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 The other problem was that they were frequently outdated with their handsets, or would showcase tri-band GSM handsets of the European flavor (900/1800/1900MHz), which lack the important 850MHz frequency for real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?
