Nokia has called upon its dealers to help the company become the leading smartphone vendor, and promised to become a disruptive force in the handset market, according to a top European executive.
Conor Pierce, Nokia's vice president of Western Europe, told a meeting with 120 dealers that the company has moved from being in a position of leadership to one of being a challenger brand. This will enable Nokia to do things differently from its competitors and give it the freedom to be more disruptive in the market, he said.
"We want to become a disruptive force in the market, but not just a reckless force landing something almighty on the market, we need to be very clever about how we do it," Pierce said, according to Mobile News.
Accepting that Nokia's new Windows Phone sales are not where they should be, albeit that he was happy with the strategy, Pierce said the Lumia 800 was a great start and that 50 per cent of the UK population was now aware of the Lumia brand.
Nokia sold four million Lumia phones in the second quarter--low by industry standards, but double first-quarter sales and more than analysts were expecting.
"We have a great portfolio, great partnership with Microsoft and a great start but that won't make any difference unless we as individuals, and Nokia as a company, do something radically different," Pierce told the audience. "It's about knowing what we need to do and doing it fast, but not recklessly."
Separately, Nokia director of B2B sales for Europe, Adrian Williams, said that the company has started to win sales from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion in the B2B market.
Williams claimed that Nokia has won four "major" contracts worth "thousands" of Nokia handsets in the B2B space at the expense of RIM. The deals, according to Mobile News, include the service management group ISS, IT provider TSG and infrastructure supplier GTC.
"Business customers are seeing the Lumia device range as a very strong way forward for them because the native productivity solutions come straight out of the box, such as Microsoft Office products like Word and Excel," Williams said. "Many customers, like most businesses, will already have made significant investments into the Microsoft ecosystem. What we're doing is opening up that investment to their mobile fleet."
For more:
- see this Mobile News article
- see this separate Mobile News article
Related Articles:
Nokia's 4M Lumia sales offer bright spot in Q2
Nokia chairman: We'll continue with cuts to restore competitiveness
Microsoft kicks Nokia when it's down
S&P: Nokia smartphone revenues could rebound by year's end
Nokia worries analysts with cash burn rate
Nokia unveils low-cost handsets to regain share in emerging markets