Opinion: what Nokia needs to do to catch up
By James • Jun 11th, 2010 • Category: Industry News, Nokia
- Photo: Nokia
Throughout the nineties to the mid ‘naughties’, Nokia was the undoubted mobile phones leader. The Finnish company had an unassailable lead, dominating virtually every market on the planet. But the Blackberry gathered traction, etching out a space for itself in the smartphone market. And then the iPhone happened in 2007, cementing itself as the most desired mobile phone in the world. And since then, Nokia just hasn’t seemed it’s old self. Below are three things Nokia can do today to turn around its fortunes.
Step one: handset convergence
Apple has only released four iPhones in four years. That’s one phone a year. This ensures that people, when they discuss Apple’s mobile phone, are all talking about the same handset at any given time. In a time gone by, when feature phones were all the rage, releasing a plethora of phones was undeniably the right strategy, but until Nokia can release one killer phone, the company needs to scale back on the volume of smartphones it releases.
The Nokia N8 looks as promising as the incredible yet buggy Nokia N900 looked before its release. One home run could change Nokia smartphone prospects considerably. And this homerun will only happen if the very best talent is all in on one key device. Great hardware with unreliable software like the Nokia N900 isn’t enough. Hardware and software needs to be in step.
Step two: rethink your mobile OS
- Photo: Nokia
Symbian^3 is supposedly a very good platform, and MeeGo has been well received, but therein lies the problem. Well, two problems, to be specific. Firstly Nokia needs to have one mobile OS for its smartphones. Don’t confuse customers. Secondly, very good is not good enough in a world where people are becoming increasingly familiarised with Android, and getting ‘handcuffed’ to iOS through all those app purchases. Nokia need a Windows Phone 7 Series moment – a mobile OS so promising, people have a hard time believing its come out of Finland. And if that is combined with a brilliant Nokia smartphone (see step one), well, you’re in business, so to speak.
Step three: acquire talent aggressively
There’s a talent drain going on over at HP’s recently acquired Palm webOS team. Nokia should be in the thick of things, wooing the very best that company has. Somewhere along the line, Nokia’s brilliant engineers stopped being able to see the forest from the trees. Nokia needs fresh eyes, with fresh design and usability sensibilities. Nobody denies Nokia’s engineers are brilliant, but almost-but-not-quite Nokia smartphone after smartphone may indicate something fresh is needed.
That’s all, for now
The fortunate thing for Nokia is that, based on previous achievements, the company has all the right cogs in the machine: brilliant engineers, marketers, executives and a passionate (though dwindling) fan base. If everyone begins swimming in the right direction, and one special Nokia smartphone (no N900 mistakes) with the right support gets kicked out, the fear the Finnish giant once elicited in competitors might be reignited
Tags for this article: MeeGo, Nokia N8, Nokia N900, smartphone, Symbian^3
Wow, you’ve just given instructions on how Nokia should copy Apple, but won’t you don’t realize is some people think Apple’s model sucks, especially since RIM (makers of Blackberry) sell twice as many units as Apple, and Nokia sells twice as many units as RIM, and has 40% of the smart phone market, compared to Apple’s 10%.
The reason Nokia makes phones running different OSes is that one is essentially a computer OS, and the other is an “app phone” OS, which more directly competes with iPhones. You make the illusion that Nokia could sell more by making only one phone, but what Apple fan boys don’t realize is this is a DUMB idea. Not everyone uses their phones in the same way, and some people have different features they look for. One person might want a Music phone that plays music on the best speakers, with the best interface. Another person might want a messaging phone with a QWERTY keyboard because they use text messaging a lot. Someone else might want a camera phone because they’re constantly taking pictures. Apple tries to do the best job at everything, but until now (well, not yet, but when the iPhone4 is shipped) they’ve had the same 1.3MP camera my old Nokia had 5 years ago! They still don’t have the qwerty keyboard many business users love for email, or kids for TXTing. And none of the iPhones have memory slots for adding more space for music & movies.
My N900 comes with 32Gb of space (built in) PLUS I installed a 32Gb microSDHC card which gives it a total of 64Gb of space for music, movies, podcasts, pictures and documents…. More than ANY other phone on the market! It’s 5Mp camera takes absolutely stunning pictures with dual LED flash, and great videos. My web browser is based on Firefox (and I can install Firefox mobile, Opera, and many more browsers) and plays Flash video! I also get OVI Maps (for free) with turn by turn directions! I can tether my phone via USB or Bluetooth without having to pay extra fees, and can act as a wifi hotspot similar to the MiFi for a one time payment of $60, to a 3rd party application maker. I can get “root” without voiding the warranty by installing another firmware. I can even install other operating systems like Android, Ubuntu, Debian, and more! Oh, and my display on my 5 year old 770 (4 versions before the N900) had a 800×480 display, my N810 has GPS (a full year before the iPhone 3G), and oh yeah, I’ve been able to make video chat calls to people on GTalk, and Gizmo5 for a few years, and Skype for the past month or so. Something Apple won’t be able to do until next year (maybe).
Enjoy your iPhone!
LOL !
What was that – A slap on the face of non-Nokia users !!! You probably got most of the things wrong. Well, I’ve used Nokia since ‘01-10 that sums up a DECADE. Yes, Nokia has made awesome phones in time immemorial but stop just stop counting these legacies coz future doesn’t moves only on laurels.
Whether anyone believes or not, smartphone market today is classified into two ages – Pre-2007 & Post-2007 (iPhone release).
Pre-2007 Yes I was Nokia admirer and bought number of Nokia phone’s uptill 2009. Few of my fav’s are communicator series (Include E90), Dedicated gaming phone’s i.e N-Gage QD, 6630, N82, N95 & yes each of these phone’s brought something revolutionary in evolution of smartphone’s. They sat standards for others to follow. Symbian was ‘the best’ OS in those days.
Post-2007 With advent of Apple iPhone and services (App. Store), there came a huge change. Nokia simply couldn’t withstand the pressure & hit of this product. It continued to release number of “N” & “E” series phone’s, which obviously gave/proved choice but not a true iPhone killer device. In order to compete in smartphone market where rules of the game changed due to fierce demand of touch & full qwetry devices, Nokia decided to launch plethora of phone’s – 5800 XM (5530, 5230, 5235…..etc), N97, X6….but all seemed to be playing a catch-up role with Apple iPhone. If you take a closer look even proposed N8 will fit in similar role.