NO DOUBT THAT the products from the Finnish company, Nokia, are some of the very best in the world, but the company still hasn’t found a profitable way to market its goods. The very reason that other mobile phone companies are fast eating up Nokia’s market share is their superior (yet simple) marketing practices.

 

Motorola and Samsung must now be in the FUW (frequently used words) list in Nokia’s board meetings. These companies have made Nokia pay dearly for its rudimentary approach in marketing its phones. The aggressive marketing practices followed by Motorola have hit Nokia very hard and it is losing very crucial global market share every month to its American competitor.

 

Nokia, quite alarmed by the dropping sales of its phones, is now putting all its weight behind the N-Series range. The N-Series is packed with multimedia features and Nokia believes that these phones might woo the costumers back to the big daddy of the mobile phone world. But Espoo, we have a problem!! (Nokia is headquartered at Espoo, Finland).

 

While Motorola (quite intelligently) gives a dashy-flashy name to every phone it brings into the market, Nokia tends to do the exact opposite. Nokia from the very start has relied on numbers rather than names. This strategy worked very well in the past, but only because there wasn’t much competition back then. But times have changed. Every month the market sees at least a dozen new handsets from an equal number of manufacturers. Consumers now have more than they can choose.

 

Consumers are more attracted by names because they can thus easily relate to the features of the phone. This is evident from the success of the MotoRazr, MotoSlvr, MotoRizr and MotoKrzr. These phones are not packed with heavy multimedia features like the N-Series; still they are selling like hot cakes. Just by reading the name of the handset, one gets a broad idea what the phone looks like or what its features are.

 

Nokia advertises more than Motorola. Still its market share is dropping. Motorola does not need to spend much money for the promotion of its products and it doesn’t have to worry about the marketing of these phones; it just simplifies its job by naming its products right. Take the example of Apple. It did not have to do much to promote its iPhone. Thanks to the leaked photos and technical specifications, it became the most anticipated gadget of all times.

 

It is high time that Nokia starts applying some common sense to its marketing strategies. It doesn’t have to do anything great, other than just naming its phones. A few months ago, a highly placed Nokia official told Reuters that his company would soon go the Motorola way and start using names for its new phones. It is in Nokia’s best interest that it takes to this path as early as possible, otherwise the once market leader might see its market share plummeting to even lower depths.