Nokia was treated as the most preferred brand for mobiles since the time people started using mobile phones in India. For few, Nokia was the nick name for mobiles. Then something changed after years of rule in mobiles. Google introduced android platform/OS which created a revolution in the history of mobiles. Samsung emerged as one of the largest smartphones manufacturer of mobiles running on Android OS. It improved gaming and book reading experience on phones. Samsung became the leading seller in android smartphones. These smartphones were faster, performance oriented especially for internet usage, they were affordable and offered great feature for competitive prices. Samsung grew enormously big with its android smartphones in India especially with its Galaxy series whereas Nokia used Symbian OS until late 2011, as the mainstream OS.
Android platform has a huge fan following and this is one of the key feature why users moved from Nokia to Samsung. Despite of the boom of Android OS Nokia chose to continue with Symbian and then to Windows to cater smartphones user, whereas Samsung realized the importance of change and they worked according to demand. This eventually made them the mobile category leaders. This seems like one of the reasons of Nokia’s market downfall.
Mobiles evolved with Nokia and are seeing sea of changes with Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola etc. Nokia’s most popular handset Nokia 1100 was no less than a revolution; over 200 million units were sold. It’s strange to see this market ruler facing a downfall. Nokia was recently acquired by Microsoft. This creates the need to look at mobiles offered by Nokia and Samsung and analyze them on their OS.
Below data is sourced from Mobiles category at FindYogi.com – a buying decision making platform. Only new products that are under manufacturer warranty and available as on 2nd Week of June 2014 is covered in this report.
- Nokia offers 37 mobiles which operate on Symbian, Windows and Android OS. There are other low end phones that Nokia offers which are not included in this report.
- Samsung offers 49 mobiles that run on Android and Windows OS. There are other OS that Samsung runs its mobiles on; such products are not included in this report.
- 86% of Nokia smartphones run on Windows OS whereas 96% of Samsung smartphones operate on Android OS.
Market penetration of smartphones by Nokia and Samsung
- From the graph it is clear that Nokia caters well in price range below 5000. Nokia has 11 smartphones for users with budget below 5000 INR. Whereas Samsung offers only one smartphone in that range.
- 32% of Nokia’s smartphones are priced between INR 5000 – 10000 whereas 39% of Samsung’s smartphones are available in this price range. There are 19 smartphones from Samsung.
- 19% of Nokia Smartphones are priced between 10000 – 20000 whereas 33% of Samsung’s smartphones are available for above price range.
- 19% of Nokia’s smartphone are priced above INR 20000. Most of the mobiles under this price range operate on Windows OS.
- 27% of Samsung’s smartphones are priced above 20000. Most of them run on Android OS.
To deduce we can say that Nokia offers more products to consumers with limited budget especially less than 5000. Overall Samsung has better catalogue with more products across these price ranges. One can easily say that with Samsung you would certainly find something in your budget and it has better presence for Android OS users. If one is looking for a Windows smartphone then Nokia has great variety to offer you.