Lets write a letter to Santa. Santa Claus lives in Finland (not on the North Pole but that is a common misconception, Finland is, after all, the Northernmost country in the world when countries are compared by the centers of their geography). Santa lives in a mountain called Korvatunturi (The Ear Mountain) which is in Lapland. Finnair is the official airline of Santa and Rovaniemi is the official airport for Santa. As Nokia is a Finnish company (from far far South, born in the town of Nokia from which the company took its name. Nokia the town is located outside of Tampere, inland in SouthWestern Finland; originally Nokia was a paper mill company and also a rubber goods manufacturer before it made telecoms equipment like mobile phones. Thats how I knew Nokia as a kid in Helsinki my rubber boots were Nokia brand and in our Saab car, we had Nokia brand tyres). I know there are always skeptics around this time of year, who make silly claims that Santa is not real, here is the proof. Rovaniemi is the official airport of Santa Claus! What more could you ask for?
So its appropriate to ask a Finnish miracle-maker like Santa Claus to help out a quintessentially Finnish consumer brand, Nokia as in mobile phone handsets. And for 2017 we are about to see the return of the brand that less than a decade ago was the most used consumer brand on the planet. More people used Nokia branded mobile phones than wore Levi's blue jeans, drove Toyota cars, told time on Timex wrist watches, watched a Sony TV, worked on a Windows PC, or drank Coca Cola or ate a Big Mac. Nokia was by the end of the last decade, literally, the most widely-spread consumer brand on the planet (and one of the most valuable brands too, more valuable than Mercedes Benz).
CONNECTING PEOPLE
Regular readers of this blog know how Nokia died. Yes, Nokia the company did not die, they survived their crisis, they sold their handset business to Microsoft and fired their idiot CEO and kept selling other telecoms networking equipment and are a giant global company, a profitable one, today. They compete with Ericsson, they recently purchased the Alcatel-Lucent telecoms business, thats how rich and powerful they are. Nokia had previously purchased/merged with several of its past telecoms infrastructure-maker rivals like Siemens and Motorola. So I am of course talking about the consumer brand, what most 'normal people' associate with the brand Nokia. Its handsets, its mobile phones, its cameraphones, its featurephones, its smartphones. From the Communciator to the N-Series, E-Series, the X-Series; to the Lumia and Asha; to magnificent masterpieces of technology marvels like the Pureview cameraphones. The brand whose slogan was 'Connecting People' and who literally achieved that. When Nokia introduced its first mobile phone, the whole world had less than 800 million telephones (almost all fixed landline phones at that time, and most of the rest were Motorola handsets). By the time Nokia reached its peak, there were more than 1.4 Billion human beings who walked around with a Nokia in their pockets.
However, consider HOW Nokia did it. Here is 'the Nokia Way' part of that growth. Consider first Apple? Apple's iPhones currently are used by 525 million people. Apple did not bring pocket computing to those 525 million people. At least 500 million of them had a computer before, most had a smartphone before they bought their first iPhone, and almost all of the rest had a more basic mobile phone before they bought their first iPhone. Apple does not bring technology to people, it makes existing technology BETTER. That is the Apple way. They take bad broken concepts like the DOS-era Personal Computer, and redesign it magnificently and give us the Macintosh, a computer run with a mouse and icons and beautiful graphics, and today every Windows PC owes its history to the Mac. The same with music and the iPod, the input of modern phones as touch-screen phones (the original iPhone of 2007 was not a smartphone and smartphones had existed for 10 years, Apple did not invent the smartphone nor even re-invent the smartphone; even app stores existed for years before Apple launched its App Store in 2008) and what Apple did to tablet computers with the iPad. Apple does not invent new tech, it adapts existing tech but does it so totally and perfectly and beautifully, it recreates whole industry sectors and of course Apple does this at enormous profits selling to rich people of the world. So how did Nokia do it, then?
Out of the 1.4 Billion humans who had a Nokia branded mobile phone in their pockets at the start of year 2011, 80% of those lived not in the rich world, 80% of those were living in.. the Emerging World. Living in India, China, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, Vietnam, Turkey etc. Of those 80% who owned a Nokia phone in 2012, most did not own a premium-priced Nokia N-Series or E-Series smartphone, most owned basic phones or mid-priced 'featurephones' but still proudly carried their most-prized possession. For most who owned a Nokia, for MOST, the Nokia brand was not just their first MOBILE phone brand, for most, their first Nokia phone was indeed their first-ever phone. Their home had NEVER had a wired telephone before they got connected via the Nokia brand. If you want to think about the corporate marketing slogan of 'Connecting People', no company has connected more people (ie people who never previously had any telecoms, digital, internet or banking/payments connection of any type before - no fixed landline, no internet connection, no credit card or bank account even) - that was Nokia. If we take a modest number, and say only 80% of those in the Emerging World who at the end of year 2010 had a Nokia branded phone in their pockets, out of those if only 8 in 10 were of this class, that before their first Nokia phone, they never had a telephone, not as a fixed landline in their home, nor personally as a mobile phone, before their first Nokia sometime in that previous decade, then that number is a massive 912 million people.
EVERY STORY NEEDS AN iVILLAIN
Understand this point. When Nokia launched its first mobile phone, the world only had 800 million total telephones. It was not just that Nokia sold expensive premium mobile phones to those rich people of the Western Industrialized rich countries, who could afford a Motorola or Siemens or Ericsson or Panasonic or Nokia (or Palm or Blackberry or HTC or Apple smartphone) - yes, Nokia sold to hundreds and hundreds of millions of those types of customers, of course. They bought the premium Nokia phones. BUT IN ADDITION TO THEM, Nokia went out to literally 'Connecting People'. They connected MORE people who never were electronically reachable before, and connected more people to the telecoms and digital networks than had been the total connected human population before Nokia started. And those new connected people in India, China, Nigeria, Brazil, Egypt, Russia, Indonesia etc - they all found their first digital telecoms connections through a Nokia branded magical device in their pockets. Those phones by Nokia were durable, they had batteries that lasted forever, they had features the consumers greatly appreciated, they were compatible with the standards, they had connectivity that worked with everything. They were so indestructible, a dog ate one. The family took the dog to the doctor who x-rayed the dog and saw the phone inside the dog. The dog eventually pooped the Nokia phone out - and yes, it still worked (may have smelled a bit). One Nokia phone stopped a bullet and saved its owner. There was a video of someone using a Nokia phone as a hammer to hit in a nail into a wall - hitting with its SCREEN (don't try that on an iPhone).
Compare this to Apple. Apple wants to lock us into the iPrison. They want to only sell to rich people, very expensive iToys that lock their customers to proprietary iStandards of a very snobbish iParadise where Apple control everything. An iWeb woven by the possessive iSpider. The Apple pure way and nothing ever is compatible with all other standards, the Apple way always has its own weird connectors and they are always in a rush to abandon anything that would give compatiblity to the rest of the world from USB ports to the standard earphone jacks now that used to be part of the iPhone. All of this obssession with disconnectivity, is so Apple can sell you more at their proprietary standards. Yes, Apple is the second-bestselling mobile phone brand globally today behind only Samsung. But they are not anywhere near attempting to connect the world (at least Samsung is also doing that). Apple is strictly just milking the iSheep for all the profits they can - witness the silly idea of the Apple Watch. Selling an iDecoration for the wrist at obscene prices.
