Branding or Product Innovation?

On 31st July 1995 India made its first cellular call on a Nokia phone using Nokia network and today after 15 years we have 15 companies fighting in telecom sector to reach on top. Apart from this we have over 50 mobile phone manufacturing companies selling there mobile phones in India. With current mobile subscriber base of 635 million every mobile manufacturer is trying to expand its market share. Irony is the company which started all in India is taking the maximum beating.

In upper segment Nokia faces tough competition from Apple, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, RIM(Blackberry), Motorola. Nokia's current best smartphone N900 features and technology is already lagging behind of iPhone 4, Galaxy S, Milestone, Xperia X10. To stand against them Nokia needs to come up with some product innovation to remain in smartphone market or else the biggest manufacturer would be wiped out of the segment ruled by it. Latest in line from Nokia is N8 which shows some signs of a good product but i guess its entry is too late in market and also it runs on Symbian OS which itself is way behind of Android(Google OS) and iOS(Apple OS).

Now, if we talk about lower segment there are new player raining in market and eating up Nokia share. Although these players are targeting lower and middle income group of Urban and especially rural, they are spending hefty for branding. We have seen Micromax coming and shouting aloud in market and grabbing a chuck of Nokia market share, same thing Karbonn tried although it wasn't as successful as Micromax. Branding ideas from these newly entered manufacturers are quite unique and appealing. For instance Wynncom mobiles not only made Bipasha Base and Saif as there brand ambassadors but also they recently came up with new scheme i.e with their mobile one can send free sms to anywhere in India, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia etc.(powered by 160by2.com). Another example is Lava mobiles which made their phone with Alpha keypad instead of QWERTY used by every other manufacturer to be different and visible in crowd and now they have announced to be the first mobile manufacturers to include rupee sign on their phone.

With such unique marketing ideas tried by new entrants to make a brand and also pressure from technology advanced companies such as Apple, Samsung, Motorola is making a sandwich out of Nokia.

Nokia is fighting will all this on the brand name and service network they had established for years in India. But only relying on brand name won't help for long. It's time for them to come up with some product innovation along with re-enforcement of their brand.

Source: http://samirmantrao.blogspot.com/2010/08/branding-or-product-innovation.html