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

[m]

It doesn't matter what specs old Nokia phones had. They've been killed and Lumia no longer has to compete with them. Elop and gang should face criminal charges but that's beside the point for Nokia's future --- it won't bring them back from the brink of collapse.

The 920 seems to have a decent camera. It could push Lumia to the head of the pack in *one* feature at least. We'll have to wait to see what the other new phones are like this season, and for reviewer comparisons. I'm so used to Elop chasing after last year's competition that I'm surprised by this.

People may choose the 920 over an ATIV because:
- They want a better camera (low light, image stabilization).
- People who want WP8 are often Android haters who may also be Samsung haters.
Other people may choose ATIV because:
- Removable battery.
- Micro SD port.
- Will probably be cheaper.

So I think that Nokia has a fair shot at a decent share of the WP market. I think it remains to be seen whether WP8 on a whole will succeed or not. I think it's a long shot, but I don't think the 920 is already a failure on its own. If MS can change popular opinion to "WP is no longer hated" and "WP can compete with other OSes" then Nokia might still have a hope of eking out a meagre survival.

tl;dr Elop's failures have probably already ruined Nokia, but today's announcements don't make it worse. Note: the stock plunge suggests that investors disagree, but I already had low expectations for Nokia and they exceeded those low low expectations.

[vladkr]

I have few comments about all this :

- Nokia 808 PV = 41mpix, Lumia 920 = 8.something mpix : where's the Wow effect Nokia promised to Samsung and to us ?

- Lumia 920 and Samsung ATIV characteristics are quite similar, is it due to OS limitations ?

- when looking at the event's re-transcription, Stephen Elop doesn't seem to be sure about his answers (will the new Lumia come to China, what will be available there and there)... is he the Boss or just Nokia's janitor ? To me a CEO should be aware of his company's plans, and show some strength and confidence (to partners), especially during such a turbulent time.

- if the new devices were revealed today in NYC, what will Nokia show to partners in Helsinki at the end of the month ? The same phones everyone knows (and is already disappointed) about ? How will the partners appreciate that ?

[vladkr]

Last comment (sorry for the double-post, my memory fails sometimes) :

Have you noticed there is no Finn anymore at Nokia to demonstrate cellphones ?

[Me]

At least the 820 has a microSD card slot... I hope it works... I hope the bluetooth works...
I cannot believe I ended up questioning the usability of nokias' bluetooth in 2012, something taken for granted since... ever.
I cannot believe I have to go to a store and actually try the damn thing just to be sure...
This is madness.

[Hoista]

You need to update the chart - 808 Pureview does support NFC

[Poifan]

Where is the low end? I don't think this one conference dictates all Nokia releases for the rest of the year. Like Samsung last week, Motorola today, and Amazon tomorrow everyone is trying to get their new high end devices and innovations announced before getting swamped by next weeks iPhone announcements. These phones are clearly targeted for the U.S. and EU markets (hence the NY morning release). I assume a low end device for emerging markets would be announced from a more global venue and given that low end smartphones are usually yesterday's specs, probably with less fanfare.

[ChrisD]

Tomi,

For the China smartphone market... take a look at http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/09/06/android-breaks-past-80-smartphone-market-share-china-apple-nokia-pick-scraps/

tl;dr: Android 82.8%, iOS and Symbian 6% each, WM + WP about 2% (hard to tell from the chart, but WM+WP and another OS share the remaining 5.2%, and the other OS is about 2x as much).

[J.O. Aho]

Just made a fast read, but I didn't see you mention that Samsung was out with it's WP8 phone news earlier than Nokia and IMHO that caused Nokias announcement to be less exciting as they ain't first with WP8 (not that I personally care about WP8).

[zlutor]

@vladkr: "Have you noticed there is no Finn anymore at Nokia to demonstrate cellphones ?" - to be more precise no Finns to demonstrate Lumia phones...

