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November 30, 2012

Comments

cycnus

Hi Tomi,

Nice article.
I don't know how many aspirin you take to write this less-emotional article. :)

btw,
Microsoft problem with phone OS is because their employee who do the job is not good. Wired got a video that show Microsoft know about Kin problem even before they sell it. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/11/unreleased-internal-microsoft-videos-show-why-kin-crashed-and-burned/ and this http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/11/exclusive-additional-microsoft-kin-usability-testing-videos-reveal-deeply-flawed-device/

cycnus


This is one of the Microsoft way of making us believe they have a great product.
http://www.traderplanet.com/commentaries/view/161991-tech-stock-mania-could-microsoft-be-the-winner/

Tester

@cygnus:

Haha, that article may be worth something if WP8 was actually any good. But considering how things stand... ;)

Esa

"The world average smartphone price has fallen 7% to 284 US Dollars. Elop pricing decision is.. Lumia 920 costing 649 Euros and Lumia 820 costing 499 Euros giving an average price for the two of 574 Euros or 749 US dollars !!! The Nokia Lumia series as launched last year was 42% above the average price of smartphones globally, and achieved 600,000 unit sales. Now Elop bravely pushes his new Lumias which cost .. 2.6 TIMES MORE than the average smartphone price! He has raised his prices by 66% from last year while the world price level fell by 7%. That means he is effectively 73% more costly now"

Are u fucking high? Did you consider that perhaps Lumia 920 is a lot better than "average smartphone"? It`s a high-end device which should be compared to SGS3 and iPhone5 and we can see the pricing is just fine. Or are you saying those are all priced wrong? I agree that the 820 is priced too high but there is absolutely nothing wrong with 920 price.

And the camera..it should always be compared to the competition. Now 920 is doing fine vs. sgs3, iphone, htc, nexus etc. and it should be rather easy for Nokia to be ahead in the next smartphone generation because of possible 808 pureview technology and so on.

tomppa-is-a-troll

If you believe what you write, you're no doubt shorting NOK heavily, right? I think the new Lumia 920/8X0 line alone will sell 7-9 million units this quarter. They would sell even more, if it wasn't for the component shortages (probably CPU and the camera unit).

Tomi T Ahonen

Esa lets keep the profanity off the discussion, ok?

Tomi Ahonen :-)

Jesper Nyrup

Yes ESA that's right. Nokia is losing money on every phone and this will somehow save them?
The only way Nokia can avoid death with the Winpoo strategy is to stop making smartphones, firing everyone in that area and doing something else entirely.
It's too late there is nothing to be done.
The microsoft phone will be the last nail in nokias coffin

Tester

>> The present situation of Nokia is because of cancer-Symbian. Luckily the cancer has been operated and WP will save Nokia.

If you want to compare Symbian with cancer - something I won't disagree with, btw., I would equate Windows Phone with strong chemotherapy. It first destroys the cancer but it also hurts the patient. And in many cases it also kills the patient, just as the cancer did.

No, Windows Phone won't save Nokia unless a miracle happens. People already hate Metro on Windows, how do you expect the same people to buy a phone using the same unpopular user interface?

No, sorry, they will say 'thank you' and buy something else, maybe an entry level Android phone, which Nokia has nothing to compete with since their own phones are exclusively targeted at higher end markets.

Tester

>>The new Lumias are very highly rated
[citation needed]

>>by consumers, and they are flying off the shelves.
[citation needed]

Just because some people with company interests say so doesn't make it a fact.

So where are those 'flying off the shelf' phones, for example on Amazon?

On Amazon.de, yesterday the highes ranking one was on #65, today it's no longer listed in the smartphone charts.

Yes, truly some success. And these things are wayyy overpriced, too. €200 more than a Samsung Galaxy S3 for a Lumia 920? Come on! That's utterly ridiculous.

Interested to know

It would be great to read some predictions about what Microsoft will do regarding Nokia once their Surface phone is ready. What is left for Elop & Ballmer to transfer to Microsoft? Surely they will formally sell the mapping stuff to Microsoft for a song. Will they start using Nokia's patents more aggressively to stifle their Android competition?

nnine

@cycnus: This is the usual Microsoft way. Push the buggy crap to the customers no matter what. You see it with the constantly crashing Windows Phone 8 as well. This worked with Windows on PCs where people had no choice, but times are changing...

@Esa: Don't be ridiculous.


BTW: it seems Nokia is hiring Linux engineers again:
http://androidcommunity.com/nokia-headed-to-android-hints-job-posting-20121130/

JustMe

Elop: Yes I believe all those user ratings are fabricated.
Just to refresh your memory: Lumia800 first and Lumia900 after where both (in the internet news) sold out and with hundreds of happy users on amazon:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/532392/
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/14/2948039/nokia-lumia-900-out-of-stock-att-site
http://blog.laptopmag.com/nokia-lumia-900-top-selling-phone-on-amazon-beating-android
http://bgr.com/2011/11/24/nokia-lumia-800-sold-out-in-u-k-despite-rumors-of-weak-demand/
On Amazon US you can still find the more tan 400 positive ratings:
http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Lumia-900-Windows-Phone/product-reviews/B007P5NHJO/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
Surely all fabricated.Take a look how many ratings has the iPhone, a real best seller.

Christian Maurice

Nokia will maybe do Android phone or new linux based phone:

http://www.intomobile.com/2012/11/30/nokia-job-posting-hints-possible-android-device-development/

Plan B in action, they will not continue the spiral to death :)

Tester

I don't trust all those glowing user opinions either.

