Nokia's personalization is key driver for growth

Mention mobile phones and it’s almost certain that Nokia comes first to mind for many. The Finnish giant has grown exponentially, with the rallying cry of providing “Human Technology” for all. In Asia, Nigel Litchfield, Senior Vice President of Nokia Mobile Phones, is responsible for the overall drive of the company in this region.

Since his appointment in 1996 as Senior Vice President, Nigel has been leading the company's efforts in building a strong brand presence for Nokia in Asia Pacific as well as growing the brand in terms of technology and sales leadership in building Nokia's competitive edge in all key markets. .

ZDNet Asia presents selected excerpts of Litchfield’s opening address at the Technology Summit 2001 in Sydney, Australia on 22 March 2001.

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On the challenges ahead
I believe our industry is going through its biggest change ever. We face tremendous challenges and opportunities. We all know there is and will be a continuing demand and interest in the convergence of the Internet and Mobility.

Exciting developments are taking place to bring highly personalised services to mobile devices, combining the freedom of mobility with huge amounts of data and services available today on the Internet. This is driving the need for new, innovative ways for consumers to stay connected to information and services whilst on the move.

In the year 2000, there were about 60 million internet enabled terminals worldwide, of which two thirds were WAP enabled terminals. By our estimates, we believe this will increase to about 200 million internet enabled terminals by the end of this year, of which 85% are WAP enabled terminals.

By 2002, there will be more mobile phones connected to the Internet than PCs.

Personalization - The Key for Growth
We believe that personalization is a key driver for this growth. Today's consumers constantly want to assert their individuality and identity, often in the form of lifestyle enhancing solutions from ringing tones to the latest fashionable X-press On coloured cover, to text and picture messaging. The phenomenal success of Short Message Service (SMS) text messages is one such example of personalization.

According to the GSM Association, the worldwide SMS volume for 2000 is 15 billion with more than 200 billion text messages forecasted for 2001. We see many opportunities to be creative in delivering exciting services to end-users and we will leverage our strong partnership with the operators and other Nokia partners to meet these market demands.

Future services must continue to meet the needs for personalization. New services such as flexible payment solutions for m-Commerce and Multi-media Messaging (MMS) are designed to meet these needs.

The industry is faced, today and in the next few years, with many new emerging technologies - technologies such as WAP over GPRS, Bluetooth and 3G, all of which bring about new consumer benefits. We need to manage these technologies, and more importantly, develop consumer friendly services that would appeal and be beneficial to the end-user.

Nokia [is] intent on helping operators and service providers create services with real usability and added value. Now is the time for the industry to make concrete services and solutions out of these technologies for the benefit of all consumers. Partnerships & Nokia's track record
To do this, Nokia will continue to work closely with our partners. We need good planning and good execution - to work very closely and strategically with operators, distributors and other partners with Nokia. Nokia products must work seamlessly with industry services so that we create a user friendly experience for the consumers.

Nokia has a solid track record in doing that. We have proven our technological expertise in terminal development and in infrastructure deliverables as well as solutions. We must now ensure that GPRS is launched effectively to deliver services. In time to come, third-generation standards will enable a more sophisticated and rich multimedia user experience.

Our product development is built on the foundation of extensive research, continuous feedback from consumers, operators, solutions providers, and Nokia Forum members. While the results and solutions that come out of this research and dialogue may not be the same, we will work individually with each partner to ensure we deliver the best services and solutions.

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