Many rumours had been going around regarding products that would be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress that recently concluded at Barcelona. While many companies proved the rumours true, some sprang surprises with unexpected product launches. One company such was the Finnish mobile manufacturing giant Nokia that unveiled a range of Lumia smartphones and budget phones that would release this year. The company was expected to show off a 41 MP PureView device or a Windows tablet. Instead, four phones with widely varying price tags were launched – the Lumia 720, Lumia 520, Nokia 105 and Nokia 301.
Lumia 720 is a sleek and stylish smartphone featuring a high quality camera uncommon among other phones in the same price range, Here location service and NFC. On the other hand, Lumia 520, also running Windows Phone 8, will be the least expensive model yet in the Lumia series, and boasts of a 4 inch display, 512 MB RAM and 1 GHz dual core processor. The Nokia 105 and Nokia 301 are low priced candybar feature phones with supposedly humongous battery life and the latter having a smart 3.2-megapixel camera, Xpress Browser, Microsoft Exchange compatibility and a full complement of social apps.
Nokia has so far come up with 12 Lumia devices including the recent additions, since their introduction in 2011. The Lumia 920, the high-end flagship phone launched in November, was the ice breaker which propelled the Lumia line to sales of 4.4 million units. Nokia seems to be adopting a careful strategy. It is not neglecting the low end segment, as it helps prop up the bottomline of the manufacturer and helps fund the Lumia series. Nokia is still the largest seller of feature phones, and the Asha line has been very successful in emerging markets. On the other hand, the company is clearly positioning the Lumia line as the future mainstay of the Nokia line up.
Instead of releasing high-end expensive devices, the strategy is clearly to release high quality affordable smartphones. This, of course, has meant that Nokia has not seen wild success in North America, but with smartphone adoption rates skyrocketing in countries like China and India, the company seems to have clearly identified where its future growth will lie.
With Blackberry 10 receiving lukewarm response (contrary to RIM’s claims), the time is ripe for Windows Phone, and Nokia in particular, to consolidate its position as the third major platform in the market. Nokia’s MWC’13 releases will go a long way in ensuring the same.
