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Can Nokia be beat?
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 Nokia, specifically in Europe, is a very strong brand name and already associated with mobile phones. The strong expansion of mobile phone plans and pre-paid phones (more recently) has depleted as expected and the benefits of 3G are not as convincing to the public yet. The Mobile phones however carry a touch of fashion, therefore the market is not expected to just saturate. Nokia with its new models, is reaping the fruits in the market successfully and already clear ahead of its rivals and Sony Ericson joint venture. I don’t see Nokia losing market, and with the clear advantage of perfectly user friendly designs and a common operating system, Nokia users are not willing to change and the company holds a monopoly in the market specifically with the age group >30. Samsung phones recently may pose an avoidable threat to Nokia, but it is evident that Motorola and many other companies are way behind in terms of user friendliness and other technical aspects of mobile technology.
Motorola success in the US market, is heavily reliant on the premature characteristic of the American Cellular Market and the aging infra-structure. GSM technology, however is catching up in the USA, and a proper implementation of the phone sales structure similar to Europe where the user chooses the phone rather than the service provider, will certainly have a huge impact on Nokia sales within the USA market.
In my personal opinion, Nokia offers superior products at similar price levels, and their common operating system on the phone convinces you instantly that you want nothing but just another Nokia. The recent models launched (The radio built in, Game downloadable and Camera inclusive ones) are quite stylish in the same sense and the combination of high and friendly technology with fashion at affordable prices offer superior value.
Nokia will certainly return to its profitability levels, as soon as the consumers start spending money. 
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Husnu Murat Erenli, Research Assistant, North Carolina State University - July 2, 2003
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The sticky things about Nokia are the user-friendly, all familiar menu. Also there is the after purchase community effect that comes as logos and ringtones. However, I see dangers in the entry-level handsets. In my market Motorola and Samsung are totally absent with less than 5% market share in total. The runner-up is Siemens. An average Nokia entry level phone possesses the marvelous consumer insights, cool desing and everything that builds a "Nokia". However, for the same price, an entry level Siemens also possesses cool design, nice menu and plus incredible technology such as Java. Should the consumers decide to go beyond ringones, Siemens will be a good candidate for top spot.
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Seza Aydin, Business Development, Turkcell - July 3, 2003
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Handset manufacturers have done their best to load their phones with functions and top ‘em off with good design in order to distinguish themselves from each other on the marketplace. But that process can only go so far...
Operators and service providers will soon be scrambling over each other to give us the barrier-breaking services we want and need. When, for example, a regional Vodafone affiliate secures a deal with major banks and content providers in a specific geographic region, they’ll have taken a giant step towards achieving immense customer satisfaction and market domination.
And the images that have been associated with handset design will be replaced by, and embedded in, these operator-provided services.
In such a scenario, the survival of essentially identical handset manufacturers will be based upon which strategic partnerships they succeed in building with which operator...
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Kurt B. Geiger, Copywriter, Freelance, www.kurtgeiger.nu - July 6, 2003
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Leading brand, now there's a 70's soap opera triage resuscitation. The mere suggestion of verb tense points to one clear argument: all things are temporary. Great brands lead, are formidably challenged, reinvent and return to lead. Nokia, should it be able to shore the breach, will likely return -- if ever displaced. Fleeting successes are based in pop-culture, spokespersons, economic booms of spend-thriftiness and technological advances. Long-term solid growth and dominance are determined by myriad factors of markets, marketing, product development, partnerships and alliances and, not-least-of-all, vision. The corporate leviathan that figures most prominently in our future of communication likely made a concerted effort to 'let Nokia have its day' while they plotted for dominance based on the 'next great thing.' Turns out that wasn't the phone-camera or the color-screen or the economic pressure of a world-wide recession. The brand Nokia has built has little to do with its success, in my opinion. The decision to be the commodities manufacturer and aggressively develop partnerships with the carriers whereby building their product into the pricing plans, was the masterstroke. It seems unlikely that another widget-maker won't be able to create that same planned attack with another intelligent approach.