Lets turn to Nokia. Its not just they were Connecting People. What about our memories? The single most important memories for all families are their photographs. Global, planetary phenomenon. If your house is on fire and you've got your kids and dog out safely, the immediate next thought is - the photographs! For most people who own a camera today, for most that is a cameraphone, not a stand-alone digital camera. For most who own a cameraphone, their first-ever cameraphone was a Nokia. Think about that for a moment. Before the cameraphone, only rich people could afford cameras. But Nokia put cameras onto not just its expensive smartphones, Nokia put cameras onto its basic phones. For most people on the planet who have a camera today, their first owned camera brand was Nokia (as part of the phone they had). Whether they today are still a Nokia loyal user or have moved onto Samsung or Huawei or Apple or whatever, their first camera was a Nokia. Can you imagine the impact that 'phone' made on the life of that village in Africa, when the first Nokia cameraphones arrived and then the local wedding and birthdays and graduations started to be documented by cameras?
The Nokia Tune is the most recognized song on the planet. In terms of our Christmas theme, yes, the Gran Vals by Torrega (ie the Nokia Tune) is more recognized on the planet than the song White Christmas. Its more known than any song by Elvis or the Beatles or Michael Jackson or Madonna. It is known more than 'Happy Birthday'. It is the only 'Western' song widely recognized even in countries that severely restricted access of any 'Western corrupting' culture such as North Korea and Cuba. The game Snake that has been standard on Nokia phones for nearly two decades now, is the most-played videogame on the planet. Yes more have played Snake than Solitaire on a PC haha. And far more have played Snake than who have played Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Pokemon Go or Super Mario Brothers.
The Nokia that once was, that was a gentle giant. They did invent a lot of magical technology for us, such as the world's first smartphone (the Communicator, literally a decade before the iPhone). But in many ways, like Apple iPhone of today, the mythology then takes over. Many of the great aspects of the Nokia phones of the past were attributed as Nokia inventions while they were actually not. So take cameraphones. Nokia had the highest annual sales of cameras recorded in history of nearly 350 million cameraphones sold per year (Samsung has come close but not yet passed that level annually when their smartphones and dumbphones are added together). Many think Nokia invented the cameraphone. It didn't. Sharp of Japan invented the cameraphone in 2001. Same for music. Nokia was yes the first phone maker to put a 'song' as its ringing tone to its phones; and then again, the first phone maker to let YOU the consumer install your OWN songs (as very simple ringing tones) onto your phones to further personalize it (I created my first ringtone in October of 1998 haha, when did you first LEARN of the ability to install a ringing tone to your phone...) but 'musicphones' like the original iPhone of 2007 or the SonyWalkman phones that back then were killing the iPod business? They were not invented by Nokia. Musicphones - that had MP3 songs downloaded onto them and had MP3 players on them - they were invented in South Korea. Sony Music's artist Ricky Martin was the first to release MP3 songs to download onto the first musicphones in South Korea (I got to meet the executive who came up with that idea some years later, it was funny that I knew 'his story' haha). So while for most consumers who had pop music stored on their phones in year 2012, that was more often a Nokia phone than any other music player - Nokia did not invent musicphones.
Nokia was a kind of 'bellweather' company for most tech. Others would launch it first, experimentally. When Nokia decided to install that technology then it was time to do it mainstream. Like Nokia did with 3G or with 'selfie' cameras (early Nokia cameraphones only had the 'outward-facing' camera, not the inward-facing videophoning camera we now call the selfie camera). So once Nokia decided to put 3G into its phones in large scale, then the whole industry knew, hey, this will be everywhere we have to do this too. And MP3 players, cameras, Bluetooth, etc. Today Apple's iPhone seems to be that way a lot. No matter what Samsung does, it doesn't seem to matter until Apple does it. Is waterproofing really necessary? When Samsung did it, nobody cared, but when Apple does it, wow this is awesome. When Samsung did its Note sized phablets, nah, you don't need a big screen but when suddenly Apple does the iPhone 6 Plus, wow, the big screen is awesome, etc. We seem to have the iPhone today acting for the industry in that 'what is ripe' bellweather, what Nokia used to be for the industry before.
Unfortunately here is where the old Nokia philosophies of Espoo and the iTax people thinking of Cupertino are at odds quite dramatically. Whatever Apple tends to do, is strip the industry out of its commonality, its functionality, and give only iProprietary and expensive cumbersome solutions. Apple is notorious for this. They didn't bother to give MMS functionality to their first iPhone. And industry telecoms standard? Your airline sends you a boarding pass, oh, sorry, is that an iPhone you use? We can't send it. Sorry. No, of course this is silly. Apple was forced to put the MMS standard into all iPhones in less than a year. But that is Apple's way of thinking. Look at the silly one-button mouse on the Mac. How many decades have Mac users begged for two buttons on the Mac like the incredible functionality that the second mouse gives those who use the far-more-widely-used Windows PCs? But no. Its the Apple way, we know better and style is always more important than functionality at Apple and less is always better. Always take control away from the end user, and from the ecosystem too. Look at Apple's repeated feuds with the telco industry trying to take away the SIM card, to create the virtual SIM card.
THE NOKIA WAY
Now compare to Nokia. Look at WiFi. Nokia did not invent the WiFi phone (Invented in Japan by NTT DoCoMo). But Nokia was the first-non-Japanese phone maker to put WiFi onto its smartphones. And what did American carriers demand? They demanded that Nokia cripple its smartphones and take WiFi away (so carriers can screw their customers by forcing them to use the more expensive cellular data networks which also often in the USA are notoriously unreliable). Nokia said no. And Nokia insisted, this is an international telecoms standard. It is also the standard specs of the same handset model we sell around the world, we will not CRIPPLE the phone for the US market and take out functionality. That is against the user experience. And yes, obviously WiFi won. But you know what? Nokia was also winning that war. The rest of the world went along with Nokia and increasingly all major smartphone makers also put WiFi onto their phones but the US carriers blocked Nokia premium phones from their markets for years. But that dam was broken in late 2010 and for February 2011, Nokia had already announced its return to the US market with its first top-end smartphone provided with handset subsidy by one of the major carriers - only to have this deal suddenly cancelled by Nokia (because the lunatic CEO had suddenly decided to destroy his company, as we later found out). But if you ever used WiFi on your phone today, in any hotspot in the world, don't thank Apple. Don't thank Samsung. It was a war that was fought - bitterly paid for, with considerable market share penalties, but ultimately won - by Nokia. A war won for us, by Nokia. Nokia did not invent the WiFi phone but they won that war for us. Meanwhile Apple? They cripple the functionality on their phones all the time. Bluetooth was crippled, FM radio was muted and off, the video functionality of early Apple cameras was turned off, etc. They are control freaks who want to limit you and limit THE INDUSTRY.
Nokia wanted the industry to thrive. So they put memory card functionality onto their phones! Not expensive internal memory that you have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for the phone models with enough memory. No, put in a memory slot and now the consumer can buy the amount of storage you want - AND you can buy more later (when memory prices are lower) AND you can upgrade that ability later, and you have a convenient way to exchange information with friends ('Connecting People') and most of all - when you replace your phone, you can take your memory card and slot it into the next phone and instantly have all your precious memories on that phone. Has anyone EVER begged Apple to put a microSD slot onto the iPhone? Did essentially all rival phone makers offer microSD by the time Apple came along? And has Apple bothered? No. Of course not because of iTyranny. And here we see the CORROSIVE side of how Apple does it. After Apple doesn't offer microSD, now other makers are removing microSD support as well. Samsung tried this with the Galaxy and got burned and brought the microSD back, but that is what Apple causes. When Apple leads, others follow and in many ways (removable batteries for example) once Apple sets the stage - WE the CONSUMERS suffer when OTHER makers follow Apple's lead. With Nokia it was the opposite way! We gained when Nokia led the way even if we ended up buying another phone by some other brand at a later date.
