Nokia may have followed up the iPhone hype in India with an announcement of their own - the launch of the N96 - but the company has now said that Q3, globally, for them isn’t looking as good due to “weaker consumer confidence in multiple markets”. Basically, there is a price war at the lower end of the market, and Nokia expects a drop in their market-share; they’re not willing to compromise margins in the segment which defines their profits and volumes. Another comment worth noting - “users in developing markets are taking longer to replace their handsets.” More at Reuters and Bloomberg
On the services side, Nokia has unveiled the new version of their service Ovi, alongwith the Nokia Ovi Suite, which allows users to sync their calendar, contacts, notes and tasks with Ovi.com. This free service is similar to the paid Phone Backup service that OnMobile is offering with mobile operators in India.
Taking a look around Ovi, it appears to be an aggregation of acquisitions that Nokia has made over the past few years - there’s Maps, from the acquisition of NavTeq, “Share On Ovi” itself is a reworked version of media sharing site Twango, acquired last July, File storage from Avvenu, acquired in December. On the India front, Nokia recently announced plans to start with Mobisodes, and mentioned a tie-up with Hungama Mobile for mobisodes like Afterworld and Kahanai Hamari Mahabharat Ki.
What I’m curious about, is how Nokia intends to get on older handsets. Sure, they can bundle Ovi with the new handsets they retail, but given the propensity of users to not change handsets too often, they have a tough task ahead of them.
