While Nokia was capable for long last make profit the fact still is that Nokia has totally dropped out of the smartphone race led by Apple and Google/Samsung. Asha phones are keeping Nokia as the world second largest phone manufacturer, but it’s still most of all a race to get believable smartphone sales, as Asha without drastic changes is going to wither in the long term against the cheap smartphone competition.
Professor of School of Electrical Engineering at Aalto University, Jukka Manner believes that in the maturing smartphone market you just can’t walk in and be the winner right away. You need to get the masses accustomed to the product first. Android and iOS combined market share at 90% starts to be on the upper limit, if not by the natural limit, then at least by over saturating the market making people look for something new. Jukka Manner believes that Lumia and Windows Phone are set to surprise us.
I would not be surprised if this year, Windows Phone and in particular Lumia sales figures would grow exponentially. When the device and the operating system are new, will go some time before the great mass begins to believe that there’s really an option here. - Jukka Manner
I don’t believe in a slow, gradual growth to +15% market share in this business, but more of a sudden spike at some point by halo family of products that people are buying because the products clearly bring more value to the user than the next one.
I also totally agree with Manner about the need of warm up phase in this industry, because even with a good product it still needs to be around for obvious reasons, like evolving the ecosystem, but also to get the story of the OS through to the customers and confidence to make the jump. Android and iOS were light years ahead on user experience compared to Symbian at launch, yet it did take years for Symbian to fall. In the current market it’s certainly not any easier or faster.
To me that added value by Nokia is hardware, has been since the start. The reason why i still remember painfully clear Nokia’s previous CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo’s speech on his first day at the position talking of going all out for services. He was partly on the right tracks, just totally forgot the reason why people were craving (keyword being craving, not because it made sense to get N95) for Nokia’s and buying tens of millions high end Nokia’s back in 2007.
With Elop Nokia seems to be seeking more hardware centered direction again, rather than offering full suite of Nokia services and sacrificing hardware. Elop is going towards the right direction, but the one major release is still missing and to me that all connects to hardware. Lumia 620 on its price point being the most encouraging device i have seen from Nokia in years, gives me good feeling about the next wave of high end Lumia phones.
Could the rumored EOS be the final push WP and Nokia has been waiting for or is there simply no future for WP and Lumia?
