Nokia’s New Beginning
It’s been a strange few years for Nokia. The largest manufacturer of mobile phones in the entire world, more deeply involved with more economies than most countries, suddenly found themselves shoved out of the spotlight by smaller competitors. And when you count “Apple” as smaller, at least in your area of expertise, that’s some serious industrial capacity. It’s not so much too big to fail as too big to have ever expected this. It was like someone sneaking up on the Sun.
There was a time when Nokia was phones. They were synonymous. You’d ask friends to borrow a Nokia charger, you’d use your Nokia every day, and when it broke you’d just buy the next one with a larger model number – or pick up a free handset from a friend who’d done just that. Then the smartphone hit like a smartbomb, except the smartphone was able to keep exploding into the market. While still masters of the dumbphone, Nokia found themselves sidelined in a gigantic new market.
Smartphones get the publicity, the love, and a huge chunk of the money. They’re much more expensive and attractive than the old featurephones, allowing for far fatter profit margins – and a constant revenue stream if you can create an App Store for yourself. Despite having the largest phone research and development network in the world Nokia was suddenly years behind and losing market share with every passing second. Which is why they decided to do several years’ work in one.
Last week’s Nokia World 2011 was all out with the old and in with the new, their first shot in a new invasion of the smartphone market. The long-awaited Nokia N9 was shown off, a glorious last gasp from the MeeGo era, then cast off by fans too busy looking at the Lumia 800. Billed as the “first real Windows Phone” this sleek shell with the big blue buttons makes Mango look sexy. It’s sad to see the long-awaited N9 fall by the wayside, a victim of Nokia’s commitment to using Windows, but it’s great to see the world’s biggest phone firm making exciting phones again.
Even the release date is a calculated assault on entrenched enemies in the market place. The UK release date of 16 November is one day before the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is scheduled to land, and in choosing to drop the Lumia at that juncture, Nokia are clearly hoping to scoop some of the smartphone share from its competitors. Unlike Apple fans, Android adherents are all about choice and new products. Many will stick it out to stay loyal, but anyone looking for the newest and shiniest phone now has a real choice ahead of them.