With the announcement of the Nokia 5320, X6, and 5530 XpressMusic, it’s clear how Nokia intends to take on the touchscreen market – the same way they ‘took on’ the regular mobile market – with a flood of devices. Unfortunately, there’s a major difference in the touchscreen and non-touchscreen markets, and I think it’s big enough to doom this particular strategy.
With its non-touchscreen strategy, Nokia was able to flood the market with similar devices using different form factors. The same phone guts could be released as a slider like the Nokia N81, or a dual-slider like the Nokia N95 or N85. They also have the option of a standard candybar, or a flip phone, like the 6650 or the N76. Beyond the physical form factor, with non-touchscreen phones, Nokia has the option of various text input methods – namely, QWERTY and numeric keypads, or a combination of the two, as with the venerable E90 or the more recent E75.
With all of these options, Nokia could essentially release the same phone, but in different form factors, as they did with the Nokia N85 and N79 duo. This enabled them to appeal each phone to a different person, as some folks refuse to use flip phones, others love sliders, etc. Unfortunately, with the touchscreen market, they don’t quite have that luxury. All of Nokia’s (and competitors’, for that matter) touchscreen phones, with rare exceptions, are basically the same slab form factor.
They will now, as we’ve seen, have to simply experiment with various hardware configurations, in order to differentiate the touchscreen phones from one another. A while back, I asked our Twitter followers if they could tell me the difference in the 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic, and 5230. Sadly, none could, which points to the problem Nokia will face in differentiating so many various touchscreen models – consumer confusion. One phone has GPS, another drops WiFi, the last might have an IrDA port. How is the consumer going to be able to make a decision if they aren’t able to easily see what’s different on each phone?
What do you think? Will Nokia (and other manufacturers) be able to differentiate their products in this new touchscreen market, or will we soon be drowning in a sea of touch-friendly slabs, each missing or gaining a feature against its brother?
