Friday, January 20, 2012

Nokia Philippines Names New GM, Intros Nokia Store Premium Contents



I'm used to being invited by Nokia Philippines for launches of their new phones and/or new products. However, their first event for 2012 was quite different. No, I'm not saying it became boring. There was the usual good food, great company and fun surprises. What's the difference, then?

New General Manager and Head of Sale
Instead of introducing just a technology or a gadget to the techie media and friends, they named the new Nokia Philippines General Manager and Head of Sales, Dharmesh Goshalia.

Called as Gosh by his colleagues, Dharmesh has had extensive experience in business development, management and marketing across retail distribution and operator business from diverse markets. With his new appointment, Nokia Philippines is looking at maintaining its market leadership in the country while continuing to innovate and keep pace with the needs of the market.

Prior to his assignment to Nokia Philippines, Gosh was General Manager of Nokia Greece and Cyprus. He has been with Nokia since 2006 and since then has significantly contributed to the success in markets such as Nigeria, Egypt, Tunisia and other countries while heading the multimedia business unit for North and West Africa.

Gosh remarks, “The mobile phone landscape in the Philippines is very dynamic and exciting, and we look forward to maintaining Nokia’s leadership position in the country. Nokia has a long-running relationship with Filipino mobile users, and enjoys a huge gap over competitors in terms of preference, driven by its strong image as a trustworthy brand, meeting customer needs and being easy to use.”

A change in leadership is always exciting. I myself am very interested as to how Gosh will be able to change the Nokia Philippines market into something bigger and better. I hope he surprises all of us through his great leadership skills. I heard he's more hands on and more fun as a boss.

Nokia Store's Premium Content
I've read through a couple of articles in the past saying the Ovi Store has been renamed to Nokia Store. However, I still see a lot of "Ovi" logos being used, especially on other blogs. During the thanksgiving lunch, though, they indeed confirmed that the name has been changed.

Aside from the name change, Nokia Philippines also revealed that they have recorded 11 million downloads per day globally. And this year, they're introducing the Nokia Store Premium contents.

Now, not only Free apps can be downloaded from Nokia Store, but Premium apps, too, with local currency prices in five denominations Php20, Php30, Php50, Php75, and Php100.

Unlike other competitors that use foreign currency and charge via credit card, Nokia Philippines has partnered with Globe Telecom by using its Automated Billing Solution to allow users to purchase an app from the store and have the amount added onto the next bill (for postpaid) or have it debited from the credits (for prepaid).

Apart from the Free and Premium apps available to both Symbian and Series 40 phones, Nokia Store also features Freemium apps that has an in-application purchase capability. By downloading these freemium apps, a user may opt to purchase the merchant's content (e.g. additional premium levels for a game) or services (e.g. magazine subscription).

Since the Premium content purchase is currently limited to Globe subscribers only, Nokia Philippines is working on having Smart jump onto the ship to offer the same service as well. Timelines are not yet clear on when Smart would be joining, but they said it's hopefully soon.

3 comments:

a lot of things to consider new GM, one is the uncontrolled quality of Nokia care employees spread throughout luzon two, a new marketing style, instead of making Nokia one sided and making ads that will make people think nokia as a maker of feature phones should be reduced, there must be balance

The automated billing is quite innovative... The telcos can push this to other OS if this is not exclusive to Nokia

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