Nokia - Wake up call
Mobile phones May 12th, 2009It’s time that someone in Nokia really woke up and started doing something with these phone UI’s. I had a chance to view the lovely Nokia N97 in the last week. The phone has a genius construction, it’s practically unbreakable, the designs finally looks nice, fully functional keyboard is awsome. But: The phone UI was just simply horrible. I just hope I was holding the pre-release alfa or so.
Well, how is Nokia really doing in mobile phones? In the past year, they have launched only one major touch screen device, the “Nokia Tube”, the Nokia 5800. Basically nothing else in terms of touch screen devices was launched. According to independent sales information, iPhone has only 35% higher sales then the Nokia 5800, which is not that bad.
Of course, we are talking about futuristic touch screen devices. Nokia still completelly dominates the market of non-smartphone devices, where it is key, and will be for the following years to come, which they probably know.
On the other hand, if you look at the difference between using a Nokia 5800 and Nokia N97 - it’s huge. As many industry leaders agree with me - Nokia has recently lost all it’s shine with always being the leader in UI in mobile phones. I do believe Symbian was a huge success and a great step for Nokia, and it’s a perfect platform, technically, I still very much enjoy using it, and there are things I would be missing on all Windows Mobile, iPhone and Android handsets.
The problem that Symbian is now recently coming, especially seeing the N97, that it is still extremelly unsexy in terms of UI, mostly slow and not easily usable like the other devices on the market.
So Nokia, we hope you get your phones set in line correctly, and that there will be some new phones for us hungry mobile users (and hungrymobile writers). Nokia, please wake up, and start delivering the experience professional users are expecting.
Tags: nokia N97, nokia wake up
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May 12th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Nokia is also facing a very difficult situation with its development platform which is complicated & requires unscallable/expensive certifications and tweaking for advanced features. For Lokola for instance, developping the clients for Android, WM, iPhone,… is a breathe, including getting the location, the center of Lokola local mobile search, but with Nokia, ouch, it hurts, which is frustrating.
Making developpers’ life easy should be a prio for Nokia if they want services (besides their own of course) to be available and keep their smartphones relevant. Very little support is today available which does not bode well for scale.
In the meantime, Lokola will still be available for Nokia phones, but the end user experience is not as rich as it is with Windows Mobile, iPhone or Android.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Just a quick message to let you know that the Nokia 5800 Comes With Music SIM-free edition will go on sale this Friday, 22 May at Nokia Regent Street, Nokia T5 and http://www.nokia.co.uk/shop for £299 SIM-free and including VAT.
To celebrate, the first 100 customers to visit the Nokia Regent Street store on Friday (22 May) between 12 midday and 1pm, and bring in 2 old devices – a mobile phone of any brand and type and one ipod or other mp3 player – will get 50% off Nokia 5800 Comes With Music.