The FINANCIAL — Georgian mobile phone importers are reporting the title of Best Selling Mobile Phone in Tbilisi. Samsung and Nokia brands are at the top of the list of best sellers.
According to the small mobile phone shops situated on Rustaveli Avenue and located in the central trading centres: Kidobani, Megaline and GTC, the best selling brand is Nokia and the best selling models are: the Nokia N 70, Nokia 5070, Nokia N 95, Nokia N 93, Sony Eriksson K 770, and Samsung U 700.
“The best selling models don’t necessarily equate to the most popular or expensive ones. A low price is more accessible for most Georgian clients which therefore makes certain cheaper phones best sellers. The Nokia N 70 costs GEL 575 and the Nokia 5070 – GEL 220. It is a strange but quite common trend that young people mostly buy expensive models. For example the Nokia N 95, which costs GEL 1 300 and the Nokia N 93 – costing GEL 1 100, are popular among younger people,” Irakli Phakadze, owner of a shop in the Kidobani trading centre declared to The FINANCIAL.
According to Elit Electronics and Elitel, the leader shops of mobile phones and home appliances, the leading brand among mobile phones is Samsung.
According to Elene Tsintsabadze, Sales Manager of Elit Electronics and Elitel, the models represented in the shops’ net are the most in demand mobile phones among Georgian customers.
“The company is always conducting market researches and new models are only imported after careful observations. The clients’ age range varies from 15 – 40 years. The prices of mobile phones are acceptable for all segments. The cheapest phone is the Nokia 1200, at GEL 92 (USD 50) and the most expensive are Vertu models, which tend to cost around GEL 12 000,” Tsintsabadze declared to The FINANCIAL.
“Vertu’s high costs are due to the diamonds which decorate the brand’s models. Vertu’s technical characteristics satisfy second generation mobile phone standards. It was extraordinary for the company that these models showed such good sales index despite their price. So in Tbilisi Vertu does have its customers,” Tsintsabadze added.
According to the small mobile shops possessors and sellers, they are oriented on the sales indexes of the product and import those models which are suited to the customers’ interests.
“Importing famous and extremely expensive brands such as: Vertu, D&G and Motorola, and the Lamborghini 8800 Sirocco from Nokia are not profitable for these types of shops, as these phones do not have great sales indexes. Such phones can be compared to the brand Ferrari. Everyone knows that Ferrari is an excellent car but to open an auto shop with this brand would not be profitable for any company, as in such a case maybe just one automobile would be sold in a whole year’s duration,” Irakli Phakadze, owner of a shop in Kidobani told The FINANCIAL.
“Besides Vertu’s monopoly, the world market is represented by several new luxury mobile makers, including Gresso, Mobiado and GoldVish. Other mobile phone manufacturers are also partnering with luxury brands to produce a range of premium mobile phones, such as LG and Prada, D&G and Motorola, and now Tag Heuer and Modelabs. Finally, there are the ridiculous, super-expensive ones, made purely for aesthetics. Georgian importers don’t import such models.
According to Vertu’s global site, Vertu is a division of Nokia, manufacturing uber-premium phones. With prices starting at around USD 4,000 Vertu phones are only for the filthy rich and super famous. Nokia has other additional luxury models: the Gold Edition Nokia 8800 Phone and Lamborghini 8800 Sirocco from Nokia.
Only 200 Lamborghini 8800 Sirocco from Nokia phones are being made and each one has a limited number engraved on the back. The Lamborghini Nokia 8800 Sirocco is another special edition, like the previously launched Aston Martin branded Sirocco. It will ultimately be a standard 8800 Sirocco but with the addition of the famous Lamborghini logo engraved on the front and back, plus ball bearings from the auto company for the slider phone mechanism. The Lamborghini phone will be a limited edition with only 500 being made in total. It will also feature Lamborghini graphics as wallpapers, screensavers, ring tones, and even have a short documentary video about the Lamborghini.
The Gold Edition Nokia 8800 Phone is worth USD 2,700. The features found on the Gold Edition are standard 8800 features, which are pretty basic. These include a 0.5 Mega pixel SVGA camera, 64 MB of internal memory, 64 voice polyphonic ring tones, an FM Radio, Mp3 Player, video recording and 180 minutes talk time.
The technical characteristics of Georgian top selling phones are as follows:
The Nokia N70 (Model N70-1) is one of the handsets in Nokia’s NSeries lineup of smart phones. It is equipped with a 2 megapixel camera with built-in flash, a front VGA camera to allow video calling, FM radio, Bluetooth, digital music player functionality, and support for 3D Symbian, Java games and other S60 release 2 Symbian software. The Nokia N70 costs GEL 575.
The Nokia N95 is the flagship smartphone produced by Nokia. It is part of the company’s Nseries line of smartphones. The N95 is equipped with a 5 megapixel camera. The phone uses a two-way slider to access either media playback buttons or a keypad. The N95 is a full fledged music player. It supports MP3, WMA, RealAudio, SP-MIDI, AAC+, eAAC+, MIDI, AMR, M4A and True Tones.
The Nokia N95 costs GEL 1 300.
The Nokia N93 is a smartphone by Nokia specially designed for multimedia use. The N93 has improved camera capabilities compared with the earlier N90. The phone has a 3.2 megapixel camera, Carl Zeiss optics and 3x optical zoom as well as a 30 fps VGA-resolution MPEG-4 video recording capability. It was the most advanced camera phone from Nokia at the time of its release. The Nokia N93 costs GEL 1 100.
The Nokia 5070 has a vibrant design, FM stereo radio, web browser, a wide selection of downloadable MIDI and MP3 ring tones, and a VGA camera. The Nokia 5070 costs GEL 220.
The Sony Ericsson K 770 is equipped with the following items: Photo Camera: 3.2 MP, Auto focus, internal Memory 16 MB, Memory Card Slot Memory Stick Micro (M2), Card Included 256 MB, Java MIDP 2.0, FM-Radio RDS, Media Player MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player, and Games. The Sony Ericsson K 770 costs GEL 670.
The Samsung U 700 is characterised by the following data: Polyphonic melodies MP3, Number of polyphonic tones: 64, Vibrator, Body type: Slider. Entertainment: MPEG4/H.263/Real video player, Java MIDP 2.0, Media Player MP3/AAC/eACC/WMA player, Games, Secondary video call camera VGA, Photo Camera: 3.2 MP, Autofocus, Video. Mobile internet: E-Mail client, WAP 2.0 HTML Browser xHTML, HTML (NetFront 3.4), EDGE, GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps. Memory: Internal Memory 40 MB, Memory Card Slot microSD.
“The top selling mobile phone models are those with prices ranging from GEL 200 up to 750,” Irakli Phakadze declared.
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