Failure Version 2: Nokia Lumia Relaunch with Windows Phone 8 is Also a Total Dud (Updated)

So we have today seen the relaunch of Nokia Lumia now with Windows Phone 8 operating system. Nokia was already failing catastrophically with the first generation Lumia and then Microsoft decided to not allow those first Lumia handsets to be upgraded to Windows Phone 8. So now its back to zero and starting once again from scratch.


Note - two updates to this story one day later. A Nokia promotion video had been 'faked' without acknowledgement, ie they used other camera gear to create simulation of what Lumia 920 'Pureview' videos could look like. Nokia apologized for this. And also, Nokia has said they miscommunicated the 7 milllion sales number (as I said, it seemed too small a number). 


I wrote last year about this time my first gut feelings about how the first generation Lumia would fare in the market. Later I also gave my considered view of what all was wrong. I ended up being remarkably accurate on how utterly the first generation Lumia series would fail inspite of the hype pushed by Nokia and Microsoft. Remember all that? That supposedly Windows Phone was outselling the iPhone in the UK (remember that, Nokia people saying UK customers were tired of the iPhone???) and that the AT&T sales was very strong (it wasn't, didn't even hit 600,000 in a quarter) and that Windows Phone was outselling the iPhone in China (where in reality iPhone outsold all Nokia smartphones running Windows, Symbian and Meego combined by 3 to 2).

The Microsoft Way of trying to distort reality is to push misinformation, misleading comments and even downright lies to try to create hype. This is all part of the standard dirty tricks by Microsoft that Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, an ex-Microsoft exec is eager to emulate. And now we hear again, at the New York event launching the new Lumia's today, according to live blogging by Gizmodo, that "Elop says China quickly becoming largest WP market in the world." Yeah. And I am quickly becoming a teenage girl from Japan named Tomi haha.. But lets look at those China sales a bit later. Lets start with these new Lumia smartphones. How did Nokia's Lumia Relaunch succeed today? I call it simply: Failure Version 2.0.

SPECS AS FLAGSHIP

So we get two new Lumia smartphones by Nokia that run Windows Phone 8 (the four older Lumia models are now totally obsoleted, 'Osborned' in fact, as they are not compatible and cannot be upgraded from Windows Phone 7.5 to 8.0). Understand what it means. It does not mean that Nokia has now expanded from 4 to 6 Lumia models - where we might think Nokia grows sales say from 4 million last quarter to 6 million soon. No. Rather, Nokia has regressed from 4 to 2 marketable Lumia models. This cannot help Nokia grow, this is likely to produce a Nokia sales regression, dimishing versus this year Q2 when Nokia managed 4 million total Lumia sales (vs other Nokia smartphones of over 6 million, vs Blackberry sales of 8 million, HTC sales of 9 million, iPhone sales of 26 million and Samsung smartphone sales of 50 million in the same Q2. 18 months ago, before this Windows strategy was announced, Nokia had seen dramatically growing smartphone sales powered by Symbian, that produced 28 million sales per quarter).

But lets start on the positive, shall we? Yes, there is obviously a lot of development, these new Windows Phone 8 based Nokia Lumia smartphones are - yes they are - better than the previous Lumias. Unfortunately, in many areas, these Christmas-2012 period smartphones are only trying to catch up to tech specs that Nokia has been selling on its other Symbian and MeeGo operating systems many years ago, so while yes, these often are improvements, they are not exactly cutting-edge tech, for the most part. There are some goodies though. So lets do the specs. I will compare the new flagship Lumia 920 to the previous year-old flagship Windows based Lumia 800, the year-old MeeGo based N9, and the two-year old Symbian-based flagship N8, so you can see how the specs compare:

FLAGSHIP COMPARISON (all handsets similar form-factor of touch-screen slate)

