Chennai: Buoyed by a large customer base, leading Finnish-mobile handset manufacturer Nokia said it would focus more on enhancing its “services” portfolio.
“An average customer expects more from a mobile phone’ Nokia India vice president and managing director D Shivakumar said.
In Bangalore alone, he said, more than 50% of customers listen to radio using their mobile phones, while more than 95% of users prefer to take pictures using their phones than a camera.
Nokia was offering a wide range of services because of its customer base and “what the consumers expect from their mobile phone.” Customers expect much more to do from their mobile phones as they were “living life virtually on their mobile phone 24x7,” he said.
“We have to develop applications relating to what consumers expect”, Shivakumar said.
On “Nokia LifeTools”, a service which the company has launched for the first time, he said basically it comprises agricultural information whereby a farmer gets access to latest mandi rates or it can also offer education where people can also learn the English language using their mobile phones.
“It is because of these reasons Nokia shifted into services category”, he said.
According to Shivakumar, more than 200 million people in India have a Nokia in their hands and globally it was more than a billion.
Asked whether the mobile phone had reached ‘saturation’ level, Shivakumar replied in the negative saying the “journey” was starting now and “may reach a new level.”
“As we are going to services, the phone has to have significantly higher features like colour screen, key pad, the speaker volume, the quality of audio and video and battery life. Everything needs to go for a transformation”, he said.
He said the “churn rate” in mobile phones was very “low” and as long as the same brand offers significant improved features, people may ‘not´ opt for a new brand having new features.
The company which launched the recycling of mobile phones has also got good response from the public, he said.
“We are finding the recycling (of mobile phones) is excellent in the age group of 15 to 35 and they are the people who are concerned about the damage to the climate.” he said.
Stating that the industry had been “performing well” witnessing net additions of 10 million handsets every month, he said, “we are of course seeing people buying multiple sim cards”. However, he declined to comment on whether they were having plans to launch dual sim phones.“We dont have (dual sim card phones) at this point of time and I woudn’t comment on it”, he said.
Nokia currently has around 10,000 employees at its manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur with 71% of them constituting women. It exports handsets to 59 scountries.