In a recent interview, Nokia’s mobile division head Rick Simonson said that the mobile giant hopes to catch up to RIM and Apple (who currently leads the market for smartphones). According to the interview, a significant gap has begun to grow between the companies thanks to the popularity of iPhones and BlackBerries, although Nokia has been gaining ground late last year thanks to the sales of Eseries phone.

The perceived “slump” has been attributed to their position in North America where the iPhone and BlackBerry tops the pop charts, and thanks to North American media reports, the perception is that they’re dropping the ball everywhere else: “If we look at the figures, 50 per cent of smartphone devices globally are on Nokia/Symbian. In smartphones, we are not well positioned in North America, which is a huge market. The media reports are not really wrong, but then we are also seen by the media through American and English speaking lenses. And it is made to seem that what is happening in North America is true to the rest of the world as well. In BRIC countries — we prefer to call them BRIC, and not emerging markets — where people don’t just use expensive, high-end devices, where everything is big from very basic phones to high-end smartphones, we are right up there in every segment.

“We shipped over 200 million smartphones last year and our strategy is volume driven. We have been stable in this segment and are trying to strengthen our position in the North American market. There is a lot of money to be made in the North American market and since we are not doing too well there, it has resulted in our stock performance — this issue has played up and media coverage makes it appear it the same across the world, which is not the case.”

“Our success is best explained by the fact that Nokia is growing the email market faster then incumbents — we are growing faster than Gmail, Yahoo! and all other email providers.

“Not every customer looks for a high-end email solution as the sole criteria when picking up a smartphone. They want a slew of other factors, which works to our strength.

According to the report, Nokia sees the gap shrinking by 2011, when the company’s efforts on mobile email, multimedia, and messaging push them back to the forefront. We agree with the vision. But we also think that Nokia should just show more video clips of Batman using their phones. Strangely, after the Dark Knight movie came out (where we learned that apparently, everyone in Gotham uses a Nokia), we all shopped for Nokias. Who are you going to trust? The media or Bruce Wayne? Please don’t answer that question. It’s Bruce Wayne hands-down, right? Right?

Tags: Mobile Phones, Nokia

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