Situation Analysis:

To survive in the competitive business environment, it is essential for a company to conduct extensive market research and develop a strong brand image. When an effective marketing strategy is developed it ensures success in the global competitive market where major player such as Apple, Samsung and Google have a significant impact upon Nokia’s strategies.

Nokia held the pole position as the premier mobile vendor for well over a decade, but that grasp on the mobile market has been slipping very fast and has threatened its very survival by market leaders such as Samsung and Apple. Many industry experts had predicted this shift in power since the advent of smartphones’ a few years back. 

Nokia was ponderously slow at adapting to the market even though it had been a pioneer in the smartphone market, literally introducing consumers to the smartphone with its initial Symbian Series 60 devices in 2002. For the next five years, Symbian phones had little trouble maintaining a leadership position in the smartphone pack. But in 2007, Apple leapfrogged the Nokia through the technical advances of its iPhone. With full touchscreen and app-based operating system, the iPhone changed the very definition of what a smartphone should be. It reinforced the fact that the smartphone market was hyper-competitive and success can be fleeting if companies do not focus on innovation and changing customer needs.

The consumer transition from traditional mobile phones to smartphones was dramatic, and caught Nokia off-guard as the business had become too product-led rather than customer-led which was considered by many as a missed opportunity. However Nokia has recognized this trend and through a partnership with Microsoft finally arrived with vigor to the smartphone party. Nokia released new models through its Lumia series in 2012 and launched an aggressive marketing campaign to regain its market position which has started showing signs of revival.

Despite the lessons being learnt and progress being made with the Lumia range, many Nokia loyalists still find it difficult to enthuse about their latest flagship products as we look at the reasons for their skepticism and avenues for Nokia’s improvement.

Background

Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications and information technology corporation headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, Finland. Its principal products are mobile telephones and portable IT devices.

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Nokia has around 122,000 employees across 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and annual revenues of around €38 billion. As of Q4,2012 it is the world's second-largest mobile phone maker by unit sales (after Samsung), with a global market share of 22.5%. Nokia had pioneered the first mobile phone in 1984 through its Mobira talkman, the Finnish conglomerate had turned itself into the world’s leading mobile phone company in the 1990s. It continued to build on its success and gained market dominance between 2002 through 2012 through its range of mobile products.

Last year, not only did Samsung break Nokia’s 14-year record of being the world’s largest handset maker by overtaking it in terms of unit shipments in the January-March quarter, according to a report in April 2012 by research firm Strategy Analytics, it is also threatening to upstage Nokia in the overall mobile phone market. It has already toppled Nokia in the emerging smartphone segment.

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, January 24, 2013

Nokia formed a strategic partnership with Microsoft in 2010 to build a global mobile ecosystem based on highly complementary assets. With Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, Nokia would help drive the future of the platform by leveraging its expertise on hardware optimization, software customization, language support and scale. Nokia and Microsoft would also combine services assets to drive innovation and gain market share in the world mobile OS market. This led to the launch of the Nokia Lumia series in 2012 through the Lumia 900 and 800 series in the US market.

Since launch, Nokia is estimated to have sold 810k units of Lumia 900 series in the North American market.

Smartphone Market size:-

The smartphone market has entered a maturity phase where the market growth has been stabilizing. US markets alone account for 40% of the all smartphone sales worldwide and is considered as the bellwether of the smartphone industry.

The US Smartphone revenues is estimated to cross the 300 Million units mark with estimated revenue to exceed $190 Billion in 2012. Hence it is a crucial battleground for Nokia dominated by Apple and Samsung to regain the lost ground in this important market. Nokia through its launch of the additional products in its Lumia series is positioning itself to make inroads in this market.

Nokia Segmentation Strategy:

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Nokia has understood that to be successful in the US markets they needed to have a

differentiated offering for the everyday consumers and business. In having these different

options they would be able to appeal to the demographics who would be most likely to switch

to the Lumia phones.

Segmenting and targeting by purchase behavior: Target Market for the Nokia Lumia phones is between 20-50 years. As the smartphone penetration has already reached 60%

Nokia has differentiated its offering to the first time smartphone buyer through Lumia 620,820

series and mature users through the innovative Lumia 920 series.

Social contact: The second segment for Nokia is the upwardly mobile, socially-conscious

segment that uses a mobile to stay in touch. Today's young women and affluent housewives

constitute two major chunks of the segment and Nokia has targeted them by launching a pink

smartphone – Lumia 820.