But did you see HMD's first announced ultra-cheap cameraphone just introduced last week? Not the first proper Android smartphone by the returning Nokia brand. It takes more time to design the top-end phones, but its faster to do the cheap phones. HMD announced its first pair of ultra-cheap Nokia basic phones. The price of unsubsidised (aka SIM-free aka no contract) phones is an amazing 26 US dollars only - no smartphone, no web browser, no downloadable apps, no Facebook. BUT it is a color screen CAMERAphone at that price, with a Nokia brand! The camera even has LED flash. And at this bottom-end price phone, the new Nokia has yes.. a microSD slot. Thank you Nokia, thank you HMD, you are showing us that you are true to the essence of what was best in the old Nokia we used to love so much.
And FM radio? Yes. FM radio. The chips that the iPhone uses, come with FM radio capability built in nowadays. And Apple rather than give us free music of the universal standard of FM radio, of course in their iDictator mindset crippled the FM radio functionality so the iPhone user - who tends to LISTEN TO MUSIC and have good earphones - cannot listen to FM radio! This is all to maximize the profits of the iTaxman - they would rather you are forced to spend money in the iTunes store buying paid music than like an evil pirate, listen to free despicable FM radio.... (the chip HAS the functionality but Apple iSadists will cripple the functionality so you can't have it). Nokia put FM radios to all its musicphones the moment the technology became possible. The exact opposite way. For most people in Africa, the first FM radio their family ever owned and the family was able to listen to - was on a Nokia basic phone, the FM functionality that came with the basic phone. They then used the 'loudspeaker mode' ie the 'speakerphone' mode (another Nokia invention that everybody laughed at but now every phone has). This is the very core of the Nokia Way. This is 'Connecting People'. And it is the philosophy of harmony with the standards in the world, with open technologies that build, not closed proprietary and expensive systems to shield and lock into a private exclusive garden.
OUR PRIDE AND JOY
Nokia was not a perfect company but boy, as a Finn, was I proud of our biggest corporation and what it represented. It won awards as the most 'green' company of the handset makers, and even as it gave us wonderful tech at the top-end of the technology spectrum (Nokia had an app store before Apple, had a 4 inch screen size before the iPhone, had a phablet before the iPhone, had NFC before the iPhone, had DVD quality video recording before the iPhone, gosh, the joke was, to see what will come in the next iPhone, look at a 3 year old Nokia) what made me personally most proud of, in Nokia was that it was truly 'Connecting People' in the Emerging World, who had never been digitally connected before. Their first phone, their first music player, their first internet browser, their first camera, their first FM radio, their first payment instrument, their first video camera - was a Nokia phone. Nokia was the most valuable brand throughout vast areas of the Emerging World. Not the most valuable PHONE brand or tech brand. The. Most. Valuable. Brand. Period. More valuable than IBM or Coca Cola or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Apple. Nokia, the most valuable brand in the country, from India to Nigeria to Brazil. And then when I showed my Nokia business card back in the day, gosh they were impressed. Later, when I said I have written 12 books, that did not impress my audiences as much as telling them I used to work for Nokia at its headquarters. As I have often said, if you cut me, my blood is not red, I bleed Nokia blue.
So the past six years were a nightmare for me personally and we've lived through that trauma on this blog as I chronicled all the blunders of the worst CEO in history who demolished my most beloved brand. And we saw the sad aftermath of where the Nokia handset brand then ended at Microsoft and its failure there too. But it is nearly Christmas and this is a magical time. Lets wish upon a star. Lets ask Santa Claus for some good will to all men and the safe successful return of Nokia brand to many millions possibly again one day, billions of pockets.
I was literally the first person to say, the Microsoft Windows alliance would doom Nokia's handset business. It was a catastrophic mistake. It would end in Nokia having to sell its handset business. I said so not just ON THE DAY it was announced, I said it within MINUTES of the news breaking. I said it on Twitter and came on this blog and wrote my prophesy about it. Not just that Nokia would fail, it would ruin the handset business, not only ruin what was then only HALF of Nokia's handset business, its smartphone business - but this would doom all of Nokia's handset business including its dumbphone side. I was the first to predict Microsoft would have to buy the doomed handset operation. I said the Nokia CEO would be fired for this Windows decision. I said even after Microsoft would buy the Nokia handset business, it could not make it work - and in less than 3 years after Microsoft would buy the Nokia handset business, that business would either be shut down or sold (as it was then obviously sold, in less than 3 years from when Microsoft took over). Nobody else made that series of forecasts. NOBODY else made all those calls. I had every one of them correctly. I did not ever call for a Nokia collapse prior to that date so I was not a Nokia-hater. I had never said Windows smartphone OS was doomed prior to 2011, even as I am an openly-admitted Microsoft-hater and have been for three decades. Prior to year 2011, I have never said Windows smartphones were doomed. Its not like someone who every year says something and one year he is finally right. I never said those before, but I was the first to call it, and on every one of those Nokia related forecasts, I was not just the first to call it, I was correct 100% of the time. I did not make ONE BAD call of something I said would happen, that did NOT happen, either. If you read this blog from 2010 to today and only read the articles that mentioned 'Nokia' in its title, you knew PERFECTLY what was going to happen to Nokia (and its partner Microsoft in smartphones) for the past 6 years, correctly foretelling EVERY stage including the repeated layoffs, including WHEN the company was going to generate losses, including how badly the market share was going to collapse etc. Nobody else comes anywhere near close.
And in 2013. In September 2013 when we learned with a very heavy heart, that yes, Nokia's handset business was going to be sold (to Microsoft) that was when I wrote on this blog:
"We will miss you Nokia as a consumer brand. Please fare well as the networks provider and if the gods of technology have any sense of justice, they will let our Nokia return one day to again live with us, in our pockets ...and in our hearts."
The gods of technology have smiled upon us and shown us mercy, they are letting Nokia return to our pockets. I would later prophesize further that 'poetic justice' would be for Microsoft not to shut down its disastrously unprofitable and horrendously unsuccessful Nokia handset unit, but rather to 'sell it back' to Nokia. There was some speculation that Microsoft might sell its Nokia business to some other tech company. I thought the best idea would be to 'sell it back' to Nokia. And while HMD is not Nokia, HMD is a start-up based in Finland, staffed by ex Nokia senior execs, its nearly that 'Hollywood ending' that I had dreamed of. The Nokia handset brand, for what is tarnished remains left of it, is kind of returning home, or close to home, to Finland. And Nokia the actual corporation (telecoms infrastructure giant) still will benefit out of some licencing deals with the brand if this HMD entity can make this Nokia brand return actually work out, commercially in the coming years.
So I write to you, Santa Claus. Please give us technology fans and of course your most humble local servants, the Finns who endure those miserably cold bitter snowy Finnish winters with you and work in your sheds, a Christmas Gift. Let the HMD venture with Foxconn succeed and let this new returning Nokia brand have the very essence of the Nokia that the world grew to love, as the world itself became more connected. Let those people who will experience a Nokia brand in 2017 and beyond, cherish it as deeply as they did their first Nokias a decade or even two before.