Feature . . . . Lumia 920 . . Lumia 800 . . N9 (MeeGo) . . N8 (Symbian)
Year . . . . . . 2012 Q4  . . . 2011 Q4  . . . 2011 Q3  . . . . 2010 Q4
OS . . . . . . . WP 8 . . . . . WP 7.5 . . . . MeeGo . . . . . . Symbian
Screen  . . . . 4.5". . . . . . . 3.7". . . . . . . 3.9" . . . . . . . . 3.5"
Memory . . . . 32 GB . . . .. 16 GB . . . . . 64 GB . . . . . . 16 GB
MicroSD  . . . no . . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . . yes
Camera . . . . 8mp . . . . . . . 8mp . . . . . . 8mp . . . . . . . 12mp
Flash  . . . . . LED . . . . . . . LED . . . . . . LED . . . . . . . Xenon ('real' flash)
Second cam . yes . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . . yes
LTE . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . no
NFC. . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . no
Video out . . . no . . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . yes
Qi*  . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . no 

(Qi is standard for wireless charging) 

Note, most other specs are same or similar ie all have GPS, WiFi, FM Radio, and the handsets are roughly similar in size and appearance.

So how does this compare? The screen size for the Lumia 920 is big and very sharp. That is good. Its nothing like the biggest screen by rivals, but it is big and far bigger than past Nokia flagships. Yes, the Lumia 920 adds wireless charging (again not a Nokia unique benefit but is definitely hot tech now). But after those, look at where the Lumia 920 is only catching up to past Nokia on Symbian or MeeGo. The second camera and NFC are aspects Nokia flagships have had in the past but the lame Lumia 800 for last Christmas did not. So this is only catching up.

Then on the memory, 32 GB is better than what the Lumia 800 had (16 MB) but pales compared to last year's N9 (64 GB) and the N8 had expandable memory via microSD cards.

But on major tech aspects that past Nokia flagships have had, that this latest Lumia 920 still can't match include: 12 mp camera, real Xenon flash and video-out, aspects Nokia had two years ago in the flagship (and many rivals have today or have even better, and other Nokia phones have since like the 808 Pureview running Symbian this year).

So we have definitely improvements in the new Lumia flagship for Christmas-sales 2012 vs last year, but this latest-and-greatest Windows Phone Lumia 920 flagship still fails and disappoints on many major Nokia specs of its recent past flagships (memory, microSD, 12mp camera, Xenon flash, video-out). For a smartphone maker who invests heavily on the camera side - including an exclusive partnership with camera lensmakers Carl Zeiss, this is crazy stuff. In fact Nokia has sold 8mp cameras four years ago on its flagships. HTC has been selling 16mp cameras last year and Nokia introduced the monster-camera at 41mp on its 808 Pureview this year (running Symbian obviously).

Will the Lumia 920 seem better in a store than the past four Lumia handsets? Yes. Is this a competitor worthy of top flagship for Christmas 2012 and into Spring 2013 smartphone sales? No. Absolutely not. This is a mid-range premium smartphone by specs, not a superphone. Nokia could do (and has done) far better than this (if it used more capable operating systems like Symbian or MeeGo).

If you compare the Lumia 920 to the past, it may seem competitive. But in a week we'll see the iPhone 5. Before Christmas we'll likely see more updated Galaxy models from Samsung and hot new rivals from Sony, HTC, LG, Motorola etc. This is not competitive enough as a flagship smartphone. 

SPECS VS 2012 NOKIA

FLAGSHIP COMPARISON (all handsets similar form-factor of touch-screen slate)

Feature . . . . Lumia 920 . . Lumia 900 . . N9 (MeeGo) . . 808 Pureview (Symbian)
Year . . . . . . 2012 . . . . . . 2012 . . . . . . 2011 . . . . . . . 2012
OS . . . . . . . WP 8 . . . . . WP 7.5 . . . . MeeGo . . . . . . Symbian
Screen  . . . . 4.5". . . . . . . 4.3". . . . . . . 3.9" . . . . . . . . 4.0"
Memory . . . . 32 GB . . . .. 16 GB . . . . . 64 GB . . . . . . 16 GB
MicroSD  . . . no . . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . . yes
Camera . . . . 8mp . . . . . . . 8mp . . . . . . 8mp . . . . . . . 41mp
Flash  . . . . . LED . . . . . . . LED . . . . . . LED . . . . . . . Xenon ('real' flash)
Second cam . yes . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . yes
LTE . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . no
NFC. . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . yes
Video out . . . no . . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . yes
Qi*  . . . . . . . yes . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . no . . . . . . . . no 

(Qi is standard for wireless charging) 

Again, same story. Compared to the Lumia 900 from this year, the new Lumia 920 does move up many aspects and seems a big upgrade. But just compared to the two other top phones sold this year by Nokia, the 808 Pureview on Symbian and last year's N9 on MeeGo, the newest Lumia 920 only matches many aspects and falls short on many more (memory of 64GB, microSD support, camera resolution of 41mp, real Xenon flash, video out).

