Nokia is feeling the economic slump and to beat their rivals is coming up with a new scheme for one of the world’s most populous country India selling Nokia phones at Rs 100 per month ( sorry E71 and N97 not included ) . The scheme is announced in conjunction with Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo’s India tour to chair the jury for Economic Times Award For Corporate Excellence.
He says that India is proving to be a big market for Nokia where Nokia commands more than 60 % of the market of more than 450 million users with 10 % growth and India stands among the top Five Markets in OVI Store Download since May ’09 and soon be part of‘ Nokia’s ‘ Comes with Music ‘ markets , a all you can download music store . He has further added that it was wrong for Nokia to think India as a lower segment cellphone market and the high-end phones are selling ‘nicely’ and smartphone segment shows a rapid growth
It’s not the rich Nokia is after , India comprises of a large portion of poor consumers and Nokia is not ignoring them too by offering the cell phones at Rs 100 a month . They have already ran the pilot program at Karnataka and Andhra Pardesh and 12 new states will be further added . The payback period will be more than 25 weeks but the rate of finance is not known . The pilot had been a success and in the 2500 villages the test was run over 27,500 applications had been received.
Given the target market of ‘poor consumers’ the phone range will comprise of Nokia 1xxx , 2xxx and maybe 3xxx phones as Rural segment had been the main growth sector for Nokia’s low and mid-range phones.
Nokia is targeting that the current economic conditions will fuel the mobile sector growth as people will travel less and make use of more communications to compensate for that . Nokia has also launched their Life Tools program in India giving Rural area farmers , real time rates of grain , fertilizers and market situation beside providing entertainment and education via the low end handsets .
Will we see a scheme like this in Pakistan , I don’t think so Pakistan is too small a market for Nokia and credit market may prove to be too volatile for Nokia but they can launch handsets in conjunction with Carriers which are now teeming up with Chinese to offer low price handsets . Nokia can also team up with Credit Card companies to offer similar schemes to Pakistani consumer or even a Cash for Clunkers program for Cell Phones through their authorized dealers.
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