Newsflash: Nokia N1 A Sellout In China!
Nokia may just be able to bill itself as the current day Phoenix, if it keeps selling its N1 tablet everywhere
Like many others, Chip-Monks too, was caught unawares by the “new” Nokia. And pleasantly surprised.
When Microsoft announced its acquisition of Nokia’s mobile business, the finer points were lost on the majority — almost all of whom assumed that Nokia had bitten the dust.
And the ensuing silence from Nokia was so resounding that most of us even forgot to keep an eye on them.
Well they’re back. And we love what they’ve done. Allow us to explain.
The “new” Nokia is a far cry from the “old” Nokia.
- The world’s largest manufacturer of phones, no longer makes devices. Instead it gets them made. A la Apple, Nokia now designs the device and its surrounding experience and then passes it to a specialist to create and manage the device. In this case, Foxconn. Read all about that in our earlier article: Nokia Licensing Its Brand To Foxconn To Manufacture N1 Tablet.
- Nokia now makes Tablets. A product line it never cared much earlier. It just launched the Nokia N1.
Since the Finnish company is restricted from producing mobile phones till 2016, per their deal with Microsoft, they chose the next hottest consumer product on the planet. - Nokia practically put Symbian on the map, at one stage riding exclusively on that platform. And then Windows Mobile happened.
Gone are the days. In with the new. The Nokia N1 runs on a custom-built “Z Launcher” that sits on top of an Android platform. - Market: Contrary to earlier protocol, Nokia decided to land in China first, to attract the massive customer base there. European, Asian and American markets are planned as subsequent releases.
- Once the king of brick-and-mortal based retail supply, the “new” Nokia imitated the Online-only, sales strategy of Xiaomi — a flash-sale-only marketing approach, coupled with limited stock.
If online reports are to be believed, the Nokia N1 tablet when tested using unofficial industry-standard AnTuTu and GFXBench tests, actually fared better than the iPad Mini 3 — especially in the CPU efficiency and Image processing tests!
And it all seems to have worked. The sudden switch of Nokia from Windows smartphones to Android tablets, from awaiting customers to having them queue up, it all seems to have yielded phenomenal results in the market.
From the day the tablet first hit the huge Chinese market via online stores , the device has consistently been marked as “out of stock”. The first batch of 20,000 units was launched on January 7 in China, and it sold out in just four minutes and two seconds! The second lot went on sale a week later, with 32,000 units — lasting a little longer for about eight minutes.
Subsequently, the third and fourth weekly batches too sold out pretty quickly.
The Nokia N1 tablet is valued at 1599 Chinese Yuan (around INR 17,000), which is a fairly modest price-tag given the specs that the N1 boasts of. Read more about them here.
This accounts for the high demand in the market as the tablet offers very impressive features at a humble price.
The unexpectedly great market response has left the developers dumbstruck and the limited stock has compelled them to plan the next sale one whole month later, to allow for the supply chain to catch up.
Having tasted huge success and remarkable sellouts in the Chinese markets, Nokia is now setting its sights on the burgeoning customer base in India and then the European markets (that have generally been kind to its homegrown celebrity).
Well, Chip-Monks for one is tremendously happy to see this happy turn of events for Nokia, to see the brave “new” Nokia make such a splash. Now we wait for them to land here!
Originally published at Chip-Monks.
