Now The Music Has Stopped, Does Nokia Have A Seat in America?

Uh, unless I'm mistaken, the iPhone does tie into Exchange.

[tote]

Hi folks,

It seems it's escaped lots of people's attention that AT&T wants a single smartphone platform on their network and it might be Symbian. Still, they're in a big problem at the moment ...

[tenoce]

Originally Posted by tote

Hi folks,

It seems it's escaped lots of people's attention that AT&T wants a single smartphone platform on their network and it might be Symbian. Still, they're in a big problem at the moment ...

And add to that the leaked Nokia e71 manual for AT&T:

http://www.intomobile.com/2009/01/11...-it-again.html

[Rafe]

I've been resisting posting on this, but I can't take it any more.

I do not buy the idea of a carrier being married to a particular platform / device. Any sane carrier should have some diversity in their portfolio. The fact is no platform currently encompasses all market options (S60 is closest though). Moreover it only takes one hero product for carriers to switch as, at the moment, switching costs are out weighed by the cool factor. Most importantly the discussion here is focused on the high end of the market - the bigger part of the market is ignored - mid tier devices... and low-end.. though in the next few years they're not going to be served by open platforms.

While entry to any market is more than just a product (Nokia has the products, it just hasn't been able to partner with a carrier) I do think any company, with the right device, can gain entry. I think realistically you probably need to be of a decent size to be able to get the right product. Sustaining it is harder, especially if you look at say the decade time scale. e.g. what was the top US device just 3 years ago...

A good example of a decent product that could do well in the US in the E63. This SIM-free costs about the same as similar QWERTY devices which are subsided on a 2 year contract. Even in the US this could realistically be given away for $50 on a 2 year contract. Same goes for a device like the 5800.

On the other hand I probably would agree that has problems in the touch / tablet style device. I've said before I feel the iPhone and G1 owe more to a PDA ancestry than a phone. Nokia's product are the other way round.... what is relatively unremarked upon is the fact that Nokia totally dominates the smartphone space in the T9 keypad space (be it slider or mono-block)... While there are 7+ companies who could reasonable claim to be serious players in the QWERTY keyboard space there's really only Nokia and Samsung in the smartphone in a traditional phone form factor space... (the form factor beloved by everyone accept the US).

I suspect some of the reason Nokia hasn't been able to successfully partner with carriers in the US is because its a meeting of two immovable objects. Operators can get their way with smaller manufacturers, but this is going to be harder with a company as dominant as Nokia. i.e. from a business sense perhaps it is viewed as better to partner with a mouse you can dominate, than an elephant?

Android is an interesting platform, but as other have commented there's no reason for Nokia to switch. Android has a lot of hardware partners, but then so has Windows Mobile and they're looking to streamline things. Lots of small partners may well end up being Android's fragmentation nightmare... I still wonder whether Google is really in it for the long haul too.

Incidentally I do think RIM and Windows Mobile have the US enterprise market sown up... but Eseries is actually doing OK. I think it did about 50% of the global sales of RIM in the last quarter for example.

Given the current strategy, I can't see Nokia/Symbian making big gains in 2009. However, a real possibility is that Nokia acquires Palm or another player to buy its way into the US market.

90% of people just want a phone, something to call and text on. Nokia is damn good at that. Personally I don't give a damn what OS is on my phone as long as it does what I want. Which isn't much because it's a pain to do stuff on such a tiny thing, and it's a pain to carry around a large device (large meaning iPhone). Anyway, Smartphones are a sideline for Nokia, they are the core business for RIM.

im a nokia fan, have had many nokia phones and still use a couple (N95/E71) but i also use an iphone.

problems with current high end Nokia smart phones;

1. ugly (N95/N85/N96 relatively speaking) i do think the E71 design is a work of art though
2. fat - N95/N96/N97 to large for high numbers of the population
3. poor battery life on high end media devices n96, n95 (improving but still poor)
4. screen resolution and size poor/outdated - N95/N96
5. UI looks old
6. poor firmware on 1st gen releases (puts a lot of people off)
7. no app store
8. no serious / large developers - lots of small companies but no big names
9. two steps forward and one step back (camera/Flash/LED etc)

I think Nokia need to pay more attention to the design of both hardware and software - phones have become fashion items, old school geeks may be ok with chubby and clunky but new wave geeks want sleekness and style.

I know the above may make it appear as if i am not a fan of Nokia but that isnt the case - i do think they innovate, they tend to be ahead of the pack in a lot of areas but they need more attention to others.

As an aside - I keep reading that Nokia is the biggest smartphone seller in the world, this in turn creates an impression that Nokia is successful at selling smartphones - but this is simply not the case.

While technically they sell more smartphones than anyone else - a huge amount of people that buy them dont even know what they have. They bought a Nokia because it was relatively cheap and has a few features (such as music playback) that they use. Nokia dont "sell" smartphones they just sell phones of which some are very smart.

