Upcoming Lumia 925 should bolster Nokia’s top end but threats in the mid-range could be rising

Two weeks ago, when Nokia featured Lumia 925 as an upcoming device on its India website and also slashed the price of Lumia 920 by almost Rs 5,000, it signaled at least two things.

One, Nokia was more confident of its Windows-based offerings than ever before and hence was able to put a much bigger bet on the Lumia range now. Two, India was more core to its global turnaround strategy than what even the initial internal thinking within Nokia would have suggested (it must be noted that when Nokia announced the device for a select set of countries for Lumia 925, India did not feature in the list).

In a span of just about 18 months, Nokia has made a significant shift forward from its erstwhile sagging Symbian platform, with India being an important part of its revival journey so far. Particularly, the Asha series ofphones, which were pivotal to the transition during a good number of quarters in calendar year 2012, saw a good uptake in India. It however, cannot be overlooked that the Asha series of devices didn’t perform well enough during the first quarter of 2013.

The Asha series of devices broadly cover the price segment ranging from Rs 3,500 to Rs 7,700, from where the Lumia series takes over. The Lumia range retails from just under Rs 8,000 to Rs 32,000 today, served by Lumia 510 at the lower end and Lumia 920 on the upper end.

The void created in the Rs 37,000 bracket, which Lumia 920 earlier addressed, is likely to be filled by Lumia 925, which in fact is being expected to retail at around Rs 39,000.

The upper end of Asha’s price range is where a serious challenge could be lying for Nokia, especially from Android-based devices pushed both by global makers like Samsung and LG as also by homegrown brands like Micromax, Lava and Karbonn. Nokia would need to pay close attention to bolster its presence and value proposition in this price segment in particular.

Samsung, Nokia bring the battle closer to the Rs 5,000 price front

If some recent announcements are any indicators then mobile phone market leaders Samsung and Nokia are gearing up to intensify competition and raise the ante in the price segment of just above Rs 5,000.

Both the companies have announced at least one significant product each in the price category. While Nokia said it would be bringing Asha 501, which the market expects to be priced at around Rs 5,300, Samsung too has said it would be bringing its Galaxy Star model to India soon and the device is likely to be priced at Rs 5,240, as per an NDTV news release.

In fact, this is the first time Nokia would be bringing an Asha series phone with a 3.2 megapixel camera at a sub-Rs 5,500 price. Galaxy Star lags a bit in the imaging department and would be having a 2 megapixel camera. However, Samsung edges ahead of Nokia when it comes to the internal memory. It has 4GB of internal memory while Nokia only has 128MB. Looks like Nokia realized this ahead of announcing the device and decided to include a 4GB card in the box, as if in an anticipated response to Samsung’s Galaxy Star announcement.

Neither of the devices, however, supports 3G but that could also help the makers achieve longer battery lives. In fact, Nokia claims a 2G talk time of up to 17 hours, standby time of 48 days and music playback time of 56 hours.

A large number of other features for both the devices are largely comparable. Most notably, both come with dual SIM slots.

There already has been a play in the price segment just under Rs 6,000. Samsung’s most notable device addressing this segment was Galaxy Y, priced at around Rs 5,900. It too featured a 2MP camera though. Asha 303, which was a Nokia play in the sub-Rs 6,000 price segment, again scored better in terms of camera. Samsung, however, claimed a much longer 2G talk time, of up to 17 hours for certain variants (and that is one thing Nokia has obviously attempted to address with Asha 501.)

After the Talk app shutdown, Google now notifies on Buzz termination date

Google’s product rationalization and consolidation drive continues to be on. Just about ten days after the Hangout application replaced Talk on Google Play, the Internet company has put a formal deadline for Buzz shutdown.

A Google mail today has notified Buzz users, even prompting them to delete their Buzz accounts lest they were fine with losing control of the content they posted on other users’ posts.

“Any comments you made on other users’ posts will only be saved to those users’ files and not to yours. Once the change described in this email is final, only that user will be able to change the sharing settings of those files. This means that if you have commented on another author’s private post, that author could choose to make that post and its comments public. If you would like to avoid that possibility, delete all your Buzz content now,” read the mail after informing users that on or after July 17th, 2013, Google would take the last step in the shutdown of Buzz and would save a copy of their Buzz posts to users’ Google Drive, a service for storing files online.

In October 2011 Google had announced that Google Buzz would be shutting down.

The notification said Google would store two types of files to the Google Drive, and the newly-created files would not count against the storage limits.

“The first type of file will be private, only accessible to you, containing a snapshot of the Google Buzz public and private posts you authored. The second type of file will contain a copy of only your Google Buzz public posts. By default it will be viewable by anyone with the link, and may appear in search results and on your Google Profile (if you’ve linked to your Buzz posts). Note, any existing links to your Google Buzz content will redirect users to this file,” it noted.

“Once the files are created, they will be treated the same as any other Drive file. They are yours to do with as you please. This includes downloading them, updating who can access them, or deleting them,” it added.

However, the notification reiterated, “If you do not want any of your Buzz posts or comments saved to Google Drive files, you can immediately delete your Google Buzz account and data.”