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Nokia Losing its Cell Phone Dominance
supersandra writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that Nokia is struggling to offer features, such as cameras and flip-phones, that are luring customers away to phones by other brands such as Motorola, Samsung, and Siemens. While Nokia used to account for 1 in every 3 phones sold worldwide, they are down to 28.9 percent. Nokia plans to bring 35 new phone models to market this year to win back more users."
I'm not a big fan of nokia
While Nokia used to account for 1 in every 3 phones sold worldwide, they are down to 28.9 percent. Holy Cow, they lost a whole 4.4%?! That's a really interesting way to make it sound like a big loss, when it's really not.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Sure, this isn't a gain obviously, but 1/3 = 33%. So they've basically lost 4% of the market. Seeing how many more players there are now with PDAs and stuff, this makes sense to me. Also, all you'd need is a somewhat major service provider to push someone else's phone with some kind of package deal, and suddenly Nokia would lose a few percentage points.
Is it really worth it to have 35 new phone models?
The article says that Nokia's problem is not having features that consumers want, like clam-shell phones. Yet their solution is not to include those features in their new phones, but to offer consumers 35 different models this year (only 6 of those are clam-shell). I'm all about consumer choice, but does this make sense to anyone?
Nokia's phones have recently been designed really poorly, IMHO. They are either too big or have a weird, non-standard design that doesn't always improve functionality.
That being said, for the most part, their GSM phones work better than most of their competitors for call quality and reception, but their competitors are quickly catching up!
Doh!
Next time they won't assume consumers will buy any piece of crap with a cell radio stapled to it. I'm sure the next year will have some nicely designed nokia phones now that they have been humbled.
I know I'm leaving Sprint, which sells and promotes tons of Nokia phones, because T-Mobile offers camera phones and (most importantly) BLUETOOTH.
Every other major cell phone service provider has had bluetooth compatible phones for a while, but not Sprint. If people are leaving the providers that Nokia sells the majority of their phones thought, they will definatly be losing marketshare.
~Donald
~Donald / Just RTFM
There are still plenty of people (like myself) who prefer a simple, functional phone. We don't need flip phones, color displays, builtin cameras, etc.
But this isn't much good to Nokia -- what they need is to sell phones. People like me aren't going to need to upgrade except when forced to by changes in radio protocol. And that only happens every 10-20 years or so.
I don't have a "real cellphone", i just have some crappy prepaid wireless cards "tracfone" they seem to be the only service that uses nokia phones now. Nokia still makes some OK cellphones, but i don't seem them making "PDA phones" or "game phones" or "camera phones" or "video phones" they might make them but they arn't popular. However, nokia has been making cellphones/carphones forever, and cellphones have been getting very very popular, so they are still doing ok in buisness i guess.
This seems a bit overkill to me. I feel like this is more of a knee-jerk reaction than a solid business move for some reason. Perhaps the real question is not "how far can we boost our market share with these 35 new phones," but instead should be "what's wrong with our existing phones?"
Realistically, you shouldn't have to add this many different products to your line to snag the coveted clamshell and camera buyers.
I bought a Motorola MPX200 a little under a year ago because I could write software for the damned thing, but before that I had always been a Nokia owner. Clearly, this is not a standard line of reasoning for most buyers. Nevertheless, perhaps Nokia should make it a little more obvious where their SDKs live for their phones and hold student developer contests or something.
iRooster, the Mac OS X a
I don't know if you can increase your market share by just increasing the number of phones you offer. Sure you become more customiced to different market segments, but I doubt that's why they have been loosing those 5% market share in recent years. Things like warranty, reputation, simplicity (including available selection!), and customer centricity are more likely to have contributed to Nokia's recent slide, and more phones only fixes a few of those problems.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
They're just falling behind in the market, simply. There's less technical difference between phones and a once innovative company has out-innovated the entire market, and now every cell manufacturer can do the same as they've done.
Not to mention Nokia's insistence on using higher rates of energy coming out of their phones. I am an Energy Sensitive and while a normal cell phone will give me a slight head pain, going anywhere within six feet of a Nokia gives me a splitting headache.
It's not to say they won't keep up as a company, but they won't keep up as a gigantic company. It'll come down to other things than pure innovation that will keep them alive now that cells are pure commodity,
Motorola's making choices easy....
How could they possibly be doing poorly when they invented the wonder of sidetalking?
Vandemar.org
I, for one, don't care about "interchangable faceplates" when the devices themselves are of somewhat dated design.
The features that are "luring customers away from Nokia" are the reasons I stick with Nokia. I never liked clamshell phones, more because no one seems to do it quite right than any other reason. AND I hate the idea of a camera phone. On so many levels.
:)
I've had three Nokias, a Motorola, and a Samsung in my cell phone career, and the Nokias have all been the best. Well, except for the first one, but that was at the birth of cell phone popularity, so I don't really pin it on Nokia. It was the best at the time
Who would ever need a Nokia when SonyEricsson has the P910!
The _perfect_ phone/PDA.
However, Nokia is a smart company. What do they care if they have 35 models? The average (not anyone reading slashdot) Cell phone user cares about two things: One, the phone looks good to them, and right now this means flip phones. And two, the phone has the features they want. That second request is going to be different for every person.
It is this diversity that can help nokia. A soccer mom who calls a max of 10 minutes a day and a corporate executive who needs a high capacity battery are two totally different segments of the market. However the Nokia brand can keep both by releasing phones taylored for each.
Lastly, you'd be surpirsed how many millions of people hate learning a "new" phone. I personally can't stand nokia phones, they're bulky, have features I never need, and I can't seem to get used to the menus. But I hear from everyone i know with one that "they're so easy to use." And if you know how to use one nokia, you know how to use them all. That's their best kept secret.