This could have been a contender. This could even have been a true challenger. But now, seriously, if an average salesrep looks at those specs, and remembers how the current and recent past Nokia smartphones have been in their specs, this is not a 'wow' factor smartphone. As this is the flagship from the Lumia series, it will be compared to the iPhone 5 and Samsung Note and Galaxy S3 and whatever new funky stuff will come for Christmas. 

COOL SOFTWARE

So, you thought that Nokia and Windows software show was somehow cool? City Lens? Yeah, nice AR application for Windows Phone, but its just what..... 3 YEARS behind the AR apps we've seen on Androids for example and that 'obsolete' OS called Symbian.. Mapping, navigation, please.. 100,000 apps in the Windows Phone ecosystem - is only now catching up to that 'obsolete' ecosystem of Ovi Store and Symbian - which by the way had far more carrier billing support and a 20x bigger addressable market size so if you are an app developer and want to earn millions, rather than thousands, you should sell to Symbian/Ovi not Windows Phone - this before we zero the installed base now with Windows Phone 8 once again. And yes, some people do buy smartphones because of their apps, but come on, iPhone and Android have 500,000 apps each. Its not even close!

If you are like most consumers - and like the Nokia research itself revealed about Nokia smartphone users this Spring - then the camera is your number 1 priority on a smartphone and Nokia's Lumia 920 fails you, at least compared to past flagships by Nokia. If you are like many heavily addicted consumers of smartphones, youth, business users, young adults etc - Facebooking, Twittering, SMS texting and emailing - then the lack of QWERTY will drive you to rival smarpthones. If you are truly after those apps, then you go for an iPhone or Android. Why would anyone bother to buy this lame compromise.

SO ITS TWO MORE FAILED i-PHON-A-CLONES

So, what do we now have? So far Elop has brought us six new Lumia devices. Each of them is a similar i-Phon-a-Clone - very very similar form factor close clones of the iPhone. Why? We know that only 38% of all smartphones sold now are touch-screen smartphones (which includes hybrids), according to latest Q2 stats by Deloitte. So 62% of smartphones are non-touch screen smartphones (includes non-touch screen style QWERTY based smartphones like say a Blackberry or basic keypad smartphones). I am not suggesting NOT to do any touch screen on a Windows Phone based smartphone. I DO mean that Nokia HAS to introduce some QWERTY sliders into its portfolio. Six Lumia devices already, all made on the minority form factor and with not even one QWERTY-slider hybrid device amongst them all?

Note, this is a Nokia staple! This is what came from the Communicator line, and we saw in recent Nokia touch-screen hybrid smartphones like the N900 (on Maemo), the E7 (on Symbian) and the N950 (on MeeGo). These smartphones sell in massive numbers, especially outside of the USA where many heavily addicted smartphone users send 100 SMS text messages per day and often shift to OTT services like Whatsapp, Blackberry Messenger etc. Business users obviously appreciate a real keyboard for email uses whereas heavy Facebook and Twitter etc users on the consumer side are equally appreciative of the physical QWERTY keyboard.

I am NOT suggesting to make all Lumias QWERTY-sliders, but I DO suggest to make a couple of the series do this. ALL smartphone user surveys find that mobile messaging has more users than downloading apps, on all continents. This is a traditional Nokia competitive advantage. Elop is throwing it away with these iPhon-a-Clones.

WHERE IS LOW END?

And so we see a top-end flagship in the Lumia 920 and a mid-price 820? This makes sense why? The majority of smartphones are low-cost smartphones! 41% of all smartphones sold this year will cost under 100 Dollars (price without contract ie without handset subsidy - note the real price of an iPhone 4S is 650 dollars, not the nominal 179 dollars that it might be sold with 2 year contract). The Lumia 610 was aiming towards the lower end of mid-priced smartphones while not coming anywhere near the 100 dollar level. Now we have a far more expensive second Lumia? Why? Why why why why why?

