Why American consumers don’t like Nokia phones
There has been a lot of speculation in recent weeks about the future of Nokia phones and Symbian OS. Many insiders believe that Nokia has missed number of trends in the last few years and it will be hard for them to catch up. A recent study done by Generator Research suggests that iPhone could surpass Nokia as the smart phone leader by 2013. The report predicts that Nokia will see its market share cut in half to just 20 percent by 2013 and names the rapid increase of the applications available for iPhone and price drop of 3G model to $99 as primary reasons for this.
This morning Wired magazine also published an article about why American consumers stay away from Nokia phones. This report is particularly interesting to me because in my previous job, I worked for one of the largest Mobile carriers in the US and I was part of Nokia’s “Retail Evangelist” team and we used to sit in focus groups and talk about this very specific issue and how Nokia can improve its market share in the US.
The article lists 7 items:
- Weak Brand and the fact that Nokia has stayed low key in their marketing efforts to compete with rivals.
- Lack of focus on CDMA handsets – believe it or not, many people in the US still use CDMA networks.
- Poor execution when launching the Ovi store or other high end phones.
- Lack of carrier relationships to subsidize handsets and put them in consumers hand.
- Unusual handset design- The article talks about the “American Standards of Beauty” which essentially means design values doesn’t matter in the US and consumers want something thin.
- Symbian OS.
- Lack of decent apps in the Ovi store.
Thinking back about my Nokia focus groups, this list is pretty legit and I think majority of consumers will agree that if Nokia plans to rival Apple or Palm then they have a bigger task of changing their overall culture and focusing on what matters the most to handset owners in the US.