The user interface of a pushbutton telephone is such a simple thing, yet almost every Nokia phone breaks the rules, or bends it so far it hurts.
4 rows of 3 numbers (plus # and *), equally sized. Is that really too much to ask for?
If Nokia could stick to this simple rule, I'd have bought another one. I now have a Sony Ericsson phone.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I'll be pissed if the company that isn't selling obnoxious phones goes out of the phone business. I recently lost my sprint phone (cheap samsung flip phone, b&w screen) and tried to get a new one. I checked the sprint store, radio shack, and best buy for a new phone. The cheapest was $150, all but 1 or 2 were camera phones, and all the flip phones were camera phones. So I paid the $150 termination fee on that account and signed up for AT&T. So now I have a flip phone with no camera and cheaper service. Still, a lot of hassle for something that would have been solved by offering a cheap stripped down phone.
I don't want to pay extra for a camera phone, but I love flip phones. They're more compact and I don't have to worry about hitting buttons while it's in my pocket. They don't cost much more than a standard phone.
They plan to win by introducing 35 new models in one year? When Jobs returned to Apple, they had 35 models of mac with arbitrary names like Mac 2200/750. It was a confusing morass. He rejuvenated them in part by canning that mess and developing a small number of compelling products. Now Nokia thinks developing a mess is the way to go?
IMHO, their phones are the most expensive with less features. I Have an 3520, its software is full of bugs and the battery begin to fail in less than a year. When I buy, I want try to run some java midlets but I could never to donwload an midlet to it. (ok, its tmda)
My friends have some other's brands phone like motorolla in the same price range who had lots more features.
My next phone will not be Nokia.
Could it possible be that Nokia is losing money on *gasp* the N-GAGE????
Naw, that couldn't be it.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
What is the main advantage to having a bluetooth enaabled phone? I guess when I shop I look for reasonable price, tri-band (Not a lot of digital coverage in the rural West of USA), and maybe a good selection of features from the service provider such as internet.
As I understand it, Bluetooth allows two different electronic devices to interact, but what would a bluetooth cell phone do? Interact with a PDA/Laptop? I've searched around on Google, and mainly it's the typical sales sites without any real information on the benefits.
Basically, it comes down to a question from me: Should I look for a bluetooth enabled phone for my next cell phone?
Nokia's hardware and software is great, but they have a serious problem in their phone: There are only 5 user groups (except for the Symbian phones, which are usually just too big).
So, it means that you can't assign ringtones for more than 5 people, nor can't organize them nicely, and it's very, very annoying.
I like their "one ring" feature though. Only them and SK got that feature - other phones don't.
I've recently switched to a Nokia phone after using Motorola for a few years. It is *much* better for texting (SMS). I just wish that I could run the software that they offer through their website; unfortunately it all requires Windows. Supporting Linux might help them to get back at least a little of the market that they are losing.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Nokia is too expensive. For half the price I can buy Siemens with the same functionality.
SHE does throw dice.
Well, first of all, Nokia has been very successful in the cell phone market, and generally when you have high-quality competing players, the competition kicks in, and things even out. Nokia boasted 34.7% global marklet share in 2003, and in Q1 2004 grew in European region with those new concept devices like N-Gage and what not. Suchy growth is hardly sustainable, especially when competition largely is just as good.
Second, US is a large market for cell phones in regards to global sales. However, few of US customers ever choose their cellphones, since in the United States the phones are purchased by the operator, not customer. Which still creates some sort of competition, but it's way tougher to push newer phones and newer features, while the operator still has the year-old models available and runs those commercial "and now get a free blah-blah-blah phone with the signup for 1-year plan".
Realistically I think slipping to 28.9% is not too big of a deal, and Nokia will kick back after maybe just one sweet deal with US operator like Cingular or Verizon, where new models get pushed.
For a while, you had no choice but to get a camera with your t-Mobile phone. I ended up with a T610 because of the Bluetooth.
But there are people that don't *want* all of that crap - they just want a simple, easy to use phone that has decent call quality.
Now I have a camera phone, but have absolutely *zero* coverage at my apartment. In Walnut Creek, CA. We have a friggin Tiffany's and an Apple Store, but cell coverage just sucks sometimes. (Just to illustrate that I'm not in BFE)
Hmmm...the way nokia seems to be going, pretty soon, you'll have phones that you can put on the ground and play that dance-on-the-lit-squares-to-really-bad-music game... .
.
.
.
oh, wait a minute....people are already doing it without waiting for the game to be programmed into the phone....i think it's called stomp-the-phone...whatever happened to just talking into a phone *sigh*
N'way, my point being that by the time some of those new handsets make it to market here many consumers may just be starting to forget about Nokia. Credit where it's due though, T-mobile got the 6600 out fairly fast. But then they're not an American (or CDMA) carier either. Just my $0.02
I don't know, pushing out more phones would be okay, if they're going to be nice and solid and actually let you sync descently.
Kind of irritating the damn app only runs on windows, and even then still sucks rocks. I've been playing with various developer packages, trying to cobble something together, but the packages for the 3586 are pretty much basically non-existant, unless there's an overlapping dev kit and I'm just ignorant of it. (I've been *looking* though too, hard to believe that's the case)
I guess you do get what you pay for, that model is kind of they're entry and newer, but also the best that my provider can recommend for getting a signal out here in the sticks...
I'd love to get a decent *basic* phone with good/great signal reception that you can actually sync contacts with, even if the only option is being allowed to roll my own...
sorry Nokia but my brother's Siemens is as good as my Nokia and was half of my Nokia price.