Wanna free the world, Nokia? Buy a broadband company, give away the service and go back to charging for the cellphone, a phone that operates cross-platform. After all, regardless of which 'collect call number' you dial, someone has to own the phone...
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Jayson L. Truttmann - July 8, 2003
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Everyone here is mentioning user-friendliness, intuitive UI, loyalty… All of this reminds me of the first desktop I used: Apple Macintosh, a computer with the first graphical user interface…remember DOS ?? You no longer had to type in commands. Back in 1990, when I was still clicking one mouse button using a computer called Apple IIsi, I would have blurted out the same comments.
Back to the future. Nokia unlike Apple is not showing any signs of falling asleep at the wheel. Nokia seems to have learned from history and are keeping their pricing politics sound while their trendsetting product design gurus & engineers are on top of it with each new model launch. Add magnificent marketing power, brand management and communications magic…and it looks like Sony-Ericsson (brand power synergies) and Samsung (Korean wildcard, Matrix sponsoring digitall life as we know it flip artists) are the only candidates for second. Both already have even better UI in their latest models. Siemens and Motorola are the underdogs, but they’re starting to learn quickly through trial and error.
I predict that Nokia will stay at the top, they will emerge to be the IBM-type-of-behemoth of the mobile phone market. Nokia’s “real” threat lurks in the East: Japanese, Korean (Sagem) and Chinese (Soutec) generic brands (not familiar to most Europeans and Americans) may begin to seriously contend with the well established brand names. A daring claim? Perhaps, but back in 1990 I would have never dreamed of finding myself at work in front of a German-Japanese JV built laptop in Warsaw, connected to a Sony Ericsson T68i via Bluetooth, and cursing Microsoft Windows every day.
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Lukas Jaglowski, HYPERmedia - July 22, 2003
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To my opinion, Nokia is still hard to defeat. It is one of the reasons that it has topped international market for its product’s prominent feature. For the Asian region, I reckon Nokia has the highest Brand Awareness, not to mention its achievement of Indonesian Best Brand 2003 for mobile phone category.
Nokia’s ad and promotion were always done to support and strengthen the brand image. Thus, other competitors like Motorola, Ericsson, Samsung, Siemens, etc. should improve their performance in all manners, including their BTL & ATL communication, line of distribution, and make an effort to assign profound brand perception to consumers.
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Felix Ferdinand, MagicDesign (Jakarta, Indonesia) - July 28, 2003
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I don't think that the signals in the last two years mean that Nokia lost the leading role in the mobile market. Probably there is another truth behind it: Nokia, as a lot of other brands, is still trying to digest the fall down of mobile forecast. The problem is always the same: people talk enough using the mobile and all the sector needs is something that has real value for customers (business and consumer) and for corporates and that speeds up market growth. If you see the numbers, you will see that just Samsung grew in last two years. Motorola, Ericsson, SonyEricsson, Panasonic and others are still floating in the market. I think that without an answer to the main question (what will make the value's market speed up?), leaders like Nokia will have some problems to increase the leadership.
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Giuseppe Rollino, Marketing Manager, Cesaweb s.p.a. - July 29, 2003
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In any markets there are market leaders and followers, and in most cases market leaders lose market share to followers, for many reasons such as pricing, availability, "user-friendliness", relevance to the target audience etc. It's inevitable. Can Nokia be beaten? On one hand, it is up to Nokia's marketing department, and its agencies. So far the brand has established itself well in many markets, and consumers have identified with what the brand has to offer. But that does not mean they cannot lose the brand battle. To remain at the front of the pack, one must constantly be innovative, the minute you lose that edge competitors will definitely overtake.
On the other hand it also depends on the competitors. How far are they willing to stretch? Are they willing to take Nokia head-on? How? What will the outcome be? For the same reason that Nokia has managed to gain market share and be ranked number 6 in the Global Brand Scoreboard, certainly someone else can do the same?
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Vuyisile Mzozoyana, Senior Project Manager, Octagon South Africa - July 29, 2003
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back to debate
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