Few years ago, Indian Youths seem to be a huge follower of Nokia whereas business man uses BlackBerry device. Actually, this was the time before Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android came along and totally changed the market. So, Is it time for Nokia and Blackberry to quit the smartphone business?
Nokia and BlackBerry May Still Have a Chance to Comeback
In the year 2009, approximately 70 percent of the smartphone were sold globally which had the operating system of Blackberry or Nokia and then Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android came along and totally changed the market. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are acquiring the 99 percent of Sales today in the smartphone market, whereas less than 25 percent of smartphones sold at that time.
As we know Microsoft after acquiring Nokia for $7.2 billion in 2013 placed a huge gamble on hardware, and we also know that hardware was never been Microsoft’s power so they now started selling off Nokia phone-making company to Apple’s supply-chain partner Foxconn. On the other hand, Blackberry reported a loss of $670 million in the first commercial quarter this year.
Karthik J the senior Market Analyst said “Blackberry can’t catch up on the plethora of offerings iOS and Android players are providing with their vast ecosystem. The surge in vendors offering android devices at competitive prices dominate the smartphone market globally. Similarly, Windows-based smartphones are likely to decline sharply given the fact that Nokia is no longer a part of Microsoft”
As we know that Blackberry was amongst one of the latecomers to join Android-based smartphones in which Karthik also said to India’s Largest Independent News Service (IANS)”The high-end Blackberry Priv (based on Google’s Android OS) smartphone was a drastic approach the vendor took to revive by moving away from its homegrown OS to Android but failed to create ripples in the market”
Vishal Tripathi, Research Director at global market consultancy firm Gartner said “BlackBerry needs to focus on feature phone market and concentrate when it comes to India if it wants to beat Chinese and established players in the country. They always had top-of-the-line security and they can still cash on it in upcoming devices when data security is the buzzword”
Faisal Kawoosa the lead analyst with Cyber Media research said that Blackberry is known for its security and Software “They should become a technology company, licensing their solutions to original design manufacturers (ODMs) rather than attempting and reattempting to emerge in the smartphones”
If we talk about Nokia then the company still have a good chance to make a strong re-entry into the market in which Karthik said “Nokia continues to have a strong brand perception in India especially in lower tier cities and with its in-depth knowledge of the market, possibly it is still not too late for Nokia to make a comeback”
Faisal Kawoosa said “The only way out for Nokia would be to go back to its roots and spin all its strategies from scratch. Again, Nokia’s strength has been its technology orientation. It should focus on research and development and license its technology and patents to the mobile world”
