No loyalty from most Nokia customers

Changing consumer tastes are swiftly altering the mobile phone market. The Life looks into which manufacturers are projected to have the most popular brands.

Few Nokia users in the region plan to buy the same brand. Bloomberg News

Q&A: Dan Healy, the chief executive of Real Opinions, talks about what business professionals want for their mobile phones.

Last Updated: June 21, 2011

Your research shows 95 per cent of smartphone owners from the Middle East have at least one app. Which are the most popular? One of the main categories was apps that facilitate communication and provide something to help them in their day-to-day lives … Some of the most popular apps being purchased internationally … are entertainment-focused.

Four in 10 smartphone users are professionals or senior managers. As a business traveller, what are your favourite kinds of apps? I love the ones that locate where you are and then provide recommendations on what points of interest to look at … That gets into a new area, which includes augmented reality.

What else of interest to business professionals is coming? Some of these face-recognition apps, whereby you literally scan someone's face and it tells you their Facebook profile, Twitter profile and other information they can allow to be made accessible.

Middle East residents are demanding more from their smartphones, which does not appear to bode well for Nokia, the leader in mobile phones.

According to a new survey conducted by Real Opinions, a market research company in Dubai, while 43 per cent of respondents said they currently used a Nokia model, only 12 per cent planned to buy the same brand when purchasing a new phone.

Fifty-seven per cent of respondents to the survey, conducted in the Middle East and North Africa, said they were considering Apple's iPhone, although fewer than a third owned that phone at the time of the survey.

The results "show a relatively short lifespan of handsets, and the current willingness for people to not be phone-loyal to a particular handset," said Dan Healy, the chief executive of Real Opinions.

A similar trend is also taking shape globally. By the end of the year, Google's Android operating system is projected to oust Nokia's offering, Symbian, as the world's most popular software on handsets, according to the market research firm Gartner. That means consumers can expect to see a lot more devices in the region from phone makers that have partnered Google. New models are already reaching the market.

Sony Ericsson recently announced its new Xperia mini and Xperia mini pro models would be released in the Middle East during the third quarter. Both devices include cameras enabled with video recording, as well as improved features for listening to music. The "zappin" key can be pressed to preview the chorus of the next track in a song list, while a karaoke function lowers the volume instantly so aspiring singers can practise their favourite tunes.

Top 5: Mobile operating systems by market share

1 Nokia's Symbian: 37.6 per cent

2 Google's Android: 22.7 per cent

3 Research In Motion: 16 per cent

4 Apple's iOS: 15.7 per cent

5 Microsoft Windows Phone: 4.2 per cent

Source: Gartner

Each mobile will also access over 150,000 apps on Google's Android Market, as will Samsung's Galaxy Pro smartphone, which is aimed more at business professionals and started selling in the GCC this year for Dh999.

The Quote: There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, when the iPhone was first released