Nokia to be amongst top players in next three to five years, says Ajey Mehta of HMD Global

HMD Global, the company which has an exclusive right to develop and market Nokia branded feature phones, smartphones and tablets till 2024 against royalty payments to Nokia, has launched its first flagship smartphone India. The Nokia 8, that was unveiled last month in London will go on sale in India starting October 14.

The festive season has already started with ecommerce players such as Flipkart, Amazon India and Paytm offering cash backs and discounts on smartphones but the company believes that they aren't late in launching the Nokia 8. Ajey Mehta, Vice President - India, HMD Global, explains,"The date works the best for us. All our asserts are ready. We are not just looking for quick sale during festive season but we are looking at long term, will support and drive the sales even after Diwali."
 
After unveiling the three Nokia Android smartphones at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, HMD Global has launched the Nokia 3, 5 and 6 in the India in Q2 2017, which were available in the market in July and August. The Nokia 3 and Nokia 5 were available in offline channel whereas the Nokia 6 was an online exclusive with Amazon India. While the company declined to share the number of units sold in India, Mehta added, "We have been off to a solid start and will be amongst the top players in next three to five years. The response for the Nokia 3,5 and 6 has been overwhelming. Most importantly, the our Pure Android story was welcomed by consumers."
 
Commenting on the channel strategy, Mehta further explained, "We will focus on the channel where are consumers are. Depending upon what product at what price point, what kind of consumer are we targeting, will determine the channel. The channel will not determine where the consumer is but our consumers will determine our channel strategy. But we will continue to be present in both offline as well as online."
 
The Nokia 8 that will go on sale in October will be manufactured in India. It features an unibody design crafted of 6000-series aluminium, features a dual camera at the rear and 13MP front camera with both sensors powered by ZEISS optics. It comes with a Dual-Sight mode allowing users to use both front and back cameras simultaneously for split-screen photos and video. It also supports built-in streaming straight to Facebook Live and YouTube Live.  The new Nokia smartphones run Android operating system and the Nokia 8 runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat out-of-the-box and will receive Android 8.0 (Oreo) update sometime later this year or early next year. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835v processor. The one launched in India will come with 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage, and supports expandable memory of up to 256GB.