Nokia Is Back!

Nokia has staged a comeback in India, a market it dominated for years. But will sentimental appeal be enough to take on the competition from global giants?

- Abhik Sen

The phone looked like a clunky old brick but it was still the ultimate symbol of cool in the 1990s. Long before slick smartphones and touch-screen technology entered our lives, you flaunted the Nokia 5110 to say you’d arrived. You couldn’t do much with it apart from making or receiving calls and text messaging, but, boy, did it give you some serious bragging rights. For the longest time, a Nokia was almost everybody’s first phone. It was so easy to use even your grandparents loved it. Moreover, it was almost indestructible; you could drop it on the floor any number of times and it was still forgiving. No wonder the handset maker from Finland dominated the Indian market with a huge 60% share for around 15 years.

But all good things come to an end, they say. And Nokia, which saw its turnover increase almost fivefold globally from €6.5 billion to €31 billion between 1996 and 2001, also hit the end of the road at some point. The beginning of its end was in 2007 when Apple launched the iPhone, which went on to become a style icon across the world. To be sure, it didn’t immediately disrupt the market and Nokia’s devices still accounted for over 60% of the global market at the end of 2007. But a year later, Nokia’s share shrunk to 40% and as the smartphone market kept expanding, iPhones and Androidbased devices steadily took over the market. Nokia’s market share dived below 30% for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2010.