HMD Global, Nokia’s home company, announced that it will not be joining the flagship race and will focus on affordable devices in the meantime.
HMD Global Head of Product Marketing Adam Ferguson said in an interview on Android Authority that “making a USD 800 phone doesn’t make sense for us at the moment.” This means that the manufacturer will instead focus on their more profitable entry-level and mid-tier devices.
Focusing on the said strategy has been fruitful for HMD. The company has recently celebrated its first full year of operational profit. Q3 2021 and Q4 2021 was the most profitable quarter in the company’s history.
HMD Global tried to enter the high-end market by launching the Nokia 9 PureView but it was not received well and no plans of a follow-up device have been reported since.
It has been hard for smaller companies to compete in the high-end market lately mainly because of the silicon shortage and the difficulty in acquiring needed parts to build flagship devices. Thus focusing on where you are good at (i.e focusing on mid-tier devices etc, in the case of HMD) is a viable strategy for smaller manufacturers.
With that said, HMD wants to be the market leader for pre-paid phones in the US by the end of this year. They also plan to make a separate division that will focus on business users (IoT data roaming and SIM management). This is the foundation where the company will build its core business and hopefully, flagships will come after this.
Started his freelancing adventure in 2018 and began doing freelance Audio Engineering work and then started freelance writing a few years later.
Currently he writes for Gadget Pilipinas and Grit.PH.
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