Chief Marketing Officer of HMD Global Pekka Rantala has an extensive mobile background which started as an Export Manager for Nokia Mobile Phones in Africa in the early 1990s. He has lead Nokia’s business in Europe and after that Nokia’s marketing worldwide. Speaking to BusinessLine on the launch of three new Nokia smartphones, Pekka describes India as what is probably his most visited country in the world, having been involved in Nokia’s earlier presence here and now as HMD Global.

The mobile market landscape has completely changed from Nokia’s early days as smartphone king. Beyond the goodwill that still exists for Nokia, how will the company fight the Chinese brigade in the mobile market?

Yes, everything has changed. None of the things that we will do are enough alone, but we think that as a package there is much that will make us different. The Nokia brand is still one of the cornerstone elements and it allows us to take a difference stance in the market — not just tech alone. We are able to bring not just a technology angle but also a human angle. This philosophy we believe will help us also as we take a different approach to Android, for example.

We have been talking to customers about Android and asking them about their pain points with the system. One of these is that there are so many phones with old versions of Android because no one can say when the latest version will come to any particular handset. So, the Android experience is very rarely at its best and optimal. We are the first ones to commit to providing the latest version of Android — as you can see in the three new phones launched — and also monthly security updates. As you may know, only 0.5 per cent of Android phones are on version 7.1. Then we will provide solid and high quality phones. We believe these things together will give us the difference.

For many of the Chinese players one could say trust is an issue, but for others like Xiaomi, has a connection with its customer base here. How do you plan to counter this?

We respect the other companies that been working very hard here but we are here for the consumers so we don’t target any specific company as our strategy. If we stay focussed on the consumers, we will be on the right track. There are many competitors out there but I think we can lay claim to the fact that none have the same emotional bonding that Nokia does. It’s true that we may need to run faster as they have a head start, but in India in particular, the connection for Nokia is strong. And every Nokia phone sold in India will be made in India.

While Nokia relies on a long-time emotional bond, it is targeting millennial not older people for its new phones. Isn’t this paradoxical?

From our research, we know that we can speak to younger people as well as the older generation. We will not need to dedicate marketing to older people — they will anyway be curious and will come to us. And we are confident that they do will like the way to talk to the younger generations as they too like to be youthful today. Some of our trade customers did ask us to focus on older people only and leave the battle field to the new entrants. But external consumer research has shown that our brand is resonating very well with millennial who not only know the brand but also feel for it. This can only happen with a brand that has equity. And it is remarkable considering Nokia has been silent with advertising for so long.

Do the 400 distributors you have on board include any that have been with Nokia earlier?

We are extremely grateful that so many distributors have come to us of their own accord. They do of course include many from previous years. We are really humbled that we have been approached by them and it gives us a starting strength. We do have HCL channels on board. Amazon, with whose partnership we are so pleased, will exclusively feature Nokia 6 but the Nokia 3 and Nokia 5 will be available in offline stores for everyone to pick up. And so is the Nokia 3310.

How do Nokia’s ambitions in India stack up now?

We feel we have so much Nokia heritage here and we feel a big responsibility. We want to become the leading brand in terms of emotional share as well as market share in India — and the world we have today started that journey in which we are looking for rapid growth and we are very encouraged about the initial reaction to all our recent launches.

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