This is as stupid as Henry Ford, being asked to give a Model T Ford automobile in some other color than black, and he then offering the choice of dark grey!!! Elop is an idiot! So he now offers a lame flagship rival to the iPhone 4S and clearly a slightly lesser rival to what, the iPhone 4? In an era when we are about to see the iPhone 5. Whereas Apple itself refuses to offer the world a QWERTY variant of the iPhone - a market Nokia should own and Apple refuses to give us a lower-cost 'iPhone Nano' which is where something like a Lumia 610-priced lower-end device would fit. But no. Elop is incompetent!

Last year this time Nokia announced 2 Lumia smartphones for Christmas, the Lumia 800 and 710. They managed 600,000 total sales in that quarter. This time the Lumia 920 and 820 are aimed even higher on the price range, they won't thus gain scale from lower prices (while that is where the market size is expanding massively this year). So at its peak, with 4 Lumia models this past Q2, Nokia was able to sell 4 million Windows Phone based smartphones. At the launch of the series, in the first quarter, Nokia sold 600,000 units. That is immediately a window for you to consider the scope. Thus with two models now, the scale of expectation of Christmas sales would be in the range of 600,000 to 2 million. Do you think that is 'a success' by any definition? Incidentially, in Q1 of this year, Nokia Lumia series did exactly that, 2 million sales.

What would 2 million Lumia sales mean in Q4 of 2012? Roughly 1%.. Yes. One percent! The latest quarter we just got results for, Nokia Lumia still managed to sell 3% of all smartphones. Symbian, yes, the 'obsolete' and 'Burning Platforms' Symbian based Nokia smartphones outsold all Lumia Windows Phone smartphones by Nokia by a ratio of about 3 to 2. This while Nokia's own marketing admits they were unable to satisfy the heavy demand of the 808 Pureview (yes, Symbian-based 808 Pureview) in many markets.

Nokia owned the smartphone market when Elop took over and 18 months ago Nokia sold more than Apple and Samsung - combined! Nokia was more than twice the size of its nearest rival !!! During the year 2010, Nokia grew more in new unit sales of smartphones than Apple's iPhone!!! Yes, Nokia, that 'Burning Platforms' Nokia - with Symbian - grew more than Apple's iPhone, the tech darling (and far more than Samsung or Blackberry). Nokia did this all profitably, in fact for Q4 of 2010, Nokia's Symbian-based smartphone unit set a Nokia record in profits. Nokia's market share in smartphones was 29% when the Windows partnership was announced. Now, after total self-destruction of the Nokia smartphone market by Nokia's own CEO and his 'partner' Microsoft, Nokia's new strategic direction, the Windows Phone based Lumia, is headed to what? About 1% market share for Q4 of 2012? This is madness!

Good thing we still have Symbian (and MeeGo) and Nokia can still sell some other smartphones. But I do think Nokia's Christmas quarter 2012 smartphone market share will be between 2% and 3% when counting all smartphone operating systems, Symbian, Windows and MeeGo, combined. This unit will be ridiculously unprofitble at this level of collapse and obviously, more profit warnings will come, as will - unfortunately - ever more layoffs by Nokia management as it attempts to adjust to the continuously collapsing sales.

ELOP TALKS CHINA

So, then what was this madness that Elop said today in New York? I mentioned the Gizmodo live blog which wrote the Elop statement like this "Elop says China quickly becoming largest WP market in the world." - This may be misquoted or mis-stated, note I have not seen anyone else livetweet this or quote Elop from New York (yet) making that statement. And it is not a verbatim quote of Elop, that is my direct quote of how Gizmodo reported it. But there is no reason to question Gizmodo's live tweeting. If Elop did make this claim, this is bullshit at the batshit-crazy level.

