Archive for the ‘Nokia’ Category
Nokia heading for its “Kodak-moment”
Nokia’s recent earnings release has been dismal. The worldwide recession is hurting the industry in general and Nokia in particular. It’s market share has gone down from 40% a year ago to 37% in Q1 2009. This trend is continuing for past several quarters and it is my belief that Nokia is headed for its “Kodak moment”.
Remember way back in 2006, the digital camera revolution was in its infancy and a ton of competitors from Sony to Fuji to HP were producing digital cameras. However, Kodak was the king of cameras, selling the most cameras in US and winning awards for its products. “Really!”, you say. “Wait, I don’t remember that!”, you say. It is sad but true. Kodak was still considered a film company despite having invented the 1st Megapixel camera, won awards for its product design and had the biggest market share. But, it was struggling to become a leader in digital camera. Its business model was failing.
Now, fast forward to today. Nokia is the market leader worldwide, its products win awards too and it basically ruled the market (though did not invent the mobile phone) for a long time and there are a bunch of upstarts that are eating away at its market share. All the while, Nokia is struggling to keep its place. It has not recognize the challenge RIM & Apple pose, it has been slow to innovate and has failed to recognize the shifting consumer tastes.
As Bruce Nussbaum suggested in this 2006 blog post, Nokia, like Kodak, needs a business model innovation. Its device strategy is not working and needs overhaul, RIM & Apple are eating its lunch with smartphones, the next baseline phones. Nokia smartphones have not outshined the competition, even HTC, LG & Samsung have better, more popular offerings that are doing better than Nokia.
How does Nokia change its strategy? First, it needs mid-market smartphones to compete with HTC, LG & Samsung. Second, it needs to overhaul its flagship N series and the E series to be at the leading edge to compete with Apple & RIM. It should take a leaf out of Palm playbook and design a new device that not only improves upon the rival’s offering, but has that extra special feature that the world wants. Third, it is time to dump Symbian from its smartphone lineup. Symbian has its place in the mid-to-low market phones, but it is not upto snuff on the top-line smartphones. The user experience is just not there. Good news is that Nokia has several options on this front: – Design a new user interface from ground-up to sit on top of Symbian much like LG S-class. Or get on the Palm’s WebOS or Android bandwagon or do incremental improvement on Symbian. This last option just maintains the status quo and does nothing dramatic. Finally, it needs to take the battle to the competitor on their home-turf, ie. US. Nokia has not been successful in the past. However, it needs to try again or go down fighting.
This is probably the last chance Nokia has to avoid its Kodak “moment”. So, will Nokia change the game plan or will the game change Nokia?
Nokia’s flirtation with Android raises questions about Symbian investment, again.
Here we go again. Recently, Nokia and Google announced that they were going to collaborate on Android to develop new Intel-chipset based mobile devices. This has led to many in the industry to question Nokia’s commitment to its Symbian operating system. Adding fuel to fire is the news by the Guardian newspaper indicating that Nokia is going to announce an Android based, touchscreen mobile phone at its Nokia World Conference in September 2009.
I truly doubt that Nokia has given up on Symbian just yet. It was only a little over a year ago that Nokia spent millions of dollars to buy out its partners in the OS and made it open source. Secondly, Nokia has been saying since February that they were going to develop Android based devices. I have to agree with Om Malik of GigaOm:
It is quite possible that the company is using Android as a basis for a 3G- or 4G-enabled netbook-type device that’s powered by Intel’s chips.
Finally, while it may be true that Nokia might be losing share of the smartphone market, you have to remember that Nokia is still the largest maker of mobile phones and almost all its phones are based on the Symbian OS.
AT&T readying 6 new phones for release
AT&T put out a press release today announcing the release of 6 new phones and there is something for everyone. Lets start with the Nokia E71x, the much delayed and much talked, slim Blackberry competitor. It will be released in coming weeks with $99.99 price tag with 2-year contract. There is a second Blackberry lookalike, the Samsung Propel Pro. This one runs Windows Mobile and will be available in April for $149.99. Next up are two touchscreen sliders from LG, the Xenon and Neon. The Xenon comes with 2.0 megapixel photos and includes AT&T Navigator, Napster Mobile, eMusic Mobile. It comes in 3 colors and will be available starting April 8th for $99.99. The LG Neon is targeted towards teens and adults who text a lot. It will be a low cost device that will be released in coming weeks. Finally, there are two more Samsung phones: the Impression and the Magnet. The Impression is a messaging phone with AMOLED screen. It will go on sale on April 14th at $199.99. The Magnet is a slim, low-cost messaging phone with quick messaging capabilities. It will be released sometime in April.
[Via Boy Genius Report]
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone set to release in USA
Nokia has readied the 5800 XpressMusic, aka, the Tube, touchscreen phone for the US market and is set to release it as early as today. Nokia’s website still shows XpressMusic as coming soon and allows you to pre-order. However, according to Engadget Mobile, the company is set to release the phones to its flagship stores in New York and Chicago this week, possibly today. Nokia has priced this phone attractively at $399 unlocked and it has both GSM and WCDMA support so it should work on any network. So, if you were looking for an iPhone competitor with 3.2Mpxl camera and up to 16GB microSD support for tons of music, mosey over to the Nokia store or online and order it.
