Nokia closes Shanghai flagship store

Nokia has shut down yet another store in China - this time it's Shanghai flagship, the world's biggest. This comes after the struggling Finnish phone maker closed up shop in Beijing. The closure was announced on April 1st, prompting speculation that it was an April Fool's joke. Nokia has suffered huge losses as it has failed to keep up with the fierce global competition in the smartphone market.

Downtown in Shanghai's shopping district, people are gathering, not for a new store opening, but for a shutdown.

On April 1st, Nokia's Shanghai Flagship store posted three microblogs on Weibo, the Chinese version of twitter, to say goodbye to Nokia fans. The flagship store was officially closed at the end of last month.

The shutdown of flagship stores is part of a strategy to cut costs and sell Nokia devices through carriers and retail partners.

The Finnish cell phone maker has been outpaced by Apple and Samsung especially in the area of innovation. Its market share has declined at a rapid pace over the past few years, and even fell off the top 10 list of sales in China. Nokia has already closed stores in France, Spain and Finland.

With the closure of the Shanghai flagship store, all after-sale services will be taken over by another smaller Nokia store in Shanghai.

From a paper maker to a cellphone producer, Nokia has made wise decisions in the beginning, but failed to keep up with technology and innovation in the era of the smart phone, no need to mention their picking of a wrong alliance.

A series of non-performing strategies has pushed Nokia out of the elite group of the cellphone industry, from owning half of the world market to only two percent of the cake. Experts say, it's a perfect case study for technology companies to learn from. Nokia is now promoting its latest Lumia series gadgets sporting a windows smartphone system, with a flagship device Lumia 950 on its way.