Press article: "Is Nokia losing its grip?"

[sebset]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12595

Is Nokia losing its grip?

Handset lead slipping through its fingers

By Tony Dennis: lundi 10 novembre 2003, 18:41

IT'S BECOME a very noticeable trend that Nokia's grip on cutting edge technology in mobile handsets is loosening markedly.
Famed for being a couple of jumps ahead of its competition, Nokia is beginning to lag in key technology areas. We're not talking about its deliberate reluctance to introduce a silver painted, clamshell handset like its Asian based competitors. That hole in its repertoire recently bit the dust although Nokia insisted on using the word 'fold' rather than clamshell to describe the folding fabric-encased handset it announced it the US last week.

The world's aleady moved on to handsets which can enable users to view TV signals. NEC showed a working prototype capable of showing digital TV signals at ITU Telecom in Geneva. Nokia responded by announcing the 7700 which is its 14th handset to support the Symbian OS. The 7700 should allow users to view TV programmes but it's not due until Q3-Q4 2004. NEC is bound to beat Nokia to market.

And guess what? The Sunday Telegraph ran a report that Vodafone has placed its (very large) order for 3G handsets and the winners are Japanese manufacturers (NEC and Sharp, we reckon). Not a whiff of a Nokia 3G handset order.

A very similar thing happened to Novell at its peak. While its market share continued to rise, Novell showed no new ground-breaking technology. Then, in a wink, Microsoft stole the server market from Novell.

Complacency kills. And if Nokia takes its eye off the ball, it could wake up to find its No 1 slot looking remarkably shaky. Let's see who really sells loads of handsets over the festive season.



And you, what do you think? :insane:

[Ghibli]

Well, didn't we all know that already?;)

[-The Andyman-]

like i said in another thread it be a long time until anyone overtakes nokia is the selling of mobile fones nokia is outselling 2x more than any other mobile fone company the closest competitor is motorola

[McKinley]

Down with Nokia for many of their ugly handsets...
Nokia will lose very much on 3G market if they don't fix their handsets. Too ugly and not too good either.

[-The Andyman-]

3G is still very minor and still catching up,GSM is the main leader and nokia excels at this fones...

wen 3G eventually catches on nokia will have made much improvement from there 3G fones rite now

[traktori]

Nokia is known to unveil its products to market just right time. As a 3G is conserned I don't think it's right time yet to bring WCDMA phones to market, but EDGE is right there now with its 100 - 200 kb/s download, and easy-to-upgrade base stations. Operators can have a cheap opportunity to offer faster data with EDGE and TCP/IP handsets and Nokia is right now there with 3200, 6230 (also 6600 with its TCP/IP even without EDGE is much faster than say 3650), and Nokia is the one and only manufacturer to offer that.

And what about TV. Yes, some manufacturer in Asia is offering that in one coming phone, but that is analog-TV. Which manufacturer is offering this in Digital-TV (yes, Sony showed its chip, but when is that coming?). And which is offering this in Europe? Nokia is with its 7700. (Well yes this is only for testig-purposes but so are the DVB-for-mobile-use-networks.)

[McKinley]

traktori
You are talking about that Nokia don't think it's the right time to bring 3G-handsets but then you are also writing about EDGE and Digital TV??
Well that is your view but don't you think 3G is more up to date than Digital TV and EDGE?

Is it only what Nokia believes that is up to date and not what the market says that counts for you with Nokia brains?
How many people can afford the tacos shaped ugly Nokia 7700 and how many wants to buy it?

[traktori]

Originally posted by McKinley
traktori
You are talking about that Nokia don't think it's the right time to bring 3G-handsets but then you are also writing about EDGE and Digital TV??
Well that is your view but don't you think 3G is more up to date than Digital TV and EDGE?

Is it only what Nokia believes that is up to date and not what the market says that counts for you with Nokia brains?
How many people can afford the tacos shaped ugly Nokia 7700 and how many wants to buy it?

Well its how you define 3G. For me it is mostly more speedy connections. And now when operators have spent so much money on licence-fees for 3G-networks (WCDMA) they don't have money to spend for expensive 3G base stations. EDGE is very cheap alternative to offer higher speeds and operators have found it as a good way to get higher data fees and this way get WCDMA networks done. Nokia is offering phones with EDGE and is no doubt leader in EDGE-technology.

Of course WCDMA is there to come, but right now EDGE is more rational for operators. When WCDMA is more common Nokia _will_ offer more normal phones for WCDMA, but now there is only very few networks offering that and for those people buying WCDMA handsets it is important to have something special and wouldn't you agree that 7600 is special. And I'd like to remind that Nokia 6650 was the first handset to offer WCDMA / GSM.

Then what do you want 3G phones to be like? And which of these features EDGE / TCP/IP phones like 6230 can't offer? WCDMA is faster when it is available but do you like to wait for that and use your slow (not-Nokia, I think) handset until that day or be a first-to-use-200 kb/s-phone?

BTW. Can you watch DVB with 3G handsets? No I don't think so. So you can't consider digital-tv as a alternative to 3G but as a nice feature which in near future only Nokia offer.

About bringing phones to market. When anlysts have wrote about the causes why Nokia is leader there have been two main reasons. User friendly UI and right timing. This doesn't necessarily mean this is the case today but I think it still is. Now the competitors have to be innovative to get attention, but Nokia has been in market very soon when technology gets mature. This was the case e.g. with bluetooth. But there is also many technologies which was developed and first introducced in Nokia e.g. very important Smart Messaging.