Nokia exec: Young fashonistas 'fed up' with iPhone A Nokia exec has identified the target market to which his Espoonians will "deliver services and phones that are different" from the industry-leading iPhone and Android-based smartphones: jaded kids. "What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone," Nokia Entertainment Global sales …
I thought the youngsters fed up with iPhone/Android already had rioter friendly Blackberrys?
Moving from phones with lots of little, cute icons and a touchscreen to one with less but bigger, uglier icons that don't quite fit on that same touchscreen... hardly appealing is it ;)
(Did enjoy Microsofts HTML5 WP7 demo on my phone - confirmed that it's just a fugly and limited in action as it looks in pictures of it)
Poor old Nokia, though they're right about Android being complex. I've watched with amazement as a friend struggled with his new ZTE compared with the relative simplicity of using Symbian on my ancient Nokia E71 that has most of the smartphone essentials.
As for the iPhone, it's a bit rich to suggest that it's passe simply because it's so successful.
Where I really think Nokia have lost it is on price -- Android phones can be bought for as little as £40 which is nearly what Nokia expect me to pay for a new battery. Won't be a difficult choice when my battery finally dies -- new battery for an old phone or a brand new phone with a new battery included ? And another Nokia customer is lost.
Either these PR drones truly are idiots, or they think people reading it are.
Android is as hard as you want it to be. Sure there are lots of settings and tweaks you can do to make it work how you want, but the bottom line is you don't ever need to touch these things.
My 65yr old mother also has a Wildfire, and se has no problems with it. She is unlikely to ever visit the marketplace, she certainly wouldn't change her home launcher, the widgets are what I put there for here. BUT she uses her smartphone every day and loves it, she never thought she could use a smartphone...
the same OS ( in my Arc S) is also a power-users dream, I can tweak and change anything I want.
it's today's 55 to 65 year olds who got computing into the mainstream of business and hobby life. Some ot them are female, even mothers, despite losing brain cells along with the placenta.
65! I get the impression you think that is the definition of senility. Most 65 year olds I know can run up hills, sail boats, walk long distances, do rock-climbing, ride motor bikes,out-think spotty would-bes and use a real computer (not some wysiwyg abortion of a desktip consumer device) in a way that you patronising adolescents can only dream of.
Actually, my 82 year old mother is happy with her macbook and a "smart phone" and she was not even in a technical profession, unless you count general nursing.
Pompous twits. Pray you never get old, e.g. 35.
...so it's only a matter of time when it becomes part of MS.
""Also," he added, "many are not happy with the complexity of Android and the lack of security.""
Right. Because, unlike Android's underlying linux core, MS Windows is well-known for its hardened security for decades now especially in its mobile offerings, thanks to their also long experience in mobile business including long line of Windows Phone devices.
'"What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone,"'
- So 'youth' is the major important market? I hope this fjin doesn't refer to teens whom ask a weekly allowance from their parents? I can't see them as the big spenders. Especially as this suit says a bit later
'The marketplace is extremely crowded'
- So you suits concentrate on an already 'crowded marketplace' of consumers whom have no money of their own? Very smart indeed.
'whose lack of individuality is "very confusing to the consumer." '
- WTF. This is a contradiction. iPhones are easy because they're all the same and very limited to personalise (read: hard to tamper with).
'Nokia will need breakthroughs in design, features, and app-developer interest'
- By going the Microsoft route Nokia don't need to do anything. It's Microsoft that needs breakthrough in features and app-developer interest because they decide to what specs the hardware must adhere and how the OS will evolve. Nokia has absolutely nothing to say in that matter. They can only write their own apps which sets their phones apart from e.g. HTC, LG or Samsung. Just as HTC wrote the Sense HUB to set their phones apart and LG wrote some DLNA-thingy to set their phones apart. Djeez, who writes these things?
And more importanly what stupid f&^%£%^&%$ runs these companies today? Do these morons ever come out of their ivory tower? No wonder our economy is in shambles. All those stupis ppl ru(i)nning the companies that were supposed to bring us welfare and jobs.
Get me a rope.
I've bought phones directly from Nokia in the past, so I'm on their sales mailing list. The point at which I decided I'm not going to be buying another of their phones was when they started sending me promo Emails full of patronizing juvenile crap about 'Seeking Irregular People' for their 'Amazing Collective' and how I'd be 'sillier than a fake moustache' not to join in with their new social media hipsterfest. At least I now know that alienating boring business-bods like me is part of their marketing strategy, so I don't feel so bad about it...
Has he looked at the Windows Phone website?
If he's even mentioning that then he can't have actually seen his product, or he still thinks Nokia are shipping Maemo/Meego
Even the various models of iPhone look more different to each other than the various Windows Phone 7 devices. Windows Phone is homogenous by design intent!
One can claim that to be a good thing, but claiming the Lumia is not part of a sea of sameness is just stupid.
[Posted from my Kindle. How different is that!]
The killer feature for me is the built in FM transmitter. It gives me mp3s / spotify / internet radio in my car without wires or fuss.
Apparently the (developer only) n950 is very nice, but rare as rocking horse shit. The n9 is also a fine machine but will cost you £600 if you can find one and meego is looking a bit shaky these days.
My personal experience is that once I got a tablet/slate/pad computer I wasn't as interested in using smart phone apps anymore. I still have a smart phone, but I use it to *gasp* make and receive phone calls now.
On the outside chance that other people react the same way, well...this is good for apple, since they have the most popular tablet. And in a way, it's good for nokia because it commoditizes smart phones by making people think of them primarily as phones again, something they are still viewed as excelling at.
Anyone else remember, way back in late 2006/early 2007, when the world was in black and white and Jobs did the Keynote to introduce the iPhone, that he said 1) the killer app for smart phones is phone calls, and 2) it's amazing how phone manufacturers don't get this.
