Nokia remains top earning in FY11

Finnish mobile handset maker Nokia continues to maintain its leadership with highest revenues of Rs 12 ,929 crore during 2010-11 in the handset market but has registered a meagre 0.2 per cent growth over the previous year, says a survey.

Revenues of the Indian mobile handset market grew by 15 per cent to touch Rs 33,171 crore in 2010-11 from Rs 28,897 crore a year back, according to annual survey by media firm Voice&Data.

The survey included all mobile handset companies doing business in India across categories like feature phones, multimedia phones, enterprise phones and smartphones from both multi-national and Indian mobile phone firms, it said.

Nokia continued to maintain its leadership in the market with revenue of Rs 12,929 crore showing a meagre growth of little over 0.2 per cent as compared to its last year revenue of Rs 12,900 crore.

The analysts at Voice&Data attributed Nokia's loss of market share to lack of dual-SIM phones in its portfolio. For 2010-11, Nokia enjoys a market share of 39 per cent, the survey said.

Nokia's leadership was followed by Samsung with revenues of Rs 5,720 crore with market share of 17.2 per cent.

Voice&Data said that Samsung grew by 21.7 per cent in 2010-11 from Rs 4,700 crore an year ago. The survey attributed Samsung's success to its rich product portfolio on various popular operating systems like Windows and Android.

It also found company's entry level smartphone 'Wave' and 'Galaxy S' witnessing huge successful during the period. For 2010-11, the company's 3G phones contributed 5 per cent of its entire sales, Voice&Data added.

Homegrown handset company Micromax stood at third position in the survey in terms of revenue. The company grew by a whopping 43 per cent during the fiscal to register revenue of Rs 2,289 crore from Rs 1,602 crore a year before, and grabbed a market share of 6.9 per cent.

Despite objection raised by security agencies on its highly encrypted services, the survey found tremendous growth in India business of Canadian firm Research in Motion's brand BlackBerry.

The survey ranked BlackBerry at fourth position. Blackberry garnered revenue of Rs 1,950 in 2010-11, up 61.2 per cent from Rs 1,210 in 2009-10, Voice&Data said.

Its entry level smartphone saw more sales in the fourth quarter than all other three quarters put together. The company grabbed a market share of 5.9 per cent.

The survey saw highest growth in business of Taiwanese handset maker HTC at 99 per cent. HTC's revenue for 2010-11 grew to Rs 450 crore from Rs 226 crore in FY2009-10 and holds 1.4 per cent market share.

Nokia and Accenture Finalize Symbian Deal

Accenture will be taking on 2,800 Nokia employees and will continue Symbian software development and support through 2016.

Nokia and Accenture have finalized the terms of their deal announced last April that will see Accenture take over development and support for Symbian, which for years has been the heart and soul of Nokia’s mobile phone empire. Under the terms of the deal, Accenture will take on about 2,800 Nokia employees from Finland, China, India, the United States, and the United Kingdom—a figure slightly lower than the 3,000 or so employees the companies initially announced. Accenture will also continue developing the Symbian platform and continue to provide support services for Symbian through 2016.

Nokia is, of course, shifting its mobile phone lineup to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, with the first Nokia Windows Phone devices due to hit the market later this year. The Symbian deal with Accenture is expected to close in early October.

“We look forward to partnering with Nokia as they continue to support Symbian and transition to the Windows Phone ecosystem,” said Accenture communications and high tech chief executive Marty Cole, in a statement.”The highly skilled group of technologists and engineers transferring to Accenture will complement our current mobility skills and enhance the breadth, depth and scale of our capabilities, allowing us to meet the growing global demand for mobility services across many industries.”

The deal requires Accenture to continue development of the Symbian platform, and Accenture will become the “preferred supplier” to Nokia on their transition to Windows Phone—Accenture will be working with Avanade, a tech services company that focuses on Microsoft technology and is majority-owned by Accenture, to provide services to Nokia. Accenture also anticipates it will retrain and redeploy some of the employees it onboards from Nokia.

Although Symbian doesn’t have many customers in the North American market, phone makers in Japan and some emerging markets are still building handsets around the platform—Symbian also sees some use in embedded systems. However, Accenture’s primary customer for Symbian services will be Nokia itself as the company shifts from Symbian devices (many aimed at emerging economies) to a product line based entirely on Windows Phone.