The bigger they are, the harder they fall - and it looks like Nokia's falling very hard indeed.
The phone giant's market share is in decline, with Apple, RIM and Android biting great big chunks out of its smartphone business and Samsung overtaking it in the European market for no-frills mobiles.
To make matters worse, a new survey by YouGov found that the firm is losing friends, fast. Only 34% of respondents would consider Nokia for their next smartphone, a drop of 12% since December.
So what's gone wrong? According to the YouGov survey, people are moving away from the firm because they fancy a change, because they feel that other platforms have a better range of apps, and because they perceive Nokia phones to have poor operating systems.
We've come a long way from the days when the Matrix phone, the Nokia 8110, was the must-have handset. The problem is partly marketing - anyone who finds themselves going head to head with Apple's unicorn-powered dream machines is unlikely to come off best - but there's more to it than that.
Its operating system looks ancient, its phones haven't been as sexy as rivals' products and it hasn't been as appealing to developers as Apple and Google have been: Nokia won't tell anybody how many apps are in its Ovi Store and it has just slashed its developer fees and approval times, major hints that there aren't as many good Ovi apps as Nokia would like.
The good news is that Nokia has some cool technology up its sleeve. The N8 will be Nokia's flagship when it goes on sale in a few weeks' time, and it should be a bit cheaper than its smartphone rivals. There's a new operating system, Symbian^3, there's support for Bluetooth 3, HDMI and 10.2Mbps HSDPA internet access, and it's all very impressive.
The bad news is that the N8 isn't shipping yet, but new iPhones and Androids are - and that means some of the N8's specs already look a bit me-too. HD video recording? Apple does that. Just three home screens for your apps and widgets? We can hear a bunch of HTCs chuckling. OLED display? Old news. 20% less battery life than its rivals? A sub-par internet experience?. There are already eight better phones on the market, and more will surely follow.
We've loved many Nokias in our time, and as we said in our hands-on N8 review we hope that Nokia makes the N8 perfect before it goes on sale. However, and it's a very big however, "if it gets it wrong it's a long old wait until Symbian^4 or MeeGo show up to hopefully save the day."
By the time Symbian^4 ships in 2011, Android will be in its fourth generation and Apple will be gearing up for iPhone 5. Nokia can't afford to let its rivals' lead get any longer.
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Your comments (4) Click to add a new comment
bradavon
July 6th 2010
4. The trouble all the historical phone makers have is an image problem.
The majority of people think Nokia, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson think "dumbphone". Which means poor 1990s style menus, poor phone design, poor touch screen and so on.
It's no wonder HTC's flavour of Android is doing much better than other makes that have dabbled with Android. HTC have been making phones for a decade or so but it's only the past year HTC have made a name of their own. HTC has no image problem to content with. Of course HTC Sense is also a fantastic user interface in it's own right too.
Add in that Nokia deludedly think their operating systems can compete with Google, Apple and RIM's operating systems, just makes matters worse. Symbian is utter rubbish.
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twinpeaked
July 6th 2010
3. With respect, I think that you miss my point, Nokia see devices as a means to an end, last year, Nokia rebranded themselves primarily as a software and solutions company. It is in their very nature of their business model that the smartphone commoditises as quickly as possible, in order to place as many compatible and enabled devices in the hands of the general public. There is more money selling an intangible good than a high end device.
And no, I do not believe that a £100 will be comparable to a 2010 iPhone or HTC device. I believe that technology akin to the original iphone, will continue to commoditise and replace the masses of dumb candy bars that most people have, especially outside of the core young, male, and professional demographic. Meanwhile, Symbian^4 will scale down to the bottom price level mentioned providing and provide a very large audience with the unprecedented opportunity to buy content.
I just get the feeling that news of Nokia demise have been greatly over blown. If we are talking about a battle for taking the top mobile computing accolade, score to you, but their are other ways to making a buck than making an iPhone killer (yuck hate that term)
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healeydave
July 6th 2010
2. @twinpeaked
I think your missing the point completely.
Nokia is already in the mass market of cheap (minimal profit) phones. It doesn't want to be king of that and only that. Nokia desperately wants to be a contender in the the high value smart phone end.
If you think Nokia has plans to produce smart phones of the same quality of current high end devices from HTC & Apple and it wants to sell them for circa £100, I'm afraid you are seriously mistaken!
HTC & Apple are not interested in making £30 - £90 devices and whilst this is a huge market for Nokia still, it has the likes of Samsung & LG etc who are happy to compete in this arena, thus further diluting it.
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twinpeaked
July 6th 2010
1. How does having a well documented game plan of selling highly functional smartphones and associated services, to the majority of people who dream of owning iPhones, but will never have the cash, equate to losing one's mojo?
I have a feeling that when symbian^4 hits the 2011 £100 smartphone, it will be Apple who appeared not to get the memo. Granted to a technology site, Nokia are nowhere on the map. But as any high end user can attest, all the advanced features in the world are worthless if one is the only user with that functionality. It is the 90% of the userbase that is genuinely important
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