Have all guys joined Jolla already? ;-)

BTW. It should not matter. What really matters is that presenters were - well, you have seen them...
I think they just screwed the whole event. Telling the truth I was almost not able to recall any major feature/spec of the devices at the end...

Jo Harlow and the Belfiore guy was just simple boring but Kevin?! OMG...

Eeeh, look at the share price - it tells everything...

Tomi, will there be any immediate consequences? (http://www.4-traders.com/NOKIA-OYJ-1412498/news/Shareholder-Frustration-Grows-Over-Nokia-14487885/)

On the other hand, what could they do? Fire Elop? So what then? 2012 is lost for any change, I guess...
Maybe Nokia could buy Jolla... ;-)

[prn]

Thanks for the great post!

Well, their mediocre presentation will largely be forgotten on the 12th of September. I'm no Apple fan, but the announcement of the new iPhone will put the updated Lumias is the shadows: competing hardware and sooner availability. I'm guessing that Apple will ship their product much, much sooner than Nokia. Nokia has been getting far to easy off with "announce now, ship in six months". Hell, their first dual sim (C2) was at least a year late.

Hardware, one glaring omission is off course the lack of storage expansion on their flagship and no HDMI output. Put a N8 on a HDMI enabled screen, wireless USB- keyboard/Mouse and one have a decent mediaplayer. Hardware wise, these are a disappointment.

On the software- side, I don't see Windows Phone 8 adding anything new witch either Android or IOS already does.

Tomi. This post was a good read. The Old-Nokia vs New-Nokia was a good point of view. They seems to have trouble with competing with their past products.

Regards prn

[DS]

The phones are clearly aimed at the US (their added value services only work there) and smartphone begginer market (for people that can't gasp the concept of blutooth and hdmi). But this simply doesn't correstpond to the phone size or price. So to whom is this phone targeted to? Clueless rich people that only care anout status? Doesn't Iphone occupy that niche already? Early adopter market is clearly dissapointed with range of features WP8 has caught up to.
The fratures they got right imo are:
-The camera - if they really get the best in class results then some distinctive moniker us justified, still they are wasting the breakthroug technology from 808. 902 may be not enough to soldify absolute nokia domination in mobile photography. I still hope another proper Pureview handset will be released.
- Resolution, esp. horizontal. 902 has now the biggest hor. resolution of any phone except org. Galaxy Note. Owning it i can tell you a few pixels here can really make a difference making portrait web browsing practical.
They have outdone Galaxy Note 2 here!
- They scalado photo apps are nice indeed. The WP concept to enable plugins for builtin photo app is very sensible as well. I hope Android adopts it in next version.

[Sebastian]

I am sorry, but you are becoming very annoying, what is worst; your comments are becoming very biased.

Let´s start with this, I agree with you that Elop is a fiasco, I agree with you that the new Nokia phones will not overtake the SIII or the iPhone 5, but I don´t think it will be because a bad hardware, it will be because of Windows Phone low adoption rate.

Just to be clear, I used to be a Nokia and Symbian fan, started with the 3650 and ended with the horrible N97, now I am a very happy iPhone user, and for sure my next phone will be the iPhone 5, not the Lumia 920...but in a world without iphone I choose the 920 everyday before an android phone.

Let´s take a look at what you wrote:

*** 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).

Please, let me ask you, when a Symbian phone was upgraded to the new OS version?? When I had the E71 (FP1) Nokia announced Feature Pack 2, the message was very clear, "you asshole want FP2, no problem, trash your E71 and buy an E72" And we are talking about Feature Packs, no new OS releases, however you wrote a billion times that Symbian was (and in fact was) the market leader.
Conclusion; the crappy Symbian upgrade policy never affected sales, why is now an issue for you? (how many android phones will never see Jelly Bean, and they sold like hot cakes?)

