Thursday, May 26, 2011

By Shereen El Gazzar

Of ZAWYA DOW JONES

DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones)--Finland-based Nokia Corp. (NOK), the world's largest mobile phone maker by volume, is betting on Africa becoming a lucrative market for its yet to be released dual SIM card handsets, as it looks to tap the continent's growing number of multi SIM card users, a company executive said.

"It is a fact that the market clearly is there and the market is crying out for dual SIM, and to bring it in a Nokia fashion that is easy to use," Chris Braam, Nokia's vice president for sales in the Middle East and Africa, told Zawya Dow Jones in a recent interview. "It means that we will take larger share there (Africa). This is my expectation."

The dual SIM handset push comes at a time when the Nordic company is battling to staunch the loss of market share in the global mobile phone market.

Nokia has of late ceded ground in the lucrative smartphone market to rivals like Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iPhone and Google's (GOOG) Android operating system. It said in March that its estimated share of the converged mobile device market fell to 26% in the first quarter, from 41% a year earlier, and 31% in the previous quarter. Apple meanwhile overtook Nokia as the world's largest vendor of mobile handsets by revenue in the first quarter, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

Nokia's performance in emerging markets has suffered in part due to its lack of a dual SIM device, say analysts. The company will finally launch its own version of the handset in June, said Braam.

AFRICA

In Africa, Chinese and Indian original equipment manufacturers currently dominate the dual SIM handset market, at the expense of Nokia.

The appeal of Africa for Nokia is clear. Mobile subscriptions in Africa stood at 536.4 million at the end of 2010, an increase of 18.5% on the year before, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. Mobile penetration rates meanwhile are about 51%, one the lowest levels in the world.

It is common in Africa, say analysts, for mobile users to have several prepaid SIM cards, each for a different mobile operator, and to switch between them in order to take advantage of lower tariffs for on-net calling or a particular promotion. In this kind of situation it's more convenient to have a dual SIM handset than having to manually change the SIM each time a customer wants to use a different service.

Nokia's Braam said the introduction of five dual SIM Nokia phones before the end of the year will help it compete more effectively in the Middle East and Africa, or MEA, region.

"If you look at MEA, it is very clear that competition is increasing, but we do have a number of new products kicking in. We recently produced E7 and E6 devices which will clearly drive our smartphone share. At the same time dual SIM will drive our mobile phone share," he said.

Dual SIMs aside, Braam sees great potential in Middle East and African countries for Nokia phones with internet capabilities.

"In the western world consumers are using internet through their PCs, their fixed internet. What we can see in Africa that people can skip that step and go through their first internet experience through mobile," he said.

-By Shereen El Gazzar, Dow Jones Newswires, +9714 446 1684 Shereen.elgazzar@dowjones.com

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

26-05-11 0820GMT