MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS. India at the centre of brand Nokia’s comeback

India is at the heart of Nokia’s comeback strategy, with the country playing a key role in the market research for the resurrection of its iconic handset 3310. In a first for the brand, India would be the only geography where two of its smartphones will have three SIM slots.

Back in 2000, when Nokia was ruling the mobile phone category, it had conducted a lot of consumer research in India before launching the 3310.

“For me, if we are relevant in India, we are relevant globally as customers in the country are very demanding. India is a highly-competitive and energetic market, awareness is high and everybody knows about Nokia,” Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer at HMD Global, told

BusinessLine . In 2013, Microsoft announced plans to acquire Nokia’s mobile device unit for $7.2 billion, a deal that was concluded in April next year. Later, the IT major sold off the feature phone assets to Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile, and design rights and rights to use Nokia brand to Finnish company HMD Global Oy. HMD now holds the right to use Nokia brand. In its second coming, the brand announced the availability of Nokia 3310 and three Android-based smartphones — Nokia 6, Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 – from the second quarter of this calendar year. The brand is also re-launching the iconic ‘Snake’ game, which was available on 3310. Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 sold in India would sport three card slots, two for SIM cards and one for memory card.

“This is just for India, because our research told us that we need to have two slots and a micro SD slot, while that space is used for speakers on Nokia 6,” Sarvikas said. Nokia 6, which debuted in China in January, is priced at €229 and a limited-edition gloss black model priced at €299, while Nokia 5 was priced at €189 and Nokia 3 at €139. Price for India is yet to be unveiled.

(The writer is in Barcelona at the invitation of Qualcomm.)