I wrote my very deep analysis of why it is NOT POSSIBLE for Windows Phone to be selling particularly well in China right now. You can go read that analysis if you need the evidence. Suffice it to quote latest Canalys statistics for Q2 which find China market at 81% Android, 9% iOS, and Nokia only with 6%. In China Nokia has long-standing carrier relationships with the two biggest carriers, China Mobile and China Unicom, who sell Symbian and MeeGo based smartphones. Only the smallest Chinese carrier, China Telecom has even accepted the Lumia into its offering (and also sells the other operating systems too). So its definitely certain that Lumia cannot sell more than one sixth of that 6%. If you think somehow 1% of China is Nokia's best market, when Lumia global market share was 3%, then you are mathematically challenged. This is physically not possible. Elop is lying - if that is what he said in New York today.

UPDATE - this next item has now been updated and corrected by Nokia, as their miscommunication. The 7 million was not cumulative up to now, it was cumulative up to about end of June. I am striking over my original text so you can still read it if you want, but this section is now no longer relevant. It was - as I suggested - not the real number as reported.

LUMIA ONLY CUMULATIVELY 7 MILLION?

Then we have yet another bizarre statistic just out this week from Nokia. They said that Nokia had sold a cumulative 7 million Lumia smartphones since launch last year. That might on the very surface of it seem like a nice number, until you understand this. We know from previous Nokia statements that it sold 600K in Q4 of last year, 2M in Q1, and then 4M in Q2. That means only 400,000 total units sold of Lumia in the first two months of Q3 !!!! Wot ?? Lets put this into a table:

Period . . . . Lumia sales . . . Lumia sales per month
Q4 2011  . . . . 600,000  . . . . . 300,000
Q1 2012 . . . 2,000,000  . . . . . 667,000
Q2 2012 . . . 4,000,000 . . . . 1,333,000
Q3 2012 . . . . 400,000 . . . . . . 200,000
TOTAL . . . . 7,000,000

The statement is official Nokia, and cumulative to this week, ie end of August. Since 6.6 million Lumia were sold by the end of Q2 of 2012, that means that since the Osborning of the Lumia series by Microsoft, the Lumia sales have truly collapsed and are at near-nothing level. We did hear that carriers have pulled Lumia from the shelves, Europe's T-Mobile Germany for example cancelled its Lumia 900 launch altogether and stores such as Walmart have the Lumia 900 in discount bins selling for 0.97 dollars (yes, 97 cents) with contract.

I am skeptical of that level. I am sure we'll hear the latest Lumia quarterly sales level in the Nokia Q3 results in late October, and there is still one month of September to sell. I was expecting something like 2 million or so, at vastly discounted price-dumping levels, but if the sales have fallen to this catastrophic level now, it means the Lumia brand is severely tarnished too.

PUREVIEW BRAND DAMAGE

I do have to say that Elop is destroying yet another Nokia brand - now the Pureview brand. The 808 Pureview camera, with the 41 mp camera - had its 'party piece' as the supreme trick, that astonishing zooming ability into supersharp pictures, as the image was taken in 41mp resolution, but pictures usually then selected as a 'crop' of that original image. So if you wanted an 8mp picture, you could select and edit exactly what parts you wanted, which still would be supersharp. The camera sensor resolution and size is a critical element to the most obvious, visible and most-used part of the Pureview experience. Now by branding some low-light and other imaging gimmicks as supposedly 'Pureview' Elop is ruining the Pureview branding. But this is also par for the course, Elop has no interest in preserving any Nokia properties for the future, he burns them all in his bonfire of platforms.

UPDATE - MARKETING COMMUNICATION DISASTERS

(This part to the blog is added one day later). So we now know that Nokia messed up its marketing communications realted to the relaunch of Lumia. This is totally inexcusable, as this date was known well in advance and the importance of this launch was so great. But yes, first, Nokia was caught falsifying its video and had to apologize. Secondly, the released Lumia sales numbers were completely misleading. How can Nokia be doing this now? I think it tells of a confused and disrupted marketing communications department, where most veterans have been fired or have left out of their own initiative, and the recently hired marketing people are either not competent to do their jobs, or are overworked and overstressed. This is to be expected when Nokia keeps cutting staff so deeply - but the fastest way to discover such major systematic problems would be in the marketing communications department, because they work on such a short time frame. It is very likely that Nokia is also suffering from many other similar internal problems in everything from product development to production to shipments to partnership management etc and those problems will only appear as equally embarrassing problems weeks and months from now. But this is very serious messing-up of Nokia's most important launch date of this year. I would not be surprised if over the next few days we discover other problems related to this specific launch, that are still bubbling under the radar.. Nonetheless, clearly Nokia has lost the talent and deeply insightful professional skills to catch these kinds of errors, and now the new marketing communciations team that Elop has, is far less focused on sticking to the truth, honestly and accurately. I think this is yet another sign of problems long-run with Nokia management.

