Jun
13

Campaign against the Counterfeits: Nokia’s fight.

According to Shop Mag, 28billion pounds are lost annually to counterfeit products.

According to Daily Finance, the worst affected industries are footwear with a value of 99.8million USD followed by Consumer Electronics coming in at 31.8million USD value.

Many of these electronics are Television sets, radios and sound systems and even the prestigious home theatres that are coveted by many who are out looking for a good appliance to use in their homes.

The other biggest culprit is mobile phones.

The Kenyan government has been losing KES3bilion every year due to evasion of tax by bringin in counterfeits to the country. Additionally, counterfeits cost giant phone maker and distributor Nokia-Kenya USD 361million in their last financial year.

In this light, reports have come out that shed light on this situation. The influx on say fake Nokia Mobile phones into the Kenyan market has resulted in adverse effects and most of them fall in a domino model. The money lost through tax evasion has to be recovered somehow and this normally results in loss of jobs in industries, lowered and unprofitable operator profits, customer dissatisfaction and many dangerous and numerous health risks associated with using fake Nokia phones.

To try and curb this, Nokia-Kenya has taken some steps to ensure that the number of counterfeit Nokia mobile phones is greatly reduced. Some of these steps are like the training of Kenya Bureau of Standards and the Anti-Counterfeit Agency officials to sensitize them on the importance of being able to stop the real from the ‘not’.

To help identify if the Nokia phone you are purchasing is an original, there are a few key things to note.

The battery should have a hologram Nokia logo on it.
Typing *#06# on the dialing pad should reveal a unique serial number (IMEI) consisting of 15 characters which should be identical to the IMEI number found underneath the phone’s battery.

A few other useful codes are as follows:

*#0000# – Find phone and software version information
*#06# – Find your phone’s IMEI number (also on the product label inside the phone’s battery casing)
*#2820# – Find your phone’s Bluetooth address
*#62209526# – Find your phone’s MAC address (WLAN)
*#99# – GPRS dial-up code

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