I was invited to the Nokia N8 launch yesterday.
I was actually a bit dubious about accepting the invitation, but @themolk convinced me to. Sadly, a bunch of circumstances mean that I ultimately missed it. But I have been doing some thinking nonetheless.
Does Nokia truly have any relevance left? I'm not strictly talking about their 'bread and butter', so to speak - the standard Nokia mobile with minimal featureset - but more the smartphone market. I've watched the smartphone market develop over the years - once upon a time Microsoft actually had a lead, believe it or not - and Nokia seems to struggle. Now, I know for certain that there are people who love their Nokia "smart phone" in spite of the limited app market (primarily through a lack of agility on the part of Nokia). But it seems to me that these people are in the minority.
If today I picked the three market leaders, it would be a predictable list:
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Apple iOS (has Cisco got cranky yet?)
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Google Android
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Blackberry
I'd further observe that there is a rapidly widening gap between 2nd and 3rd place, and an apparent shrinking gap between 1st and 2nd. This is not through exhaustive review of market research or anything so "scientific" - simply an impression from the people I know, whether over Twitter or in person. Highly subjective of course, but probably not too far different from your typical "representative market research".
What's in 4th place? It isn't Nokia. It's, oddly enough, Microsoft's Windows Mobile ... but extraordinarily distant from 3rd place. I'm interested by the buzz around Windows Phone 7, to the extent that I'm wondering if my prediction of its imminent failure could be premature, but there is a massive amount of ground for it to make up before it can hope to be in a top 3.
What went wrong? It was obvious in 2003 that the then-nascent smartphone niche would go mainstream; it was only a matter of time. Apple and Google have been quick to capitalise on it. Blackberry - not so quick. They do have some good stuff. Their business capabilities still leave the others for dead .. but they're not offering what people are clamoring for.
(As an aside, it still stands up to strong scrutiny to observe that what people are "clamoring" for is often what Steve Jobs tells them. Interestingly, this can be best observed by watching the people who switch from iphone to Android. They first look for their favourite iOS features. Having found those, they then start to warm to it, rather rapidly in some cases. There are Android haters, certainly, but it apparently is offering "enough" of a comfort zone for a reasonable number of people to switch.)
So somewhere under all the others is a Nokia clamoring to be heard. What did they focus on with the N8 launch? The camera. Hmm.
Ok, so I think I know the problem here. They don't "get" their market. Do they even have a market targeted? Camera is important to many, certainly, but we are hardly bereft of choice when it comes to cameras. My current Android phone does a rather nice job with its 5 megapixel camera, and of course we have a superb sub-$200 standalone camera made by Panasonic at our disposal. They certainly do the trick for us.
I had the opportunity to get a review unit for the N8. I couldn't really consider that seriously... why would I want to take a step backwards? I rather like the functionality of my present phone, with quite a bit of that liking being the result of the apps I have. Nokia apps ... are not anywhere near as prevalent.
Apps aren't everything of course. But it seems to me that Apple and the various Android handset manufacturers have a better idea of their target markets, and have capitalised well on them. Even with a bunch of articles doing the rounds about the "extreme" fragmentation of Android, I'm not seeing a lot of unhappiness on the platform? Generally the complaints I've seen are resolved by a third-party mod .. invalidating your warranty, sure, but I've pointed out before that warranty in Australia for smartphones is often worthless. Funnily, most of the complaints I see around Apple also seem to be resolved by jailbreaking ...
I doubt Nokia will fall over any time soon on this apparent 'failure' in the smartphone market. They do a good trade in dumbphones, and there are still plenty of people who are happy to have a "phone-only" mobile. But if they can't attract the same attention as an iOS or an Android ... how long will they last? Relevancy is surely important.