CARRIER SUPPORT

So, the one other rumor was that perhaps Verizon would be announced as a new Nokia carrier partner. Now, first, please remember that before AT&T started to sell Nokia Lumia smartphones, Nokia's North American sales were 600,000 total mobile phone handsets per quarter. Now after AT&T started to sell Lumia, with the biggest new phone launch marketing campaign AT&T had ever created - supported by the biggest handset launch budget Nokia had ever done - in fact 3x bigger - and supported by massive MIcrosoft budgets too - the resulting total North American sales of Nokia mobile phones were.. 600,000 units this past quarter. Zero gain. That was before the Lumia was Osborned. Now AT&T has effectively stopped selling Lumia. So if there had been a big Verizon announcement (or a big China Mobile announcement for example) then maybe - just maybe - we might have some optimism for Lumia gains for Christmas.

Instead, what did we learn? We learned that Nokia Lumia series has 13 systematic faults why it fails in all markets including the USA. We learned that the Lumia series has 101 faults when used by loyal Nokia smartphone owners (now with more Lumia! upgraded to 121 faults, get yours today!). And what does that mean? It means that the Lumia series has the biggest return rates of any Nokia smartphone ever released. The stores refuse to sell the Lumia. The very latest Kantar statistics now in August 2012 tell us that for every 5 existing Nokia Symbian customers in Europe, 4 will rather buy any rival smartphone than take the Lumia. And that the independent survey of Lumia owners by Yankee Group found that of Lumia owners in the USA, 4 out of 10 rate the Lumia as literally the worst phone possible (rating it a 1 out of 5 where 1 is worst and 5 is best).

If you thought that Lumia and Windows Phone will somehow 'save' Nokia, that myth was exposed first on this blog last year, and the evidence is now overwhelming. I have now taken my first look at Elop's attempt at Lumia version 2.0. This is not good enough, either. This will be failure 2.0. When Elop started, he traded 29% of Nokia Symbian market share for 7% with Symbian and Windows Phone. Now we start from zero again. Now we don't get to re-set to 29%. We start from 7%. And if the same math holds, then a year from now Nokia's smartphone share will be 1.7%..  If we want to be generous, we may see twice that, call it 3.4% or if you want to be very negative, take half of that, at 0.8%. But even then, Nokia Lumia will be the biggest remaining Windows Phone maker, and total Windows Phone market share will not be over 4%, more likely close to 2% a year from now. That is hardly a 'third ecosystem'. This is a path to certain death. Elop has to be fired and this suicidal Windows path has to be abandoned. Nokia now needs to prepare to join Android (or Tizen) as Windows cannot save Nokia. And obviously I am expecting Nokia to be sold and split up into parts. 

PS those who need more info on smartphones, their specs, form factors, market shares, etc see my TomiAhonen Phone Book. 

Comments

[Michal Synacek]

Well, I love Nokia's of old, especially the E52 and the E6, so it would be great to see a phone with a real keyboard. However, from my perspective as a consumer, the new Nokias look very, very tempting. Nokia is still undefeated when it comes to great off-line maps, the design is excellent and the wireless charging is very cool. In fact I like the new Nokias so much, that I may actually buy one these despite Windows 8 (I loved the old "open" Nokia systems plus I'm a Linux guy) and disliking Elop in general a lot. I think the new phones are a big win for Nokia and I personally love them.

[Jojo]

WP-sales in China actually seems to be increasing quite well. And Nokia has over 75% of WP-market.

http://vdisk.weibo.com/s/bHlEk

Interesting is that only 4% of WP-devises are Nokias sold by China Telecom. Rest is retail.