...
Next time I am getting a cell phone - I will be cheap
A better question to ask is:
Who would ever need a SonyEricsson P910 when they would just use it to make calls anyway?
I had a Nokia phone once. It SUCKED! I could sit it on the coffee table and watch it reboot itself without ever touching it. After having it replaced 4 times I switched to an LG phone. The LG hasn't given any problems whatsoever... minus the rapidly degrading battery life
Nokia is DOS to Sony Ericsson's Macintosh. Nokia just can't get a windows to market. They're stuck on their crappy UI designed for small black and white screens. All they did when color came out on big screens was color their same crappy UI and make the text bigger. Its probably too late for Nokia, they lost. Sob Sob.
Doesn't sound like the CEO is doing his job!
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
Hello Nokia! If you're reading this, we have already figured out your trick: You never sell a phone will all the features. I guess you do this to artificially "keep the hunger up" for your phones, because people will then have to buy a phone which has one more feature the next year. And then again.
Well we have found out your trick already 3 years ago. Other companies sell phones with the whole nine yards, and they're light too. So we now buy these phones. Bad Nokia, bad!
If you want my business back, give me a phone that has every feature in it. Every acronym, even if I don't know what it means. I want to have it. It's some sort of spiritiual thing, you know.
It will take a long time for competitiors to ever quell Nokias dominance, since many users will continue to replace their old Nokias with new ones "because the others are too complicated". This of course is not true, but the mere fact that sending an SMS is different seems to be enough to put many poeple off. It means that to compete other manufacturers have to offer vastly superior phones and reasonable prices (which they do... especially Sendo). But some people still wont change.
The real bummer about this is that Nokia has far and away the most open platform for development of any phone manufacturer. They provide a huge array of sdk's and example code for both symbian and j2me developers.
Contrast this with an LG phone running brew on verizon and you have to pay all kinds of money and jump through all kinds of hoops just to write an app that verizon decides it doesn't want to distribute anyway.
My (very small) company is developing a cellphone app, and the costly barrier for starting Brew/Verizon devleopment is preventing us from using that platform. You pay through the nose for the development suite, then it's 300 bucks to register as a qcomm developer, then you have to jump through all of these verisign hoops to get a DRM key to sign your apps with, then you have to mail in your phone to be flashed into development mode, then you have to deal with verizon for distribution.
Meanwhile we're downloading compilers, tools, and example apps off the net for the nokia symbian platform that just work on an unmodded handset we bought at the store.
Is their goal to saturate the market with so many models they'll just win by random choice? That sounds like crap to me.. but then I'm an engineer, not a marketing exec.
Still, if their phones suck then no one is going to buy them. I bought my nice Moto V600 because it had the features I wanted and wasnt a hassle to use. Nokia made the goddamn buttons so small on their phones and in such stupid designs. Make a cell phone thats easy to use and works well... doesnt need to be art-deco looking.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
... or with whomever manages to solve the basic issue: low-price, reliable communication anywhere in the world. I am sick and tired of phones that have silly gimmicks, but which deliver a pitiful performance on those counts.
i want a phone. i don't need it to have internet, a camera, bluetooth. just. a. fucking. phone.....
That is a bit excessive.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think they could increase their sales a bit if they'd offer a phone that JUST MAKES CALLS. I don't want to play games. I don't want voice features. I don't mind customized rings, but I don't need them either. I especially don't want the bloody animations whenever I do anything with the phone- I just want it to do whatever it was I asked it, and then stop showing off so I can press more keys without waiting for the phone!!!
I can't believe I'm alone- there must be a lot more folks out there who just want a phone!
I've considered getting a camera phone, but never for the reasons that they seem to show in the commercials. Where I can imagine it coming in useful is when my wife sends me to the store for some insufficiently described item. Right now, I can call and say "did you mean the one in the purple box or the turquoise one.", to which I get a non-responsive answer like "its not really a box so much as a plastic wrapping.." and the frustration on both sides builds from there with each subsequent question and response.
With a camera phone, I can send two pictures and say "this one or that one"
Um, I remember when Motorola WAS the cell phone market. Basic cell phones have turned into another fad, where people upgrade solely for the 'WOW' factor.
you do have the PDA users who want the combined features.
Back in the day, it was all about size (or lack thereof). That's when I switched from Motorola to Audiovox (remember when audiovox was cool?). Now, I don't really need a smaller phone, but I don't need the features as well - so upgrades go in cycles of years instead of every year.
and still do love my nokia 3100, but i just bought nokia 7610 because I wanted a camera phone, and I found the user interface horrible. The one I bought only has dictionaries for Danish English and Norwegian whereas 3100 has 7 or 8 including Danish english and German that I all use. I wanted the nokia 3100 + a camera, and it turns out I got a horrible monster that I have a terrible time using. Nothing is where i expect it to be and everything is much slower. i am afraid it is symbian that is the problem.
I wanted a phone with
color screen, GPRS and polyphonic sounds
3 phones fitted the above options and and were equally priced
Nokia 3200
Sony Ericsson T 210
Samsung SGH-C100
Used each phone for 10 mins and the user friendliness of Nokia was outstanding
Striving to be common...
I just purchased a new cell phone and switched providers mostly due to a Nokia phone in combination with an AT&T plan. The phone loses reception all the time (there were many times when my friends, who were mostly on AT&T as well but didn't use Nokia's, maintained service standing right next to me and I had no signal).
