Nokia Losing its Cell Phone Dominance

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Nokia Losing its Cell Phone Dominance

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday July 17, 2004 @05:09AM from the fighting-to-keep-up dept.

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."

10 of 303 comments (clear)

Man... by aptenergy · 2004-07-17 05:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Is it really worth it to have 35 new phone models?
1. Re:Man... by micolous · 2004-07-17 05:17 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  What happened to mobile (cell) phones that just make phone calls and send SMS? They're turning rather rapidly into PDAs.
  
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2. Re:Man... by rokzy · 2004-07-17 05:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  yeah and what happened to PCs that just let you add numbers and print dot matrix? They're turning rather rapidly into complete work and entertainment centres.
  
  d'uh, it's called progress. my mobile has calendar, email, internet, mp3 and lots more and that's the way I like it.
3. Re:Man... by rokzy · 2004-07-17 07:14 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I have a Sony Ericsson P900. the battery takes ~3 hours to fully charge then lasts for 4 days typical use. it has a huge touchscreen and stylus handwriting input (plus the usual T9, virtual keyboard), plus a very well designed 5-way jog wheel. so you can't get any easier input than that.
  
  as for ringtones, since it can play mp3s you can have anything you want, including old-fashioned ring. it also comes with a PC sync/dock and loads of internal memory (plus flash cards) so getting a new ring tone means drag and drop from PC file manager, not phoning some crappy company that will charge you $5/min for a barely recognisable sequence of beeps.
  
  smartphones are fantastic. people who bitch about wanting "simple" things are either ignorant of how well-designed phones like the P900 are, or are just too poor to afford them.
35 new models? by rgoldste · 2004-07-17 05:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

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?
1. Re:35 new models? by sjwt · 2004-07-17 05:18 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  What i think the oohone market shoudl look at moving to is custom phones, or at lest semi custom.
  
  Order body X, featuers Y,ZA and C.
  
  I put off geting a new phone becase i couldnt get what i wanted, in the end i finaly had to get a compromise, but thats life i guess.
  
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Re:1/3 is still just 33% by stecoop · 2004-07-17 05:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, they are down 4.4 percentage points but take (33 - 28.9) / 33 the orignal is the way to find the percentage change which is down 12.42%.
Ngage! by Mr.+Vandemar · 2004-07-17 05:19 · Score: 5, Funny

How could they possibly be doing poorly when they invented the wonder of sidetalking?

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Re:1/3 is still just 33% by angst7 · 2004-07-17 05:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's 4% of the total market, but it represents a 12% loss within their customer base. Further the Cell phone market base is increasing at a fairly brisk pace, so it represents quite alot in terms of revenue $$$.

Secondly, if you're an investor in a company that was the big player, and you see declines like this, you start thinking of other investment opportunities.

It's a pretty big deal.

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Why Nokia ain't selling more phones by bmo · 2004-07-17 06:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

Because the old models are more durable than anything by Motorola, Samsung, or the rest.

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 .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.

You can have my 3390 when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

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BMO