Nokia strike a blow for reasonably priced smartphones

I'm not getting the fuss over pricing on these devices. It just looks like Nokia have ditched their obsession with releasing devices with oddly high RRP's for the hardware offered (N97 and Mini being the main examples) Nokia have constantly been talking about pushing smartphones further down the markets and to do so they need to maintain features but lower the price point. That's what we see here. No surprises

Might be the best strategy for Nokia considering they simply can not compete in the high-end smartphone market.

Nothing wrong with bottom feeding.

There is a massive market these days for cheap affordable smartphones and Nokia are embrassing this, more power to them. These will sell by the bucket loads in the likes of India and other emerging markets.

OT

People all over the net have been bashing the Microsoft phones, but I recon with the Kin-1 it will appeal to teenage girls in the drones.

What fuss? There are no phones that can compete feature wise at the price. So Nokia take that end of the market and then release the stronger phones later, just in time for their new customers to move up.

Nokia did well at the high end with the N95, but lost their way after that. They are maintaining their market presence whilst giving themselves a chance to get things together.

Honestly, I've always gone with Nokia everytime I changed phone, and it's been great. But since the N95, Nokia has absolutely nothing worth mentioning. Good for Nokia that it's found its new niche, the low end market. I'm going HTC next time I buy a phone, because they aren't afraid to put some good hardware into it and charge me a few couple of hundred bucks. I personally dislike Android, but if Nokia keeps launching phones that look like this, then HTC here I come.

Yeah I know S^3's in the tunnel and they're basically scraping the bottom with S^1, thus the crap phones, but Nokia's losing application support so fast that it doesn't even have a decent MSN client on its platform anymore.

Ok the 'Nokia expanding in the mid-tier' story has been rammed home by now to all unsundry with all the subtlety of John Leslie unhooking a bra strap. Who is really taken in by all this 'emerging markets' nonsense?

My take? Until Symbian^3 is ready to be unleashed and there is genuinely something to talk about, Nokia are going to mine every last cent out of the existing S60v5 (or is that Symbian^1 in the new Symbian Utopia?) Like being able to offer these technologically aged platforms at bargains is something we should all marvel at! The costs are sunk, bleed 3rd and 5th edition for every mediocre handsetyou can... Then spin it so it's all part of your strategy to develop the BRIC markets.

Not saying that Nokia wouldn't be doing exactly the same were their new Symbian^3 flagship was ready but please, enough of connecting the dots to arrive at 'data point' (new AAS bullshit phrase of recent weeks) where, miraculously. This is just where Nokia wants to be.

If it was a choice between reading concrete about the ethereal N8-00 or more on the crop of handsets from earlier this week, honestly, which would you click on first?

Guys have the balls to say Nokia is bleeding everything they can out of S60 and enough of this 'Nokia planned this'.

Like an MSN client is any indicator of how good application support is!

What total crap. These handsets are not at all mediocre, they are fairly powerful phones being offered at surprisingly low prices. They may not be "high-end", whatever the f*** that means, but these are actually very interesting devices, with a potentially enormous market. That is news, whether you like it or not.

I'd like to say I'm surprised at the rubbish being spouted at the moment, but that would unfortunately be a lie...

There'll be more announcements in due course. Nokia has never been about just one segment.

And yes I do appreciate that many reading this blog are probably interested in the higher end device (and would read that news over this). Rest assured we'll be doing just as complete coverage when the high-end release(s) roll around (more so in all likelihood).

Yes, Symbian^3 is going to be the new shiny, but there'll be plenty of users on the older version too. These phones, while not high-end, are still taking smartphones / open platforms into new areas. I do think this is a point worth hammering home as its not something I see being widely understood (many honourable exception reading and commenting here of course).

And realistically Symbian^3 is a stop gap / transition on the way to Symbian^4 and Meego 1.0. In a sense 2010 is something of transition year - I think Nokia is going to get more hammering this year (even with S^3), as they did last year, but perhaps people will see the horizon a bit more clearly.

morpheus - I did enjoy your turn of phrase :) Getting the most out of something is not a 'bad thing' - it is good business. And Nokia did plan to do this, it has been sign posted for sometime... although it would be fair to say they've rapidly embraced (maybe increased emphasis) it after enjoying more success in the low and mid tier than in the high end this year. The same could be said about general success in BRIC - but then you would expect Nokia to play up the positive.

