savramesh 37 Report post Posted May 30, 2009 Economic Times 30 May 2009, 1343 hrs IST KOLKATA: Nokia plans to significantly ramp up its portfolio of touch-screen phones in India. The world’s largest cellphone maker intends to roll out at least 4-to-5 new touchscreen phones in the mid-to-high end segment in 2009. Nokia feels touch phones will also be key to drive revenue out of its services venture in India and thereby plans to launch touch-based applications. The company’s forthcoming touch devices will be positioned in the enterprise, music and multimedia segment. While Nokia will primarily use the Symbian smartphone operating system S60 for its touch phones, it will launch few devices on the S40 platform as well. It is also evaluating possibilities to launch touch phones at the sub-Rs 10K price point in India. Talking to ET, Nokia India director (marketing) Vineet Taneja said Nokia wants to cash in on the popularity of touch phones in India. Incidentally, the average selling price of touch phones are much more than the industry-average. "Studies have indicated that touch phones will account for nearly 40% of the Indian market by 2012. This represents a huge opportunity and we too will evolve our portfolio accordingly. We were waiting for the touch technology to mature before going full steam. Now is the right moment," he said. Nokia is betting on the large screen size of touch phones to cross-sell its services in India. "While the traditional form factor phones have an equal split of keypad and screen, touch phones have much larger screens. Such large screens will allow use of multiple applications at the same time and will thereby provide a fillip to sell such applications," Mr Taneja said. Nokia is building a portfolio of touch-enabled applications with third-party developers. "There will be a portfolio of touch applications across categories like gaming, music and imaging. For instance, we will launch an application around June with which someone can play their favourite music instrument on 5800 XpressMusic," said Mr Taneja. The Finish major has two touch devices in India — 5800XpressMusic and 6208 Classic. The much touted first touch ‘N series’ handset ‘N97’ is lined up for launch in the next two months. The current portfolio is priced upwards of Rs 13K. "Pricing is a dynamic factor and there are possibilities of launching sub-Rs 10,000 touch handsets next year," Mr Taneja said. The company has undertaken an extensive study on the consumer behaviour towards touch phones which revealed people have high emotional connect with such devices. According to IDC, India’s touch screen device shipments had grown from 0.7% of total mobile phone shipments in 2007 to 1% in 2008. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
