expected to have commercial GPRS terminals available until mid 2001 at the earliest. The recently announced Communicator 9210 does NOT support GPRS. See the Casio MessageCam review at mobilemms.com for an example of a superb Japanese 3G terminal that is a couple of years ahead of any black and white small screensaver Nokia can offer on a handset.
[Note: I think that one reason 9210 does NOT support GPRS is that Symbian does not yet have an SDK available supporting GPRS but will in it's next release].
NOKIA:
Nokia estimates that web-enabled handset unit volumes will increase to around 200 million with WAP handsets representing some 180 million of the total.
MOBILE LIFESTREAMS:
The big question here will be how many of those 180 million WAP handsets will be being used for WAP, the fact that WAP does not have an upgrade path to new versions of the WAP standard without the need for a new phone, the non-support of GPRS, the ideal bearer for WAP, as explained earlier. WAP handsets are looking more like any other voice-centric devices. The strange looking Nokia 7110 with its bulb like screen for mobile Internet has now been replaced by the Nokia 6210 with regular screen size.
NOKIA:
Nokia announced that it is executing its strategy to become a leader in the CDMA handset business. The company is now shipping its new tri-mode Nokia 5185i (CDMA1900/800/AMPS) phone in large volumes and, in 2001, is planning to bring exciting new models to the market including Korea. Nokia also announced that a new mobile phone model specifically for the trend-setting Asia Pacific markets would be launched before the end of this year.
MOBILE LIFESTREAMS:
Nokia’s entry into the Japanese i-mode and Korean markets should build volumes of handsets but not necessarily values- Nokia will lose ground in the higher value segments such as smart phones. These volumes may be behind the ambitious market share statement described above.
MOBILE LIFESTREAMS:
In summary, Nokia faces a lot of challenges in its existing business on the terminals and infrastructure side and therefore it is surprising that it would go ahead and set such high expectations for its future performance. Nokia is simultaneously transforming itself from a mere hardware manufacturer into a supplier of value-added services direct to end users. It success in implementing this strategy is likely to determine the future success of the company. <<
- Eric - |
