Nokia campaigns sink counterfeits market share

By Prince Osuagwu
Nokia last week revealed that consistent media campaign and other related activities in the Nigerian mobile market has significantly checkmated the spread pf counterfeit mobile phones dropping the market share from 15 percent in July 2010 to 6 percent by July 2011.

Ordinarily, the market share of fake devices in Nigeria was estimated at about 18 to 20 percent, translating to about 4 million phones per year, which is the highest in the world.

What this means is that with the statistics Nokia released, by 2010 it reduced by approximately 5 percent to pitch at 15 percent.

However with more efforts, between one year it has reduced by 9 percent now pitching at a meagre 6 percent.

Head, Nokia Care for West Africa, Mr  Silvin Sinan at a roundtable with ICT journalists recently released the figures and attributed the success to the consistent fight the Nigerian journalists have given the deadly menace.

According to Sinan, the dangers of counterfeit phones not only affect the individuals buying them, it also ravages the economy of the nation and the growth of the mobile market. For instance, since fake devices are not have IMEI codes, it can not also be tracked by operators and so could be easy tool to terrorists. Again, counterfeit devices are not covered by warranty and so would eventually result in poor customer satisfaction.

More damaging effect of the menace is that since they are imported illegally, the import duties and taxes the governments were supposed to recoup from such transactions are diverted and like Nigeria where it had grown to about 20 percent market share, that could also translate to a loss of about 20 percent market share and revenue.

Sinan said that Nokia on its own has also designed strategies to curb the menace, adding that they were also result oriented.

He highlighted activities that Nokia has engaged in recent times to include “Be original Buy Original” campaign and the SMS-warranty check. He explained that the SMS warranty scheme enables buyers to do a check to verify whether the phone they are buying was genuine or not, while the “Be Original Buy Original Campaign” has been launched with above-the-line advertising as well as awareness campaign in trade.

For him, the lure of buying fake phones at cheap prices is no longer attractive as Nokia now has a range of devices that are available at the same affordable prizes but still far more durable with value added services.

He said that buying original devices would give users access to proprietary services on Ovi store, Nokia Life Tools (NTL) internet data package by operators and the 12 month warranty.