A LOYAL CUSTOMER BASE
So lets look a bit about HMD's mission and its particular challenges. First the dumbphones side. I mean the Microsoft handset business that was not smartphones (Nokia featurephones that included the Asha type 'nearly smartphones' and ultra-cheap basic phones) was in a death-spiral. It had no synergy to Microsoft's future, the devices too low cost to even be possible to run the bloated Windows OS so these customers were not relevant to Microsoft's visions of its future. The dumbphone-side handset unit was occasionally profitable even under Elop at Nokia (while the smartphone side, Lumia Windows smartphones never once delivered even one quarter of a profit) but when Microsoft had to cut costs out of its failing hardware business, those cuts of course came deeply in this undesirable part of the Nokia acquisition. From HMD's side, there is a huge upside but also an urgent need. Nearly 10% of all humans who have any type of mobile phone in their pockets today, still has a Nokia branded phone! When they walk into that phone store in the next 30 months, they will ask to see a new Nokia, even if they have become 'sold' on perhaps switching brands by say local advertising, they are existing loyal happy Nokia users, and they will at least want to see what the latest Nokia looks like (within their price range).
This is an ENORMOUS opportunity. That is 195 million customers who walk into a phone store worldwide, in year 2017. For context, remember Apple will sell about 220 million iPhones this year. Now by far MOST of those 195 million Nokia owners who will replace or upgrade their phone next year, will not be smartphone users (only about 1 in 7 will have a smartphone, 6 in 7 will have a dumbphone of the Nokia brand) BUT for about a third of them, this is when they take their step into buying their first-ever smartphone. And for nearly all who remain, the two thirds who now own a dumbphone and will replace it with another very-low-cost dumbphone again, for them, they do not know it, but it will very likely be the last dumbphone they ever bought because their NEXT phone will be a smartphone. Their NEXT upgrade/replacement happens around year 2019 or 2020 when 95% of all phones sold will be .. (ultra-low cost basic Android) smartphones.
Nokia used to have the best loyalty in the handset business. Even in its decline stage, in the EMERGING WORLD markets, Nokia continued to have high, and often yes, best loyalty. Those 195 million who walk into a handset store next year to replace an old well-worn Nokia phone, will be delighted if a new Nokia fits their budget and roughly their expectations of functionality and features.
I am not in any way suggesting that HMD and Foxconn can convert that 195 million user potential into anywhere near 195 million sales but they might get half. And then if its roughly say 100 million handsets, you do see, thats already nearly HALF the SCALE of the global shipments of iPhones (also made by Foxconn/Hon Hai). So there is the first giant opportunity and a considerable strategy and management challenge - how to grab as many of those potential Nokia buyers, and feed them 'something' nearly anything, to just hold onto them. To do that somewhat profitably, and get the HMD-Foxconn alliance up on its feet and up to scale. That scale means sourcing parts, it means staffing sales, it means bulk shipment discounts at air cargo, it means preferred placement in in-store sales.
Here is the HUGE upside to that prospect. Almost every dumbphone (in the Emerging World) is sold through the IDENTICAL sales channel as the smartphone in that country. It its a carrier-sales model, the carrier stores decide. If its a retail distribution model, then the handset retailers stock both smartphones and dumbphones. Then if you have roughly 5% of the handset market (even as most of it is ultra-low-cost handsts) you DO HAVE SHELF SPACE in EVERY STORE. A rival who sells 2% or 1% may not be in every store. Samsung will sell 25% and will be in every store. Apple is so expensive you'd have to be a fool not to include iPhones in your store. But Sony will not be in every store. HTC will not be in every store. LG will not be in every store. Only Nokia will be the one other brand, in year 2017, in most Emerging World markets, where the Nokia brand will be in essentially every retail outlet for handsets.
Here HMD needs a smart strategy to deliver 'just profitable enough' models that are truly 'priced to fly off the shelves' at the lower and mid-price levels, to lock as many of those customers as possible. To make the business itself sustainable, to stop the decline in total sales and market share that has gone on for six years. And to try not to damage the Nokia brand itself in doing that (not cut corners, bad products, exploding batteries, antennagate, bendygate, alarm clocks that don't wake you up, you know, the usual problems in handsets). But that will not excite the market or get any leadership credits. So HMD should (or could) also do a few selected 'flagship' class products - ideally several launched at various points in the year, say one in February for Barcelona, a second one for the summer and a third for Christmas 2017 season. Use those flagships to help grab the headlines, tell the story of the amazing comeback. Showcase some tech leadership and help sustain the image that Nokia stands for premium quality and performance. THOSE premium phones do not need to sell in large numbers and they can end up being prices quite high (to maintain profitability) but I would expect more than one flagship class phone out during 2017 to just remind Nokia owners that their brand is one of the leaders and has nothing to be ashamed of, when compared to a Galaxy or iPhone.
Here we have seen rumors and some leaked photos of some products in the mid-price range of the first Android smartphones. Starting in the 150 dollar range, mid-spec performance and features but what seems to be a very 'logical' mid-field product offering by specs. Ticks every box, has every common feature you'd expect in roughly the right range of specs. You can probably find an Android smartphone of almost the same specs for say 100 dollars from a 'nobody brand' but probably no Samsung or rival in the 150 dollar price will in any way significantly beat the Nokia. This would be the intended big seller to reverse the sale collapse of Nokia smartphones and get the Nokia smartphone market share back into growth and hoping to get back into the Top 10 by say year 2018. It will not be a phone you or I would want for ourselves but it might be a good value phone to buy as a gift for a teenager for example. And this phone will be aimed to sell for the middle class adults in the Emerging World who would love an iPhone but know its beyond their budget. 150 dollars is a bit below the global average price of all phones. Its about half the average price of all phones. Its nicely near the sweet spot in terms of volume sales (remember difference between average and median). If we look at median prices of smartphones in the Emerging World, 150 dollars is very close to exactly that. This is not a flagship. This is a class of smartphone intended to sell in large quantities to the masses. Good plan. Now what about a possible flagship then?
THE X FACTOR
So then this week we had the story out of China of a possible first flagship. Its just a rumor, we don't know, but the pictures seemed to suggest dual camera (like the iPhone, so one wide angle camera and one telephoto camera) and LED flash and .... also Xenon flash. I think most who looked at the specs of the Chinese story went with the parts about the CPU and screen specs etc but the real story is the one with the X. Xenon. That picture is clearly a Xenon flash unit. If the picture is accurate that the flagship has 2 cameras, and both an LED flash and Xenon flash, that would be very ... telling news about the philosophy we could see on the flagship class phones. Ever since Nokia entered cameraphones, it ran away with the best-cameraphone-of-the-year awards, ranging from the breathtaking N93 (first ever phone with 3mp camera, AND optical zoom, ie real zoom not pixel nonsense of digital zoom we all have but proper professional camera-style optical zoom made with glass, and DVD quality video recording etc); to the N5, the N82, the N86, and the N8, each miles ahead of the competition in terms of their cameras; culminating with Pureview. The technology that just blew any comparisons away and singlehandedly ended the megapixel race. (For those readers who aren't aware of this, the Nokia 808 Pureview smartphone had a camera sensor with 41 megapixels. That is not a misprint. Rival cameras at the time had typically 8mp. Nokia put 41mp into its phone? Even professional cameras do 24mp or 32mp and almost no top smartphones today do more than 20mp but back in 2012, Nokia gave a cameraphone with a sensor of 41 megapixels. At that time the only cameras with bigger sensors were on US spy satellites up in space. Literally, no Nikon or Canon professional camera costing 7,000 dollars just for the body alone, had that many pixels ie could get that much detail out of a picture). The 808 Pureview and its sister phone later on Windows, Lumia 1020, utterly devastated the expectations of camera quality in terms of their sensor pixel count (and various other tech too). Only after the lunatic CEO decision, did Nokia's leadership in cameras end and as I wrote on this blog, the ultimate cameraphone ever made is as of today still, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom (from 2 years ago, sadly Samsung seems to have decided not to update this pocket miracle, in their cost-cutting frenzy). if you want to read the definitive internet article about cameraphones, my epic blog is here.