Assured: The last segment as defined by Nokia comprises of CEOs, high-profile celebrities,

industrialists and other high "net worth" individuals. The fact that the segment cannot do without

a mobile phone makes it the 'assured' segment. Recently a few snaps from the president’s

office of Thailand showed that the president used a white Nokia Lumia 920.

As can be seen from the top purchase consideration the critical success factors in the US smartphone segment was:-

1) Diffusion rate of the smartphone operating system2) Availability of range of applications on the phone3) Performance of the smartphone4) Cost of the phone.

Nokia’s Strategic Marketing Objective for Lumia series: - The key driver for Nokia to

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launch the Lumia series is

1) Regain the market share lost to Apple and Samsung in the smartphone industry to make it relevant again.

2) Competitiveness and Profitability: - Nokia is aimed at further developing the capabilities of the Lumia smartphone by providing better browsing, music and multimedia capabilities.

3) Increase the awareness amongst customers about Nokia’s smartphone devices so that it will drive sales up and create customer brand loyalty.

The key metrics for ensuring that Nokia has been successful with its marketing strategy would be to review the market share for the new Lumia series and the Units shipment of the Lumia smartphone. These together would give a quantitative measurement of the success for the Nokia smartphone.

Nokia Lumia’s marketing and positioning strategy : The key pillars of Nokia’s marketing strategy has revolved around its product, pricing and branding strategy. Nokia has broadened the price range of Lumia series to differentiate the Windows Phone platform, technology and location-based services for the broader market.

Pricing: - Nokia has leveraged this strategy through models such as the Nokia Lumia 920,820 and Nokia Lumia 620.

The model that has grabbed the attention of consumers on an international scale is the Lumia 920, the top end model in the range. A 4.5 inch display and powerful 1.5 GHz dual core processor are teamed with a range of great features to enable this model to compete well against leading devices currently available. Nokia has adopted a market penetration pricing to capture this market from Apple.

Lumia 820 still offers some great specification but is geared for a more mid-range market and therefore is a good option for people not wanting to spend premium money on the 920

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handset. Nokia has successfully leveraged the segmented pricing strategy against Samsung and HTC.

Lumia 620 is below these two models in the range and be a great first smartphone while the attractive price point will also see the model strike a chord with a teenage market. Nokia has used the value pricing model to increase the adoption among the first time smartphone buyers switching over from the feature phones.

Branding & Marketing:-

In order to do this, Nokia has moved away from its traditional marketing strategy in launching the Lumia series. Instead of relying solely on the traditional marketing channels like advertising it has shifted towards advertisements through social media, TV and digital campaigns. This has allowed Nokia to place a greater emphasis on collaborating with its partners such as Microsoft and AT&T to develop an integrated marketing plan. It has leveraged its AT&T partnership to market the Lumia phones in North America. Nokia had previously eschewed this approach which limited its penetration in the region. However it has used the “Push” strategy to spur demand for its Lumia products.

It is leveraging Microsoft’s business/enterprise sales channels to appeal to corporate customers in the region, offering value-added services in a play for the enterprise sector. Such moves have positioned Nokia to compete with Research In Motion Ltd., whose Blackberry phones are popular among corporate users.

The Integrated advertising budget for the Lumia promotion is given below which has helped it to create an integrated marketing plan:-

1) Nokia Budget: $50 million

2) Microsoft Budget:$50 million

3) AT&T Budget :$150 million

Secondly, Nokia launched the device only through its AT&T partnership rather than launching with multiple carriers. This was one of the key adjustments Nokia made from the launch of Lumia 800 –across multiple carriers. The CEO of Nokia, Stephen Elop, recently commented that they prefer a “less is more” approach when it comes to selecting network providers for their range of phones including the Nokia Lumia 920. This entails that the company opt to release premium models on a limited number of networks rather than flood the market by using every provider available.

“One of the things we had learned with the first launch was being very narrow would yield better results for us” said Mr. Elop. By carefully selecting network providers this also allows Nokia to encourage the selected companies to promote the handset in question as flagship phones and gain the company even more carefully selecting valuable marketing.

Nokia has pushed this further through experiential marketing using celebrities such as Gwen Stephanie and Jessica Alba to promote the brand as bold, fun, and youthful. This can be seen through the “smoked by windows” campaign launched by Microsoft in which Ben Rudolf convinces a reality star to swap her Samsung for Nokia Lumia 920.

