Nokia's Experience Mobility event in Chongqing, China, gave the company the chance to demonstrate its commitment to make more affordable mobile communications accessible to a broader range of subscribers.
Nokia also announced a new business model for profitable market expansion, the Nokia Connect Market Expansion Toolkit, as well as the start of licensing for its Prepaid Tracker to GSM and WCDMA device manufacturers and GSM and WCDMA operators.
Nokia estimates that the number of mobile subscribers will grow to three billion in 2008. As around 80% of this growth will come from new growth markets, the importance of these markets will continue to increase. Nokia expects that Asia-Pacific and China will account for 50% of the next billion subscribers.
Nokia believes that the right combination of mobile phones, network solutions and services along with a favourable regulatory environment, are essential to spreading the benefits of mobility. The key is to reduce the total cost of ownership to the consumer, while ensuring a profitable, and thus sustainable, business model for operators and vendors. A large part of expansion of mobile services in new growth markets will come from lower-spending customer segments. Nokia's new Connect Market Expansion Toolkit is designed for operators to increase their revenue by reaching out to these people, without affecting the service expectations of their existing customers.
The Toolkit allows the shared use of resources within a radio network. Voice channels can be set to use adaptive multi-rate, half-rate or full-rate depending on the subscriber type, and even SMS services can be differentiated without additional traffic related expenses.
Predominance of prepaidAccording to research from Informa Telecoms & Media in February 2006, over 70% of all mobile subscribers in new growth markets are prepaid customers. To better serve their needs, Nokia last year introduced its innovative Nokia Prepaid Tracker solution that automatically updates users' phones with their up-to-date prepaid balance and call expenses. In addition to their current account balance, subscribers can also view information on the account's expiration date, the cost of the last call or SMS, and the amount of the last prepaid recharge.
The Nokia Prepaid Tracker is provided to operators as a software implementation. It is designed to help operators differentiate their services, thus reducing churn. In fast-growing markets, where prepaid subscribers far exceed post-paid, innovations such as the Prepaid Tracker may be able to help operators create a competitive advantage.
* The Nokia Experience Mobility 2006 event in Chongqing also allowed Nokia to introduce three new mobile phones targeted at first-time users in these markets. The Nokia 1112, Nokia 2310 and Nokia 2610 expand Nokia's portfolio, with all three expected to begin shipping during the current quarter.
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