Nokia on phone return mutterings: They LIIED. We won't be BAAACK Nokia has dismissed claims that suggested the company was "currently" planning a big, splashy return to the smartphone business next year. As of the second half of 2016, the Finnish firm will no longer be saddled to a deal it inked with Microsoft – which bought Nokia's devices and services unit in 2014. However, Nokia …
I'd suggest that implies a return to business oriented devices.
The problem with that, is that business phones don't sell as they're less "sexy" as consumer phones. Ask yourself these two questions:
1 - How much time, effort & money has Apple spent selling its iPhones (& iPads) to business?
2 - How many people in business use iPhones (&iPads)?
I'd suggest that answers are "little" and "lots".
If you're entering the mobile phone market, in general, you have two main target areas:
1 - Low end/cheap (and probably low margin so you need large volume). Dominated by Android phones at the low end, so how are you going to stand out amongst all the vendors vying to the race for the bottom?
2 - High end/high profit: Dominated by Apple (& Phablets) What's your unique selling point to lure people away from the Apple brand?
So if you're going to enter the mobile phone market where are you going to pitch your product?
Considering the volatility of "consumer" based mobile electronics tmarketplace today, especially in regard constant demand for "Gee-Whiz" non-sensical features, overwhelming technical support and underappreciated infrastructure and low profit margins, it makes sense for Nokia to avoid any product or service designed for the "consumer" market all together.
The company maybe interested however in the corporate and government mobile electronics ecosystem requirements, since neither Apple, Android or Microsoft products - as primarily consumer products vendors - can fit the bill satisfactorily. Maybe Nokia can sell mobile technologies or enter into a cooperative arrangement with Blackberry to provide greatly superior (especially more secure) mobile products and services to this professional marketplace.
As much as I like Nokia hardware (and I do) I fear the OS horse has firmly left the stable and has galloped across the galaxy - six times in fact.
It would be pointless releasing an Android phone and competing for scraps against the likes of Samsung. Equally, releasing a competing OS when the ecosystem is with Android and Apple would seem pointless. Maybe they can port apps as Sailfish purports to do, but then the hardware would have to be out of this galaxy to win.
If only they hadn't f*cked up with Meego. Nokia only have themselves to blame - they foresaw the future, then f*cked it all up.
I don't reckon they fucked it up at all. If MeeGo launched at that time, the competition from iOS and Android would have been too great. In the mean time Sailfish has carried on gently. My this time next year, I reckon that the consumer market will be begging for an alternative and if they take Sailfish on board and polish it as it needs ... they'll be in the right place, at the right time, with the right OS to make an impact.
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