HMD Global, the company managing the Nokia brand globally, is having a busy time leading up to the New Year. Nokia currently has as many as four smartphones in the works, leading us to believe that it is seeking a revival in this segment. However, the company is also adding smartphone accessories as a focus area.
Nokia would be focussing on smartphone accessories such as TWS earbuds, wired headphones and more in 2022, says a report published in India Today quoting a senior official at HMD Global.
The big question though is whether Nokia would be able to outgun competition in this fast-growing and highly competitive segment, straddled mostly by the Chinese phone-makers.
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TWS earbuds segment show robust growth
Besides audio products from brands such as Xiaomi and OnePlus, we now know that even Poco (a sub-brand of Xiaomi) plans to expand into audio products. Poco's head of product marketing Angus Ng was quoted by Android Authority as saying that for them nothing was off limits.
However, there is no surprise that most of these brands are entering the audio beat in droves. India's TWS earbuds market grew by 55% year-on-year during the third quarter of 2021 with shipments of more than eight million. Counterpoint Research highlighted that the growth was achieved on the back of new entrants, discount offers and focused sales events.
At a global level too, TWS headset sales are expected to grow 33% year-on-year in 2021, touching 310 million units by the end of the year. In 2020, the grow was 78% and could have been an outcome of the remote working and home education trends that accompanied the pandemic-led lockdowns.
It's Nokia versus the Chinese brands
From Nokia's point of view, their exposure to this lucrative segment in India has been limited to two offerings - the Nokia Power Earbuds Lite that launched earlier this year in February and the Nokia True Wireless Earbuds from 2019. While the former is priced at Rs.3,999, the latter debuted at Rs.9,999. Both devices did offer decent features at the time of launch, but competition has zoomed ahead now.
The question that needs answering is the price bands that Nokia aims to target in the near term and the competition that it finds there. Be it the below-Rs.3,000 range or the below-Rs.5,000 band, Chinese products are already ruling the roost, which makes us wonder whether the move would really add to Nokia's revival.
Sanmeet Singh Kochhar, Vice President for HMD Global (India and MENA) says Nokia is looking at different price segments within the earbuds and headphones offerings by focusing on a variety of new products.
Nokia plans to sell these new hearables through both online and offline channels based on the price band that it falls under, though at a broader level they expect 40 to 50% sales to be through the digital route.
It remains to be seen whether today's generation of buyers care about the nostalgia that the Nokia name evokes or are happy with the Chinese brands that are offering them good devices at competitive prices.
- Check out our curated list of headphones under Rs 2,000 in India
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