Niklas Savander sees vast growth potential for Nokia services in India and China

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By Anni Lassila
     
     A poll was taken recently among owners of mobile telephones in India's large cities concerning the use of the Internet.
     Ten per cent of respondents had used the Internet, 20 per cent knew what the Internet is, but no fewer than 70 per cent of respondents had never heard of the Internet.
     "And all of these people had a mobile telephone", says Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President of Services and Software at Nokia.
     
When the Internet is discussed, the focus is often on what the latest trends are in California's Silicon Valley, or in London. There is news about how many people use Facebook, the new products of Google, or sales by the Apple iTunes music store.
     At Nokia, discussions are not limited to what sells in the United States or Europe. Hundreds of millions of people in India, China, and other rapidly-growing economies have Nokia phones.
     Many of these people get their first contact with the Internet through Nokia phones.
     The mobile phone giant has been launching its own Internet services since last summer. At the moment, there is a navigation application, a photograph community, and mobile phone games.
     Nokia's music store opened officially last Wednesday.
     
"We are not trying to convert consumers who are already active users. We are looking for people who do not yet have any contact with this world",Savander says.
     He does not want to say when the next Bollywood hits will be available at the Nokia music store in India, but an Indian store is in the cards.
     "I will not give a date, but India is a big market, and Nokia's market share is huge. We are naturally working on setting up a music store there", he says.
     
It has not been exclusively a triumphant march in India for Nokia.
     "You have to keep in mind that the countryside often has no more than a basic mobile phone network, and the poorest people do not have the money to buy services. It takes plenty of money to run a Western Internet infrastructure", Savander says.
     Nokia cannot take solutions that were popular in the West and move them as such to India. Even in mobile telephones, the Indians value different characteristics than the Europeans do.
     "We have people thinking about these things. We cannot just go there and say that here we have this Share on Ovi community. It doesn't work like that."
     Savander nevertheless predicts that China and India will eventually bring Nokia more income from services than Europe does.
     
Nokia is not resting on its laurels in the West either. The company is involved in both negotiations and cutthroat competition with other Internet companies.
     "The whole time we are thinking about what we want to do ourselves, and what we should cooperate on. It is clear that consumers want to use Google's search engine services and that is why we are working together."
     "On the hand, we do not want Google's map service, because we have our own", Savander explains.
     Nokia is holding talks with Facebook on the feasibility of a version of the community that would work better on Nokia telephones.
     "This is a matter of resources and agreements."
     However, Savander does not want to raise a single community above others. With Facebook, Nokia is mainly trying to learn how the next generations will communicate.
     
Nokia's success so far is based on the realisation that speech can be transmitted wirelessly. Now a big target of interest are new means of communications.
     "Quick messages are taking over from e-mail. Communities are increasing the use of communications through pre-determined groups of users and peer groups both through messages and pictures."
      Nokia's famous slogan from years past is connecting people. According to Savander, the slogan obliges those at Nokia to understand what is expected of Nokia's services, as methods of communications change.
     
Nokia has invested vast amounts of money into positioning services. Last year the company bought the map maker Navteq in the largest single purchase of Finnish economic history. The idea behind the deal was that the company believes that the big cash flows on the mobile Internet will be in positioning and related advertising.
     "Mobility can bring added value to advertisers, as the device is in the user's pocket and the advertiser knows where that pocket is", Savander says.
     He believes that the threshold for companies operating locally to spend money on advertising will come down when the advertisement reaches the right target group.
     "Nowadays most advertising is wasted. The advertising pie as a whole is a vast one. The question now is how much of this pie can be channelled for use on mobile phones."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 22.3.2008


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nokia to buy Norwegian open source software vendor Trolltech (29.1.2008)
  Nokia has high expectations for new Internet services (5.12.2007)
  Nokia buys new talent (7.10.2007)
  Nokia re-launches N-Gage in N-series handsets and introduces photo sharing site (6.2.2008)

Links:
  Nokia website: Niklas Savander

ANNI LASSILA / Helsingin Sanomat
anni.lassila@hs.fi