Cultures and Mobile Handsets

Each culture is different, something that works in one continent might not work in another, at times what works in one country might not work in the neighboring country. One such thing that has an association with culture and countries are the mobile hand sets. Out of the countries that I had traveled to I had seen different hand sets being considered fashionable in there, but totally out of sync with the other country/ies.

Indonesia - The blackberry paradise
It's a land of blackberry and apparently outside of North America its the biggest market for RIM. You would find all the youngsters carrying one. Playing to the gallery, the operators there have the blackberry services as a prepaid daily service, which means you can opt in for a day as an when you want. So youngsters when they have money opt in and enjoy it for a day! Chat and facebook on blackberry have cult like following there.

Singapore - The apple garden
If you get into any public transport and look around you would see more iPhones than the number of men travelling in it. Anyone who has another model might feel a bit inferior to pull out some other device and flaunt it. Its obviously one of the most up market cities of Asia and it does live upto the reputation of being techie and chic. People take it by choice as part of operator offered packages and it becomes part of the persons life style.

Africa - The Nokia's home
I was thinking the Nokia domination is gone and symbian OS was something that you would only see in museums until I stepped into Africa. Nokia is still number one in Africa and they are dominant in there. Most popular mobile OS in Africa is Symbian OS!

The biggest threat for them at the moment is actually from Android but funnily its not the Samsung which is threatening it The threat I was told was from a model known as Huawei Ideos, a $200 android phone which I have never heard about in Asia or APAC before or after my African visit.

Sri Lanka - No market leader?!
Do we Sri Lankan's agree on anything? So how can you have a dominant player in the mobile handset market? Nokia used to lead the market, but no longer I guess. Chinese phones, Nokia and an abundance of smart phone variety is the order of the day here!