If report is accurate, Nokia has sold over 300 000 Lumias in China during Q3. This means

a) Elpos comment about China being largest WP-market is accurate
b) Nokia has definately sold a lot more Lumias than 400 000 during Q3.

I am pretty sure they ment until end of Q2 when they said 7 million sold Lumias.

[HCE]

Let us address some of the points you have raised.

1. Regarding lack of Xenon flash. It isn't as if this is incredibly tough to implement technology. Mobile phones do not generally use Xenon flash because it is a battery hog. The PureView phone with its photography emphasis is an exception to the rule - it is quite likely that for the forseeable future, most smartphones will continue to use LED flash and not Xenon. In other words, lack of Xenon flash is no big deal.

2. Regarding lack of other features such as video out - yes, Windows Phone is going to lag in specs for a while more. It is after all, a new operating system. Everytime a new OS is introduced into the market, it will almost certainly be missing some feature that the established operating systems had. The iPhone was missing a lot of features when it was first introduced. Now - 5 years later, it has caught up in many areas but there are still a few areas where it hasn't. That has not prevented it from selling in huge numbers. In the end, a new platform will succeed if can bring some compelling positives to the table that will allow users to overlook its shortcomings. It is too early to tell. However, constantly beating them over the head because of their lack of spec parity is belaboring the obvious.

3. Your point regarding the PureView brand is well taken. I think it was a mistake to dilute the brand so soon. For the brand to have any value, it should be reserved for photography-centric phones like the 808 with high megapixel count cameras.

4. I also completely agree with your take on the the Lumia 900s lack of upgradability. Obsoleting a platform within 6 months of introducing it is criminal.

- HCE

[AtTheBottomOfTheHilton]

You're really quick commenting on the Microsoft Event, keyboards must be a wearing part for you.

My personal reaction is that this is a re-run of the Windows Phone 7.5 launch. Nokia and Microsoft stirred up the expectations but delivered a mediocre product. This time it is Windows Phone 8 which is more mature and a little more support but still behind all other OSes. The hardware from Nokia is not bad but not great either, just like last time. Despite of SD-card support in Windows 8, Nokia leaves it out. Nokia also decided not to include an HDMI out which most top tier Android phones has today. They also abuse their own PureView brand. In short, Nokia and Microsoft are still behind competition and the phones still look more like a feature phone compared to the feature packed Androids or the Aesthetics of an iPhone. They simply can't keep up and Microsoft rather slows Nokia down than helping them due Microsoft limitations.

Sales numbers, well I think this phone will not sell worse that the previous iteration but about the same. Maybe a generous 15 million in a year. Initial sales will not that bad if they hit Christmas market but it will rapidly decline as more people find out that the Lumias are very limited in several ways.

Same old story, Ballmer and Elop is beating the same old dead horse they have done for several years now. Microsoft much earlier than that with Zune.

Last chance for Nokia or Microsoft? I don't know, this is like an old cartoon where every episode is about the same. Next we will hear "it will be better in Windows Phone 8.x".

[jo]

http://t.co/PZ0dMTeO pureview video is fake too.

they probably dont even have real IOS working on the 920, camera.

[JJ]

Original Lumia design was much better than these new models (IMHO). Why did they change it?

[TimoT]

Mr. Elop is an arrogant Canadian, acting like a moose in china chop. He is also, typical for many Canadians, obsessed with US markets. Nothing else matters.

US markets have been Nokia's weakest point anyway for over a decade and it did not even matter. It should not matter now either. Nokia was strong pretty much everywhere else until this moose turd showed up. 310 million Americans are not that much when we talking about India or China or EU with 450 million.

Now everything is put to conquer this one market with huge expenses and even that is failing miserably. How the fuck one man can be so idiotic. It is like listening a real lousy karaoke singer night after night in a bar because he pays the owner some money. Except the owner is actually losing more and more money due to fewer customers.

[Naikon]

Most of the N9 nokias was delivered with 16Gb. 64Gb versions was priced extremely.

[Naikon]

Nokia 820 looks like a twin of Xiaomi Mi-Two. Design is the same. The size is the same. Colors are almost the same. It looks like the engineers of Pegatron corp used the same design for both Nokia and Xiaomi (Mi-Two actually beats Lumia 820).

