Sales dud: India doesn’t have the hots for Lumia 920 and 820

Amidst much noise and expectations, Nokia launched its Windows Phone 8 running Lumia smartphones – Lumia 920 and 820 – in India earlier this year. Currently, the Nokia Lumia 920 is officially available for Rs 38,262, while the Lumia 820 is available for Rs 23,969.

Given the popularity of the brand in India, we spoke to a variety of retailers who gave us the lowdown on how well these two Lumias have been doing in the market. Read on to find out.

One grey market retailer told us that the two Lumias were not performing very well in terms of sales. When prodded, he said that in a week they sell an average of 2-3 units of the Lumia 920 and 820 smartphones. It must be noted, however, that the seller said users preferred Android-running smartphones to their Windows Phone counterparts. 

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The Lumia 920 has a great set of features

In contrast, another grey market source told us that sales have been decent in the past week. In that period, they have managed to sell eight units of the Lumia 820 and five pieces of the 920. Between the two, people prefered the Lumia 820 thanks to its lower price. We were also informed that the sales have dropped after the launch of the Lumia 520 and 620 smartphones.

Trying to gauge the sales performance at official stores, we checked out the multi-brand retailer, The Mobile Store. We were told that the Lumia 920 is fairly popular with the users. The store told us that in the past 10 days, they have sold about 6 units of the Lumia 920. As for the Lumia 820, the store said it was doing “Ok-Ok” in terms of popularity in the market. In the past 10 days they only managed to sell about 3-4 units of the smartphone. 

We then headed to Vijay Sales, another popular retail store chain in the city. You can pick the Lumia 920 for Rs 37,990 here, and we are told that the handset is fairly popular. The Lumia 820 is available here for Rs 23,700. However, we were not given any exact figures about the sales of the two smartphones. Here too, the store said users preferred Android phones. 

Lastly, we stopped by two Nokia Priority stores, the company’s service and official sales outlet. The first one told us they sold five units of the Lumia 920 and a couple of Lumia 820s last month. That makes for a grim reading. 

Alarmingly, the next Nokia Priority outlet told us users have been going for other Nokia phones or passing over the Lumia 820 and 920 because of performance issues. He said that the phones were priced high, and the fact that in the country, users weren’t used to the Windows Phone 8 platform. He also went to mention the fact that WP8 was not considered very user-friendly by customers, in addition to the handsets having battery issues. The store only managed to sell 3-4 units of the Lumia 920 smartphone and 6-7 units of the Lumia 820 in the past month.

The Lumia 820 comes with different coloured shells

Going by the specs alone, we think that the Lumias make for an attractive proposition. What explains the low sales numbers then, you ask? The low popularity of the Windows Phone platform in the country may be one of the reasons behind it. The fact that the OS has not grown big enough to compete with the likes of Android may be another factor. Having said that, the launch of the mid-range Lumia 720, Lumia 620 and the low-end Lumia 520 could rejuvenate Nokia’s fortunes. 

Do you think Nokia can turn things around?