The point at which you need new stuff can be debated, but I believe we'll see some action on that front shortly. Also bear in mind why you understand the strategy, a lot of people do not - we're trying to make the point to them too!

Well, it's nice that Nokia can dominate in the low end, but I'm looking to upgrade from an E71. I need something from Nokia that's their answer to the Evo, HTC Desire or the Nexus One.

The N900 was not an option; it's been noted over and over that it's a geek's/developer's/tweeker's phone and not for the average consumer. I'm not looking to spend my days tweeking my phone. I need it to 'just work'.

I'm sure other Nokia customers like me are getting tired of waiting.

Dear God I hate to say this but if you want it to just work, get an iPhone or at least wait until June when the 4.0 version is released.

Love them or hate them, Apple delivers the best out of box user experience coupled with the eco-system backing up their devices. Nokia simply can not match this with Ovi.

All you Nokia apologists/salesmen can swing it any way you want, but still these are devices with 2008 specs.

This will be the same story in a year from now. Like someone here said, Nokia simply can not compete in the higher end. They need to wallow in the basement where the others don't bother. There is NOTHING that Nokia has that can compete with Android, Apple, HTC on the high-end. Nothing.

You're right - Nokia don't compete at the high end which is why half their smartphone sales last year were N and E Series.

Woops. Wrong again, Mr Unregistered.

Yes, but at 2010 prices which are pretty darn cheap for what you are getting. I thought that was the point of the story. Which part of that you don't understand? :)

Hi,
I thought I'd stop and leave a defence and some comments after all the responses.

The thesis of the article was quite simple: These new phones seem to be very good value for money. Which I based on my own consumer-centric point of view. I don't pretend to know whether this was a knee-jerk reaction by Nokia or a long reaching strategy.

Either way, I think it was a wise move. In the tech world, there is a lot of bias towards what's going on on the USA, and what the latest shiny is. Although there is a big wide world out there, and emerging markets are very real, and more heavily populated. I find it hard to believe how these phones could fail to shift a high volume in emerging markets, and in the European budget market.

The whole release had a central theme of messaging, therefore, it nice to see the common sense move of furnishing this with QWERTY equipped phones. In a world where everyone is still desperately (and rather embarrassingly, IMHO) trying to imitate the iPhone, I viewed this unabashed fleet of QWERTY phones as rather pleasing two-finger salute to the trend setters. (If you follow my articles, you know what I think about touch-only designs.)

My initial reaction to the phones were similar to a few people here, in that they seemed (in my words) conservative. Although to make this a criticism worthy of flinging rotten vegetables is a bit irrational. Who said that Nokia are only supposed to be pushing out a new top-spec'd flagship every few months?

These new phones may not be exciting to hard-core geeks, but just look at how much world-wide popularity the E71 has had with ordinary folk. The E71 isn't an exciting phone, but it is a good down-to-earth useful tool, which is what all phone designers everywhere should be aiming for first and foremost.

People are so desperate to knockia Nokia that they will say anything.

Show me the phone with better specs with a price anywhere near these devices with 2008 specs?

Nokia are not asking 2010 spec prices, not even 2008 prices, these are cheap enough to hurt rivals sales regardless of the numbers and specs (that most of the many buyers will not give a shit about the specs).

Here we go again, in a thread about low cost phones somebody suggest an alternative at three times more expensive price.

I have an iPhone and it doesn't "just work". It's an irritating pain in many ways. - especially reception and signal strength - basic stuff that I would expect a phone to be able to do in 2010 and in fact the Nokias do very well.

Not really surprised, the E5 to the E72, is like the E63 to the E71. The e63 was cheap, but missed GPS, had a lower quality camera and used cheaper build material.

The E5 has a weaker battery and a 256K colors screen!, misses the optical keys and the compass. And we still haven't seen the build quality! but from the pictures, it looks more toy like.

It could be that the screen cosumes less power allowing a weaker battery to last longer, but anyway, it's still inferior to the E72 as hardware.

Plus from now till June when it will be released, the E72's price will have dropped much more.

You're so confused.

