Nokia India Yet To Find Cdma Market Worth It

[ravi_patent 28]

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/09/21/stories/2010092150350700.htm

Nokia has no intention of launching handsets that will work with CDMA-based mobile telephone services in India any time soon. It believes there is not enough market for those devices.

(But at least one CDMA telecom operator is talking to Nokia China for the supply of Nokia branded CDMA-compatible phones into India.)

Telecom operators that are on CDMA would like Nokia to bring in CDMA-compatible handset and (help) create an open market for the devices. The absence of an open market for CDMA devices is forcing players such as Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications and MTS (Sistema Shyam Teleservices) to work with manufacturers such as Micromax to bring in devices for their customers.

In a recent chat with Business Line, MTS's Chief Strategy Officer, Mr Cheenu Seshadri, said the three CDMA operators (Tata, Reliance and MTS) were calling upon Nokia to bring in CDMA phones. China is a CDMA country and is a huge market for Nokia.

It is learnt that while Nokia's headquarters favours the idea, the India team opposes it, on the grounds that there the market is not big enough here.

Today, Mr Vipul Sabharwal, Director, Sales, Nokia India, said that there was no difference of opinion between Nokia India and the headquarters in Helsinki. He said that Nokia constantly reviews the market and has found that the market for CDMA devices is today not worth entering into.

Incidentally, Mr Seshadri told Business Line that MTS was in touch with Nokia China to source Nokia branded CDMA phones.

Nokia had CDMA phones until a few years ago. The reason for the mobile phone major reluctance to get back into the market is that CDMA operators, in their zest to rope in customers, offered phones at prices as low as Rs 800. There was no way Nokia could compete with them.

There is a big GSM market in India and Nokia is happy to serve the market, Mr Sabharwal said.

He was in Chennai in connection with the launch of Nokia's dual SIM phones (C1 and C2) here. Asked about the growing competition in the handset market, Mr Sabharwal said that Nokia was a player that provided ‘products plus services', referring to add-ons such as Nokia Music and Nokia Life tools.

“That is where the customer stickiness lies. We will gravitate the market towards products plus services,” he said.

[kalpeshaparmar 66]

Mr. Vipul must not be knowing the sales of other companies.............

[xuketo 7]

bad for us customers.

[csmart 472]

it may not be market but some royalty related issues with qualcomm for CDMA handsets...

[Karthik R 246]

There are more than 100million users of CDMA in India?? I dont know the exact no. as it is not reported regularly. Anyway we surpassed China in 2009 and presently is the second largest market after America and still it is not large enough to invoke interest from Nokia??

[SumitVerma 187]

Who needs nokia when we have RIMweb to take care of our needs?

[xuketo 7]

Who needs nokia when we have RIMweb to take care of our needs?

[kshah 452]

India is market of cheap handsets due to operators stupidity and nokia wants to sell cheap handsets in terms of quality and features at premium so certainly market is not big enough for them.

[Mufaddal 678]

Who wants nokia now

let them go to hell!!

its coz of their arrogance and over confience in their products which made them fall on their face in smartphone segment , for years they have exploited us with sub standard quality of handsets at ridiculous prices

now they are wiped out in smartphone segment by HTC , MOTOROLA , SAMSUNG ,

[me_saket 73]

I am no longer nokia customer now.

Only 10% user of nokia will upgrade there handset to nokia.

[HetalDP 947]

@Nokia - Go to Hell . . . with your symbian . . . they are arrogant and stuborn

[rajanmehta 4,056]

Nokia ko sabne No Kar Diya He :rofl_200:

Edited October 9, 2010 by rajanmehta

[dkaile 1,051]

Nokia will be killed soon... Android will rule roost... Same happened to Sony which is now just left in Bravia and Viao... rest its camera, stereos, phones are all nearly dead...

[xuketo 7]

True.

Look at morotola, which was almost dead in the mobile market... They've made a great comeback by jumping on Android bandwagon.

[SumitVerma 187]

Offtopic: No Doubts Vaios are best built in its range!

[Karthik R 246]

Getting off-topic. Anyway sony cares for money. And only money. Look at their product line and all are over priced. Btw. Liked their play station - disk reading error LOL.

[raccoon 53]

An interesting article on whats going wrong at Nokia.

[Karthik R 246]

good article. To sum it up - Nokia should get its focus right on smartphones. Symbian is nearly obsolete and they should embrace Android OS. Btw, anyone have used Meego OS or is it still in the making??

[Harshal 11]

Nokia will be killed soon... Android will rule roost... Same happened to Sony which is now just left in Bravia and Viao... rest its camera, stereos, phones are all nearly dead...

One more offtopic.

Sony's biggest revenue is not from Vaio or Bravia or Sony Pictures (lest we forget)

...it is PlayStation and the games that go with it.

[rajanmehta 4,056]

An interesting article on whats going wrong at Nokia.

Very nice article. Sums up what Nokia needs to do rationally.

+1 For this.

[raccoon 53]

Yes, they seem to have gone very wrong on a lot of counts.

Hope you saw the video on N97.

[xuketo 7]

An interesting article on whats going wrong at Nokia.

Good analysis in the article. Anyone interested in the subject must read.

[sougatadc 358]

Nokia didn't want to pay for the patent rights of Qualcomm, and went all by themselves into the CDMA designing. But we all know that there journey in this field is not a success.

I've used four Nokia CDMA phones (two 2112, one 6255 and 6275) and found these to be not at all worth their prices. Both 2112 are now dead and 6255 and 6275 experienced many glitches, gave me troubles many times. IMHO Nokia's presence will be not felt in CDMA for long.