NOKIA CLOSING STORES

On April 1, Nokia announced it's closing its flagship Nokia store in Shanghai, and this was no April Fools' joke. It’s the latest in a series of shutdowns of the phone-maker’s failing retail storefronts. The Shanghai store was its largest remaining shop.
Unfortunately for Nokia, not many people really noticed or cared that the shop is closing. The Nokia Flagship Store SH account on Sina Weibo has had only 938 reposts of its “Goodbye Shanghai” post in the past three days. Trending Weibo posts generally get tens of thousands of interactions. However, the account only had 4,251 fans.
The Nokia Shanghai store opened in 2007, one of about 10 worldwide. At that time, Nokia was still China’s top phone-maker with its Symbian platform. Then Android and iOS happened. While Symbian still has a surprisingly large user base in China, all the traction is behind Android. There will be an estimated 300 million active Android users in China by the end of this year.
In contrast, Nokia’s stats for 2012 were disastrous in China, with sales down 79% throughout the year. Now Nokia is pinning its hopes on the Windows Phone OS, but it’s growing slowly. Apple has three major stores in Shanghai and has rapidly expanded to eight Apple Stores in four cities across mainland China.
Nokia’s flagship store on London’s Regent’s Street closed in 2009.