Nokia needs to arrest decline in emerging markets

Nokia is having a hard time catching traction in the smartphone market.

While most reviewers have only good things to say about its Lumia series of Windows Phone-powered smartphones, consumers are somehow not buying.

Nokia's Lumia 900 and other Windows Phone smartphones get all the media attention.

And although most of the more than 2 million who actually bought the phones as of the first quarter of 2012 are very much satisfied about their Nokia smartphones, there are just not enough of them to counterbalance all the bad news hitting the Finnish mobile vendor.

A more alarming development for Nokia, however, is the loss of its crown as the world's largest seller of mobile phones. The company held that distinction for 14 years, but finally lost it to Samsung in the first quarter of 2012.

Nokia's features phones, such as the Asha series, must do better in the market.

This means the company is losing its luster in the features phone market as well, a segment that provided Nokia with reliable profits and stable growth in the emerging markets.

Nokia's sales in the basic-phone segment dropped 16 percent in the quarter, as well as in four of the previous five. In contrast, sales of competitors, such as ZTE and Huawei from China, are growing fast.

To give their higher-end brethren a bigger fighting chance.

Meanwhile, Nokia lost half of its market share in India in the three years until 2011, accounting only for 31 percent of the 183 million handsets sold, according to market research firm CyberMedia.

Nokia hopes the Asha 302 helps the company improve its fortune in emerging markets.

While most media attention has been focused on Nokia's struggles in the higher-end smartphone market, the company clearly needs to take care as well of its lower-end handset business. After all, its lowly features phones might give it the leg it needs to go mano-a-mano with dominant players Apple and Samsung.