Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Exec: Young People Fed Up With iPhone and Android
jfruhlinger writes "Nokia's Windows Phones haven't hit the U.S., but at least one company executive thinks they'll be a slam dunk, since young people have soured on the iPhone and find Android baffling. Of course, much of the Internet commentariat found his remarks even more baffling. Is he right, is he delusional, or is he just trying to build buzz for his company's products the best he can?"
And looking to promote his company.
Guess that's why my teenagers wanted iPhones..
I don't think I've ever met someone who wasn't a hacker/tweaker sort who didn't like their iPhones. Regardless of your beliefs about their business practices, Walled Garden, etc, by and large the iPhone works and works well. I'm not sure exactly who he talked to about being fed up.
I've also not met a lot of people unhappy with their Android phones, though they may not be using them to their full customization potential.
He's paid to be delusional. What's he supposed to say? "iPhone outsells every other phone by an order of magnitude and Android devices in general are rapidly cornering the lion's share of the market and now we've made this commitment to Windows Phone 7 that we can't just drop for a number of reasons" Yeah, I'm sure the shareholders will love that.
...I've soured on the Android (performance and privacy issues) and the iPhone looks expensive (based on the iPhone tax it looks like service providers charge). But, I also had about 2 years of development experience on the inferior Windows Mobile platform when Microsoft pissed on the developer base, then shoved us out the door.
I'd say he's right there's room for another competitor, but his ain't it.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
... in the same way as their friends.
Many of them have sold off the shares. Nokias shares are down ... alot.
It was the board that decided to select an alliance with Microsoft.
Just saying it like it are.
He employs some great logic. Here is a direct quote:
"What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone," he said.
If everyone wants something, then nobody could possibly want it... right?
I can't speak for really young people, but the 20-35 crowd with whom I work love their Androids.
They tend to see the iPhone as a bit more "stuffy", but that distinction may have more to do with company policies regarding who gets what, than with any actual differences between the devices themselves. But "Baffling"? C'mon, you just slide through the screens to the one you want, and tap when you get there.
Now, if you want to ask if the business world will get all hot over a device they can lock down via domain policies - I'd at least give that one a 50/50 (with the "not" 50% swearing like a sailor at the horror of having any mobile device trusted on their domain). But the actual users? Yeah, I'll have to go with the Nokia execs as "delusional" on this one.
What's really missing the marketplace is a Linux console phone. All this graphics nonsense is just slowing people down. And what could be better than the feeling of compiling a kernel in your pocket?
They are fed up with the carriers, not the phones.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
... that Windows phone runs Windows? Think of it like this: Android phones don't run Ubuntu.
By "Exec" in the title the actual position of the speaker is in fact "director of Portfolio, Product Marketing & Sales at Nokia Entertainment Global", which equates to something like "manufacturer of consent via media manipulation, innuendo, and implication". No hard science or technology in that guy's department.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Uh, no. The young people make very few calls on their phones. It's text messages, IM, Facetime, VOIP over Xbox, facebook; everything but phone calls.
- Living with a 20-year old in the basement.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
the first of the five stages of grief.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
They are doing it wrong. They should push it as a business friendly phone. Nice tight integration with Exchange server. add on some security tools. Enable remote wiping, and perhaps even a remote bricking.
Sell it as an Enterprise phone. Replacement for the blackberry.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
There is no escaping the fact that the entire Google-supplied Android software suite is half-done. There are hundreds of things that need "polishing" and most of these just make life more difficult for the user.
Is the phone a neat toy for geeks? Absolutely. I switched from a recent BlackBerry (Bold 9700) to a Galaxy S II a little over a month ago. There are probably some things that still could be done to "customize" the phone into a more usable state, but you have to contrast this with a phone that comes ready-to-use in an efficient and user-friendly form right out of the box. And in no way is any Android phone efficient or user-friendly right out of the box.
It is hard to blame Samsung for the problems with the phone because they are just taking advantage of a free phone software environment. Rather than spending lots of money developing the phone software they just picked it up free. Can't really say that isn't a really smart thing to do.
Google, on the other hand, supplied nearly all of the software on the phone and is clearly responsible for the ad-hoc unfinished way lots of stuff works. For example, why are there two email applications (Gmail and Exchange) and they are so completely different? One asks for confirmation for a delete, the other one does not. Probably somewhere this is a setting, but why would the shipping default settings be different? And why would the Gmail email client look so much better than the one for other transport types?
Then there is the touch screen keyboard. Incredibly sensitive so that it takes twice as long to type anything. No, they didn't put a lot of effort into figuring out what key you meant to press, they are just taking the first thing that seemed to get poked. The result is a huge number of errors. I haven't seen anyone using the keyboard on an Android phone that isn't being incredibly precise with it - basically because they learned how to use it. Contrast this with a phone where the software works with the user.
I am not a big Apple fan. But they actually spent some time on the software and got their phone working the way people use it. As soon as I can afford to do it, I will be replacing the Galaxy S II with an iPhone. Sadly, I have to switch carriers to do it - no iPhone with 3G on TMobile.
Because if companies would stop being childish and suing each other, improving their product instead of throwing lawyers around, I might have a better phone in my pocket.
And that does effect me personally.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Yes... Nokia needs another open-soure OS to get behind since Maemo, MeeGo and Symbian weren't enough.