The N95 is currently one of the most desirable phones in the mobile market – with a specification list that matches up to most of the other big ticket handsets (such as the P990, the HTC Windows Mobile devices, and a number of others) it’s not that which is selling the device. No, I think that honour goes towards the marketing of the device, and creating a bit of technology that is getting people (and press) excited.
No phone in the modern market can be sold to everyone – there is no wonder phone that does everything. Shops don’t have space for the massively long feature lists that we pour over on AAS on a phone being announced - they just go for the top two or three by the phone. But while most of the long term Symbian watchers realise the full potential of the phone, that’s not something the regular buyer will be doing.
They’ll be looking at the advertising, the word of mouth building up on the street, and the ‘coolness’ of the phone, and undoubtedly one of the reasons why the N95 is gaining traction is the effort that is coming from Finland in the marketing of the device. It seems to have the full power of the press office behind it, with the major retailers in the UK all carrying window sized placards for the device. There’s a lovely buzz in the air. So what if almost everything that’s in it can be found in other devices. The P990 may well have a similar specification list, but it’s aimed at a much smaller target, the Enterprise User. The N95 is gunning for the consumer, and in a big way.
One of Nokia’s targets is to get a foothold in America. It’s always proved tricky for Nokia to break the US with their smartphones, but again the N95 could be the one to build the beachhead. The blogger outreach programme is a new twist o the same PR principles used by many tech companies – get the technology into the hands of the people who influence opinion. Traditionally this was the tech reviewers at the newspapers and magazines, but the influence of the internet is something that is being harnessed.
It’s paying off, as there are more and more people talking about the N95 and placing it as a head to head comparison with the marketing behemoth of the Apple iPhone (amazing hype around a phone with average specifications). And if Nokia’s strategy was to make sure that the N95 was at least considered in the same breath, then they’ve succeeded (and if that wasn’t the aim, then it’s a very convenient by-product).
In today’s market, the smartphones are all going to have a reasonably similar features list, there have been no real differentiators appearing in the last year to eighteen months. Even the benefits of adding features such as GPS are going to make less of an impact going forward. It’s time to take the technical specifications away from the front line marketing war, and let the (shudder) black arts of PR take over to try and build the demand for a phone, and to keep it visible through its lifetime.
It’s no longer going to be about the best phone, it’s going to be about the best perceived phone. It’s going to be very interesting to see how the likes of Sony Ericsson and Motorola react to the charm offensive.
Motorola already have a proven success in this field, with the RAZR. Working the ‘slim’ feature of the phone to great effect, they created a product that was seen as being desirable – placing it initially into the hands of enough of the Hollywood Glitterati to create a ‘fashion conscious phone’ was pure marketing, but even when the handset moved into the mass-market, this aura proved sticky enough to keep demand high. With the Z8 ‘kicker’ phone due out in the near future, a marketing campaign based around its multimedia capabilities has already started with a large cinema based run of advertising.
There’s also the upcoming P1i and W960 from Sony Ericsson. The P1i seems likely to be pushed toward the Enterprise users, while the W960 (8GB Walkman phone) which fills in all the technical holes that didn’t make the W950 (e.g. a digital camera and Wi-Fi) has great consumer appeal. If any Symbian smartphone at Christmas is going to challenge the High Street dominance of the Nseries, I feel it’s going to be the W960.
I think while the ‘feature wear’ is now going to move down to the mid and low range devices, the mobile manufacturers are now concentrating on getting as much mind-share as possible, and use that to drive sales, rather than the addition of features. It’s going to be very interesting to watch this over the next year or so. It’s not necessarily the best phone that’s going to win, but the best marketed.