The lumia 920 has already amassed 100 'reviews' on Amazon.de, 88 of which are overwhelmingly positive. That's just far too much for the short timespan it has been on release.

So I think it's safe to assume that most of those have been posted by people attached to either Microsoft or Nokia.

What I find much more interesting is that there's almost no negative opinions. That's statistically impossible. With any product you'll find naysayers with a strong desire to bash it, hell, even the Samsung Galaxy 3 has 6% 1 star votes. So based on these things and average distribution of opinions I'd say that at least 70% have to be fakes but far more telling is that there's very few customers buying this thing unsuspectingly. It's probably just the Microsoft fanboys left.

User ratings can't be taken at face value, there's so much manipulation going on in that field that you have to extrapolate a bit - but anything with 90% positive votes is definitely bogus, no matter if it's Nokia, Apple or Samsung.

Per Johansson

Regarding QWERTY keyboards, Sony currently has no such phone. They said that the market demand is too small. When I read this news, I was quick to order a last year's Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro, before it ran out of stock.
So most people seem happy without buttons to push.

cm'on now

Tomi, lose the manic punctuations (!!!!!!!!!). One symbol is more than enough to convey your passionate incredulity. We get the idea. Only idiots and/or chumps use those long strings! (<<--notice, one exclamation mark.)
Further, try getting out a dictionary and looking up the word/concept of concision.
You're a darned interesting guy but does every last entry need to drone on into what seems like perpetual verbal diarrhea?

u1w1e

Is it possible that wp8 sales actually haven't even started yet?? Samsung and Huawei haven't even anounced when their wp8 phones will be available. The Lumias at least in Europe seem to be in very limited supply. Big retailer like amazon have not even a date for initial availability ... well I know the HTC's are on sale ... but other then that, I have the impression cell phone companies are holding back. I wonder what the story is??

Tomasz R

You also have to remember, that on markets where Microsoft is successfull they then to increase prices of their licenses over time.

For example Office 2013 is going to be 10-17 percent more expansive to purchase, what's more - the licenses that allowed to install on multiple computers for the cost of a single license are gone.

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=AF728912-D47C-E05C-7A941A7B4167F993

Similar for office server software.

http://richfrombechtle.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/microsoft-office-2013-price-increases-license-changes/

For their successful product SQL Server they changed licensing from per-processor to much more expansive per-core model, where the cost that earlier would buy you a processor license now only gets you 4 cores (servers use 8,10, of even 16 core processors now).

For Windows Server itself they changed licensing from per-node to per-2-sockets. So if you use servers with more than 2 sockets, you pay more for new Windows. This is coupled with 15% increase in their per-user client acces license to those servers.

Basically their pricing and licensing terms are getting worse, and worse from a customer perspective.

So you can only guess what would happen if Windows Phone 8 achieves a success: the prices of licenses are going to go UP in a significant way!

Michael Demetriou

> If Apple moved away from this concept as fast as it could,

Apple even had a reason to start with this model.
1. They had a subpar phone, which lagged behind in all major technologies except the screen. It didn't have 3G years after it had become a norm on high-end phones, it didn't have gps to fight the N95, it had a mediocre camera, it didn't have apps. They needed to make it feel desirable, and exclusivity was a way to do that. Few people could have it, media coverage was huge, artificial demand had to be created. It was more like a demo device. The average customer saw one in the hands of a friend, impressed by the wow factor, but didn't live enough with it to get frustrated with the limited hardware.
2. Apple was a new player in the mobile industry, they had to make friends in the carrier world, and what better than landing exclusivity deals for a product with high media coverage.
3. iPhone production volumes couldn't probably meet demand. (Even NOKIA, with the biggest production capacity in the world faced shortages with successful flagship models - the N8 had a one-month gap in sales, shortly after release). It was better for them to look like they limit the availability because it's a phone for 'a few' than admitting shortages. There was even a limit of one per credit-card for AT&T.

A year later Apple came out with a real smartphone, with 3G, gps, apps, had proved that the product was a hit and had obviously planned for the increased needs in production volumes, no wonder they wanted to move away from the exclusivity concept. And by that time (and even more with the 3GS) they had the carriers lined up ready to carry the iPhone, and not the other way around.


None of the above is true for Nokia of 2012. Lumias ver.2 don't have any real wow factor, they have specs competitive with other flagships, Nokia is in no way a new player and exclusivity might hurt carrier relationships (those who don't get devices - assuming they would sell as Nokia expects them to.) and of course there is no production volume issue as Nokia factories are running under capacity.

It's not only that Apple moved away, it's also the fact that Apple knew why they went there in the first place, and when was the right time to move out.

bjarneh

Michael Demetriou> 1. They had a subpar phone

the iPhone was a sub par phone when it came, really? what was cutting edge tech at the time; the Zune-player? the Virgin Mobile Lobster?


Microsoft cannot expect consumers to forgive mistakes like the ones they have had with cell-phones, nobody who bought the Lumia 900 will splash out another $650 for the Lumia 920 (5 months later). the whole thing about not being able to upgrade from Windows 7 is a deal-breaker for the platform, Microsoft does not get 5 iterations to get it right, they get 1 (possibly 2 or 3 if you can upgrade).

the last Zune player was not bad, but with several bad iterations prior to that device, it was toast. the name Zune was synonymous with failure, plenty of jokes about the Zune over at theonion.com

http://www.theonion.com/articles/thousands-wait-overnight-at-microsoft-stores-for-s,2357/

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