I had the phone replaced a few times due to call disconnections and bad service, but every single one they gave me worked the same and had crappy reception... that leads me to believe that they (Nokia) are using sub-par parts in their phones, which leads me to consider their phones to be junk.
My previous phone was a Nokia (and the phone before that too) and it was much better quality and didn't ever disconnect.
From first-hand experience, I'd say they have many things to learn and change before they gain back their dominance of the market.
phones can truly be a phone+pda+music player combination I'll just stick to the freebie phones.
... and until they get neuros or ipod type music features (20+gb, nice interface, etc) they aren't worth 300 or 400$ to me.
I use mine primarily for work, and they aren't willing to spring for a treo
I used to have a Nokia 2160 phone a long time ago and it was great. Not so long ago I purchased a Nokia 3310 GSM and it sucked. After a few months it became crazy. A lot of funny things appeared on the screen. Here in the third world warranties don't last long so I had to buy another phone. This time I sent nokia to hell and bought a Siemens C35. That phone rocks. It has better features (the only thing that sucks is the tune editor) than the nokia, was less expensive and has way better quality. I have a friend who has an siemens phone from about 5 years ago and he sais the phone has never broke. It even fell on a bucket with water and soap (for a mop) and it didn't break. He continues to use it and says it's the best pohne in the world.
My heart is pure, but make no mistake, it's pure evil
Nokia's most popular phone in many UK retailers is the Nokia 1100 - just makes calls and SMS, the only bonus feature being a built in flashlight (kind of useful). It retails prepaid in the UK as low as £30...
...Software Patents in Europe I won't buy anything from them. Period.
I don't want 5 million features I don't want or need in a $5,000 phone. I just want a couple of useful features in a nice inexpensive phone I won't be afraid to actually use.
For me, the following would be perfect:
Folds up to protect the screen from my pocket.
Monochrome display, just large enough to display the info I need, maybe 3-4 lines. Placed somewhere that won't be pressed up against my cheek when I'm making a call, making me have to wipe it off every time I make a call. Color uses too much batteries.
A ringtone that sounds like a phone. This is a pet peeve, I don't want some annoying song to play when I get a call, I just want something to let me know I have a call, that's it.
Good reception. I want to be able to use my phone from my basement or my office building.
Rugged. Should take at the very least a 3-foot drop.
That's it! You could probably sell this phone for $50 with a HUUGE profit margin, and I'd buy it.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Because the old models are more durable than anything by Motorola, Samsung, or the rest.
.0001 inches), or a cheap Chinese knockoff. I've got a Federal indicator that's pre *WWII* by the looks of it. It's just as smooth and accurate as anything new.
I've dropped mine on concrete, had it go skidding 'cross the shop floor, etc etc etc.
It still works. The only thing it could use is a new plastic shell.
I dropped a Motorola *once*. Within a week, the screen died.
My Nokia is an old 3390. It doesn't fold in half and doesn't have an external antenna. It doesn't have a camera. It doesn't have a fancy qwerty thumb keyboard. The display is rugged. Since the case is an external component to the phone itself, cracking the case isn't always going to crack the phone itself.
IOW, it's well engineered, even for a cheap phone. This probably (definitely) means that people aren't replacing them as often as say...Motorola phones.
It's like whether you buy a Federal Products dial indicator (I've got 3, plus 2 CDI indicators graduated in
You can have my 3390 when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
--
BMO
I'm not too thrilled with Nokia myself. I've had several in my lifetime (including the old analogue Nokia phones, THEY were built well) and Nokia just keeps slipping into the more and more disposable, crap, not worth keeping type of workmanship.
I had a Samsung R225 (TMobile) as one of my first digital cell phones. I actually liked it. Small, slim, no convoluted button design. The menus were clear and everything just worked fine. Except for the hands-free... This model came with a proprietary plug that had a grounding ring on it that often shorted out.
One year later, while still having good luck with the Samsung, I was allowed a free phone upgrade on my contract. Picked up the Nokia 3595 (also TMobile, though AT&T have a nearly identical model)... Biggest piece of shit I've ever used. Most of the software didn't work, turning on the phone with the SIM card in often led to errors... reinserting the SIM card several times before turning it back on again (AND this was a BRAND NEW PHONE!) MIGHT have gotten it to work. TZones (TMobile's wireless internet) often choked. Just never could connect. I exchanged the phone for a replacement (same model) and STILL had the same problems. Text messaging adaptive features just bit the big one. After getting used to T9 on the Samsung phone, this Nokia was just a total PITA to even try to type anything on.
So I complained. The tech wiped my contract extension off my account so I could get another phone on the contract extension. No taking any chances, I just paid $200 for the Samsung E105. Clamshell, no accidental dialing. Small. Thin. SUPER thin. Well designed. Works perfectly. I love it. I mainly got it because it was one of the last models I could find that DIDN'T have a camera built into it. And I love it. Everyone I know who has also gotten a similar model from Samsung also rave about it. I'm afraid of what will happen when Samsung starts making even shittier phones, just like many other companies have done. Nokia being the big standout in this case. Many crappy phones right after the other. The people who complain the most about their phones tend to be the Nokia users. (This from my own personal experience _and_ what the sales rep at the TMobile store informed me of.)
An example of what I'd like to be able to do: highlight graphics or text on my desktop machine, send it through ssh over IP over Bluetooth type application over bluetooth to the phone.
Or, simple voice recording on the phone, which could then be simply uploaded to the PC. I know that there's an app for this on the Treo now, but it would have been available 6 months sooner on an equivalent Linux device.
So tell me, would having a superior, vastly cheaper software environment, in which the applications and data can easily be replicated to newer equipment down the road... would this sell hardware or not?