Lets get back to the X-factor. What is Xenon flash and why do we care. It means the 'real' flash you have in any professional flashgun the wedding photographer uses. It is what is on your Nikon or Olympus or Canon camera. It is not the type of 'flash' what you have on your iPhone or almost any cameraphone. We have what is called 'LED flash' in almost all smartphones. Xenon is 'real' flash for cameras. LED flash is generated by powerful LED lights that are turned on for about 1/10th of a second. Xenon flash is brilliant light tube that has to be charged before it can deliver its flash, which lasts less than 1/10,000th of a second and can be as short as 1/100,000th of a second. Xenon creates that brilliantly white light, reaches far further, and only Xenon flash can stop motion (LED flash pictures often have blur, while Xenon is always sharp). But Xenon as such, is not our point. Yes, I'm an ex semi-pro photographer and I know the difference and I love my Xenon on my cameraphones but this is not about flash photography. This is about the GUTS of that Nokia flagship.
You cannot put a Xenon flash onto the iPhone. There is a technical reason to it. But Nokia had a Xenon flash on its top cameraphones as far back as year 2008. That is the story that I think most analysts missed about that picture leaked from China. Xenon does not mean just that Nokia might have an expensive excellent flash unit installed onto its flagship for great inside pictures at night. It means something else. It means the camera HAS to have a physical mechanical shutter. Not a cheap electronic shutter like almost all cameraphones (including nearly all Nokias). Only a mechanical shutter will allow a Xenon flash unit to function (on current tech, at least). This is an expensive additional gadget that is not necessary when taking basic camera functionality into a phone (simple camera, like on an iPhone) but it IS needed if you do a proper serious camera (like any top Nokia cameraphone, or ANY Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Minolta, Sony etc DSLR or pocket camera, including ALL those cameras that used film before).
If the first Nokia flagship indeed comes with Xenon flash (and I hope it does) that means one thing. It means the cameraphone will have a mechanical shutter. And you my dear reader are going 'who cares?'. Yeah. Who cares? It means that the CAMERA part of the flagship has been done with the utter love and care of Nokia's best attention to always creating the best camera possible onto a phone. Not cheap plastic like an iPhone with a puny small Sony sensor inside. But literally the best technology that is possible, to fit inside a phone. I would love for the first Nokia flagship to have Pureview technology. I do not expect it to have that (yet). I would love the first Nokia flagship to beat every existing cameraphone by every spec, but I do not expect that to happen. What I will be utterly happy with, is if we get the 'essence of Nokia' in the first camera of Nokia's first return era flagship. The first Nokia flagship that was manufactured by Foxconn. The first designed by HMD? I would truly be delighted it it has Xenon flash, not because Xenon is better than LED (which it is, for still photography but note, Xenon cannot be used in video, which is why it ALSO has LED light for video). It would mean the new Nokia flagship has proper camera 'guts' inside, it has a mechanical shutter. It is designed to be a proper camera.
The camerawars have quieted down a lot in the smartphone space since the first Pureview put an end to the megapixel race. There is the occasional optical zoom. Apple has now done the dual camera idea with a separate wide angle and separate telephoto lens idea (less elegant than optical zoom but far better than nothing or haha, digital zoom). It seems like Nokia will do the dual camera type telephoto lens too (good, I'd love that, it would be more than I expected in the first flagship). But if Nokia has Xenon flash and a real shutter, it means HMD is SERIOUS about serving those loyal Nokia owners who loved Nokia for its CAMERAS. How big is that segment? Is it 2% or 5% or 10% or 25% of smartphone owners who would rank the camera feature the most important? If the returning Nokia brand can properly capitalize on a premium camera, and now running on Android as the OS, then Nokia could find a nice profitable niche at the top end and win a bunch of awards, and this could be a reason any store in any country in the world, would like to feature the new Nokia flagship and its sales staff eagerly try to sell it to the random Galaxy owner coming in for their next new Android based smartphone.
In 2012, a Nokia survey of its own return customers found that the camera was the top tech that their customers wanted. A 2015 Zogby study of US youth found that the camera was deemed 'crucial' by 96% of the youth! There is definitely a market segment that could be served by good camera-optimized smartphones but how big that segment is, that is not now known, because the camera side of the industry has fallen asleep. There may be a big sleeping giant there, or it may be just a small niche. We will not know until someone really tries it and it does seem by these rumors, that HMD is willing to explore that opportunity. It could be a big key to a strong return by the brand.
The first flagship will not be the ultimate that HMD and Foxconn can build. It will be needed to initially explore this part of what once was a Nokia stronghold. If a valuable market is discovered there, then the NEXT version, for about year 2018, now THAT could be a monster cameraphone, that could be the next Pureview (perhaps a 909 Pureview haha). But right now, Dear Santa, please let us get our old Nokia back, the one that gave great tech at reasonable prices, that was open and lived in all standards, that was user-friendly and did not cripple or damage its tech abilities. Let the HMD-Foxconn alliance make this partnership work and let the world start to be Connecting People again. A lot of people around the world do love 'that' Nokia even after all the Microsoft years and a comeback would be nice to see. And for the industry, to see a company built on Nokia philosophy, showing the gentler kinder cooperative way, rather than Apple's iTax iRule iSheep way; that too would be a breath of fresh air. After all, Android is Linux. And Linus Torvalds - the father of Linux, well he also came from the land of Santa Claus, yes Linus is a Finn too. So a Nokia phone running on Android ie on Linux is far more 'Finnish' than a Lumia running on Windows ever could hope to be.
For those who would like to understand 'everything' about the camera part of a mobile phone, including mechanical shutters, Xenon flashes, sensor sizes (not just megapixel counts) and things such as optical zooms, lens construction and depth-of-view etc, this is the definitive article on the camera side of mobile. Still utterly unmatched by any other article on the internet. Enjoy.
For those who would like a longer stroll down Nokia's memory lane, here is my love letter to Nokia, when the news came that the handset business was about to be sold to Microsoft.
And on more practical matters, if you need the numbers and stats of the mobile handset industry today, what sizes of screens they have or how many are smartphones or who has 3G or WiFi or bluetooth etc, all the stats you could hope for are in the TomiAhonen Phone Book statistical volume 200 pages, 100 stats, comes out every two years for Christmas. I am about to finish this year's edition so if you buy the 2014 edition now, you get both for the price of one. You get the older version immediately and also will be the first to receive the 2016 edition when I release it in some days from now. See table of contents and ordering info here.
Lastly for those who need to see the future of mobile, as seen by the most accurate forecaster of the mobile industry, my latest forecast came out last year, it gives industry forecasts to year 2018, and why would you even consider anyone else's forecast than mine haha. My forecast is here.
