Nokia has decided to shuffle the $56 million feature phone market in India by introducing India’s most affordable Internet ready feature phone at Rs 2149.
Nokia 215 is loaded with Opera mini-browser, apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Facebook Messenger along with MSN Weather and News.
Interestingly, search option is powered by Bing.
It also offers a rear 0.3 mega pixel camera, USB port and dual SIM facility. The features have been designed to give maximum worth for money for a first time mobile user or a person who has feature phone but lacks Internet browsing service. To create a national level interest in this feature phone, Facebook application will support 9 regional languages.
Nokia India Sales (a Microsoft Mobiles Oy subsidiary) Director Marketing Raghuvesh Sarup said, “India is a ‘mobile-first’ market, and feature phones are the first port of access to internet for a large number of mobile users. Microsoft remains dedicated to driving innovation and introducing phones to first-time mobile phone users,”
Instead of Symbian, this phone will have a new “Nokia Series 30+” OS.
Some of the features of Nokia 215:
- Dimensions (mm) : 116.00 x 50.00 x 12.90
- Weight (g) : 78.60
- Battery capacity (mAh): 1100
- Removable battery :Yes
- Colours : Bright Green, Black, White
- Screen size (inches) : 2.40
- Resolution : 240×320 pixels
- Pixels per inch (PPI): 166
- Colours : 262K
- RAM : 8MB
- Expandable storage : Yes
- Expandable storage type : microSD
- Expandable storage up to (GB) : 32
(When you click on “Buy On” button on the official website of Nokia, it takes the user to IndiaTimes.com shopping portal, where it’s currently out of stock.)
Why Nokia is Focusing on Feature Phones?
In 2013, 25.7 crore mobile phones were sold in India, out of which 21.3 crore (82%) were feature phones and 25% of all phone sold were under $100 range.
In the last quarter of 2014 (October-December) feature phone market in India was pegged at around 65%. Overall, in 2014, 25.7 crore mobile phones were sold in India out of which 70% were feature phones. In the feature phone market, Samsung had 16.5% share, whereas Nokia had 13.3% share.
Thus, when a popular brand such as Nokia introduces Internet ready phone for Rs 2149, then it perfectly aligns with the interest of those who want to access Internet and use Facebook on their phone, but have a budget of Rs 2000 – Rs 3000. Additionally, it will help them to close the gap with Samsung in this segment, as they doesn’t have such low cost Internet ready phone ready with them.
Feature phone share are decreasing, but it will take another 5-10 years to completely wipe them off. Out of 970 million mobile phone owners in India, only 200 million have Internet in them; and almost 80% of them cant afford to spent more than Rs 3000 on a mobile phone.
Microsoft has perfectly identified this gap with Nokia 215.
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