[tired]

Great post again. As you pointed out, wp8 is a brand new OS with as little support as any other new OS. So how did the decision to go wp8 rather than the old upgrade Qt route benefit Nokia? In my opinion, harmattan route would have got Nokia started a year before and the transition would be faster as Nokia would be keeping it's existing customers instead of shooing them away.
Now with Samsung confirmed getting into the wp8 arena, Nokia is going to lose sales to them, cutting down numbers for Nokia, hence cutting profits.
end result, Nokia loses anyway.
I agree Tomi, idiot elop

[Naikon]

I don't think that Elop is incompetent! He is absolutely competent in what he is doing. The reason you think he is incompetent is that you misunderstand his goals. He effectively removed any possibility for Nokia to come back to the MeeGo track. He is constantly promoting WindowsPhone, and he sounds like he is still Microsoft employee and he doesn't try to hide it, he is openly play for Microsoft team, he is giving all for that team. Don't you see it? He manages Nokia as if it was a part of Microsoft (which it really is today). So he is competent. He just plays another game.

[zlutor]

Lack of HDMI output might not be so serious issue IF wifi and DLNA are supported.
Just like in case of N9...

[zlutor]

What about the event itself? Presenters were catastrophic. All of them but especially Kevin. :-(

Comeback event? C'mon. Funeral instead... :-(

[Naikon]

There is a reason why Nokia is unable to satisfy the heavy demand of the 808 Pureview. The same reason why Nokia N9 was hold away from major markets. The same reason why Nokia 600 (a very special affordable loud-and-proud phone) was discontinued. The reason is that Elop don't want to sell those to the customers. Customers supposed to buy Lumia. Anything that can lead customers away from Lumia must be eliminated at all cost.

[Naikon]

@Michal Synacek
You better wait and see what Jolla Mobile will come up with. The hardware design and manufacturing will be surely done in Asia, probably on the same factory as for Lumia or iPhone. But it will run MeeGo (hopefully even better than Harmattan).

[Naikon]

@JJ
Design is not an "original Lumia". It's original Nokia N9 Lankku design, Lumia is just hijacked it.

[Tom]

What happened to the great exclusive partnerships that Nokia was talking about a few weeks ago? This would have been the day to announce them. Whoops.

[Poifan]

@zlutor: Nokia provides "Play To" DLNA app for Lumia. Works great with photos and videos.

General comments:
- How does a phone comparison not mention the fact that the 920 has 2x the screen pixels as the 900 or N9 and 4x that of the 808?
- How does a phone comparison not mention the fact that the 920 has a dual core CPU (mind you the 900 was less laggy than the N9 or 808 already)?
- How does a phone comparison just compare cameras by megapixel and flash type (920 has bigger aperture, image stabilization and 2x power LED flash)?

I think the 920 will be more like the N8 than 808. Best in class camera for real world use without the bulk of the 808 (which is a niche product, not a flagship, it's just too big).

[bjarneh]

the main problem here is that this is a strategy that was clearly made at a point in time when they thought that the lumia series would succeed, after all this is more about refining the lumia, than rethinking it.

IMO these phones miss the mark in 3 ways.

1. heavy and bulky (200 grams)
2. the all-screen-design does not work when you add the Windows buttons
3. Nokia off-line maps are in some sense old news (the N8 has them)

Nokia clearly does not even dare compete against their own cellphones (N9/N950 etc.), how on earth are they going to win against the iPhone and Android?

only 4 smart-phones have i seen people "preach" about to their friends, i.e. try to "sell" even though they were not salesmen

1. iPhone
2. HTC Desire
3. Samsung Galaxy II
4. Nokia N9

that's it, these phones all have an it factor. 1, 2 and 3 all have about the same size and weight, handy to drag around, but still useful for surfing the web, angry birds etc. the amoled screen on the Galaxy II, and it's super light weight made it desirable as well; even though it is a bit bulky.

the investors today said what we all thought, the stock is down 15.9% in one day, if these phones + the "Asha" line is all they have going, it's time to pack it up..

[Sander van der Wal]

Andrew Orlowski of The Register likes it: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/09/05/handson_nokia_lumia_920_windows_phone_8/