Surprisingly, this is still true. "Know who you are" isn't a business mantra for no reason.
do people post things like this article as a joke or what? There's been decades of Microsoft paying for "research" and "studies" which always showed what was hot sucked and that Microsoft's shit didn't stink. MS-Nokia isn't any different and besides, when an executive makes statements, he or she is going to boost their point of view. When acting like a Microsoft, they'll always disparage the others if there is even a message their product is better.
Because you know, the customers are asking for it.
So, according to Nokia, people are fed up with the "sameness" of Apple and Android.
How in that case is Nokia going to differentiate themselves from the "sameness" of Windows Phone across different manufacturers' devices?
Now, had Nokia kept Maemo/Meego (especially looking at the superb N9) then they could genuinely claim that theirs was a truly unique offering.
I would have bought a Maemo or Meego phone from Nokia and been proud to do so. but as soon as I read (a long time ago, now) that they dropped out of the Meego project in favor of Microsoft, I have turned down free phones from Nokia, offered by my work to all our IT staff. WinPho, no different than Win8, has an interface made for morons. While my employers buy ever deeper into the Microsoft money-pit, the same company lobbying our governments to bring more expatriot workers into American IT -further erroding our economy, I'm busy migrating my infrastructure to one purely based on Linux. As far as I'm concerned, Nokia has aligned themselves with the IT equivalent of Al Qaida, Microsoft, the most hated company in IT... Aside from SCO, which Microsoft funded to pursue Red Hat & IBM in an attempt to keep from being racked up in another anti-trust case. They both suck and should be destroyed.
If MS wanted their OS to do well, they should have removed all references to MS and windows and just pretended it was all Nokia's idea.
No-one wants to be reminded of their work pc when they look at their phone after 5pm, it doesn't matter how good it is. This isn't anti-MS, this is just wanting not to think about work or failing IT all the time. Apple's phone is tied to itunes (for windows users) or "my mac" for mac users. You may not like it, but its better then being tied to "windows" which may have viruses or at least needs performance-killing AV software and reminds people of being at work.
Oh yes, they should have hired Apple's PR agency. Successful, not weird (Nokia) or a loser (Win7 tv ads) is the image of the users you want to project. Its a phone - not many people care about the OS. They assume using it will be easy and expect standard guestures to work and they want decent application integration. Apart from that, you're probably looking at screen and battery life if you want repeat business.
I've just done it - broke away from the iPhone experience and bought a WP7 device. Got a second hand HD7 to have a go with to see how restrictive it is. I'm actually very happy with it. There's a couple of niggly things but as long as I have a subnet calculator and a few other choice apps then I'm happy.
I was sick to the back teeth of everyone and their mum (and 10 year old son) having one. Back in the day (not that long ago) the lines were clear and defined:
IT bods = Unwiedly smartphone
Suits = Simple, classy with great battery life
Kids = Whatever they're parents disposed of after upgrade
Mums = Whatever they're children disposed of after upgrade
Grandparents= Comes with a cable to connect to the wall
'Fashionistas'= Something small with xpress-on covers
Now the universal answer seems to be iPhone. Gahh.
a little realism into the discourse, this guy's a PR drone. Expecting him not to sound like one is like expecting water not to be wet. I would note that a couple of people here at my office have got the Lumia 800 and they care as much about front-facing cameras and video calls as any other mobile phone user I've met, which is to say "less than oil companies care about polar bears". What they DO care about is the UI, which they love, and which is fluid and easy to use, the performance, which is likewise excellent, and the screen quality, which is also lovely; they seem to be able to make phone calls perfectly well also. Funny how no-one bitched about the hardware spec when it was called an N9 and people were staying away in droves... Seriously, I suspect that most of the bitching here is from people who have never tried one, but have decided that anything Microsoft MUST be bad. While using Activesync-based email on their Googlephones (oh, the irony! http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/IPLicensing/Programs/ExchangeActiveSyncProtocol.aspx )...
Disclaimer: I use a cheapie Android phone myself, and I like it, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing when someone else has a good idea.
He goes on about a "sea of sameness" which the Nokia phone will presumably be better than.
Yet it is almost impossible to tell the difference between HTC, Nokia, LG etc Windows Phone 7 devices. From more than a couple of feet away they are indistinguishable.
This is by design - Microsoft deliberately chose to tie all WP7 devices to a very tight hardware spec and the prevent any carrier or manufacturer from customising it.
There are good reasons for that, and it's a perfectly reasonable idea that could easily work as it means the phone manufacturers and carriers can't screw it up with added tat, as they have previously done with Symbian, Android et al.
Go to www.windowsphone.com and compare the phones. Can you tell the difference? Would you recognise any of those phones if the big label next to it were covered up?
So why is the Nokia marketing drone banging on about 'sameness' being a bad thing?
I think this guy has tried to adopy the distortian reality field to ill-effect. Blind yourself to failure and pray everything's going to be alright.
No point creating a sub-market for yourself that doesn't exist. Make a good phone or move on. Oh no, you can't. Better keep sinking.
If The Youth of Today™ becomes jaded, it is Facebook, Web 2.0 and other fashonware that will sink, not Apple. When your product is no longer The Latest Thing™, it has to survive in the cold glare of merit. Facebook is no longer fashionable. Everybody is bored with knowing their chum just ate an egg sandwich.
Have any of you actually tried the Lumia 800?
Its a nice piece of kit, and the metro interface is a welcome break from the standard rows of icons. Add in the active slide functionality, and the Xbox live integration and you've got a decent handset.
I'm a BB and iPhone user,I also have an Android tablet, and I'm happy with all of them... But I strongly believe thats its going to be good having a new contender in the smartphone market!
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