Introducing Nokia Listings beta – Connecting buyers and sellers in emerging markets

For many people in emerging markets accessing information to secure a job or locate goods and services in their local area is a difficult task. Nokia Listings (now in beta) has been developed for the purpose of making this process of connecting buyers and sellers (or employers and job seekers) as simple as possible.

It is a well-known fact that the majority (60%+) of the hiring and consumer-to-consumer transactions, like apartment rentals, in emerging markets currently occur via word-of-mouth or through middlemen who charge a hefty commission for their services. Our goal is to bring the benefits of a digital marketplace to users of basic mobile phones (Series 40) without GPRS connections. The application therefore is fully functional on both SMS and GPRS.

Nokia Listings is designed for three major categories of listings:

1. Buy & Sell – Find or post items for sale
2. Jobs – Find or post a job
3. Local Services – Access or advertise services such as auto repairs, driver services, plumbers, etc.

Additionally, there's no explicit registration needed, listings are geo-coded so that the user is able to find the services nearest to his/her place, and users have the ability to call or SMS the other party through the application and forward listings via SMS to their friends.

During this beta trial, the service is only available to users in India. We are currently testing a limited content set and will be expanding across India in the near future. While the app will work on all Nokia devices that support Java, we’ve optimized the application for Series 40 phones.