Everytime there is a major event around the world, you will find all technology enthusiasts sitting around waiting for that GREAT announcement. In the last 18 months, a couple of products were able to provide us a big drool moment namely the Nokia N95, the Apple iPhone, the HTC TyTn II and the Sony-Ericsson Xperia, some more or less than others. Problem is that those splash moments don’t happen at every convention, and general tendency goes to boredom when nothing BIG hits us every now and then. Lately, there have been some “boredom” posts around the symbian blogosphere, which made me ask a question that has been in the back of my head for a while: Did Nokia release the N95 at the right moment? Wasn’t it premature? And how did the N95 perform when it comes to Nokia’s whole mobile strategy? Did it kill it or revive it?
The problem is that I am relatively unexperienced in this whole mobile business, I do have my own opinions, but it’s only when I hear other people’s thoughts that I get to put concrete words on mine, either by agreeing or by disagreeing. So in order to answer quite correctly this question that had been pounding my head, I decided to “crowdsource” bloggers, make them voice their opinions in order to find mine. And what better place to crowdsource a community then Jaiku? You can ask one question there, and in less than 5 minutes, you have from one to ten answers. So I asked the Jaiku community my question and awaited as some great long and explanatory replies came in. The post was also picked up by Ewan over at SMS Text news, and there are a couple of good comments there too.
So here comes the moment of truth. What did we learn from these answers, and how can we push the thinking scheme forward? You can head over to the thread over on Jaiku to read the detailed essays from the community, here I will only pick up some thoughts.
Concerning the N95 release date
- The hype around the N95 slowly died because of the early announcement: it was announced early, but released at a good time (Vlad Bobleanta).
- The world was ready for the N95 (Vaibhav Sharma) especially after the N93 (Meraj Chhaya).
Concerning the N95′s influence on Nokia’s mobile strategy
- The N95 could’ve sold better if the iPhone wasn’t released around the same time, especially in the US (Vlad Bobleanta) and opposingly, the N95 sold because of the iPhone release due to the lot of iPhone vs N95 comparisons that opened people’s eyes to the features of the N95 (Stefan Constantinescu).
- The N95 didn’t kill Nokia because the other manufacturers had nothing to fight back with at the time it was announced (Vaibhav Sharma), because it was a good ace in the hand of Nokia to help fight the iPhone (Cheryl Jones) and because it made the whole world realize the expertise of Nokia regarding to releasing a do-it-all device (Stefan Constantinescu).
- The N95 didn’t kill Nokia, but Nokia killed the N95 because they didn’t market it as well as its firmware updates well enough (Terence Eden).
- The whole issue of the N95 is irrelevant because the money is being made with the 100$ price range in mobiles (Krisse).
Concerning the boredom issue
- General hope that Nokia isn’t heading the Sony Ericsson and Motorola path, releasing remakes of the same device over and over again.
- Nokia should keep releasing cutting edge technology when it’s available, and work harder to release a better one later (Vaibhav Sharma), Nokia released the N95 and sat still without innovating (Abul Hussain).
- Different form factors might be the answer: clamshell, dual sliders,… (Cheryl Jones).
- The mobile industry has a 2year cycle, and 2008 is the transition year, we will have to wait for 2009 to get the wow effect back from Nokia (Stefan Constantinescu). Getting high-end midrange devices to the average consumer is a step in order to release the next cutting edge handset (Antoine RJ Wright).
- Nokia has the expertise to wow us all with an ultimate device, but refuses to release such a thing (Steve Rowlands).
Concerning the other challenges to be faced by Nokia
- The mid-market is somehow forgotten. Nokia has the low-end and the high-end markets in their hand, but the mid-tier is where the competition is eating shares (Vlad Bobleanta).
- Keeping the S60 Touch UI related to the signature S60 UI, and not overhauling it to get to the competition (Vaibhav Sharma).
- Nokia’s big challenge is coming with the 2nd iteration of the iPhone (Abul Hussain) or with the move Nokia will make in response to the iPhone (Antoine RJ Wright).
- Currently the challenge is with making great software, the hardware is already available (Ricky Cadden, James Burland, Mike42, Terence Eden and Julian).
- The challenge has always been to get operators to understand the power of what they are selling, or go past them (Kevin Neely).
I was meaning to write this whole topic in one post, but I won’t be giving it justice if I try to summarize it. So this ends it for part 1. Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will try to dwell on some of these answers, as well as explain my own point of view on the matter. But in the meantime, I would like to ask you, readers, to participate in the conversation. Tell us what you think of the replies I got, which ones do you agree on, which ones you don’t, and is there something we missed?
