In the past time, HMD Global has launched a number of new Nokia smartphones, but they are all mid-range and low-cost phones, which makes us doubt that the company has abandoned the flagship market. Now, HMD Global has officially responded to this.
Adam Ferguson, HMD’s Global Product Marketing Manager, has said that HMD currently has no plans for a Nokia flagship. “Producing $800 phones isn’t right for us right now.”, Ferguson said. Not only that, Ferguson added HMD “doesn’t want to enter the configuration war with other brands” and want “represents something very different.”
During the first few years in the mobile market, HMD Global tried everything. They launch phones in a wide range of price ranges, from basic to high-end, providing quick updates, Android One offers a “clean” operating system experience, and expanding their global business.
All of this obviously has a huge impact on the human and financial resources of a small company trying to revive the Nokia brand. HMD Global has started to show clear signs of decline after launching the flagship Nokia 9 Pureview in 2019.
Number of Nokia phones shipped. Gray is a smartphone, orange is a basic phone, and blue is a total of both.
After switching to mid-range, low-cost smartphones and basic phones, HMD Global’s situation started to get better. Q4 2021 has been HMD’s most profitable quarter to date, and according to Strategy Analytics, it shipped more smartphones (3.2 million units) than in Q4 2019 (2.8 million units).
Smartphone revenue grew 41% from 2020 to 2021. The company’s entire shipments, including feature phones, are slowly recovering from a severe drop in early 2020 due to overinvestment. much and due to the impact of the pandemic.
All of this shows that discontinuing high-end phones is the right direction at the moment for HMD Global.
HMD said it will focus on basic phones and mid-range, low-cost smartphones with good quality. They want to make hardware that lasts several years, with multi-day battery life, at an affordable price point.
Nokia C21 Plus has just been launched
They also aim to become the leader in the US prepaid smartphone market by the end of 2022. In laying out this business plan, HMD hopes to “make a profit and then expand the core business,” according to Ferguson.
The battle of configuration and features will not be discussed by HMD at this time. However, maybe after achieving certain successes, HMD will again have the resources to re-enter the high-end smartphone market with unique Nokia phones, let’s expect that to happen.
Reference: AA
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