Give me a phone with the camera guts of the 808 and bits of the 1020 (so an 808 with optical image stabilisation), a larger minimum aperture and some degree of water resistance and I'll be joining the queue.
Posted by: Tony | December 21, 2016 at 01:00 AM
Hi Tony
Haha yeah, look for me, if they just did an Android port of the Lumia 1020 with 41mp Pureview and no other changes, I'm in. Waterproofing, gosh yeah. This two lens arrangement (wide angle and telephoto) gosh I'd LOVE that added to 41mp Pureview sensor. A larger sensor by pixel count (say 45mp) whatever they did more would be pure gravy. I still take my trusty 808 Pureview with me as my 3rd device on every trip abroad, plus whenever I leave my hotel room for any situation where I expect possible photographs, while I of course always have my Samsung Galaxy K Zoom as my primary camera. The 41mp resolution is just astonishing that has so often captured a depth of detail my eyes did not at the time.
I'd LOVE to ditch the old Nokia (on its ancient Symbian OS haha) and switch that to Android haha...
Seriously though, I think that work takes more time. I think this Chinese leak is about as good as we could hope for in the first flagship. The Pureview version is likely to come a year later, for Spring 2018 (Barcelona 2018) or if we are VERY lucky, for Christmas 2017. But as PV itself is now years old, they might stun us with some enormous number, just to be able to grab headlines, so I'd expect a larger pixel count than 41mp, likely around 45mp and could even be 50mp (or technically, 51mp to be 1mp more than the famous Hasselblad that took the megapixel crown from Nokia a few years ago and has 50mp).
Again, if this was the real old Nokia, I'd be pretty confident they'd go the full distance on it. As this is HMD, they are a small operation and they can't really afford total 'moonshot' kind of technical explorations haha, I do expect them to be driven by a healthy dose of commercial realism. It may be that we'll never see another cameraphone like the Pureviews. BUT... lets hope. Because if HMD can sell Android smartphones profitably AND can grow market share AND finds a good profitable niche among camera-enthusiastic smartphone buyers - we could well see the return of the Pureview. I think its FAR more likely than a Communicator-style folder/slider physical QWERTY keyboard hybrid phone with touch screen too. So like the N950, the E7 etc. I'd love that and would stand in line for mine, but I am not expecting it. A stunning camera is far more likely than a physical QWERTY slider keyboard.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | December 21, 2016 at 01:48 AM
@Tomi
Speaking of QWERTY sliders, how have you liked your N950 SailfishOS/MeeGo dual boot phone? Is it your daily driver?
Posted by: JollaBoy | December 21, 2016 at 05:04 AM
To me, HMD seems to be as close to being Nokia as it can be, but without being legally part of Nokia. According to the agreement, HMD is getting access to technologies developed by Nokia's research unit, which hadn't been sold to MS, and, more importantly, Nokia has the *final* say over each phone release. Without Nokia's blessing HMD cannot release a single new Nokia-branded phone. That's much more cooperation and control than in other brand licensing deals.
I really think that this is only a temporary solution. If HMD succeeds, it will be b(r)ought back into Nokia corporation, and if it fails, Nokia won't be financially harmed. The current CEO of HMD will then become a Nokia VP, and the only change for HMD employees will be their business cards, as has already happened before: from Nokia to Microsoft to HMD to Nokia. The offices have been the same all along, so this would be only a minor change.
I'm also not sure how the division of labour between HMD and Foxconn is supposed to work, as both claim to be responsible for sales and marketing. It's probably the result of the feature phone unit being sold to Foxconn and the smartphone sales channel, what's left of it, being transferred from MS to HMD. But surely it'd make more sense if both were integrated at HMD, so Foxconn could concentrate on hardware.
Posted by: ChrisB | December 21, 2016 at 05:14 AM
It's good to get an historical update of Nokia over the last 8 years or so - BUT can the Nokia brand make a viable comeback. It's name alone will not cut it today.
The biggest problem - can Nokia make it's UI on Android distinctive enough to get market attention, or will it just be another lightly skinned interface similar to most other Android brands. Trying to differentiate itself from the run of the mill variations on the market today. Nokia dropped Meego OS (My old N9 was delightful and the best UI ever) - it's prodigy Sailfish OS won't happen till all the BRICS nations run with it (Russia is definitely interested)- but may go the same way as Palm and WEB OS.
The bulk of the global market is $150 > $450 - why aim for just the lower end - put 3 models into the market covering that range in the first release. I am a typical buyer - always into a Mid spec / priced phones because that is where I see most value for my spend.
I only ever had Nokia phones (N9 being the last) when MicroSlop took over, I flirted with a 625 and got rid of it a couple of months later, so when my Nokia started playing up, I went to Oppo and love it.
Carrier relations and marketing strategy are vitally important but so is DIFFERENTIATION - otherwise it's just another Android phone.
Posted by: RickO | December 21, 2016 at 10:24 AM
You are not going to delete me again are you Tomi. haha.
Posted by: RickO | December 21, 2016 at 10:43 AM
HMD: please make a security hardened Android variant. Work with two other Finnish legends, F-Secure and SSH, to deliver a system where privacy and security are taken seriously.
Instant win.
Posted by: Johnson | December 21, 2016 at 05:40 PM
I think beside the camera, Nokia need to up the ante on software update. Announce that nokia will have 3 years of software update (1 more year than what Google promise on pixel)
Posted by: Abdul Muis | December 21, 2016 at 05:47 PM
Nokia start 2017 with a bang
http://www.nokia.com/en_int/news/releases/2016/12/21/nokia-sues-apple-in-europe-and-the-us-for-infringement-of-nokia-patents
Nokia sues Apple in Europe and the US for infringement of Nokia patents
Posted by: Abdul Muis | December 21, 2016 at 08:10 PM
@Abdul
That's because Elop introduced to Nokia the habit of Microsoft bullying negotiation tactics and patent trolling.
Posted by: Fact | December 21, 2016 at 09:31 PM
Tomi,
You are wrong. Santa Claus lives in Canada (the North Pole is Canadian territory). To be safe he made a deal with the Canadian Air Force, which merged the deal into NORAD (The North American Aerospace Defense Command).
For the last forty years NORAD has had Santa's flight track, to ensure he doesn't get shot down. They track Santa using NORAD's enormous radar arrays, and keep kids updated on Santa's progress both using traditional media (all Canadian radio stations are updated, and make regular announcements of where Santa is), and the World Wide Web. The link below allows those in countries which aren't as progressive as Canada to follow along.
http://www.noradsanta.org
As to Nokia, I really can't wait to see what happens. If Nokia does well, I could see them buying Foxcon within the next five years, so that they can go back to a fully integrated company.
