12 Noiembrie 2009
Nikitas Glykas: Romania, on HTCs countries-to-watch list
Although the South-Eastern Europe at large is still below Western region, HTC, one of the largest smartphone makers sees Romania as a country with attractive returns prospects, and ranks it third on the company’s ‘countries-to-watch’ list.
“Romania is an attractive business for us, or we wouldn’t have listed in top 3 ‘countries-to-watch’ together with Turkey and Greece. We expect the smartphone market to grow in the coming year, and that is why we see an opportunity in focusing on these countries”, Nikitas Glykas HTC South-East Europe director told Wall-Street.
Romanian mobile telecom market has remained stable throughout the economic crisis, says Glykas. But compared to the western European countries, where smartphone market is already showing signs of recovery, South-Eastern countries have remained at a lower level.
“The effects of the financial crisis were visible in the first half of the year, but because our products are geared towards medium to high income earners, we haven’t observed a dramatic decline in sales. Romania is still in good shape”, Glykas added.
For the time being, affordable mobile phones, he continued, are probably the best selling handsets in Romania.
“The only thing I can say is that we want to remain overweight in Romania and that we expect a substantial growth in sales next year”, Nikitas Glykas pointed out.
The year 2010 looks brighter than 2009 in terms of mobile phone market and smartphone sales are expected to rise, spurred by the next generation of smartphones that will storm the market. The objective of the mobile-phone maker is to bring its entire HTC phone range in Romania, in order to offer Romanian consumers the possibility to choose the best-fit model.
Thus, Orange, Microsoft and HTC launched last month the Windows phone handsets that use Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system that includes HTC Touch 2 and HTC Touch Pro 2.
Romanian mobile telecom market has remained stable throughout the economic crisis, says Glykas. But compared to the western European countries, where smartphone market is already showing signs of recovery, South-Eastern countries have remained at a lower level.
“The effects of the financial crisis were visible in the first half of the year, but because our products are geared towards medium to high income earners, we haven’t observed a dramatic decline in sales. Romania is still in good shape”, Glykas added.
For the time being, affordable mobile phones, he continued, are probably the best selling handsets in Romania.
“The only thing I can say is that we want to remain overweight in Romania and that we expect a substantial growth in sales next year”, Nikitas Glykas pointed out.
The year 2010 looks brighter than 2009 in terms of mobile phone market and smartphone sales are expected to rise, spurred by the next generation of smartphones that will storm the market. The objective of the mobile-phone maker is to bring its entire HTC phone range in Romania, in order to offer Romanian consumers the possibility to choose the best-fit model.
Thus, Orange, Microsoft and HTC launched last month the Windows phone handsets that use Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system that includes HTC Touch 2 and HTC Touch Pro 2.