03 November 2010

NOKIA Resurgent ~ Emerging Market Dominance

Nice piece by Kevin O'Brien in the NYTimes on Nokia Taking a Rural Road to Growth...
"Nokia, the Finnish cellphone maker, which unlike its rivals [...] is focusing on some of the world’s poorest consumers. [...]While media coverage of the mobile industry tends to focus on the fast-growing and lucrative smartphone market, 77 percent of all cellphones sold in the third quarter were simpler models, capable of little more than text messaging. Two-thirds of the globe’s 4.6 billion mobile phone users live in emerging markets, where Nokia is the market leader with a 34 percent share [...] “For Nokia, Ovi Life Tools creates tremendous brand loyalty,” said Wally Swain, a mobile analyst with the Yankee Group in Bogotá, Colombia. “Farmers and their families will not want to lose this capability. No other handset manufacturer pursues anything like this.”
It turns out the SEID and MoMIT students had Nokia's Lior Nir who runs a key part of their Services Platform business speak this Monday at MIT Sloan. He too spotlighted the tremendous venture platform that Nokia is building planet-wide for value-added services, including especially Life Tools. We are exploring the entrepreneurial implications further via our MIT Development Ventures initiatives here in D-Lab and Media Lab.

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