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Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

Isn't there quite a bit of data though to make this very static picture of the market somewhat irrelevant? I'm not trying to spread FUD. I would seriously like enlightenment if I'm wrong, but these are the conceptions that I have with respect to the more fluid nature of the market:

-The trend, throughout the world, is going heavily against Nokia

-Nokia's margins on each unit is a fraction of the competition

-Nokia's relevance is largely in a market (phones) which is being overtaken, faster in some parts of the world than others, by SmartPhones

-Profits for 3rd party developers of Nokia products are smaller than profits for 3rd party developers of the competition.

I'm sure there was a point in history when horses were more popular than cars in most of the world and we all know how that turned out.

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Yes the penetration of smartphones is increasing, but I personally know a lot of people who don't want smartphone. For example, 2 out of 3 of my friends who owns iPhone said to me that "...but my previous nokia [dumbphone] was better", and are not planing to buy another smartphone. So it's still an open question what the ratio between smartphone and dumbphone will be in the future. But Nokia's dumbphones are certainly not going away anytime soon.

Wait until the internet capabilities on smartphones get realised.

On a bus for 30 minutes? Use the phone to browse HN. etc

That's what I do every time I'm on a bus :)

I do the same on the Phoenix light rail; This site's layout performs really well on mobile devices; Loading a beast like Digg on my N900 would make me twitch for kill -9.

Almost any phone can browse the web today.

If browsing the web on the phone is as easy as on iOS or Android it’s not a dumb phone, it’s a smart phone.

Yeah, but not in a way that approaches the usefulness of a desktop browser.

Yep, Nokia N900 is the only phone accomplishing that :-)

For example, Android and iOS browsers skipped the rather useful contentEditable functionality. On my N900 I have it.

what does it do?

Edit: OK, not that I know what it does, what do you use it for on your N900?

http://html5demos.com/contenteditable

Suffice it to say, this is not the reason why smartphones are so much better at browsing the web than feature phones.

The N900 also has the only implementation of Firefox Mobile. Adblock Plus is in my pocket.

Actually, it's on Android as well. I haven't tried it for a few versions (it...needed some work then), but it is available.

Install Opera Mini.

Its a better experience on some phones than others; "Surfing the web" in Blackberry's browser is closer to "drowning the web" and rendering nothing correctly.

There are many things you can do on the phone. Not that many you want to do, given the experience.

You can do that with old phones that have WAP browsers. OK. Someone needs to write WAP proxy for HN :)

Smartphones won't be Nokia's nemesis - indigenous innovation will.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/hardware/nokia-...

A new generation of feature phones by Indian brands, at mid-low price points, with features designed specifically for the rural Indian consumer is kicking Nokia's butt in the fastest growing mobile market. The story can easily repeat itself in Africa and the Middle East.

Some of these features include dual sims for patchy coverage, bigger battery to feed 2 sims, flashlight for when the power goes out every day, FM radio which doesnt need headphones because Indians dont mind loud music and saris don't have pockets for them anyway.

Nokia makes smartphones. Sure, they make (a lot of) dumbphones, but they also make (a lot of) smartphones. That graph was of app store visits, and thus only counts smartphones.

I've not heard an agreed definition of smartphone, but by all the various definitions I've heard, Nokia devices like the N8 are smartphones:

* Downloadable apps? Check.

* Downloadable apps written in a language that can segfault? Check.

* App store? Check.

* Large colour screen? Check.

* Touch screen? Check. (This one's a pretty debatable requirement though.)

* Desktop-equivalent web browser? Check.

* Flash? Check. (Hehe.)

* Sends and receives email? Check.

* Share your 3G connection over USB, Bluetooth or wifi? Check.

* Called "iPhone"? Ch... ah, damn.

I'm not trying to get into an argument about which device is a better smartphone, but I cannot understand when people say things like "Nokia can't compete against smartphones".

It's like comparing an Audi to a Rolls-Royce: - Four Wheels? Check - Electric windows? Check - Radio? Check and so on...

It's not about the features - it's about the polish. Before iPhone came Nokia was the best (IMO) producer of the phones in the world. But today? They are far behind Apple and far behind any producer that uses Android. Their phones are buggy, their OS is a crap, software development for Symbian is a hell, and the market..

Well - I don't know about the market. Numbers show that Nokia has 57% in China, but what about sales? Apple brags that they've put something around $1.5bln in the hands of developers. What about Nokia?

The definition of smartphones has gone to hell ever since the iPhone came out.

Betting against high-selling low-margin products would be like betting against Wal-Mart. You can co-exist with them but you can't beat them at their own game, and their game is around to stay.

Betting that learning an app development framework plus Mandarin to sell apps on $35 phones probably isn't the best strategy for developers is more reasonable though.

Why not? Long before the iPhone, several people got rich by selling J2ME apps to low end phones.

Can you name one or two J2ME apps that you ever purchased? I can't and I don't know anybody who did. It was a disaster trying to publish back then.

I published a J2ME app that was bought 20000 times. I also worked for a J2ME games company for a while.

Not sure if I ever bought a J2ME app myself. But then I have only bought one app for iPhone/Android so far: Monkey Island.

China has developers that already know Mandarin.

Makes sense. But there's a difference between staying and growing, especially in financial terms. It's the reason Nokia's shares have dropped 70% in 3 years.

Android phones are getting pretty cheap, too.

I agree with that, but I'm not sure Nokia's going to remain the king of the low-end phones. The barriers to entry are lower and competition even at the low end is increasing.

"Nokia's relevance is largely in a market (phones) which is being overtaken, faster in some parts of the world than others, by SmartPhones"

Nokia's 40% slice is of the smartphone market, not the overall phone market. The article's whole point is that nokia is the biggest smartphone seller in the world, and everybody's pretending they only make feature phones.

- The trend is against Nokia when it comes to US tech-blogs and web sites or US analysts.

- Nokia's margins vary depending on the model. I would expect margins on the N8 to be entirely different from margins on 5230 and both of them are smart phones.

- Nokia has been making smart phones since before Android or iPhone were invented, their relevance is in communication technology.

- iPhone is the king here. I've heard of success stories both from Android and Ovi.

Horses vs cars has nothing to do with iPhone/Android vs Nokia. Nokia high-end devices might not have the nice iPhone UX/UI, but they compete more than adequately on other features. And that's just Symbian, the OS that is "supposedly" dying. I'm curious to see what happens when/if MeeGo is done.

Nokia's quarterly profits have dropped 40 percent year-on-year. Symbian lost 10% of it's marketshare in one year and Android's worldwide marketshare is now quickly approaching that of Symbian.

I think the future (and the profits) are undoubtedly in smartphones and that's an area where Nokia has, so far, been unable to compete and they don't seem to have a working strategy going forward.

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