What do they have in common? They only work for two years and you throw them out and buy another one.
Gee how do we keep making these little plastic anoyance devices cooler?
They don't even ring anymore! they play overplayed radio tunes.
Until they sugically attach them to peoples ears they will still continue to be devices that will never let you escape into the peace and solitude of your own mind.
I have a Nokia 3360, one of the last phones ever made with buttons big enough and far enough apart that you can actually press the one you mean to without a toothpick. It's also durable: I don't know how many times I've dropped it -- usually onto concrete or tile from waist-high -- and it's survived.
One of the most disturbing trends in phones I've seen lately is the combination rocker-switch buttons. These are absolute garbage, and I would be more than happy to pay the extra dollar or two the manufacturer saves by using them instead of real buttons. What's next, those cheesy flat membrane panels that went out with the 80's?
So far it appears that Nokia hasn't given up on the durability front, but with their adoption of rocker-switch buttons, I wonder for how long. I've seen some phones that literally come apart in your hand if you twist/flip/slide them open too fast, or push down too hard on their buttons.
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I'd certainly want a sexy piece of steel, 2/3 the size of my pda, with features from Star Trek, but you can't do that and still stay in business.
;)
The cell phone biz' works because the customer gets a new phone every 18-24 months. If you offer the customer The Perfect Phone, s?he will stick to it a lot longer and the phone company will lose. That's one reason Nokia's businesse line Communicators are so much more expensive than they "should" be -- to compensate for lost revenue. Business users are holding on to those old bricks.
Sure, technology will evolve and eventually the happy customer with that Perfect Phone will find an upgraded model, but it's a huge difference for the company if the typical "renewal cycle" is 36 months rather than 24 months.
Volvo's biggest mistake -- business-wise -- was the Amazon. Most Amazons ever made (30+ years ago) are *still* in traffic (ok, so that might be an urban tale, but it still makes a good story
- llauren
People like lots of features, people are buying expensive phone and Samsung is flat out better at doing that.
It's not about product design it's about running an entire country.
The second reason is the clamshell models have a better 'ear to mouth' length advantage, which is difficult to obtain with the 'block' design unless you want to make the phone 'thin and long' like one of those Sanyo models, which again are more prone to breakage.
The third reason is the 'ear frying' problem with some of the non-clamshell models (I have noticed this problem with many 'block' phones, atleast when they are new). Because of the proximity of the heat producing components to the earpiece and due to conduction, the region around the earpiece becomes quite warm to cause significant discomfort. But this problem is non-existant with the clamshell, because the bulk of the heat producing electronics is away from the earpiece with little or no conduction.
The fourth reason being the less scratch prone screen and buttons. Also you dont have the problem of accidental dialing from the speed dial buttons when carrying around, or the discharge of the battery from the frequent turn on due to the accidental key presses.
The case of Nokia is like a 'hare and tortoise' story, they were sleeping when the others were running. If you have observed the company, there was not much activity atleast for the past 18 months, not many new phones or variety (like clamshell or camera phones). Not much of advertising, so they were effectively getting erased from the collective memory of the consumers. They were in the hibernate mode, now you see the results.
Yes, this sentiment is expressed in every
What features do I want? I want a reliable phone - with a proper antenna - that can hold a signal even on the fringes of a service area.
Anecdote: I carry an ancient Samsung SCH-3500 and a slightly more modern Samsung A460. I visit some people that live on the edge of the [current] SprintPCS service area or otherwise find myself in a weak signal area. With one phone in each hand, I observe the signal strength indicators: the SCH-3500 will typically have 3 bars while the A460 will have 0 or 1. That's the best test I can personally do; YMMV, of course, but I think that it is somewhat indicative of older vs newer in the Samsung line.
Bottom line to vendors: make the new phones work better. All of the nifty neato features (that depend on network access) are useless if the phone will not hold a signal.
PS Yes, the phones are smaller than they once were. Yes, this affects antenna length and consequently affects antenna efficacy for a given frequency range. That is nice, but again a phone does little good if it won't hold a signal.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I just got a 6100, and I like it a lot.
However, there are a couple of things I just can't figure out.
Like why Nokia didn't include a Java-based HTML browser and e-mail client. If a third party can make them, you'd think Nokia would give it a shot as well.
Or why there is only *one* game pre-installed, and not a very fun one at that ("Chess Puzzle").
I can make up for these deficiencies with a few Euros and a few downloads, but it strikes me as odd that Nokia didn't bother updating their phone software on that particular model, which where I live (Hungary) is being pushed as a sophisticated low-price handset (I paid about 80 EUR with a contract.)
This Like That - fun with words!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.. that can make phone calls and NOT take pictures (Ah!), NOT allow changing a faceplate in under 5 seconds (Oh!) and NOT do something else as usefull as baking a cake or running an embedded Java (why not Perl, BTW ? ;)).
:-/
Seriously, I've been looking for a new phone with no extra features - just wanted GSM phone, which is light and small to carry in a pocket. It also must look good, but that's subjective. Something like this (Nokia 8910), but triband or at least Canada-compatible.
And guess what - I'm still looking
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I think this might have something to do with the fact that Nokia had shitty, old-generation phones on the market as 'freebies' (with sign-up) for a couple years longer than other brands - which had irritatingly pitched ringtones. I, personally, got a Kyocera a year and a half ago when I switched providers, at a cost of an extra $20, simply because the Nokia ringtones were beyond irritating.
