Nokia Marketing Plan for Smartphone - Research Paper Example

The launch of Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) marked a new era of mobile phone communication in 1981. Nokia took some bold initiatives during those days with the launch of first car phone, and it's been a competitive journey ever since. Year 2010 may well prove to be happening year for Nokia on account of; Its recent alliance with Shanghai New Alliance, a Chinese investment company, with an intention to offer mobile services in China. It is worthwhile here to mention that China is projected to be the biggest market of communication gadgets in times to come (TMC News, 2009).

Smartphones are the latest additions to the mobile telephony. These are the advanced versions which tend to breach the dividing line between a computer and a mobile phone. With a Smartphone we can add on applications to it to enhance performance, for additional entertainment such as games and movie viewing, for better connectivity or even for better data processing. Continuing with the trend of being innovative and competitive Nokia was able to become a market leader in mobile phone manufacturing by 19982.

With the convergence of technologies, Nokia started the journey towards the smarter era, with the acquisition of Symbian in 2004 and subsequently the company reorganised itself into four business segments namely, mobile phones, multimedia, enterprise solutions and networks so that the company can align its structure with the futuristic strategies (Datamonitor, 2009). The Smartphone is the latest trend in technology which intends to pack as many features as possible in the smallest possible handheld device, for usages as diverse as a TV receiver to a mini computer.

Therefore, the coming years belong to smarter devices and with alternatives like Apple iPhone, Google's Nexus and many more, the competition seems to become a fierce one. As Nokia has the advantage of being an established name in all major markets around the world, it becomes easier for the company to plan out strategies for marketing its range of Smartphones. By December 2008 Nokia reported revenues worth $74,611.7 million. Having footprints in more than 130 countries, Nokia today employees more than 125,000 people at different locations3.

Company's vision and strategy statement says4, "Nokia's strategy is to build trusted consumer relationships by offering compelling and valued consumer solutions that combine beautiful devices with context enriched services." With production units in different parts of the world strategically located in Brazil, China, Finland, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Mexico, Romania, and South Korea, Nokia is in a position to leverage the economies of location and scale. Whenever the company finds that its operations are not able to deliver in any of its production facilities due to some local or regional problems, it can get the other production facilities in action to make up for the losses.

While devising