What Lies Ahead For Nokia In Indian Smartphone Market ?

Ever since HMD Global owned Nokia reentered the smartphone market with Android they have not created any big impact on the market yet due to their strategies. The latest launched Nokia 7.2 by HMD Global is a latest example of what they are doing specially in India.

Nokia 7.2 (Recent Addition to the Nokia lineup)

First, lets talk about the specs of the Nokia 7.2, It has a 6.3 inch Full Hd+ an IPS LCD panel with Corning Gorilla glass 3 protection. The build quality of the phone is great as it was in previous models. The smartphone has a triple camera layout with a 48 MP camera sensor as primary with a 8 MP wide angle lens and a 5 MP depth sensor. Also, it offers a 20 MP front camera for the selfies. It comes under Android One program and runs on Android Pie and will most likely start receiving Android 10 soon. Now the disappointing part starts, it offers a 2 year old SDM 660 Processor with a base variant offering 4 GB of RAM configuration at a starting price of  Rs. 17,000. The battery capacity is also quite small offering only 3500 mah battery with a 10 watt charger considering the stock android optimizations. These specs could have looked great if it was an 10 - 12 K phone but offering a 2 year old processor at this price is quite unacceptable even if it has a brand value associated with it when u can easily find a phone running on SDM 730 processor at this price. The current competition between Xiaomi , Realme and Samsung to be on top of the smartphone market share holders list has resulted in the consumers getting great devices at an affordable rates in the budget segment in India.

It seems like the company is trying to charge quite premium for the brand name Nokia and their fast software updates as all the phones launched under Nokia branding  by HMD Global till date are seriously overpriced whether it was Nokia 8 Sirocco or the Nokia 8.1 launched last year. Launching a phone initially at much higher price and reducing its price significantly after two or three months does not make a sense at all. This can lead into a situation when their reliable customers who have purchased the phone in the first few weeks of the launch due to the Nokia branding will feel like being fooled by the company. No one is going to ask HMD Global to compete with the likes of Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Oppo , Realme etc. They can just look at the well known brand Samsung what they have done last year with their  M series and A series of devices targeting online and offline markets respectively in the budget segment. These two series of devices helped Samsung to rediscover the lost ground in the  budget segment of Indian Smartphone market. One thing is clear, that is consumers are not sticking to any specific brand while making a purchase, they are investing their money on the most value for money smartphone fitting right in their budget. The recent success of Realme in India is an example of this scenario which proves that the pricing of a product in India plays a huge role in its success as India is a price sensitive market and has an immense potential to grow bigger in coming years. One thing that Nokia can easily boost off is the regular updates and the latest android upgrades that they provide even to their 2 years old phone. If HMD Global can price their product more sensibly at the launch in coming days then surely they can capture a big chunk of market share in the budget segment.

If they continue to carry the same strategies that they followed in the past ignoring the current trends in the smartphone market then surely they are not going to meet the legacy that Nokia had till 2010 .