Positioning: - The Strategic Positioning of Nokia is based on Personality, Self-Expressive

benefits and quality product. They has been reinforced through product placement in music

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videos alongside celebrities such as Nicki Minaj and Gwen Stefani as well as youth icons such as

Jessica Alba. This market position is key for Nokia as it battles against Apple and Samsung in the

smartphone market. At launch Nokia has tried to promote the brand as something “better”. Better

camera, better charging, better maps, better screen, etc. and promoted it through the Twitter

#switchtolumia hashtag.

This positioning is critical for Lumia due to its late entry in the smartphone market as the “good

enough” position has been held by Android overall while the “better” position has been held by

iPhone. Hence to differentiate itself Lumia has positioned itself as a better product with good price

to gain the market share from both Apple and Samsung.

Critical Analysis of Nokia Lumia’s Marketing Strategy:

The initial market response to the introduction of Lumia series gave a bump to the sales of Nokia

smartphones in the North American markets. On the upside, sales of the Lumia handsets were

still growing, selling two million of the series in the last three months of Q2 2012.

The Launch of 4 additional Lumia products on Windows 8 platform gave an additional boost in Q4

as Nokia announced 4.4 million Lumia smartphones were shipped. This number brings the

cumulative total to 14 million since the Lumia line was launched a year earlier which is much below

The forecast figure of 15 Million units. Despite its strong performance Q4 2012, Nokia still expects

Q1 2013 to be a bit bumpy, forecasting that the operating margin of its Devices & Services arm to

be around negative two percent. This begs a question as to whether Nokia will be able to sustain

this momentum given the heavy competition faced in the smartphone market.

The key challenges being faced by Nokia based on its market performance and competition can be

summarized below :-

1. The pricing: The pricing for Nokia Lumia seems to be high, compared with the IPhone and top

range Android devices due to the price cuts by the vendors. The value proposition offered by Nokia

Lumia based on value pricing does not match with the expectation of the target group and thus

leading to mismatch between the value proposition provided by Nokia and the customer

expectations.

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2. Features of Nokia Lumia: Nokia and Windows 8 aims to provide exceptional user experience

with the feature rich product offering such as high resolution camera and Web browsing

capabilities. These features are not however considered “disruptive” technologies to leapfrog the

technical features offered by the competing Apple and Samsung devices. As a result Lumia has

been struggling to differentiate itself in the smartphone industry dominated by lifestyle brands like

Apple and Samsung.

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3. Branding: - The Nokia brand is identified more as a feature phone and low end smartphone

provider needs to rebuild its brand in the premier smartphone segment. This has been

compounded by Nokia’s marketing myopia and inability to produce products to meet the market

demands. It is been hard to dissect the value proposition for the Nokia Lumia phones based on its

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4. Ecosystem: - Nokia has chosen the Microsoft Windows platform exclusively for developing its

smartphone devices, however Microsoft has partnered with Huawei for producing windows phone

for the African market which will compete directly with Nokia. This raises a concern that Nokia

needs to look at alternate strategies for expanding its growth through the development of its own

OS or developing an Android based phone. The discontinued support for Windows 7 phone and

release of Windows 8 OS already has lighted the risks for Nokia.

5. Distribution: - When it comes to a product launch, Scarcity is a good thing, if a) you are the

incumbent leader, and therefore in greatest demand, and b) you are not the competitor starting

from near-zero traction (in the smartphone market) attempting to drive a displacement strategy.

In the latter case, you must market on your differentiation, not scarcity. You must flood the market

with availability, an ultimate user experience, and blanket every channel.

This is a huge miss for the marketing team to think that replicating the Apples strategy, when you

are the challenger has any chance of succeeding. The strategy to model is the Google Phone

strategy, where you flood the market with products and attached services that work, making it an

easy decision “try the Lumia out.” This is no time for a Lumia 900 marketing strategy based on, or

appearing to be based on scarcity.

Way forward for Nokia Lumia:

Despite having made some marketing mistakes with the Nokia Lumia launch, it has managed to

garner a 90% share of the windows OS market. Nokia has also moved towards profitability during

this period and is slowly stabilizing. While Nokia has made progress with its shift from feature

phones based on its Symbian OS to smartphone using Microsoft OS, it still is in danger of missing

the trend of the convergence of smartphones and tablet devices. As the computing landscape

changes in the next couple of years, it will be vital for Nokia to release a windows tablet device

which is an extension of its Lumia flagship and continue the road to recovery. The early interest in

the launch of Lumia 720 and partnerships with AT&T and T-Mobile bodes well for Nokia and set it

up for a long term future in the US markets.

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