Now people are sold on the Sprint (et al.) picture phones.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
- Overly complex layouts with weird button positioning
- Difficult to identify buttons by touch
- redundant buttons on the business phones
- poor bluetooth support
- Ridiculous pushfit connectors that frequently fail to make contact reliably or break ears after a while
There are also things I think they do right:- Good development platform
- Relatively rugged
- Good battery life
- No external aerials and generally good reception, at least on euro bands.
My perception of this is that Nokia have neglected the business market. Business people want consistent layouts and user interfaces to reduce learning time when they change phones, reliable connectors for chargers and computer connections, and easy button recognition by touch - partly because, as you get older, eyesight adaptation reduces, and partly because with a bluetooth phone it would be nice to be able to put people on hold etc. without having to get the phone out of a pocket.The number of people who are happy to wander around with an arm up clutching a phone to the ear (and doing this illegally while driving) never ceases to amaze me - but I feel that Nokia doesn't really take handsfree seriously. Look, idiots, if millions of people are happy to use iPods with a plug-in handsfree system, why can't you produce a decent one for phones that will encourage people to use them safely?
On the whole I prefer the business oriented Motorola phones, but the plan sellers (including our business supplier) don't.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
The problem with Nokia is that their phones haven't really changed in quite some time, ever since they released the series 40 phones, which are the 6100,7210,7250,etc.. Ever since then, their GUI has been the same, features has been the same, and any new technology is borked. Take a look at their bluetooth, it freakin sucks! Their series 60s are a little better, symbian apps to power the thing but ultimately, they're the same thing and haven't changed in years. The only change they've made recently must be the 3100's 9 icon gui menu like SE's phones.
All i can say to nokia is good luck, and steal some ideas from their competitors. Sony Ericsson is becoming the phone of choice for phone enthusiast and regular consumers. Why? Their UI rocks, reception, battery life, bluetooth, screen, etc. Everything anyone could ask for in a cheap small bundle.
I import a lot of mobile phones over from asia so I've used almost every nokia, motorola, siemens, panny, SE, etc phones made in the past two years.
I've been a nokia fan since my first mobile, however, My last 'upgrade' was a Motorola V500. Though the technical specs where perfect for my requirements, I found that compared to the Nokia, motorola are buggy as hell (Ie, my phone crashes!!). Nokia J2mE developer support is miles better. Cant wait till upgrade time comes around again, when I'll be returning to the fold.
The ability to clacklist certain numbers would get me buying a phone. It's #1 on my desired features list for my next phone, which is probably why I haven't yet bought an other phone - NO phones seem to offer the ability to blacklist (or auto decline) the most important number of all - Number Withheld. If Nokia actually implemented useful functionality such as this in just ONE of their phones instead of concentrating in making them look weird/stupid and play ever larger numbers of Java games, they'd have earned a sale from me, that's for sure.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Ideally a camera phone, good interface, decent battery life, and indescructable is what I'm looking for... ;)
The strongers players and winner candidates are those with best reserves and profitability and preferably other branches of business. For example the chips company like AMD which supported the unprofitable cpu line with cash-cow flash-memory business for years.
Nokia has large reserves, good profibility and high market share going for it. It needs to sacrifice both the reserves and profibility to save the market share though. Sony-Erickson, motorola and Samsung have other business branches they can use to wage the pricewar. In the end there will be just two major phone manufacturers.
The longer the pricewar continues, the more upper hand the multi-branches companies will gain over Nokia. This would put Nokia in a position where it in order to survive needs to merger with a profitable company in a different business which can support it over the war. I for one welcome our new Microsoft-Nokia overlords!
It's because they're focusing on the stupid kiddies that want a fucking camera/MP3 player/ICBM launcher/Jesus in a cage on their phones, as opposed to people who want to make phone calls.
I'm sick of the fucking penis waving that goes on in the UK with regard to phones. At my old school, there were people changing phones every week because they wanted a camera or other such shit.
Ack, retards...
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I can't believe there are mobile phone OS zealots out there! I can't think of any other reason why my first post would have been labeled Flamebait. Here come the next OS crusades, with all new players (and Microsoft). ((Maybe Apple soon?))
What Nokia needs to do is make more CDMA phones. Verizon has the ugliest selection of phones ever.
35 new models? Give me a break. Yea just put "i" at the end like the 7250i. The difference between 7250 and 7250i is the latter had an XHTML compatible browser.
... that has good transceiver functions as well as telephone service, at the flick of a switch. At least 2 meter or 440, or bare minimum extended range freebie FRS. Something to make it more practical as a general purpose audio communications device, and make it big enough to have a decent sized keypad, screen and to hold a big battery, not a toy battery. I don't want to use up my cell minutes on chit chat around the complex here when a free radio would work just as well. Heck, it should receive normal radio broadcasts as well, am/fm/some shortwave bands. They could fit it in there if they made phones for people with normal sized hands and didn't get an attack of the vapors if they had to carry a little weight. Ain't a one of these teeny new near one ounce mickey mouse phones I am interested in, don't need games, calendars, ringtones, none of that stuff, just be able to talk who I want to talk to, in different ways, can't even see the screens on them things, let alone use the keypads. Those are good for some people, but for others, like outdoor workers, not so good. A lot of companies use transceivers now, plenty good enough to use around a small community range wise, but then you need to carry a cell phone as well, sucks. I know Southern Linc used to have that combo service in the same phone but it was ridiculous expensive because you were on their repeaters and they charged through the nose for it.
is a mobile phone that takes 2 sim cards and can use both at the same time.