*** This is a mid-range premium smartphone by specs, not a superphone.

Are you sure? It uses the same processor, memory and storage than the Galaxy III, it has an smaller screen but with better DPI (in line with the "Retina"), has a better camera, has NFC, has Qi, only loses with the SD card/HDMI out. In many aspects will be superior than the iPhone 5, I really doubt that the iPhone 5 will get NFC or Qi and for the camera if the leaked models are real being so thin it will imposible even for Apple to put a much improved camera (Sony 13MP sensors needs more room so for sure are discarded)

*** is only now catching up to that 'obsolete' ecosystem of Ovi Store and Symbian

You really must be kidding, Ovi Store was (at least the last time I checked) a pathetic fiasco where unscrupulous "developers" were trying to sell themes, ringtones and wallpapers for 1, 3 or 5 dollars. Took 100 apps and 85 were themes and wallpapers. Windows Phone has only 100K apps, but most of them are infinitely superior than crappy symbian apps.

*** Facebooking, Twittering, SMS texting and emailing - then the lack of QWERTY will drive you to rival smarpthones.

You are getting old man, did you lately check RIM´s marketshare?? Did you lately see Samsung, Apple, HTC, LG, Motorola or Sony launching QWERTY superphones??? Even RIM understood this and ditch the keyboard in their lastest prototypes...Want a keyboard? Buy a dumbphone, a notebook, or hey, even the lastest Microsoft tablet, why not?

*** 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.

Elop is an asshole and we agree, but this is not a fair statement, the only current devices that are not trying to be iPhones are the Lumias and the Sonys, even Apple´s attorneys at the trial (vs Samsung) showed a Lumia saying that it is possible to develop a smartphone without copying the iPhone. So Lumias are different enough for Apple but not for you...?

*** 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).

Again, you are getting old, nobody, trust me NOBODY besides you want communicators, I work for one of the very BIGS and we do a lot of market research, trying to sell a Communicator today is as easy as trying to sell a Casio Calculator watch. Blackberrys (no touchscreens) killed the communicators, and touchscreens killed Blackberrys.

I really enjoy some of your posts, but sometimes you need to calm down, drink a coffee and smoke a cigarette before starting to write.

[Denis]

You can listen Elop words about China in Nokia webcast
http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/webcast/live/

[anobserver]

Tomi asks:

"Why? Why why why why why?"

Commenters have pinpointed the reasons:

"Have you noticed there is no Finn anymore at Nokia to demonstrate cellphones ?"

"He is also, typical for many Canadians, obsessed with US markets. Nothing else matters."

"The phones are clearly aimed at the US"

Nokia has been taken over by North Americans with a provincial perspective of the phone market, and is committed to the strategy of a North American firm (Microsoft). Institutional know-how about international markets is being lost, market requirements not in line with what happens in the USA are being disregarded, products not designed and engineered in the USA are pushed aside.

[Naikon]

@anobserver
Lumias are _not_ designed and engineered in the USA.
Well known fact is that Lumias are designed and engineered and made in China.
Lumia 820 is so close to Xiaomi Mi-Two, I believe both was designed by the same team.
920 keeps original N9 lankku design, but that's it.

[foo]

@Tomi "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."

Just as comparison:

Google's Eric Schmidt: 1.3 million Android activations a day, 480 million devices worldwide

http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/05/google-ceo-1-3-million-android-activations-a-day/

You may want to update your article with this interesting fact.

[n9user]

It appears that Nokia fakes sample video and images for Lumia 920.
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_fakes_lumia_920_pureview_video_issues_an_apology_for_it-news-4765.php
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_lumia_920_sample_images_found_to_be_fake_as_well-news-4769.php

Hahaha

[zlutor]

What would happen if Nokia put Android onto N920? Would it sell better?

[Jack1059]

They recycled the N9 design again? So this is the best they could do with their flagship? Sad really.

[Ben]

Have you guys seen what the N950 successor would have been?

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/09/04/leaked-prototype-nokia-lauta-rm-742-cancelled-immediate-n9-successor/

Last years cancelled product would have made a much bigger splash than anything Nokia has come up with the last six months, much less yesterday.