Nokia Upgrades Life Tools, Targets Feature Phone Users in Indonesia

Mobile phone vendor Nokia has just launched its newest service for the Indonesian market, Health info for Nokia Life Tools. The content complements previous Nokia Life Tools services, including agriculture, education, and entertainment information.

The goal for Nokia Life Tools is to provide information to mobile users who are not able to access news from a mobile web browser.

Specifically for feature phone users, this health information service provides health tips related to pregnancy, sport, and children at only USD 12 cents per day. The service can also be personalized according to a user’s age with health information provided by Parents’ Guide and Faculty of Medicine of Gadjah Mada University.

Nokia Life Tools is readily available on several types of Nokia phones, including the Nokia 1616, Nokia 1800, Nokia C3 and Nokia X2 and many more. The service is especially popular in developing countries like Indonesia, India, China, and Nigeria as it allows users to access information via texts, without any Internet connection. The telecommunication operators that support this service in Indonesia are Telkomsel, Indosat, XL, and Axis.

Feature phones still a huge market

While most mobile-related companies focus on native applications, mobile optimized websites, and the rising trend in 3G and 4G data usage, Nokia targeted Indonesian feature phone users. It is a good initiative to help spread critical information across the country, skipping the need for users to log on to the Internet. I particularly like how Nokia Life Tools’s “Agriculture feature” provides information such as weather and prices on fertilizers and pesticides for farmers:

We last wrote about Nokia’s goal to connect the next billion consumers, namely the feature phone and non-mobile Internet users. Things are looking great for smartphones but there is still a sizable audience for Nokia to capture: Out of the 3.7 billion people who own a mobile device, fewer than half use it to access the Internet. There are also 3.2 billion people who do not own a mobile device.

During last week’s Global Mobile Internet Conference Steven Goh, CEO and founder of Mig33 said, “The number one phone in the world is not the iPhone. It’s the Nokia N70.” Marks of Nokia’s past glories are still visible in this low-end sector, despite what all the iHeadlines tell you.