February 24, 2011 - 13:12 AMT
ARTICLE
Smartphones gaining popularity among Armenians
Most people choose smartphones based on functionality: for big memory, high-quality photoshooting and WiFi access but they are not particularly interested in software capabilities.
Smartphones flowed into the Armenian market 2 years ago and immediately became popular among the population. Only in 2010, Orange Armenia and VivaCell-MTS sold about 550 and 1000 smartphones respectively.

According to sales consultant of Orange Armenia service center Laura Mkrtchyan, they sell 2 Blackberry, 12 HTC and 15 iPhone smartphones on the average per month. "Over the past 3 months, people even formed queues for iPhone 4," she said.

Mkrtchyan said people prefer iPhone just for the brand, but businessmen prefer HTC and Blackberry in general.

VivaCell-MTS offers both HTC and Nokia smartphones as well as branded smartphone MTS 916. Responsible for sales Arpine Paronyan noted that 60% of all smartphones sold per month are HTC smartphones, and only 40% are Nokias. "When a customer comes to buy a phone, he already knows what he wants," Paronyan noted.

Head of Sales Department at Nokia (official representative in Armenia) Vazgen Bagshetsyan informed that their customers mainly prefer Nokia N and C series.

"Nokia 58.00 was a success, but now Symbian-based C7 and N8 smartphones are the bestsellers. Nokia sells about 100 N8 smartphone a month,” he said. In his opinion people choose a smartphone based on the functionality: for big memory, high-quality photoshooting and WiFi access but they are not particularly interested in software capabilities.

According to Laura Mkrtchyan (Orange Armenia), iPhone 3 is popular among girls because of its design: "Choosing a smartphone, people generally want a high quality photoshooting, touchscreen and to WiFi access,” she said.

CEO of Unicomp company Armen Baldryan said that sales increased with the release new models of HTC smartphones: "We are selling about 50 HTC smartphones per month. Our clients mostly prefer smartphones running on Android operating system. Basically, buyers want to have a phone with big screen, and high quality photoshooting," another company representative noted.

Lusine Paravyan / PanARMENIAN News