Nokia, Siemens, Sony lead in mobile satisfaction: Strategy Analytics

Strategy Analytics' newly released research on western-Europe mobile
handsets market, finds that the chasing pack led by Siemens, Sony Ericsson, and
Samsung have raised the feature, style, performance benchmarks and are narrowing
the satisfaction gap with market leader Nokia.

This Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service report detected major
improvements in end user "Overall Satisfaction" with Siemens and Sony
Ericsson cellphones. Aggressive marketing campaigns by Siemens and Sony Ericsson
with stylish, feature-rich, and reliable phones have boosted overall consumer
satisfaction broadening their brand potential in this region.

Analyst Eddie Tapiero, Author of the report, comments, "Nokia, Siemens,
and Sony Ericsson are the leading vendors overall in terms of user satisfaction.
Motorola's lengthy delay in 2003 in upgrading its European portfolio relative
to its US line up caused the firm to lose ground across all features. Sagem and
Alcatel are relative losers in terms of feature satisfaction. Sagem shows
significant declines in user satisfaction across all features while Alcatel lost
ground in user satisfaction ranking in the display, keypad, and UI areas. Nokia's
best selling tool has been user satisfaction but now, Siemens and Sony Ericsson
are competing at the same level."

David Kerr, VP of the Global Wireless Practice, notes "As the European
market evolves from monochrome to color, from SMS to MMS and from camera phones
to camcorder phones, smaller players have been faster to innovate and have been
nibbling away at Nokia's market share. We are entering a new era fueled by
consumer preference changes and accelerated by operator activities where style
and performance are being prioritized over handset brand. User satisfaction with
mobile features is down as the combination of increased complexity and the so
far unfulfilled promise of multimedia have left users disappointed."

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