Nokia denies importing sub-standard products into Nigeria

Global mobile phone maker, Nokia has debunked claims that it manufactured and imported inferior products into the Nigerian market.

The Managing Director, Nokia Nigeria, Christopher Brown stated this while answering questions from newsmen in a ceremony to unveil Nokia Asha 501 and 210 range which it introduced with the mobile phone network provider, Airtel in Lagos.

He said there was never a time Nokia marked Nigeria out for inferior products, maintaining that it does not make economic sense for Nokia to have different factories for different quality of products targeted at different countries all around the world.

“All the Nokia phones used around the world come from the same factory. It does not make business wise for Nokia to have different facilities for different qualities of products targeted at different parts of the world.

“I can assure you that it is the same quality of Nokia product that people use here in Nigeria that you can find in Europe and America. Moreover, our experience has proven that African markets, especially Nigeria have been viable enough to afford any quality of products that we have,” he added.

Toeing similar line of argument, Vice President, Data and Digital services, Airtel Nigeria, Nitin Anand said, “Nigeria is one of the most important countries of the world as far as technology is concerned. All mobile technologies and applications companies wants to come into the Nigerian market and that says a lot about the Nigeria market,” he says.

He added that, “It is in keeping up with the importance of the Nigerian market that we went into partnership with Nokia to bring the Asha 501 and 210 which are suitable products for the Nigerian market especially the youths.”

Analyzing the Asha 501 device, Airtel Operations and Accounts Manager, Beatrice Olumhense described the new products as  a smart pocket power device for easy mobility. It comes with fashionable different bright deep colour range of blue, red, yellow, pink, white and black embedded with scratch proof properties. It can also swipe and through with inbuilt multi-window browsability.

According to her, the Nokia Asha 210 with about 64MB on-board memory space and 4GB memory card provides relevant social networks, has two smart buttons for social networks and camera.