Nokia's Strategy in India

Finland based Nokia commands a 70% market share for mobile phones in India.How did Nokia take the lead?What were the other mobile giants doing?What was Nokia's strategy to win the Indian market?

Well, here are some of the answers ->

a) The company was completely focused on two core businesses - mobile phones and telecommunications networks.It exited from all it's other business domains. This gave it an edge over others who had consumer electronics, home appliances etc to take care of!

b) It made an early investment in the brand, people, infrastructure, manufacturing, distribution, design and R&D of the handset domain. Nokia entered the Indian market in 1994. The first ever GSM call in India was made on a Nokia 2110 mobile phone on its own network in 1995.

c) It was successful in utilizing the fundamental consumer differences between India and other countries.In other words it started thinking locally.Some of the examples::
1) It came up with tunes like Sare jahan se achcha in its 5110 model in 1998.
2) In 2000, its first Hindi user interface in the 3210 model gave it the confidence to target its product development efforts at the Hindi-speaking population.
3) It introduced the Hindi text messsaging facility in the 3610 in the year 2001.
4) The Nokia 1100, the first made-for-india phone was a huge success.It incorporated a flashlight, a sheath-covered keypad for dust protection and a slip-free grip.

d) It established several R&D centres, labs and manufacturing facilities in India before it's competitors. The $150 million handset manufacturing facility established by Nokia in Chennai in the year 2005 has a total production of over 25 million handsets!!!

e) It took care of building it's brand in India.With great marketing skills and promoting each platform(like the E and N series) rather than each product, there was no looking back!

Well,that summarizes Nokia's strategy for success in India.I might have missed out some stuff so do let me know in case anyone has a point to be added to this list!

For those who know me well, do not worry, i am still a hard core Motorola fan :)
As someone has rightly said -
“You have to like math. You need to learn it and be able to apply it to the problem in front of you, and some of it is just learning from other competitions.”