Nokia bolsters ‘differentiation’ with further music messaging
Nokia is to hold a series of bespoke gigs across the UK over the coming weeks as it attempts to further emphasise its association with emerging music acts and establish differentiation in the ultra-competitive smartphone sector.
The Windows Phone manufacturer has paired with France-based music blogger network La Blogothéque, which specialises in promoting new and emerging acts, to help promote the series of concerts taking place in the coming weeks.
Each concert will be hosted in venues not normally associated with music, similar to previous activity with DJ Deadmau5 to launch earlier Nokia Lumia models, with the series of events scheduled to debut in Bristol, alternate between various UK cities, before culminating in London.
Details of which artists will appear have yet to be confirmed but Annie Kearney, a member of Nokia’s sponsorship and management team, says the deal is about “getting phones in people’s hands and have them participate in the event[s].”
She adds the series of events are geared towards bolstering awareness of Nokia’s suite of free services available on its Lumia devices – in particular Nokia Music.
Nokia Music lets users both stream and download tracks, for offline listening, as well as find nearby gigs. It has been a popular service with existing Lumia users and the average usage session is 46 minutes, according to Nokia.
The service is one which helps drive activations, according to sources within the company. Kearney adds: “Nokia Music is free, there’s no subscription charge [unlike others such as Spotify] and there’s also the discoverability element [with the gig-finder and recommended artists function]. The events are all about reflecting this.”
View Point
Nokia doesn’t disclose its exact share of the total Windows Phone audience but sources within the company confidently state it is high. The manufacturer’s CEO Stephen Elop explains his decision to pair with Microsoft, and not Google’s Android, was a bid to establish “differentiation.”
Nokia is trying to further this strategy by promoting its music credentials in a bid to win over both first-time smartphone buyers and possibly deserting Blackberry owners.
Figures from ComScore indicate Windows Phone devices accounted for 3.8 per cent of the total UK smartphone market as of December 2012, when 8-in-10 newly acquired mobiles in the UK were classified as ‘smart devices’.
However, for Windows Phone this figure was up from 2.5 per cent in December 2011, seemingly at the expense of Blackberry and the Symbian platform, Nokia’s previous smartphone operating system. But all three lag significantly behind leaders Apple and Google (see chart).