I have a mobile phone of my own, up to now I've not taken a work phone as I don't want to take 2 phones with me everywhere. surely it can't be too difficult to have 2 sims in a phone, both acive so that you can get calls on either number (each having it's own contract and possibly, different operator) and the phone call tell you who it's from and what number it's going to, so you can see at a glance what the situation is. ideally you could maintain 2 seperate address books too, ie a work and a home one (possibly a field in a single address book maybe)
yes, you can get dualo sim adapters for phones, but thats crap as it's an "either or" situation. you can only have 1 active at once which isn't good enough. I have my home phone on my desk at work and no-one minds if I get personal calls on it.
dave
Or perhaps, "I don't care for whom."
I've had a Nokia 3650 since October (they have a similar version but with a normal button layout for the numbers, if thats a turn off...)
And I've synced with iSync over Bluetooth plenty of times, not to mention used Salling's Clicker to control my Powerbook from my bed (good as a music/movie remote)
The battery life is good, but the other stuff kinda drains it quick. If you leave bluetooth on 24/7 you'll be lucky to get two days out of a battery, less if you take a lot of pictures on top of it. But Bluetooth also drains my powerbook's battery a lot too, so I think it's just Bluetooth, not the phone's fault. But it can easily make it thru a day without a charge and actually charges fairly quickly, in about an hour.
Plus when I'm on a train or in a boring lecture I pull out the phone and play Doom 1 shareware on it. There's so many cool programs for it I had to upgrade the 16MB MMC card it comes with!
Definately worth the cash if you get it, and most places nowadays have it for cheap, if not free with a new plan (I have mine with T-Mobile, not a single problem yet, unlike my Sony Ericsson T68i)
Hope this helps!
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
Half the prople that have them think it's a status symbol to have the most crap on the smallest device. And thats the way they are marketed. It's just a tool and most of the fluff is un-needed.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
If, say, you had a tax rate of 0.3% and it was increased to 0.6%, your way of calculating turns into screaming headlines of "100% TAX INCREASE!!!!! TAX DOUBLES!!!!!!!".
But it's not. It's an increase of 0.3 percentage points. That's all.
"Nokia plans to bring 35 new phone models to market this year to win back more users."
Is this something new?
Last year Nokia brought along 30ish mobile phones already.
This fact did not change the fact that people would want to buy something else.
There are other things at stake.
This is in no way no information nor is it a reply to the loss of marked share (or an attempt to win back the marked)
Maybe the marked is just to be won another way that Nokia have yet to realise, but i dont think Nokia will be worrying about this any time soon, they still have every other mobile phone producer looking up to them.
They might sell more phones if they didn't put stupid non-standard keypads on all of theirs. I know I used to love Nokia, but I switched to Sony Ericcsons for the Bluetooth, Java, and a normal keypad. I never use the stupid camera on the phone.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Siemens phones are actually quite reliable and durable, and especially their simpler models are almost indestructible.
Outside North America, Japan and South Korea (perhaps Taiwan too), the world uses the GSM standard. Most of Europe, Africa, Asia and South America are just one huge area of a single standard.
Now that GPRS (data for GSM) is widespread, people are starting to use mobile phones in different ways. I know people who chat with me over Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger using Nokia 6600, or a SonyEricsson P900. The latest fancy models have Symbian in them and semi-decent color screens that can be used for browsing, chat, ...etc. Free applications abound for Symbian.
The main points for GSM is that:
The person I know using Nokia 6600 is happy with it so far (he has been using it for a few weeks).
The downside? The person I know who uses the Nokia is almost exclusively a Linux user. He keeps Windows on his laptop to sync the phone to it! Darn!
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Most Amazons ever made (30+ years ago) are *still* in traffic (ok, so that might be an urban tale, but it still makes a good story ;)
I dunno, have you seen the M25 recently?
I loved my Nokia phone. But I wanted it to sync with my computer, and Nokia didn't have any Bluetooth phones for sale in the US. So, I got a Sony Ericsson.
The Sony Ericsson is slow and poor quality compared to my Nokia, but Nokia still only have one Bluetooth phone on the market, and have a ton of stupid designs--circular keyboards, keyboards with two buttons on each key, slanted keypads, and so on. Idiots.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Perl is just too big to fit on the phone. :-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Python isn't.
...is that Nokia is dragging it's feet when it comes to providing 3G features. When I went to get a cell phone, Sprint and Verizon (only providers in my area offering 3G service) Only had one Nokia model available each. The rest of their offered line was Samsung and Sanyo, with the ones with the leading-edge features (push to talk, video) being available with Sanyo handsets. This may not be a big deal to some people, but it's clearly important enough to account for this drop in their market share. Hell, I never liked Nokia phones. Most of their designs are ugly and difficult to hold, not to mention the accessaries are more expensive than phones that don't use proprietary stuff. Besides, at the time I was buying, they didn't offer the one feature I was interested in... USB PC connectivity. Sanyo did, and my 8100 has been VERY good.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
of course they're losing market share...
Timeless "Why make a small phone, when you can make a big pocket ?" doesn't work well for me either :)
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Python is cool, but I wish they'd support Ruby instead. :-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I wish they would just be a PHONE, msg, and (if needed) walkie talkie. I wouldn't have a camera phone/MP3 player/PDA for anything. I have a motorola phone because all the years I've been in law enforcement, Motorola makes good radios. I've always had motorola phones, and they have never let me down. Even after my current phone, a T721 fell over 50 feet down an elevator shaft! I put the covers and battery back in it and it still worked!
I've just upgraded my 5-year-old-sony brick to a new nokia. After playing with it for a day, I noticed a feature I missed. In 1 tenth of the formfactor (volume) of my phone, I can get a 256Mb USB memory stick. I want to be able to lug a couple of photos, some MP3s, etc etc on my phone instead of on a separate device. Instead of the puny 1Mb of memory it has now....
