Elop running out of time to turn Nokia around
reuters.com
reuters.com
I bet there's a huge market out there for older users that want a simple and usable phone with stripped functionality, and it's a tactic that worked very well for Nintendo when they realised that they couldn't compete with Sony and Microsoft in the console market. A lot of older users just want a mobile phone so they can get in touch with family, send a few texts to people and occasionally browse the web.
If linked with a company like Yahoo (providing mail and other basic cloud stuff) I'd be shocked if a phone that focused on being a phone and not a smartphone didn't sell millions amongst the tech-illiterate and older audience.
They could acquire the smaller and profit-making players in dumb-phone markets and let them function independently - kill their own overheads in "small-margins" game.
Nokia should reinvent their focus to something else - not continue on mobile platform now. Just like they did in past by moving away from cables to rubber tyres and so on... They're late for the tablet game too, but an enterprise centric tactile surface (which is portable too) sounds like a good idea [Sheesh! Given away the idea, but the world would be a better place with it ;) ].
There is a gap in there which they could surely fill. I don't know about Elop's strengths or weaknesses, but for me Nokia is still a severely defocused bloat. Strip down to basics is the only advise here.
Just a few thoughts.
This is what killed RIM - they bet on an enterprise tablet over their phone market, and failed. The whole "enterprise tablet" market is either ripe for the picking or no-man's land - and I don't think Nokia could have done better than RIM.
When failing, you need to cut back on unprofitable side-ventures, double-down on your core profitable offerings, execute, then re-invest that into new markets.
My wife just got a new phone. She wanted a basic phone as she likes texting on a standard phone keypad, and wanted an OK camera on it. She couldn't get a basic phone that did that, so ended up with a low end HTC Android (of the same spec as my mid-high end HTC from last year.) It could be the phone networks just don't want to stock basic phones as they don't make enough money off the contracts for them, they want to sell all the extras. On the flip side, last time I looked at basic phones they all seemed very poorly made and with awful interfaces, which is why I went to a smartphone a few years ago.
There are simple, large print phones targeted for older folk, they mainly seem to be advertised in the little pull-out magazines that come inside TV listing mags and similar in the UK, and during advert breaks on daytime TV.
A more accurate analogy to Nokia making dumb phones would be if Nintendo had created a console that appealed to legacy-gamers, people who want to play SNES and NES games. A much smaller (and dwindling) market.
They haven't downloaded any apps, they browse the web once in a while, but mostly they use the phones for calling and SMS (and my father checks his email). With their previous Nokia dumbphones, they never even learnt how to use the T9 dictionary.
Of course, it's still an expensive phone, but many of those older people get their iPhones for free when their children upgrade to a newer model.
If your basically throwing away your old iPhone anyway then sure give it to your parents. For anyone who isn't getting a free iPhone, spending $800 on one would be absolute overkill when you can buy a cheap $100-$200 phone that makes calls just as well.
- It shows you're an American, otherwise you wouldn't hand-wave the price of an iPhone, even when speaking about phones being given by kids to parents.
- the iPhone seems simple to you because you've gotten used to it. Compared with classic rotary phones, the iPhone is anything but simple - of course, for the provided functionality, the iPhone has a lot of features packed in a tight package that has a pretty simple interface by today's standards. But regarding parents, on the contrary, I've watched my mom struggle with an iPhone, before she got back to an older Nokia model, with a simple key pad and no extra functionality other than SMS.
- because of the specs, the iPhone consumes a lot of battery, even by using it only for your basic needs - it's sure nice to have a phone with a battery that lasts for 7 days of normal usage.
- mobile phones are designed to be usable for 2 years, after which the battery and the hardware start falling apart.
Also, the T9 dictionary was really awkward. I don't think anybody was suggesting that Nokia should return to their older models. I do think that some company in the future will come up with a sexy design and a set of features for simple phones that customers will absolutely love.
- Turning off WiFi, GPS and bluetooth, you get quite a bit of battery life out of an iPhone.
- I can only answer for the people I've met who are non-technical. They had no problem using an old Nokia phone to make calls, but for everything else (including contact lists and SMS) the iPhone is easier.
