Yesterday I caught a great post from Ewan Spence about the second failing of N-Gage, and what it really means to Nokia’s whole services strategy. Ewan was able to look at the bigger picture and see that N-Gage has (twice) suffered a similar fate to other Nokia services, and it’s something that Nokia really needs to work on. Basically, they launch things with an awesome initial vision, and do great at that. Unfortunately, after a few maintenance releases/updates, they move on to something else.
While at first this would seem to be limited to just Nokia’s services, it’s clear to me that this also plagues their device lineup. Given that Nokia is a phone manufacturer first, it’s no surprise that they’ve carried on handset manufacturing norms into their services execution. And that, my friends, is why Nokia continually struggles with its services offerings.
This is how Nokia has always done things in the mobile arena, though. They launch a phone with all the marketing to go behind it – real ads, viral ads, etc. After a few months, they release a firmware update or two to fix bugs, maybe add a few features, that sort of thing. After a year or so, if the phone turns out not to be very popular, it’s finished, relegated to the back stockroom (ala N76, N93i, etc). If it does prove to be popular, it’s gifted with another 12-18 months of updates and attention, ala N95.
After 2 years or so, the device, regardless of popularity, is forgotten, lost in the midst of new devices that are cooler. While this makes total sense in the tangible field of mobile phones, it doesn’t make any sense in the intangible services world. It happens, though. Look at Ovi Sync, Nokia ViNe, Ovi Share, Ovi Files, N-Gage, the list goes on. Sure, there are a few stand-outs, like Ovi Maps or Nokia Messaging, but the rest simply fall back.
Contrast this to the competition, namely the iPhone and Android devices. While the hardware is likely to experience the same fate (and rightfully so, as new hardware becomes available), the supporting services are there, and constantly improved. iTunes gets updated frequently, with new features and abilities and bugfixes. The various Google services that are integrated with Android are constantly being improved here and there, such as the addition of Exchange support to Google’s synchronization capabilities, and added features in Gmail.
If Nokia wants to really make some waves with their services, they’re going to need to commit to them for the long haul. To do this, they’re going to have to continually update them, specifically to work with the newer devices. When I got the N97 so long ago for review, it was incompatible with Ovi Sync, and no one could tell me why. Ovi Files has operated the same since it was purchased (it used to be called Avvenu), with no additional features or anything.
