Nokia have definitely taken a lot of steps to penetrate the Indian market. First it tied up with Tata DoCoMo to provide Nokia Ovi Life Tools. This was a good move considering DoCoMo’s reach in rural India was very good. Yesterday, we reported that TripAdvisor and Nokia joined hands to provide all of TripAdvisor’s tools preloaded on Nokia phones. Now. Nokia has tied up with Idea and Datamation Foundation to give away mobile devices to over 500 households to 5 villages in the Raebareli Area in Uttar Pradesh.
Datamation Foundation is engaged in advocating, designing and implementing innovative Information and Communication Technology enabled initiatives. In order to achieve this, the foundation has teamed up with Nokia to give phones to Pure Rajaram, Pure Tilak Ram, Bhalbhadra Khera, Baletha and Poore Chamaar villages in UP. They are also giving away pre-paid cards worth INR 200 to the villagers every month.
Whats in it for Idea and Nokia?
We are all for social services. It is a a great initiative by these companies to look into rural areas and help them learn and progress through technology. But where does it really help Idea and Nokia? According to us, Idea could use some promotion considering that they reported a net income decline of 32%. Rural areas in India present a lot of opportunities for service providers and Idea seem to be looking into that untapped market.
Nokia, who ruled the mobile market at one point, has seen sales drop thanks to the arrival of many new Indian brands like Lava, Olive, Micromax etc. With Android doing much better than the Symbian, Nokia have to do something to improve their market value, and what better way than to go rural?
All ulterior motives apart, this is a great project by the associated companies. No matter what these companies stand to gain through this, one thing is for sure is that India will most definitely gain a lot. What do you think?
this is an awesome initiative if its only related to social service.. it wnt b a long wherein companies would start paying users to buy their handsets and service .. cause this days every company in telecom sector are competing only on the basis of cost..
The point of thought here is that is it really a social initiative. Can it really be taken under the umbrella of Corporate Social Responsibility. There are surely umpteen business opportunities for Nokia and Idea here.