1. i am not surprised that they will be relasing a lot of models this year. probably it will be a model something like xx10 xx15 xx20 xx25 xx30. all featuring the same system with different casings, or different software features. the problem with this is that it is difficult to choose phones with only one feature compared to a competitor with feature rich phones. for example, you either choose a colored screen, one with flashlight, one with fm radio, one with camera, one with bluetooth.
2. nokia phones are expensive and devalue quickly. in our country, turn over for phones are very quick (i've been using 4 different mobile phones for the last 2 years and plan on upgrading to sonyericsson p910 - i've used p800 and using p900 now.) the problem is that nokia phones are sold at a high price initially but quickly goes down. the phone cannot be sold at a reasonable price. compare this with sonyericsson t68 that lost just around 60% of its face value years ago (probably around 3 at least.) with nokia phones, the prices go down at around 50% in just a few months (not talking about half a year here!) people get pissed and they just buy other phones. i am not afraid of selling my existing p900 at a huge loss.
3. quality of phones. the old ones are good but i think the new ones are not of good quality. nokia phones sold in our country had problems with the lcd screens in different models. the solution is to change the screen which is quite expensive (considering the price of the phone has been devalued.) many new phones are of better quality. take for example my previous p800 where it is full of scratches as it fell and fell. the same with my p900 - hasn't failed me yet. i'm quite impressed with how they handle falls (as in around > 1 meter from the ground that is hard.) being a smartphone with a big and touch sensitive screen , i haven't had problems. compare this with my old nokia that i have to replace the lcd around twice already.
4. lastly, i think that the competitors just release better phones (both features and design.) back when nokia was dominant, they was no design and feature for other mobile phones that was even close. all were yucky (bulky, expensive and featureless.) but now, the others have innovated and introduced lots of new features and nokia didn't quite catch up. now this is a problem for them. as a sidenote, i watched in discovery channel about a documentary of samsung. i'm amazed on how they design mobile phones including their turn over time for design to market in only 6 months (they claim it is half of their nearest competitors!)
anyway, this is a problem with nokia and may only be limited to them. other manufacturers are enjoying growth. it's now quite interesting to see the market on who will dominate (but i guess it will be samsung overtaking them in a year's time.) i'll be waiting for the mobile phone wars. probably new features and designs will be accelerated and, of course, consumers will be able to benefit. though japan is enjoying the cool features, i can't wait for my phone to have wifi capabilities for seamless roaming and camera of at least 2 megapixels. :)
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
I have a different perspective on Bluetooth phones than the other posters here.
I have a seven month-old Sony Ericsson T610 that T-Mobile *paid* me $100 to take once I signed up for a one-year plan. I moved from Sprint PCS because, as others have mentioned here, Sprint offers pretty much zip in terms of Bluetooth phones *or* affordable data plans. T-Mobile, on the other hand, offers *free, unlimited* GPRS data service with their voice plans, with certain limitations. That's right; as long as you are OK with only having access to ports 80, 110, and some others (443 opened up in the past few months), there is *no need* to pay $20 for the T-Mobile Internet service.
Since then I've happily used the combination of my T610, my Sony Clie UX50, and my iBook G4, all Bluetooth-enabled to get online from pretty much anywhere there's phone service. More than a gimmick, I've used GPRS as my only Internet connection for days at a time. With throughput between 24Kbps and 32Kbps--about as fast or just a little slower than a 33.6K dialup modem--it's of course much slower than Wi-Fi or even a modern 56K dialup connection, but it works and it's free. It's pretty darn neat to be able to SSH into my home Linux box from my Clie, thanks to pssh, a GPLed Palm OS 5-based client, without having to take the phone out of my pocket; it's so small I can keep it there all day, even when I keep my wallet and keys in a desk drawer. (Since port 22 isn't available, I simply tell sshd to also listen to port 110 since I don't run a POP3 server on my machine.) I got a free Jabra Bluetooth headset with the phone and that has worked well enough in the few times I've tried it (like another poster I keep it in my car).
I wish I could say as nice things about the other aspects of the phone. I've had two T610s, and they both drop voice calls like crazy. The first unit would actually *crash and reboot* multiple times per call; the second unit "only" crashes sometimes but still drops calls. Overall I find call quality meaningfully inferior to the vintage Sanyo 4500 I used through Sprint PCS's CDMA network. I don't know whether the fault lies in the phone or the intrinsically inferior GSM network technology; quite possibly some combination of both. Some stupendously obvious features just don't exist; for example, I was astounded recently, when trying to listen to a corporate conference call on a busy street without annoying others, to realize that there is no way to *mute* a call without putting it on hold!
The other benefits of Bluetooth on this phone haven't impressed me very much either. I use jpilot on my Linux box to sync over Wi-Fi with my Clie. I tried using iSync on my iBook instead, but found using Bluetooth as the transport mechanism to be stupendously, agonizingly, painfully slow. Also, three-way synching between the phone, computer, and PDA was a bust because the phone can only hold 500 or so contacts, despite having the memory for many more, and I have 2400 in my Clie. What I do instead is identify the 20 or so contacts I most need on my phone, put them in a "Phone" category on the Clie, then every so often infrared (faster than Bluetooth) beam them over to the phone, overwriting any existing entries. While this works, I then have to recreate any voice dial recordings I've attached to the phone's entries.
Verdict: I love the GPRS and Bluetooth service, but I'd prefer to enjoy such features on a more reliable network and/or phone.
Why are you bouncing your phone off brick walls? Shouldn't you use it to make and receive calls? I bet they'd break with far less regularity if you switched tactics.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt