Nokia: We over invested in the U.S. market
By Stefan Constantinescu on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 10:51 PM PST In Financial/Corporate News
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said his company has "over invested" in R&D in the U.S. market, and instead will pursue an incremental strategy of expanding its portfolio in the market rather than looking for the silver bullet in the mid-priced handset range. The U.S. market represents less than 10 percent of Nokia’s annual global shipments, and Nokia never gained a foothold in the U.S. CDMA market, which it bowed out of earlier this year. Kallusvuo said there was "no magic bullet" that would help Nokia gain more market share, only that the task required "hard work and more hard work." Of the four slim phones the world’s largest handset maker introduced yesterday, only one might work in the U.S. on T-Mobile (NYSE: DT)’s network. The Nokia 6086 is a mass-market UMA phone that supports quad-band GSM, but it looks like T-Mobile will have to heavily subsidize it to make it appeal to the mass market.
Source: Fierce Wireless
Before I go in to rant mode, I don’t think the problem with Nokia’s sales in the US is a technology issue. It’s a carrier issue. People think the only cell phones they can use are from their carriers. This kills choice, which kills sales.
Hey, I agree with you that it is not Nokia’s fault that they only have 10% of market share in the US. Consumers, here in the US, think they only can get their phone (not buy the phone) from carrier and most likely get it for free. Majority updates their phones every 2 yr at the expiration of their agreement. With that concept, it is impossible to sell cell phones stand alone with out a contract, which sounds ridicules to me and that is why our choice in the US sucks. Good thing we have Internet and we real gadget people can get whatever we want whenever we want and don’t need to wait when Cingular or AT&T introduces “new†Nokia e62 which is degraded version of European e61 that was released 6mth prior to US….
Yea I think I’m going to write about the sad state of affairs that plagues our country.