Word: nokia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Nokia is also typically more efficient when it comes to how it builds a phone. While an iPhone requires around 1,000 components, Garcha says Nokia's 5800 needs only half that number. "Having an extra 10 or 20 dollars on your bill of materials doesn't matter when you're selling your phone at $600," he says. "Think about making it a smart phone at $100 a few years from now: $20 of cost is 20 percentage points of margin. It actually becomes very important...
...Nokia's real genius is simply in selling phones in more places than any of its competitors. From Indian mountain villages to towns on the dry plains of northern Nigeria, Nokia is everywhere. Supplying the end user with a smart phone in Western Europe and America is typically the job of cell-phone operators who will even subsidize the cost of a device in return for tying a buyer to a monthly plan. Not so in emerging markets, where users typically buy their phone independently. That means manufacturers need their own "very efficient distribution," says Sanford C. Bernstein's Ferragu...
Consider India. Years of building its business in the country - the first ever cell-phone call in India in 1995 was carried over a Nokia phone and Nokia-deployed network - has established the company as India's biggest supplier by a huge margin. Nokia devices are sold in 162,000 retailers in India, more than three times the number for rivals Samsung or LG. Although Samsung is investing heavily to catch up, Nokia claims roughly 60% of the Indian market. So ubiquitous are the firm's products that many locals refer to their mobile phone as a "Nokia" even when...
That kind of presence in emerging markets helps explain why Nokia is blurring the boundary between smart phones and cheaper handsets, and trying to entice customers to trade up. In recent months, the firm has unveiled a slew of devices aimed at developing markets, some costing as little as $60. That might seem a lot to pay for someone earning a few hundred dollars a month, but for many people in places where access to electricity is hit-and-miss at best, a good phone can double as a computer, an MP3 device or even a video player...
Take, for example, Nokia's new 2730 model, which will be available later this year for just over $110. The 3G device might not have a touchscreen or a swish keyboard, but with access to Ovi Mail, Nokia's free e-mail service, it's designed to give thousands of consumers in emerging markets their "first Internet experience," says Credit Suisse's Garcha. Ovi Mail was conceived specifically for consumers with limited PC access, and almost all the 350,000 accounts registered since the service's launch last December have been created on Nokia phones, not on computers...