Call phone firms target women

By Christiani S.A. Tumelap

JAKARTA (JP): Mobile phone producers are coming up with more fun, attractive and dazzling handsets to suit the tastes of affluent young men and women who are becoming one of their most important market segments.

General manager of Nokia Mobile Phones Indonesia Alexander Lambeek said Nokia had seen a broadening of its market segments, from the traditional business segment to young people and women.

"The market is becoming more segmented ... Youth and women play a very important role now," he told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Susanto Sosilo, director of Ericsson Indonesia, predicted that 56 percent of mobile phone subscribers nationwide were young people below the age of 30 who were fashion-driven customers.

"Hence there is a trend to 'wear' mobile phones as accessories. This is the trend we are riding on to penetrate the market," he said at the launch of the strikingly-colored Ericsson T10s in August.

He said Ericsson had seen a dramatic change in people's views on mobile phones; from an expensive device for business executives into an affordable communications device for everyone.

"This change has lead us to having a much wider range of consumers, from students and housewives to business executives." he told the Post.

The shift in the market has been perfectly anticipated by Nokia and Ericsson which have introduced new models to suit young people's taste in design and style.

Lambeek said Nokia found no difficulty in meeting the changes in customers' demands as the company have always 'provided different phones for different people'.

Nokia's pitching to the young generation was clearly seen in its promotional collaboration with MTV-ANteve and Hard Rock FM, a television and a radio channel closely associated with the youth market, in a cover design contest for the latest Nokia 3210.

The Nokia 3210 offers the freedom to replace both the front and back covers of the handset in seconds, with six optional colored covers to match the users' mood or clothes.

Yet, it is still a high-end product with a convenient built-in antenna and dictionary and picture massaging.

Nokia's earlier model, the 5110, remains the hottest item in the Jakarta market after being launched mid-last year, mainly due to its 'funky' design and changeable front cover.

The Sweden-based Ericsson started its promoting to women when it launched the elegant T18 during a fashion show at Plaza Indonesia in May. No less than 30,000 units of the T18s were sold within two months of the stylish launch event.

Ericsson is eying the youth market with its strikingly colorful T10s. It has launched a series of promotions at colleges here with the campaign slogan "I like freshmen", to bring a closer association between the college generation and the handset.

Coming in five bright colors, and with numerous additional features such as a vibrator alert, the dual band T10 is aimed at the fashion-conscious.

Nokia's Lambeek said Indonesia was a lucrative and promising market for mobile phone sales despite the prolonged economic crisis.

"We are very optimistic about the future of our operation here given the fact that the level of mobile phone penetration in Indonesia is still very low, only 0.7 percent for a country with total population of 201 million," he said.

Nokia plans to launch three more of its colorful and stylish models, the 8850, 7110 and 8210, in the Indonesian market at the end of the year. It launched the Nokia 9110 Communicator in April, a high-tech and computer compatible handset designed for business executives, and the youth-aimed Nokia 3210 in August.

The Nokia 8210 was already launched in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Taiwan early in October through specially choreographed fashion shows.

Ericsson's Susanto said Ericsson has had better market penetration in 1999 than in 1998 in terms of value. This growth was attributed partly to the fact that mobile phone buyers had kept on buying the newest models in the market despite the financial pressures of the economic crisis.

1999 has been one of the busiest for Ericsson in Indonesia as it has launched six models so far and plans to launch one more before the end of the year, he said.

Ericsson launched the GF768 in January, the I888 in April, the T18 and the A1018 in July, the T10 in August and the T28 in September. Of these handsets, the I888 is the only handset which is designed for business people with a simple design and technology-driven features.

Ericsson will launch the R250, a rugged hand phone designed for field use, before the end of the year.

Susanto said the company's cellular phone sales this year could exceed last year's 100,000 units, a forecast which was based on the government's prediction that mobile phone users would increase to 1.5 million in 1999, from 984,000 last year.