What can we learn… from mobile
‘What Can We Learn…’ is the regular column that revisits some of the more interesting retail stories covered over the past 30 years by Glynn Davis for a variety of publications.
This period covers many seismic structural changes in the industry including the emergence of the internet. Alongside the actual stories Glynn will be adding commentary around each of the pieces that will seek to put the articles into context with today’s landscape.
Subscribe to TRBWhat can we learn from mobile
Much has changed in the world of mobile phones, the way they are sold, and the world in general since my article 20 years ago when I visited the new flagship store of world-leading brand of the day Nokia.
Around this time there was a massive amount of investment by retailers from around the globe into Russia, and most notably the capital Moscow, where I took a tour around the Nokia unit that was the first in a planned global roll-out of 18 such stores showcasing an increasingly large range of handsets.
At the time Finland-based Nokia was the world-leader in handsets by some distance although this was not to last much longer because exactly one year later in June 2007 the ground-breaking iPhone was launched and mobile phones were changed forever. Nokia along with other brands like Blackberry and Motorola went into a sharp spiral of decline and ultimate oblivion.
With its physical stores – as typified by the Moscow unit – Nokia was setting the pace for store design and in my article this new outlet was pioneering the policy of having accessible handsets on display that customers can actually use. Apple and many others followed this move and it went on to become common practice across the sector. The Moscow store also used digital screens to great effect, again highlighting the way forward for other brands.
When you look at the stores of Apple today, as well as Samsung and EE, there are definite similarities to that Russia-based store. But it wasn’t to last – for both Russian retail and for Nokia and its stores and handsets.
The company went on to close all its retail stores. But it has not been alone in such action because the landscape of bricks and mortar phone shops has changed dramatically over the years. The numbers of such stores in the UK went on to reach a peak of 10,000 in 2017, according to the Local Data Company, as both independents and network-owned stores proliferated, but they then fell back to around 6,000 in 2023.
The high streets almost became clogged up with them. My recollections of London’s Oxford Street are of certain crossroads having a phone store on all four corners. These included the likes of Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U, which have both since gone out of business. But despite the failures and consolidation mobile phone stores still play a very important role on high streets across the UK.
They are now regarded as much more about the experience where customers can gain knowledge of their phones and the services they provide. Such is the complexity and capabilities of handsets and mobile devices today that getting hands-on is now a vital part of the customer journey in this category.
Although so much has changed since Nokia opened up its first Russian store to great fanfare on the Moscow equivalent of Oxford Street this flagship outlet did set something of a brief benchmark for what physical mobile phone shops could be. This has very much been embraced over the years and so in many shops across the UK and beyond we see elements of that unit from 2006. Sadly the Nokia handset went the way of foldable phones…but hold on a minute aren’t they making something of a comeback.