Posted by: Wayne Borean | December 21, 2016 at 10:18 PM
Hi Abdul
Thanks! So Nokia picked the darkest day of the year to go into a lawsuit against Apple haha (21 Dec is the winter solstice ie on the Northern Hemisphere it is the shortest day of the year and obviously in Southern Hemisphere in their summer, it is the longest day)
I Tweeted about the Nokia lawsuit to my followers and credited you for spotting the story. Thanks. I am pretty sure Apple will settle this in due time. Nokia will make out nicely in their patent royalties out of whatever comes out of it. They are not in the habit of doing casual-to-frivolous lawsuits so I'd guess purely on that fact, that these have enough merit to win in court. That means that over time Apple lawyers have to agreee its cheaper to pay up.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | December 21, 2016 at 11:57 PM
Hi Wayne
Haha, actually THAT is part of the myth too. Norad and its radars. What you are referring to, is the current location of the MAGNETIC North, not the physical 'North Pole' of the planet (the exact Northernmost point of the earth, around which axis it spins). The Magnetic North is indeed on Canadian territory (currently on Ellesmere Island and it is moving at more than a km or about a mile per month. Currently the Magnetic North is headed NorthEast and may be in Siberia before we die). But the physical 'real' North Pole is where its always been (the Earth is a giant gyroscope and those centrifugal forces keep it spinning precisely around the same axis for millions of years even as the magnetic North pole keeps moving between physical North and physical South poles over the age of the planet).
So no, Santa does NOT live in Canada haha. Silly notion. WHERE would he live there? No, what Norad radars see, is up INTO the North, they see even PAST the MAGNETIC North but NORAD does not see THE actual North Pole (which is obviously under ice, and under a ton of Artic Ocean water underneath that ice). What Norad radars see and observe is Santa when he APPROACHES from the Northerly direction towards the South, when he arrives to the North American Continent, later in the long-long duration of his Christmas journey on the date we call Christmas Eve that he travels with the time zones, starting from Australia and Asia, then Europe and Africa, and finally the Americas. Obviously to ensure he has enough time to visit all children (who have been nice) Santa has to travel with the diretion of the setting sun, not against it. So he has time zone benefits of flying Westward (an extra-long day) rather than losing time flying Eastward (an extra-short day) as many of us who fly regularly for work know...
So yeah. Norad observes Santa when he is finished with his European leg, and he then flies the shortest route from Europe to North America which goes .. over the North Pole obviously (or actually near the physical North Pole, not actually over it, if you do the precise flight path). And that means it APPEARS to the US based radar systems, that Santa is approaching 'from the North Pole' when in reality, Santa comes from 'beyond the North Pole' which is ..... FINLAND. Its Lapland. Its Korvatunturi, the home of Santa Claus. So don't try this nonsense Wayne, you are only confusing our younger readers with that American TV propaganda. Santa has always lived, and still lives, in Finland. He lives on a mountain called Korvatunturi in Lapland. Finland is the Northernmost country (thus nearest to the North Pole) and while the MAGNETIC North resides currently in Canada yes, the PHYSICAL North Pole is not on any land, it is under the Arctic Ocean. And when Santa flies from Finland to America, to American radars, it SEEMS like Santa comes from the North Pole. He came from 'just beyond' the North Pole, on the OTHER SIDE which is.. Finland :-)
You can't win this argument because we have the proof. Finnair? Santa's official airline. Rovaniemi? Santa's official airport. Korvatunturi is SANTA'S HOME. They have an amusement park there where you can go see Santa and take a sleigh ride pulled by reindeer (not his flying kind obviously, that would be dangerous). Where in Canada supposedly would Santa then live? No, its a wives' tale. Its a myth. Its a popular myth. Now because of the fact that radar only sees to the horizon, and Santa flies low (his flight altitude is less than 1km, it means NORAD can only track Santa to about 124 km (about 78 miles) assuming the Norad early-warning missile tracking radar was on a very high 200 meter mast (600 feet).
But the distance JUST from the magnetic North to 'True North' ie the real North Pole of the planet is.. 500km (312 miles). So the Norad radar will lose track of Santa well before he reaches true North, even if the radar was able to track Santa all the way from Magnetic North haha...
So now this issue is clear. Yes, the silly American TV do show the Norad picture - because that is all they HAVE. But radar waves travel in a straight line, they do not curve with the planet and they cannot see the real North Pole. What they see is Santa coming SOUTH from the North, and in the past they just thought Santa lived somewhere in the North (he is dressed obviously in winter gear) and the common misconception somehow arose that Santa lives 'on the North Pole' which is supremely silly as there is no town, there is no land, there is nothing but ice. How could he possibly make his toys for example if he lived on the Arctic ice with polar bears? All gifts would be made of polar bear skins and polar bear bones? Santa lives in Finland, at his mountain called Korvatunturi. It is of course a real mountain, it is located East of the town of Rovaniemi in Lapland if you want to find it on a map (Korvatunturi is close to the Russian border so on the NorthEastern edge of Finland).
So there! Don't try those tricks on me. We Finns know our Santa... :-)
PS Merry Xmas Wayne :-)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | December 22, 2016 at 12:28 AM
Tomi,
Don't be silly. Canada owns the physical North Pole, and we don't use American radars, we use our own, whIce are installed in the far north of our country. We also have ships and planes patrolling the far north. We can see Santa take off when he heads to Australia to start his work day, with the cooperation of our British friends we can see him head over Atlantic Ocean to Newfoundland, a more direct, and shorter route than over the North Pole.
Of coarse you can't see Santa's workshop. He doesn't like visitors, so if floats, in another dimension, a serene and beautiful paradise.
Santa's Airline? Hah. We have tons of 'Santa' stuff too. Coca Cola, Pepsi, and hordes of other companies claim a link. He laughs at them, like he laughs at your airline!
You do a great job on phones. Leave Santa to the experts - Canadians!
Posted by: Wayne Borean | December 22, 2016 at 01:55 AM
Wayne,
Yes, no, and maybe. I'm less than convinced by your arguments, which are an attempt to simplify a complex situation.
Yes, the iPhone with its large touch screen was far more useable. I love it personally, could never use those stupid tiny keyboards - my ring size is fourteen. The iPhone was the first phone with a usable keyboard.
But we don't know if the Apple Imitation Stampede was what changed the market, or if the new paradigm was actually a huge improvement. While I prefer the new paradigm, the fact that so many phone makers jumped on the bandwagon so fast means that it is impossible to say because there never was any real competition between the different form factors.
Posted by: Wayne Borean | December 22, 2016 at 02:01 AM
Hi Wayne
Haha well, we do agree part of the way and then differ quite drastically yes. Thanks for recognizing my early observations about how much the iPhone would indeed change the phone world. But your view takes too much a US-centric myopic view.
If we picture the smartphone market on an axis of wealth, from the USA at one end and India at the other, then in the US market the iPhone and iOS is powerful. In Europe, Australia, Japan, the iPhone is relevant but Android rules. In China Apple is negligable where Android dominates. In India Apple is irrelevant and Android is the only game in town. So your contention that Apple won and everybody copied Apple and Apple caused the end of the rivals - is a viewpoint that carries considerable merit - IN NORTH AMERICA.
Palm yes, Motorola yes, Windows Mobile yes, Windows Phone yes, now even Blackberry yes. Dell, HP other Americans yes. They all essentially died due to Apple. Blackberry however, its big blunder was its tablet. But thats for another blog, even there I agree, Blackberry suffered deeply from Apple envy.
You say modern smartphones look like iPhones not like Blackberries or Nokias. Fine, visually yes, Apple brought us the slab phone form factor. But that argument loses its value the moment we move past year 2007. What happened to touch screen slab phone form factor was NOTHING like where Apple wanted to lead the industry and was EXACTLY what Nokia and then Samsung pushed the industry to do. Is the modern iPhone looking like an iPhone 4, or more look like a Samsung Galaxy Note? Obviously Apple resisted and resisted again any enlarging of the screen from the original 3.5 inch size to very very reluctantly to 4 inches, then very very very reluctantly towards phablet screen sizes.