The only usability problems I've discovered has to do with the buttons, as they don't discover what the sleep/wake button and silent/ringer button does, and because they think the Home button is an "end whatever you're doing" button, which makes them push that button to end a call (this of course doesn't work since it just returns to the home screen with the call backgrounded).
Since I'm curious, what was your mother struggling with?
- The iPhone hardware has a tendency to last a long time unless the display breaks. My mothers phone is from 2009, for instance. Although I agree that replacing the battery is a problem since you have to know someone with a screwdriver or pay to have it replaced.
For instance if I wanted to make a call right now on my Android, I would press the green button with a phone icon on it. The logs view would pop-up because that's the last view I've used. To dial a number manually, I would have to select the "Keypad" tab. To search of a contact I have to press the "Contacts" tab, which on Android at least is a different app with a different top bar of tabs. Clicking on a name would show me that person's profile. I would have to do another click on his phone number to actually initiate the call.
This is in contrast with her Nokia phone - to dial a number out of memory, you just need to start dialing the number on the always available physical key pad, then you press the green button, which is also always available on display. To search for a contact, you press the down arrow and then upon selecting the desired entry you press the green button. To look in the logs, maybe to dial the last number dialed, you press the up arrow, dialing involving a press on the green button again.
So basically I think it's because every basic use-case involves a number of 2 or 3 steps that can be easily remembered because all the buttons are on display and there's also some consistency (dialing involves either typing or selecting a phone number + a press on the green button). Of course, she probably could have learned to use an iPhone if she really wanted to. But she doesn't have the patience anymore.
Also, who on Earth would you buy an iPhone if you didn't want to use it for its intended purposes?
There is a market for a beautiful and cheap phone, and the iPhone isn't a part of it. You could use it as a dumb phone in the same way you could use a chainsaw to cut your steak. It'll leave it in chunks, but it's overkill for what you need.
1. Oh my friend uses this app called "Instagram", does Windows Phone have "Instagram"?
2. I want to play "Words with Friends" with my friends, can I do that on Windows Phone?
If the sales representative is honest (I mean he has to be or will get an instant return), the consumer is just going to pick up an equally cheap or cheaper Android phone.
The 920 does not solve this problem despite having pretty sweet hardware. Not only that, its a huge phone like the SGS3, but quite heavy, which will turn off a lot of consumers who want big screens, but light devices (you don't see Apple making bigger phones that are heavier). Even if the camera is the best on the market (and to be honest, I don't think it will be noticeably better than the iPhone5 and upcoming Android phones), without useful apps for sharing those photos, people won't be drawn to the platform.
Finally, things like wireless charging and using the phone with gloves on are not major selling points, just like NFC has never been a major selling point.
Since the companies making those applications are not really interested in these platforms the apps usually are halfhearted at best.
Carriers are generally not interested in Windows Mobile and Nokia, and very few carriers are interested in pushing the iPhone even though they have to carry it due to customer demand.
I had my phone upgraded a couple months back and I certainly saw a lot of pushing for Lumia phones. Even when I asked specifically for an Android phone, the salesperson wanted me to consider a Lumia. After some friendly interrogation, she admitted the commission for selling a Lumia was about twice as much as the commission she would get for selling my the Android device, and part of it would be paid directly by Nokia through some incentive program.
Microsoft is spending a ton of money on it and a lot is channelled directly through Nokia.
This could be huge feature in colder climates. I can see Koreans and northern Eurpeans going nuts for this.
> NFC
Too early to tell, because phones have only just started using it.
> wireless charging
I can see this becoming really important in the future. A sound docks that wirelessly charges your phone while wirelessly receiving the music - and works with any WP8 or Android phone - could be a huge seller.
WP8 is the first OS that gives Nokia a fighting chance against iOS/Android devices.
- I have only seen positive reviews of this OS.
- It is do or die for MS as well, expect massive ad spend this season.
- Shared kernel with Windows. Attractive to millions of Windows developers. (Windows isn't cool anymore; but there are way, way more developers on Windows than any other platform.)