Just because Nokia calls themselves and their products high end doesn't mean they really positioned themselves to be.
Just look at Gartners figures for worldwide smartphones.
http://www.buying-pda.com/TB/?P=1014
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/sma...-2009-gartner/

Or even nokia's own Q4 reports.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/...s_converge.php

The smartphone market grew by over 15% in Q3, but Nokia's market share overall declined by another 4%. Overall for 2009, they lost 5%. At this rate, they really should just re-market themselves, create a new product class for the market, and just regroup out of the smartphone market until they are actually ready.

Their N-series shipments keep declining since the N95. E-series in total shipped 5mil in 2009, but the iPhone shipped 8mil in Q4 2009. The numbered phones are really hi-end dumbphones, which is a valid market in itself, but don't delude yourself to think it will attract ppl that is willing to pay the premium in this lucrative smartphone market, so we really should just not count those, right? I see little to no coverage in AAS even for those, and are how many are s60 vs s40? Nokia is just competing on price and is milking their mature/ancient OS. How many of their phones DON'T use symbian anymore?? that's right! Nokia uses Symbian on almost all their phones now, including dumbphones. At least if you go thru their 2009 devices, it seems like even candybar phones use symbian now, not just some dummy phone OS. You might as well compare most of the symbian phones to mom and dad's cameraphones, and call it a win for the day.

To be honest, I see almost no value difference between the E series and N series now, as the S60v3 seems to be just going thru regular maintenance patching (a good thing!!), and the S60v5 is pretty much deemed a failure, as Symbian^1 development has stopped, and Symbian^2 development is just skipped. The E series just doesn't seem to be penetrating the business market (at least in the US), and the N series just doesn't attract the large disposable income consumer market. With subsidy, these phones are pretty much free now, which is the marketing death knell for high end products. Sophisticated users don't really care if the product is free. They just want their purchase to work well. But the lack of a tight, cohesive set of market targeting (i.e. a small, well-polished portfolio of products) really hurts them as they keep spending billions of $/euros with little return.

So to be honest, when you start trying to compare things apples to apples (no pun intended), you'll see why Nokia has been desperately spending big time, and trying major pushes. They've always dominated the mid-tier market (no surprise) enough to even redefine it at will. But they really fell flat on their face in the high end smartphone market since the N82 (their last well designed smartphone) as they didn't capitalize on their position. They really need to catch up on the high end market, and get much better product managers to reposition themselves. Get your perspective right.

-Gene

i have two e72s, 1 N900, and 1 6700. for now, i'm going for xperia x10, then samsung galaxy s when it comes out, and later the N8....the 3 nokia fones discussed here? they have no place in my celfone chest!

Agreed.
Finally I have some decent candidate to suggest to my friends when they want a new phone (other than 5800 and E63 which are being replaced).
Not everybody wants an high-spec phone.

As a short term business move, this makes sense: catering to emerging markets with lower end devices.

In the longer term, this strategy may come back to bite Nokia in the rear. Once your brand is known as the cheapo budget choice, it's awfully difficult for anybody to take you seriously when you decide to try your hand in the high end market again.

From an outsider's perspective, to me, this move looks like Nokia is signaling that they're ceding the high end 'Super Phone' category to nimbler moving companies like HTC.

Nokia is also deluding themselves if they think that LG, Samsung and the Chinese firms will let them play in the low end market alone. The Korean and Chinese manufacturers will squeeze Espoo in the low end, while HTC/Apple/Microsoft pressures them in the high end.

In addition to Windows Phone 7, Microsoft announced their intention this week to also play in the middle tier feature phone market, so soon you'll have former business partners now competing in the same market, and if its one thing Microsoft has, it's bundles and bundles of cash to throw at divisons, even at a loss, in order to hit at rivals and gain share.

So 2010 is a transition year

2009 was also a transition year...

2008 was what - a consolidation year?

Not much new here since 2007, we got the N82 announced in November and N95-8GB in December.


Rafe people understand the strategy, please do not assume we're stupid. We have understood and evaluated the strategy and decided it is not good enough.

Shouldn't you be doing that - and leaving the PR communications to Nokia? Your "customer" at AAS is the consumer, you should put our interests above Nokias.

Mr. Mark,

Damn that had to hurt. Gene just pwned you dude. You better look both ways before crossing the street before you get run over like you just did. Ouch....