Apple has been SLOWING the industry evolution, not leading it. If you think the modern smartphone leadership was somehow driven by Apple's leadership, gosh, then Apple has RESISTED the trends for the industry. If anything the Galaxy Note is the most obvious grandfather of all modern smartphones today including the modern iPhones (expect exploding batteries on iPhone 9 haha).
I wrote in 2007 that the industry was transformed - as it was. That all phones then out, were obsolete and all future phones will be compared to the iPhones. That was the huge change. But that was 2007. What have you done for me lately, as Janet Jackson asked in her song once. Apple has done diddly squat since 2007. It gave us OTHER tech it revolutionized successfully (iPad) and less-than-successfully (Apple Watch). But in phones, Apple turned into a luddite company resisting ANY changes from larger cameras to NFC to waterproofing to larger screens to mobile payments.
Did Google, Android and the Android handset makers understand the NEEDS of the smartphones for the planet? YES. They served phones of utility and functionality and openness and features that serve consumers OUTSIDE OF THE USA. Phones with.. dual SIM cards for exmaple, with microSD cards, with waterproofing, with FM radios, etc etc etc. Phones that are normal in India, in Brazil, in Nigeria, in China, in Indonesia, in Mexico, in Russia, in Turkey, in Egypt, etc. Apple is nowhere there. Apple keeps selling its Rolls Royce overboated overengineered ridiculously priced over-automated over-restricted device - by its LOOKS. Not by ANY functionality gain at all. No innovation whatsoever in anything else except looks. It tends to look the best and tends to be among the thinnest phones out there, who needs a thinner phone? Everybody asks for a longer battery life..
Nokia understood this, Symbian understood this, and Nokia was laughing itself to the bank in the first four years of Apple iPhone sales - because Nokia grew MORE in the hypergrowth stage of Apple's iPhone, than Apple did. And Nokia sold highly popular smartphones that didn't look like iPhones - in markets where those features that Nokia offered - mattered more than looks. And meanwhile Nokia pushed obsolescent Symbian far enought to allow the last editions of Symbian to be nearly as good as the iPhone, ie good enough (Windows was never better than Mac, it was just good enough) and yes, even in the last year before Elop killed Nokia, Nokia not just outsold Apple by 2 to 1, Nokia GREW MORE THAN iPhone. Nokia was the second-most-profitable phone maker setting its own profit record at the end of that year, 2010.
If this is failure, Boeing would love to fail like this. If this is failure, Toyota would lvoe to fail like this. if this is failure, Coca Cola would love to fail like this. to be twice as big as your rival, to grow more than your rival and to break your own records for profits (within that division).
So Nokia was easily winning the game and was not spooked by Apple. They had a clear plan - called MeeGo as you know - and all signs showed that MeeGo could have been a serious iPhone-killer or at least a strong rival like Android, with far greater sales than iPhone simply if Nokia converted its own sales and a part of its partners converted their sales from Symbian to MeeGo. But like you say, we will never know, because Nokia died due to Elop madness.
Apart from 2007, what has Apple ever given us that was an innovation or relevant? Nothing. Truly truly nothing. They were not even a fast follower, they were a slow follower and an obstruction to anything for the industry. Now we are far enough into the reality of app stores to know that was yet another iFantasy, only a valid platform for game sales of truly trivial scale in the mobile services empire. What many forecasted to be 180 Billion apps downloaded by now of an industry worth nearly $100B turned out to be downloads half that and an industry sector worth a third of that scale. Yeah. EXACTLY as I warned. No gold rush in apps, its a delivery platform for GAMING. If you take gaming and social media out of apps, there is a barren desert on par with location-based services. But in the interim same period, PREMIUM SMS has grown TWICE as fast as apps, from the same base as that sector was in value when the iPhone App Store launched.
So again, if you Wayne want to talk about app store relevance? It is ONLY of relevance to games, nothing else! Games are one tiny fraction of mobile CONTENT services (news is far bigger) like say music or movies. Advertising is far bigger. Thats before we consider other mobile DATA uses like mobile wallets and payments and banking etc, before we get to things like the camera function and selfies and so forth. Thats before we take in voice services haha from cellular voice to Skype.
If you want to argue that after 2007, the iPhone devastated the videogaming console industry, I'll say yes it did. But in OUR industry, mobile? What have you done for me lately, Apple? Nada. Niente! Nothing.
Whether Apple did an iPhone or not, Nokia was already making larger-screen smartphones than the iPhone before 2007 and both Nokia and Samsung pushed larger screens even than the iPhone or indeed later, the iPhone 4. It is CERTAIN that the industry would have moved into a large screen form factor regardless of the iPhone. Would modern phones look more like a bulkier Nokia and maybe have still more keypads if Apple had not done its iPhone in 2007, probably yes. But Apple did not invent the touch screen and LG was coming out with its revolutionary Chocolate (the design which preceeds the iPhone) for 2007, so we'd have seen some degree of that type of evolution anyway. No, its not fair to say that the competition surrendered to Apple's leadership. The original iPhone form factor of 2007, yes, it was revolutionary and changed the world. Beyond that, the ONLY other thing for us that Apple changed was mobile gaming as a subsector. Beyond that, Apple has resisted every evolutionary step whether the inward-facing selfie cam or industry standards like MMS. And Apple was forced to join the industry standards, often kicking and screaming.
No Wayne, modern smartphones do NOT look like the iPhone. They look like the Samsung Galaxy Note. Sorry. Since 2007, it was Samsung which did most of our leadership. Now we have to hope the industry doesn't follow Sammy into giving us a burning sensation in our pockets next haha...
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | December 22, 2016 at 02:19 AM
http://wap.business-standard.com/article/technology/acer-india-puts-mobile-business-on-hold-116121900017_1.html
Acer waving a white flag in india
Posted by: Abdul Muis | December 22, 2016 at 07:17 AM
The fight has started!
Apple and Nokia are fighting about patents again
http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/21/14043260/apple-nokia-patent-infringement-lawsuit-smartphone
Posted by: b | December 22, 2016 at 08:49 AM
@Tomi:
" If you take gaming and social media out of apps, there is a barren desert on par with location-based services. But in the interim same period, PREMIUM SMS has grown TWICE as fast as apps, from the same base as that sector was in value when the iPhone App Store launched."
To elaborate on that: I am currently in negotiation over writing a warehouse management app that's supposed to scan QR codes and automatically update the company's database.
Android only. Thanks to Apple's tight control over app development it's utterly unfeasible to do this thing for iOS. There's no way to do quick updates if the need arises because Apple's submission procedure would completely nullify the effect and the entire development would just cost too much. According to the company's boss, he'd rather buy each employee working with this thing an Android phone than spend the extra money on iOS development - the phones are cheaper.
And I really do not think this is an isolated occurence. iOS by its entire design is an utterly useless platform for such tasks that may require frequent software changes and quick turnaround times. One has to wonder what the long term consequences may be.
Posted by: Tester | December 22, 2016 at 09:31 AM
Tester,
Agreed. Apple had the chance to build a 'sideload' feature in for corporate use phones. But they didn't. Which kills the corporate market for iPhones.
This could be a huge market for HMD/Nokia - build a phone with corporate features, like an oversized battery (a must for trade shows), the ability to install phone locked apps (only works on the phone it was originally set up on), more secure phone passwords, etc.
Posted by: Wayne Borean | December 22, 2016 at 11:42 AM