Marketing plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Marketing plan - Essay Example The Nokia Company and products focus on providing an up-to-date and affordable mobile experience to people globally. With the rapidly increasing smart phone market, this company faces a challenge to accomplish better quality, superior and innovative mobile devices in a highly dynamic market. According to the Q1 Interim Report on Nokia, "Net sales for the devices and services got decreased 25% quarter-on-quarter to EUR 2.9 billion†. Also, the volume for the mobile phones decreased 30% quarter-on-quarter to 55.8 million units, which is higher than the estimated value by mobile phones". Hence, observing just the beginning quarter of 2013, it can be analyzed that Nokia, the once top seller in the mobile market has fallen badly. The factor responsible for this downfall is the poor and inert marketing strategy of the company. The company and its leaders failed to understand that the mobile market is one of the fastest growing in the world and when it had the largest share in the mark et, the company stopped innovation. Moreover, the company somehow managed to overlook the competition from Apple and Samsung and when the rivals were introducing astounding new products, Nokia continued doing what it was doing and did not introduce something as fresh as the others. The current issue in hand for the company is in the booming smart phone business. The strategy of market flooding has no clear picture and confusion exists. The company needs to comprehend and address the problem to deal with Nokia Lumia phones marketing and implement a smart plan to extend this line of products. The distribution of Nokia phones is done globally at outlets which are Nokia concept stores as well as multi-brand stores. It is significant to note that Nokia has stayed on the top as the largest global vendor of mobile phones from 1998 to 2012(BBC News, 2012). During recent years, Nokia has been a successful seller of low and medium end mobile phones. However, at the moment the smart phone is t he leading and commonly used mobile device and the company could not keep pace with that technology. The decline has been stunning. The stock traded at over $40 per share in 2007. It has now fallen to under $2 (Ogg, 2012). It once had a market share of over 30% and now it has less than 4% (Calkins, 2013). The market share fell as a consequence of the speedy use of touch screen smart phones from competitor companies. Since that downfall, Nokia tried to recover through the Microsoft partnership in 2011, changing the operating system of the its' smart phones from Symbian to Windows but sales of the Nokia smart phones dived extensively (Dediu, 2013). Nokia launched its first full fledge touch screen smart phone Nokia 5800 followed by N97 in 2009. The phones did not compete well in the smart phone market. The latest range of Nokia products are the phones from the Nokia Lumia series. On the market currently, are the Lumia 925, the  Lumia 920, the  Lumia 820, the  Lumia 720, the  L umia 620  and the  Lumia 520 and the  Lumia 1020. The dominant company is on its road to failure because of major competition by Samsung, Blackberry and Apple. Even though it has so many products from the Lumia series, Nokia is still facing major competition from principally the iPhone and devices running on Android. Users still have not seen anything as remarkable from Nokia as the Samsung Galaxy S3 or the iPhone 5. The iPhone has taken over the market due to its

Quality improvement and evolution over the last 10 years in United Essay

Quality improvement and evolution over the last 10 years in United Arab Emirates - Essay Example In addition, suppliers have also recognized that quality acts as a differentiating factor between what they offer and what their competitors offer (Knowles, 2012). In the last ten years, the quality differentiator in the UAE has reduced greatly between competing services and products with the maturation of Quality Management. Organizations in the UAE, as well as other countries in the Middle East, have raised their quality standards through various initiatives to meet customer demands and international standards. Three of the most widely used Quality Management tools include the ISO 9000 series, the Six Sigma, and the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, especially for organizations with American business connections like Sheikh Khalifa Medical City. By the, late 1990s, Quality Management had become a mainstay in most organizations and those in the UAE were not an exception. With the beginning of the 21st century, there was a maturity of the quality movement in the UAE, whic h saw evolution of new systems of quality beyond the foundations laid by early Oriental practitioners like Japan. One example of this maturation was the revision of the ISO 9000 series of international standards that increased client satisfaction emphasis (Knowles, 2012). The ISO 9001:2000 was integrated by UAE organizations to replace the earlier ISO 9003, ISO 9002, and ISO 9001. This version sought to centralize the process management process, while demanding the involvement of executive management in the integration of business systems quality. It also sought to ensure that quality functions were not delegated to junior managers. Performance-metrics was another goal of the improvement. Another improvement was made in 2008 with ISO 9001:2008, which clarified the requirements that were in existence (Knowles, 2012). The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence has also matured in the UAE for organizations that run in partnership or are owned by US. This quality standard serves v arious purposes; including aiding organizations in assessing efforts ate quality improvement and identification of improvement opportunities, facilitating information sharing and communication, and as a tool for performance and quality management (Knowles, 2012). The standard’s integrated approach seeks to ensure that organizations deliver improving stakeholder and customer value, as well as improved capabilities and effectiveness of the organization. This quality standard added healthcare to original organization categories in 2005. Finally, the Six Sigma methodology is a quality standard whose main aim is to reduce defects and improve the bottom line. It uses data to achieve quality that is near-perfect and has evolved greatly in the last 20 years. In the last 10 years alone, it has matured to include consultancy, training, and implementation of the tool as a methodology, a metric, and a management system (Knowles, 2012). These quality initiative movements have had various successes with regards to their effectiveness. They allow organizations to strengthen their position competitively, while also offering the organizations adaptability to conditions in changing markets and regulations by the government, especially in the UAE where q number of organizations are foreign-owned. In addition, on top of increasing organizational productivity, they enhance the image of those that use them in the public eye,