MWC Day 2 Recap: Android, Android Everywhere!
It was day 2 (almost on its way to day 3) of the MWC in Barcelona and it was Android’s day to shine. Several carriers and smartphone makers announced today that they will be launching devices powered by Google’s Android OS. First up, Vodafone announced that it will launch HTC’s Magic, the keyboard-less G1. Following up on Vodafone’s announcement with 1-2-3 punches, Heuwei launched its sleek-looking Android device; Acer is working on 2 Android based devices while Samsung does one better by launching 3 Android devices and potentially a Linux Mobile phone too.
In other news, Nokia announced that it will bundle Skype software on all its N-series phones starting with the N97. Also, a group of 17 phone manufacturers and carriers, under the auspices of GSM, adopted the universal charger standard. Phone manufacturers including LG, Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and operators like AT&T, Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Telefonica agreed to use the microUSB socket as the standard power sockets on all their phones by 2012. Key holdouts include Apple, RIM and Palm, though RIM already uses MiniUSB on its Blackberry devices.
Nokia announces the N86, its first 8Mpxl cameraphone
After the leaks and fiasco of yesterday, Nokia got its act right today and officially launched the N86 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This phone has similar dual-slider form factor as its soon-to-be-launched N97 bretheren. The other specs for this phone are as follows:
Nokia announced that the N86 will be available in second quarter in Europe and retail for €375. With launch so close to the N97 and similar specs, I wonder how the N86 will cannabilize the N97 sales.
[Via UnwiredView]
Mobile World Congress Day 1 recap: Nokia Ovi Store, LG GD900, Arena, Windows Mobile 6.5, Samsung OmniaHD
Here is a recap of the top news story on this the first day of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona:
Nokia announced 4 new phones and the Ovi App store which will be available in March for publishers to upload content and on the N97 when it comes out in June. There are two new E-series devices: Nokia E75 and Nokia E55 with revamped email interface. The Navigator series got two more devices too: Nokia 6710 Navigator, and the Nokia 6720 classic. As the name suggest the 6710 Navigator is GPS centric device while the 6720 classic has advanced noice cancellation and form factor designed to fit around the face. Nokia, in an unusual move, announced its N86 phone far from the action in Singapore. This 8Mpxl camera phone is an update to the to-be-launched N97 with similar form factor and dual-sliders.
LG and Microsoft announced a partnership wherein LG will launch 50 new Windows Mobile based phones by 2012. I am sure a lot of these phones will see the S-Class treatment which we saw in LG Arena (also announced today with March availability in Europe). LG also announced the GD900 which has a transparent keypad slider with a very thin, 13.4″ thick casing, and have 7.2 Mbps HSDPA.
Speaking of Microsoft, it also announced the availability of Windows Mobile 6.5 with its honeycomb home screen; MyPhone, its cloud-based backup solution; Recite, the voice memo organization tool; and its own marketplace called Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which will be available on all phones running WinMo 6.5 and above.
Finally, Samsung had the best news of all: the new OmniaHD (review here), its Symbian S60 OS-based,12.7mm thin beauty with a huge 3.7″ glass AMOLED touchscreen display, an 8 Mpxl camera that shoots 720p video, HD video out, video calling, Wi-Fi, GPS and 8 to 16GB internal storage plus microSDHC support with aluminum body. It also announced the BeatDJ (see video review) with Bang & Olufson audio, 3 megapixel camera, DivX support, a 2.8″ AMOLED touchscreen and DJ features which allows the user to record tracks, scratch and add effects.
[Via Boy Genius Report, Engadget Mobile, Mobile Review, UnwiredView]
Nokia expands the XpressMusic family with 5630
Nokia today announced a new XpressMusic phone, the 5630. It is a candybar phone with dedicated music keys. It runs the new Symbian S60 OS but does not have touchscreen. The phone is very slim at 12 millimeters and comes with 3.2Mpxl camera, N-Gage experience. It also has a shortcut bar for music, radio, photos and web. Other features include:
The phone will be released in Europe in second half of this year and will retail for €199 ($256) before taxes and subsidies.
[Via UnwiredView]
Nokia E75 specs, pricing and release date leaked
Courtesy of Expansys, the UK-based e-tailer, the specs, pricing and release date were leaked for Nokia’s upcoming E75 smartphone. This QWERTY keyboard bedecked phone is expected to be released on March 13, 2009 in UK for a princely sum of £389.99 or free with 18-months contract with T-Mobile UK.
The specs for this phone are:
Let’s see what Nokia has to say about this phone.
[Via UnwiredView]
Nokia E75 gets photographed in Vietnam
It appears that the Nokia E75 decided to take a Vietnamese cultural tour before its launch party at the Mobile World Congress. I guess it wanted to brush up on its language skills before making an appearance on the world stage. Anyways, that is good news for us because now we have some photos to see. Here is one and click the link to see more:
[Via Engadget Mobile]
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