Finnish cell phone maker Nokia is optimistic about Brazil, currently its fifth largest market behind China, India, the United States and Japan. During the Brazilian launch of the Lumia 920, 820 and 620, Almir Luiz Narcizo, Nokia Brazil’s general manager, said that if the company does not have a competitive portfolio, it loses market share.
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“The 10-year-old Symbian OS was facing several problems, and Nokia needed to renew it. Nokia’s brand is admired in Brazil, but our portfolio wasn’t meeting consumers’ demands,” Narcizo said, recognizing that the lack of suitable portfolio contributed to Nokia’s loss of market share. “Now, we have an excellent portfolio. Be careful Samsung and Apple because we are now extremely competitive.”
Narcizo highlighted that this year is a turning point for Nokia both in Brazil and worldwide. “Nokia chose the Windows Phone instead of Android because it wanted to be different. We had concerns about whether the developer community would follow and develop applications for this OS, but yes, they did,” he said.
His optimism about the Brazilian market is based on “excellent pre-sales of Lumia 920 and devices have sold-out.” However, Narcizo did not reveal specific sales numbers. Nokia also relies on LTE services for future launches since the Lumia 920 and 820 are compatible with 2.6 GHz frequency band, which is Brazil’s chosen spectrum for LTE. Apple’s iPhone 5 does not use this frequency band.
Nokia does have a major challenge for the region: it lacks low-cost smartphones. The new Lumia high-end devices come to the market without subsidies and retail between U.S.$1,000 and $460. The Asha series has a maximum price of $200. Sooner or later, most mobile phone companies will have to begin to move their feature phone customer base toward a more sophisticated device. And Nokia, which used to be king in the feature phone market, needs to follow this trend.
Narcizo said it could be easy for consumers to migrate from feature phones to the Asha series.
“Nokia’s business is focused on feature phones; it is very strong in the region,” Kevin Restivo, IDC senior research analyst told RCR Wireless News . According to Restivo, Asha could help Nokia with this situation and Latin America could be a “trampoline” for Nokia’s success.
“It will be difficult for anyone to take the lead from Samsung’s Android anytime soon. I don’t believe that any company will catch up to Samsung in the near future,” he said.
When asked if Nokia can recover its leading position in Brazil, Restivo said that Nokia’s brand is still very valued but not as strong as it used to be.
Nokia is manufacturing both the Lumia 620 and 820 locally at its Manaus plant in the state of Amazonas. Nokia is also studying how to locally produce the 920, but it still lacks the volume to justify the move. 
A turning point for Nokia?
For several years, Nokia has struggled and watched its market leadership fall to competition from Samsung and Apple. But better days may be in sight after the Finnish cell phone maker unveiled its Windows Phone Lumia smartphone series, following a partnership with Microsoft, and launched its emerging-market-focused Asha series (with Nokia’s S40).
When releasing its full year and fourth quarter results for 2012, Nokia admitted that the year-on-year decline in its mobile phone volume was due to the challenging competitive and market environments, which negatively affected volume across its mobile phone portfolio.
Toward the end of the second quarter of 2012, Nokia introduced affordable Asha full touch smartphones and sold 15.8 million units in the second half 2012. In the fourth quarter, Nokia totaled 15.9 million units globally, including:
- 9.3 million Asha full touch smartphones
- 4.4 million Lumia smartphones
- 2.2 million Symbian smartphones
Although Nokia’s financial results were below expectations, they did show some recovery. Now, only time will tell if Nokia will be able to continue to turn its business around.
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