Flipkart launches Nokia laptops in India

Flipkart will bring Nokia-branded laptops to the Indian market, priced at Rs 59,990, to tap into the growing demand driven by trends like work/study from home.

Walmart-owned Flipkart has announced the launch of the Nokia PureBook X14 laptop, marking the brand's entry into the laptop segment in India that is dominated by giants like HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asus.

With online education and 'work from home' becoming a norm, the demand for laptops has grown significantly.

Flipkart said analysis of millions of customer reviews and a study of the laptop market have revealed a high demand for attributes such as premium picture quality, multi-functionality, ultra-lightweight, and sleek design.

Guided by these insights, Flipkart, along with Nokia, is looking to address the requirements of contemporary laptop users, who often juggle between work and home, it added.

This launch is part of Flipkart's licensee partnership with Nokia. As part of the deal, Flipkart will develop, facilitate the manufacturing and distribution of Nokia products — Nokia Smart TVs, Nokia Media Streamers and the recently launched Nokia laptops.

"Launching the Nokia brand into this new product category is testament to our successful collaboration with Flipkart. We are excited to offer consumers in India a Nokia branded laptop which brings innovation to address a gap in the market, as well as the style, performance and reliability that the Nokia brand is known for," Vipul Mehrotra, Vice President Nokia Brand Partnerships, said.

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The Nokia PureBook X14 comes in a 1.1 kg ultralight and 16.8 mm sleek form-factor, and features a 14-inch full HD screen. Powered by Dolby Vision and Intel i5 10th Gen quad-core processor, the laptop will be available to pre-order from December 18.

"As consumers continue to stay indoors and design their work from home lifestyles, their needs when it comes to high-end value electronics have taken centre focus...We are pleased to deepen our collaboration with Nokia in our shared goal of providing for the needs of Indian consumers," Dev Iyer, Vice President Private Brands at Flipkart, said.

According to research firm IDC, the India PC market, inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, grew 9.2 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) in July-September 2020 quarter with 3.4 million units shipped as the demand for e-learning and remote working remained strong.

This resulted in the third quarter of 2020 being the biggest quarter in the last seven years in India for the PC segment. The consumer segment recorded its biggest quarter ever with two million shipments, growing 41.7 percent y-o-y.

New entrants like Xiaomi and Avita were able to leverage this opportunity, but remained outside of the top five companies in the consumer segment, IDC had noted.

HP led the overall tally (consumer and enterprise segments) with 28.2 percent market share in September 2020 quarter, followed by Lenovo (21.7 percent), Dell Technologies (21.3 percent), Acer (9.5 percent) and Asus (7.5 percent).