To "chlettn" - "Nokia is trying to get into the service business, Android forces the user to use Google services."

Android is open source. There is nothing stopping Nokia from replacing all Google services with Ovi services, and shipping that on Nokia phones. Of course, that won't stop people from installing Google services from the app store, but if Nokia offers good services, why would they want to?

In the end, probably all companies (Google,Yahoo,Microsoft,Nokia,Apple,RIM,...) will offer their services in all app stores (unless, of course, the app stores "reject" competitive applications...which Apple has been known to do). So, as an example, if I have a Nokia device, I should be able to get music from iTunes or Amazon or Ovi or wherever.

I do understand that Nokia wants to sell phones AND services. However, does this not include:

1. Nokia device + Nokia services (device & service)
2. Nokia device + Non-Nokia services (device only)
3. Non-Nokia device + Nokia services (service only)

FYI, I wrote the previous "Why not Android" comment. It was just food for thought.

[bittermormon]

Because they sure don't act like it. Where's our 5800??

here's another point of view: what if it is the us that is going to loose in the smartphone war? even if the us had proportionally substantial developer base, it still lack sorely behind if the whole developers of the rest of the world are on different bandwagon.

it's not that s60 is not ready for this or that; in fact s60 is now ready to conquer whole new price points the competitors can only dream about. my bold prediction is that s60 devices will reach (or get very very close) to $99/€99 price point this year. and i'm talking about prices of unlocked devices. and they only get cheaper.

the us might well lock itself (again) outside of the global mobile phone markets. it's nice in the short run, but in the long run it's unsustainable. just look at the carriers struggling the move to gsm path from their cdma networks.

one more point: iphone and android haven't really gained huge success outside the us.

[Tzer2]

Worrying about the US mobile market, and indeed the European market, is a red herring. By far the biggest share of sales and growth come from developing countries, largely from Asia.

Nokia's biggest customers by both volume and value are China and India, not Britain and America, yet the US and UK markets get almost all the attention on english-language mobile sites with virtually no attention paid to anything east of Moscow.

India and China have a combined population of about 2.5 billion people. North America and Europe have a combined population of about 1 billion. And the rest of the world is about 3 billion.

There was a news item the other day about a Chinese phone network which had 300 million customers... that's roughly the entire population of the United States on one network alone.

If phone companies and phone standards operate on a global scale, we've got to judge their success on a global scale, and not obsess about what the english-speaking world does.

[seki]

I've always believed that Nokia doesn't care about the US market, and for good reason. Its too immature as a "smart phone" market. There is no real national network of reliable 3G coverage. Sure there are pockets of it in various cities and states, but nothing consistent over the whole country. Probably the result of the US using other frequencies for their *cough* Networks. Nokia can continue to sell dumb (non-3G) phones to this market quite happily.
Now as far as Japan is concerned, Nokia has no presence in that market either for the opposite and the same reason. Japan also has different standards for their 3G Networks and yes they are REAL networks. you have to be in an extremely remote area of Japan not to find 3G coverage (yes they exist). Japan has easily the most sophisticated phone market in the world, though Korea is catching up. The market is pretty much owned by local manufacturers who don't really offer true "smart phones" at least not unlocked ones. Their features and quality are really stunning. The iPhone is NOT that popular as a phone in Japan. Its used more as a fashion device than a true communications tool.
So Nokia says no to USA and no to Japan where are they? Well China and the rest of Asia, Europe. Lets face it thats the market you're going to sell most phones into, of any type.

[tnkgrl]

You know I'm a Nokia fangirl, but Scoble's right. As I said in my recent podcast with Matt Bennett, Nokia should just buy Palm and use WebOS for the N97, or use Android: http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2009/01/...g-with-matt-4/

[chlettn]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

To "chlettn" - "Nokia is trying to get into the service business, Android forces the user to use Google services."

Android is open source. There is nothing stopping Nokia from replacing all Google services with Ovi services, and shipping that on Nokia phones. Of course, that won't stop people from installing Google services from the app store, but if Nokia offers good services, why would they want to?

I wonder how Google would react in this case - seeing the biggest handset manufacturer choose Android, rip out all the parts that bring them money, and distribute it with their stuff instead...I somehow doubt that they would just sit there and do nothing in that case, but since I'm not an open source licensing expert I can only guess.

Anyway, Nokia wouldn't really gain anything from that imho - it's easier for them to just use their own Maemo if they ever want to completely abandon Symbian.

[tote]

Originally Posted by Rafe

I do not buy the idea of a carrier being married to a particular platform / device.

Well, AT&T sells iPhone besides that it may sell Symbian phones, too, in the future. One major difference between the two, though: is iPhone customized to AT&T? Is there such as carrier-branded iPhone? I don't know, I just doubt it. Anyway, customer branding does exist in Symbian world. I'm not sure how much it counts for a carrier, but it may be a good reason for choosing another smartphone OS vendor ...