According to foreign media reports,Nokia's U.S. subsidiary said it plans to stop selling feature phones and Symbian smartphones in the United States and Canada and push for Windows Phone sales.
"When we launched a Windows Phone, we basically quit services such as Symbian and S40 ."
In an interview with AllThingsD, Chris Weber, president of Nokia's U.S. subsidiary, said the company will also focus on sales through traditional wireless carriers. In the past, Nokia sold its smartphones directly to consumers at full prices because operators were reluctant to heavily subsidize or sell their products. In addition, the company also has a very low profit margin but cheap function mobile phone business.
Nokia said it needed to devote all its efforts to the Windows Phone product launched later this year. Weber said: "When we launched Windows Phone, we basically quit services such as Symbian and S40. Only Windows Phone phones and accessories will be available on the market. In fact, if we fail on Windows Phone, it will not affect the business in other places ".
Weber said that North America is Nokia's preferred market, in part because it is a key market for Microsoft, and because Nokia believes that North America is crucial to its global smartphone competition. "We will develop mobile phones for North America and sell and apply them globally," he said. In fact, our first Windows Phone was developed by our San Diego team ".
Nokia plans its largest ever marketing campaign to focus on rebuilding its business in the United States. "Without understanding the numbers, we know that these activities will be much larger than what we did in the past. This is our biggest marketing investment in any market in the world. They will prove it with facts ".
Earlier this year, T-Mobile began selling Nokia Astound, a Symbian smartphone. Weber confirmed that its sales had been disappointing since Nokia had announced its transfer to Windows Phone. These actions are part of a series of changes Nokia has made since Weber was the highest position in the United States.Like Nokia's chief executive Stephen Elop, Weber is also from Microsoft and his last position at Microsoft is corporate sales director.
Nokia also said that there is no plan to bring its exclusive MeeGo mobile phone Nokia to the United States. The company is moving its sales team to sanneville, California, and plans to merge more businesses in sanneville. These operations are expected to take place early next year.
According to the digital product evaluation website Engadget, Nokia's first and last MeeGo smartphone, Nokia will not log on to the U.S. market in September 23.