Fujitsu targeting Europe’s elderly as potential customers
Fujitsu’s strategy team has made its homework
One of the most important rules of the marketing strategies is to find the exact segment of potential buyers of your products. The market is a rough place where only the strong will survive and if a company doesn’t feel like competing against big names in order to win at least a small part of the segment of potential customers they target, there’s another way. That is, of course, finding another segment, or in plain English- to target another market.
Apparently Fujitsu’s strategy team has made its homework, as the phone maker doesn’t plan on competing against the big dogs. Instead, it’s targeting Europe’s elderly for its next market push. Aging smartphone users don’t require fancy high-end devices with the latest hardware and software features; they form a niche market in Europe that can’t be ignored as possible customers. If not now, this is inevitably going to happen soon as today’s phone-savvy generation will eventually enter its golden years. In fact, feature phones won’t be enough and big names like Apple and Samsung won’t be household names anymore.
Thinking in long-term, Fujitsu wants to fortify its position on the market and that’s why its attempts will target exactly the niche market outside of the already overcrowded playing field of young users. Since it’s time for a little history lesson, back in 2012 Fujitsu released its Raku-Raku device for senior citizens in Japan and in fact, the handset received pretty much positive feedback on home ground. Three months ago in September, the Japanese phone maker also unveiled a new model of Raku-Raku that is running heavily modified Android software in order to fit the limited mobility of its older clients.
Of course, the interface features huge fonts and icons as well as the screen requires more deliberate pushes instead of tapping, which makes things easier. Aside from that, Raku-Raku is also Fujitsu’s first attempt outside home ground and last June the phone maker even teamed up with Orange SA (France) in order to bring its smartphone to European customers.
Fujitsu feels optimistic about the new strategy and believes that it will reclaim the loss over the last year when it steps back on the map.
Source: Reuters
