Does this invisibility matter? That's a point to discuss, but perhaps it's a case of other brands being much more 'shouty' about their presence than Nokia. Does it mean that Nokia have failed in this regard? I don't think so.
A few weeks ago I popped into London, and was travelling on the Underground. A glance around the carriage showed the typical mix of around a third of the carriage with the almost iconic white ear buds of an Apple device – and even if you didn't spot them, the devices were constantly being fiddled with and tucked back inside jackets as (I assume) music was selected, volumes adjusted, and all the other little things you do with a personal music player.
So the carriage was awash with iPhones and Apple own the marketplace. Right?
Taking a closer look (but not too close, because the Underground is already full of weirdos and I didn't want to be labelled another one) and the number of apparent Nokia devices outweighed the apparent Apple devices. The tell tale sign is a simple one – Nokia's little combination handsfree clip with the embedded music playback controls on it. Being London, and in winter, this dark coloured controller was clipped to a number of dark coloured jackets and headphones with dark coloured wire.
But they were there. Looking around, the number of subtle Nokia controllers was at least equal to white buds hooked to the brandished iPhones. For all the talk that iPhones are everywhere, so therefore have won a mythical race to be the most popular smartphone on public transport, a little bit more investigation means this idea is now going in my urban myth pile.
The assumption that the loudest case is the right case is not always true, be it in the smartphone market or anywhere else (such as emergency services attending a crash – the patients crying and screaming in pain aren't always the ones you need to attend to first). Nokia and Symbian both have low social media profiles (Symbian's is currently even lower than Nokia's, to be honest). But does that mean they have lost, or that others are more successful? No, it just means that others are louder.
Do I think Nokia need to stop being a wallflower and get out and engage more with their products? Yes. Do I think that them standing up and shouting really loudly is the right thing to do? Not always.
There needs to be some balance though, some outward sign that things are happening. Through the eyes of “are you shouting?”, Nokia's lack of smartphone announcements at MWC is going to be seen as a mistake. However, others will see it as more of “we're not ready to shout about anything yet, so we're not going to.” It bucks the perceived trend of what to do at MWC, and it requires a company to have a huge amount of confidence in what it has planned. It may turn out that people don't get what they are doing straight away, or think they have given up, but it does show determination and strength under the surface.
Just like those hands free remotes on the Tube.
-- Ewan Spence, Feb 2010.