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India passes Britain in Nokia phone sales

By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 11:57 PM

Business Week:

India has overtaken the UK in terms of mobile sales for the world’s biggest handset manufacturer, Nokia.

Nokia, who sells one in three of the world’s mobile phones, has
revealed the growing importance of sales in India in a recent filing
with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The phone maker’s filing revealed that in 2005, India was Nokia’s
fourth largest market behind China, the US and the UK respectively. At
the end of 2006, India had leapfrogged the UK to become the third
biggest market for Nokia, with China then the US still the biggest
players.

As well as a general uptake in India’s mobile purchasing, Nokia has
grown its networks business’ market share from single digits in 2005 to
its current level of around 30 per cent. By 2010, Nokia believes India
will again up its consumption to become the number two market and
claims to be the biggest device seller in the country.

India’s mobile market is also maturing. According to Nokia, sales of
replacement devices are increasing in emerging markets, which accounted
for 65 per cent of sales in 2006, compared to 60 per cent in 2005. The
filing added the company is seeing "anecdotal evidence that some
consumers in emerging markets are upgrading into higher priced devices
when they upgrade their devices".

Nokia said it expects growth of around 10 per cent in phone sales during 2007, with 15 per cent in the Asia-Pacific region.

China I can see being on top, but how is Nokia’s second largest market the US?

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About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Viipottaja

    Eight words explain it all: pay-as-you-go and free-with-service. That explains most Nokia US sales. Unfortunately you can also translate that as = phones that just make calls.. :-D

  • cybette

    sheer numbers. Nokia may be big in other “regions”, but in terms of individual countries, they don’t match the numbers here due to population. If 10% of people in US have a Nokia phone, that’s ~30 million, and half of UK’s population. Although most of the numbers here are made up by the eight words Viipottaja mentioned… hopefully that’ll change :)

  • flipmyx

    exactly viipottaja, if for some reason the prevailing attitudes in the US towards mobile phones becomes that it is a ‘real’ piece of electronics worth paying *gasp* full price for (i.e. ipod, tv), we’d be enjoying much better phones here.

  • Priyesh Garg

    Hello, This is Priyesh

    Well, i want to know about when E90, N76 are releasing in India.
    I am very much impressed from the fetures of E90.
    Please do revert me soon.

    Thanks