Products & Services

Nokia India a hub for innovation

By Mike on 07 July 2008

INDIA – This morning I came across an interesting (though eye-cripplingly long) interview with Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, by the Indian bureau of The Economic Times. As emerging markets go, India is a 24-carat golden child – a hotbed of diverse mobile developments and innovation, Nokia has been at the heart of this rapid evolution. Sifting through this interview, Kallasvuo is clearly excited by what’s happening in India and highlights how bright the future is looking in terms of innovation.

“We are doing a lot of R&D work and have a design centre here. And it is very important when it comes to innovation and design. And when it comes to Nokia Siemens networks, we have our global headquarters here… A lot of innovation will happen in this area. I’m sure considering India is a leader in entertainment, and entertainment will soon go mobile. Here, we can innovate and can export to other markets. As far as size and diversity of operations go, only Finland matches India. We need to establish India as a hub that exports innovation and also people… We have more Indians in Helsinki than we have Finns working here.”

He also touches on the importance of providing a total solution to people, giving music as an example of where things are headed and how the mobile landscape for Nokia is shifting.

“We are selling a device and a service together, more and more, in order to sell a solution to the consumer. It’s not enough if the device has a music player capability. But the access to music in order to make that music player capability useful has to be there in a seamless and clear manner… This, of course, means that you get new competition in the form of people who are playing in this industry. Here, Apple and Google are good examples of our new competitors like camera manufacturers became our competitors when we added that functionality. I believe adding the service element on device will be big.”

When asked whether Nokia is working on similar solutions in other product categories outside things such as pre-loaded music on phones, Kallasvuo confirms this ambition, highlighting a new term he dubs ‘Virtual Me’.

“The functionality that we can add to a mobile phone is immense. We can make the device multi-functional and it’s the centre of our thinking. We are constantly looking at opportunities to expand into adjacent categories but all our innovation and thinking will be around the mobile phone, what I call a ‘Virtual Me’. The device is a hardware platform on which you can constantly download software applications. There is a very active community at Symbian that’s adding to the totality of mobile devices.”

Interesting stuff. If you’re living in India let us know what you think is most exciting about the rapid evolution of mobile technology in your area. Similarly, whatever country you’re living in, what is mobile life like for you? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Sachendra Yadav Says:
July 7th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

Very happy to see Nokia leveraging India’s strengths.

To answer the mobile life question, I believe mobile is quickly becoming a lifestyle assistant. Check out my blog post on how mobile enables my lifestyle

http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/mobile-is-quickly-becoming-a-lifestyle-assistant/

Avinash Rathod Says:
July 7th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

“We have more Indians in Helsinki than we have Finns working here.”

Cool , I never knew that.

True, its all happening in India:
Mobile Payments, Flat data transfer rates, high end mobiles at affordable prices/installment options, SMS applications (http://www.mytoday.com) , best of VAS (http://www.onmobile.com) , lots and lots of mobile content, movie ticketing , money transfer etc…

I believe with my N95 and a GPRS connection I can find whatever info I need anytime. My dependency on my computer for info has reduced drastically.

Gomcoite Says:
July 8th, 2008 at 4:31 pm

what i feel is as follows:-

India is a country of the big Income divide. About half the population is below poverty line, one forth middle class and one fourth extremely rich.

So the Indian society can digest every type of phone model.

1. The lower sections like a phone that can make calls and play music may be a FM radio too with a bluetooth. Thats about it. Most of them are illiterate and hardly know hot to do email or surf the internet. So a phone with basic features and SMALL PRICE will be in great demand. Consists of a huge part of the population.

2. The Extremely Rich section of the society not only wants powerful features but also want their phone to do the talking at parties. Its a Fashion Icon and Style statement. It gives them a feeling of pride. So apart from being a phone, IT SHOULD ALSO BE A FASHION ICON. And yes, it should be extremely expensive. I remember a guy spending Rs. 1,400,000 on a particular phone number, no wonder he can spend more on a perhaps diamond studded cell phone.

3. Now the Middle Class is left with mixed reactions. They can be choosy from the very expensive handsets to the very cheap handsets. This class includes people like me who actually put in a bit of research before they buy a new cell phone. They actually look out through the market to get proper value for money. Tastes may vary. Mainly consists of college going and working crowd.

So, taking the above into consideration, i feel that the Indian market is full with buyers. And as far as i go, i have always trusted Nokia. It only water’s down how the way you market your product.

anil k gupta Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 4:27 pm

real innovations will come about when nokia decides to provide the building blocks of cell technology to millions of users in India who will innovate and design, fabricate and deploy variety of innovations at grassroots level,

let me quote my own paper for a talk at Chicago on April 3-4 and MIT on April 5-6:

“”Cell phones were introduced around a decade and half ago and they became mass consumption good in the last decade. Not only people developed a language of missed calls but also developed lot of other applications. Young innovator Prem Singh developed a remote switch by which farmers could switch on and off their pumpsets, power lines could be tripped or monitored for load, one could get a message whether the milk has boiled or not sitting in a separate room, lock car if stolen, amplify heart beat and communicate it to the doctor. It is a pity that not many of his ideas could go to the market and become a mass consumption product. But just the range of applications should indicate the way Indian and trained mind can create numerous possibilities. Many other innovators developed security system so that an image as well as the message would be sent to pre defined addresses in case an unauthorised person tries to tamper with the lock or open the door. Cell phones can also be used to intimate the water status in the field so that farmers can track the need for irrigation. All these innovations have been evolved by the people who have not even gone to the college much less get any technical training. Companies like Nokia never shared the technique of extracting emergency power in a battery which had run down and could not power the cell phone. The young boys in the villages figured out ways of getting that reserve energy from the battery to make sos call or sms. Anurag Rathod, a class nine student thought of converting the gait of a person into a mobile password system. The moment phone is used by an unauthorized person, it would stop working till the original user unlocks it. This is an original thought with an amazing potential. Every such idea deserves a fair trial and opportunity for value addition and benefit sharing”".
“Grassroots innovations for poverty alleviation: An entrepreneurial approach : anil gupta, iimahd
anilg@iimahd.ernet.in

would welcome comments from all those who wish to join hands with honey bee network

anil