We’ve all pounded on Nokia’s performance in the U.S. market, and it’s not like they’re completely unaware of the beating their market share has taken over the past few years. Yesterday, Reuters ran a piece stating that Nokia’s expecting to flood the U.S. market with handsets during the 2nd half of the year, hoping that will serve to boost its marketshare. The two biggest factors that contributed to Nokia dropping in units over here, in my opinion, was the gamble that clamshells were a fad, and pulling out of the CDMA market.
Prior to that, Nokia was a bombshell, offering some of the best ‘tank phones’ in the industry, and being one of 2 manufacturers to offer a GAIT phone, which helped transition subscribers from the old TDMA to the new GSM networks. Nokia also offered some of the first GSM handsets in the U.S., and started that technology off well. They also did well with some of the first EDGE-enabled handsets, specifically models such as the 3100/3120 and the venerable 6230, which is still a great handset, even in today’s market (sadly).
Where Nokia lost the U.S. market was when clamshells came into the scene, and the market was flooded with cheap silver flip phones such as the LG C1300 and the Samsung C327. Then came the RAZR, which made clamshells sexy, and it was all downhill from there. Nokia gambled that flip phones were a fad, and they gambled wrong.
The pullout from the CDMA market was another nail in the U.S. coffin, especially when half of the U.S. population uses CDMA handsets, roughly. They attempted to hook up with Sanyo, who makes fantastic CDMA handsets, but neither player felt like sharing, so that went down the tubes, as well.
Reuters’ article quotes a Nokia spokesperson that the U.S. carriers are poised to *finally* released ‘a lot of new products from [Nokia]‘, and that several of those would again be CDMA models. Personally, I say bring it on. I’d love to see a resurgence of Nokia products in the market, specifically S60, though I’m not convinced that AT&T fully realizes the potential data revenue that S60 could drive.
Gizmodo decides that this equates to Nokia ‘spamming’ the U.S. industry, but I can’t help and call foul on that, given the sheer number of cheap Samsung and Motorola handsets present on each of the U.S. carrier’s lineups.
What do you think? Does Nokia stand a chance in the U.S., if they can pull together a handful of models for both GSM and CDMA carriers, or do you think it’s a lost cause?
