Nokia Future Vision Showroom Sounds Like Experience Center
You remember the Nokia Experience Centers, correct? If not, they were these little stands inside a dozen or so malls and shopping centers in the United States that Nokia setup to introduce consumers to their phones. The Experience Centers were prominently located in the malls, and the staff was incredibly knowledgable, from my experience. They had live models of 15+ phones, SIM chip installed, ready for you to play with to your heart’s content. Sounds great, right?
Well, it was a great idea, poorly executed. For one, the Experience Centers were nothing more than glorified billboards – you couldn’t actually purchase anything there. Yes, you read that correctly. Nothing was for sale, everything was just for looking. Thus, these things were, from the start, massive money pits that did little to nothing to increase sales. The other problem was that they were frequently outdated with their handsets, or would showcase tri-band GSM handsets of the European flavor (900/1800/1900MHz), which lack the important 850MHz frequency for real coverage here in the U.S.
I saw the potential benefits of these, but obviously Nokia didn’t, and they were all closed down a while back. Sad to see, but ultimately inevitable. Well, over at the Nokia Blog, they’ve stumbled across this job posting for what sounds like a rehash of the Experience Centers, this time called Future Vision Showrooms. There will apparently be one in Helsinki, Finland (the motherland, if you will), and Palo Alto, California, aka Silicon Valley.
The full description from the job description is this:
The Future Vision Showroom will be Nokia’s “front-end” for innovation activities and a physical place to live and experience Nokia’s technology Vision.
The Future Vision Showroom will be a place where internal and external visitors come to experience how Nokia sees the future, and how we can play a key role in making this a better place for all of us. Visitors will include representatives of the press, investors, current and potential customers, as well as senior managers and key decision makers with their guests.
The Future Vision Showroom will initially be located in Finland (Helsinki) and the USA (Silicon Valley). The Future Vision Showroom will complement the existing showrooms in Nokia (like the Nokia Lounge)
Now, Nokia currently has been working on opening its Flagship stores, which are basically everything I thought would be great for the Experience Centers. They have product, they’re prominently placed in busy shopping areas, and you can buy things there (like a store, if you can imagine such a thing). They’re also, in my opinion, incredibly fun to visit. However, Nokia only has 2 of them, one in Chicago and one in New York. That’s it. So….rather than expand those, they’re going to open this Future Vision Showroom experiment.
Forgive my skepticism, but I simply can’t believe that Nokia intends to increase its presence and market share in the U.S. with something like this. Obviously I would love to be proven wrong, but I’m nowhere near convinced that the resources devoted to this project wouldn’t be better spent on things such as presence in major retailers such as Best Buy, Radio Shack, and Fry’s. Or on any sort of advertising, period, which is essentially completely nonexistant in the U.S. at the moment.
What do you think? Do these sound like a good idea, or does this smell like yet another money pit?
I completely agree with you, they should advertise on TV and at the end of the ad put something like ” Available in Best Buy” or better ” You local Nokia store” but not my local nokia store, Im in miami and my local store is in NY !! I mean they should continue expanding Nokia flagship stores around USA.
Probably they should try again with the experience stores, but this time with NAM models and actually selling them.
Or sell them through ATT, with the subsides, that would be really nice!!
Quite a lot to read through there before knowing the ideas and what it all was about.
I totally agree with you on the fact that it’s better for Nokia to spend their money on the Flagship stores.
However taken this into a business perspective more employees and rent of location means more cost for the company.
The fact that the Future Showroom will be a success or not remains to be seen.
In some degree this could be said to be fitting into Nokia’s new model being a “internet service provider”.
But only if they in fact lets you buy the products online.
(Here I think about e.g. online shopping and ordering. We have for instance Nokia Maps, whereas maps & guides can be downloaded and paid ota.)
It seems a bit redundant really when we already can get a half decent demo of a device in the about pages for a specific phone.
(What’s good here is that they launch in when the device is actually going to arrive)
The Future Vision Showroom would be a killer if Nokia provided solutions for customizing your device yourself.
When going there you first choose the model, then between some materials used in the phone, before finally deciding to buy it.
The price of the device will of course differ depending on what materials are to be used.
As a beginning they could just offer the customization of the phones exterior such as keypad, display and other more simple things. And if that was to prove to be a success they could then upgrade it to include the inside of the phone.
Alternatively you could choose the pricetag yourself after choosing model. And based on the pricetag you’ve choosen the materials that are displayed are cheaper or more costly.
They can do that when it comes to using flash.
(Which they already use everywhere on their websites. Stupid flash)
The only challenge here is really the materials to offer.
If that wouldn’t be a real Future Vision Show I don’t know.
i was one of the fortunate ones to visit the Natick Mall Exprience Center in Natick MA.
i visited there a couple of times and was quite an exciting experience. being able to touch, play, hold, and get a full run down on all the devices without having the sales pressure.
on top of that they gave away memo pads, pens, nokia chocolate coins and some other good stuff… a lanyard i think.
yes, the staff was somewhat knowledgeable, however they could not work the bt photo printer from my personal s60 device. haha.
i would be psyched if they open one of those vision showrooms here in the Boston area.
Ricky, I couldn’t be more in agreement with you. Its sad when the most famous Nseries commercials I’ve seen were made by you. Maybe Nokia should get with us two, and let us explain how things work here in America… I’m becoming quickly disenchanted with Nokia. No AWS support will cost them alot of money, and lack of marketing is death here.
I just think it’s sad that Nokia can’t follow the Apple model with their store placement: only have them at busy locations, but fill them to the brim with products and a helpful staff while maintaining a “boutique” feel.
Nokia needs to focus on selling their name here in the states, for selling their handsets as handsets isn’t working.
More stores, more commercials, more products -
Lol.. some people really think they know more than Nokia about the US market… right.
Either way I think this is a great sign. Maybe this will be the first step to launching an all out marketing attack on maybe California first. I am really looking forward to visiting this showroom especially since I have never even been to a Nokia store.
Sorry Viipottaja I do agree with Ricky in a way. Nokia has ZERO advertising here in the states besides a few newspaper ads here and there when the n95 came out. It’s amazing the damage they can do if they try to push the E71. What good is this showroom if hardly anyone has even heard of Nseries/Eseries products?
Like I’ve said before, living here in the Los Angeles area I’ve only seen one… yes ONE other Nokia S60 product besides what ATT has. And that was at a Nokia WOM meetup. I have never seen an unlocked nokia smartphone in real person, besides the ones I own.
While I think it’s great that they are building this facility, they really need to advertise more to get people to actually visit it. Or else I and a few others will be the only locals there when it launches.
@Viipottaja
I don’t know anything about the US market.
I’m just a dreamer :-p
DAMM!!! i hope they start hiring reaaal soon.
That would be the best for me a student plus palo alto is not to far off campus.
Great info, i always read ur site. :)