Blighty's biz bods get their paws on Nokia phondleslab Businesses channels will have real but only limited supplies of Nokia’s first tablet in the next few weeks, while the phone giant has signed an exclusive deal with upmarket Blighty retail outfit John Lewis. Arguably the Lumia 2520 makes more sense in a business than anywhere else, with Windows RT now capable of running an …
I don't mind John Lewis having the exclusive deal, I like them, they're a workers co-operative with strict rules on pay scaling and profit sharing, and they're pretty much ubiquitous - and if you're not near a shop, they're online.
It could be far worse if Vodaphone/O2/EE/whatever had the deal, because I presume you can bung in a SIM of your choice?
I may be tempted. I just sold my soul to the machine, and got a Nexus 7, which I love, big time, but I may bite the bullet and get one of these too - I like Nokia products, my Lumia 700 is getting a bit long in the tooth but has worked well, and a second tablet doesn't take up much room
then that'd actually be cool. Also, I'd be interested on El Reg's take on its ability to administer Windows servers.
You must be joking.
As a .Net developer who writes LOB apps there is no way we'd have these. Why?
1)
When you look at their side-loading story, it's all about si
de-loading Windows Store apps. This means Different Xaml, different control sets and all the fun of double coding features for this and the desktop version of the app.
Buying the full fat version of a W8 tablet makes all this go away and costs an additional £300. Given that a developer costs about £500 it's far, far cheaper to buy more expensive kit than to re-building existing apps using new tech.
2)
It has a teeny, tiny screen. All my users have 2 or more screens. This would only be useful to management types who wanted dashboards, and they're all in love with their iPads. They don't want these things because they don't want to buy Fruit Ninja all over again.
I'm sure it's well-built, but the only way business is going to buy these things is as kiosk/POS devices (and even then it would be cheaper, integration-wise to use intel devices). And they ain't gonna buy them from John Lewis...
Outside of the normal exclusivity benefits (guaranteed buyer and joint promotional activity) I'm struggling to see any tangible benefits.
While John Lewis has been pushing electronics lately they don't have the mind share of Amazon, PC World/Currys, Argos or even Tesco Direct and they definitely don't have store presence, there isn't a John Lewis west of Cardiff.
In America they had the right idea, give exclusivity to the networks who can not only subsidise it with their data packages but also push that instore.
How do you work that logic? If they were to scared to put them on general sale, they'd tie up a telecomms provider, surely? Rather than get what is generally accepted to be one of the best shops on the high street. Most companies would view John Lewis wanting to have an exclusive on their product as a major win.
Then again as you are shaping up to be Eadon 2.0, there would be no need for logic in an anti-ms growl.
What is it with Nokia and exclusive deals?
Artificially limiting overall supply is one thing since the shops will still advertise things even if they have none of them to sell, but I really find it difficult to understand how artificially limiting where you can buy one will help increase sales. It'll just make it less visible in the shops surely?
The warranty is 2 years minimum and they do have excellent service, their customers are also very loyal, if my old mom had to buy the Nokia and it was 20GBP cheaper at PC World, she would still buy it from John Lewis. Not going to happen with her though, she is an iPad girl, which seems to be true for many in her age group of 70+
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