- If resource constrained WP7 is anything to go by, WP8 will be smoother than any android phone in the market.
This is Elop's first, last and only chance. I'd rather give the man a fair chance.
Edit: formatting.
windows has never been cool; ubiquitous is the word you're probably thinking of.
Of course, other OSs have surpassed it and Windows now looks like an evolutionary dead-end, crushed by layers of legacy compatibility and unable to evolve in significant new directions.
What do you mean resource constrained? If anything, I think WP7 should be a leaner OS than WP8 which shares the core of the desktop Windows. Also so far I've only seen WP8 phones use Qualcomm's last-gen architecture, Krait, so of course it's supposed to be fast. As for smoothness, I think a lot of people are getting impressed by the animations. Like "look how cool the animation is...so nice", and they think that's what "smoothness" is. I remember when WP7 had terribly long transition animations, but WP7.5 cut down on those.
> I think a lot of people are getting impressed by the animations... and they think that's what "smoothness" is.
That IS what smoothness is to the end user. A frozen screen for 0.5 seconds feels much less smooth than a well done 0.7 second animation.
Developing MeeGo took a lot of time and money, but the results were quite good. Same that management had lost faith by then. http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/portable-cathedrals
I am not trying to critique Microsoft here - just that I see that as a likely scenario given the past and current circumstances. It only helps that both Microsoft (with Windows Phone 8) and Nokia (with hardware) are doing things mostly right.
Even if non-Nokia OEMs totally ditched Windows Phone - Microsoft could just take the royalty money and continue to invest it in Nokia and use all tricks in the book to gain some meaningful market share. No matter how you look at it - it looks good for Microsoft.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Them achieving meaningful market share with windowsphone would shock a lot of us in the industry since microsoft's track record so far has been that they suck pretty badly at hardware rollouts.
The Xbox, and MS branded keyboards and mice are all highly successful and highly regarded.
They already have cross-licensing and will be able to use and probably sub-license Nokia's patent portfolio to every Windows and Windows Phone maker out there.
The genius here (on Microsoft's part) is that the two other players (Apple and the Android ecosystem) will have to do whatever it takes to prevent Nokia's portfolio ending up in the hands of an NPE.
"Greenwich's Rehle said Nokia should focus on rolling out smartphones running on Google's Android software for millions of consumers in emerging markets who often still prefer Nokia's brand. Android models cost under $100 while the cheapest Windows Phone costs around $200"
OK, so they're selling a million phones a day and not making a significant profit. The reason is that too few of the phones are high margin smartphones.
And from this the conclusion is that they should switch to Android and sell commodity smartphones? This doesn't sound like analysis. It sounds like Microsoft bashing.
They already sell commodity phones. In these markets people don't pick Nokia because of brand or features - they pick it because they need voice and text calls and Nokia's phones seem to be a slightly better value proposition (rugged, long battery life) than other low-end units.
Once other manufacturers manage to bring Android 2.x into the S40 price range (something Nokia certainly won't be able to accomplish with WP8), you'll see quick erosion of Nokia's share because other sets will have a much better value proposition.
If they had gone all-in on Meego a few years earlier, or chosen it instead of WP7 and made it run Android apps out of the box, maybe they would have had a fighting chance.
@JollaMobile working with the old Meego communities still.
https://twitter.com/totoroki/status/248416652260151296
If you want to develop for @jollamobile, do qml-applications and expect a screen between 4-5 inches, says @jussihurmola
https://twitter.com/mvonwillebrand/status/248416914534170624
Jolla is the mobile phone start-up founded by a group of ex-Nokians.
Quality is polish. Android 1.0 didn't have any, but then it became better and better with each new version.
You're not alone in not understanding this. HP trashed WebOS because their first shaky release didn't show "quality". Ditto Nokia and Maemo/MeeGo.
The only way to make a "quality" OS is rub and rub and rub and rub.
Now they are at the mercy of Microsoft, who seem to have trouble wrapping up WP8, can abandon the platform any moment (as they have done with Windows Mobile, WP7), or stop delivering updates for slightly older phones.