Amen ...
Best article I have seen on Nokia and the whole smartphone war for a long time. (Warning long brain dump post as a result of my eyegasms from reading this post)
"For a start, Nokia should stop trying to pretend it wants to be Apple, and talk up its own strengths and plans."
-> I agree 100% - and if anyone had been listening over the past few years, they HAVE been. But that is not easy while (i) you, the PRESS, wants them to be like Apple, and everything is compared to Apple. After the release this week of the Symbian 3 devices, I saw many reports talking about how rubbish they were? But not a sinlge bit of substantive example? (ii) every market analyst and investor wants them to be like Apple overnight. Nobody wants to see Nokia run a marathon - they all treat this like a sprint!
"It has consistently beaten Apple, and most Android products, handsdown in terms of features."
-> Point proven. There seem to be only 2 things that the technical press are interested in: UI and Apps. Personally I belive that anybody can learn to us a phones UI regardless of friendliness - but if the functionality aint there then it aint. Why does no review of an Android or Apple handset then ever highlight what is *missing*? Instead we get assinine comments in nokia reviews about no innovation which is patently untures given the list of first in the tech sheets that Nokai HAVE bought to the market.
"Nokia is often accused of arrogance, but its current problems sometimes lie in listening to the markets too hard, especially US players, who have little perception or understanding of the firm. When Nokia is told it is a smartphone failure, it accepts that, rather than pointing out that it has maintained its smartphone market share de spite the torrent of new competitors"
-> I read a blog about Nokia from a well known US 'geek' site over the weekend. Frankly, the fundamental premise was that everything US was good - non-US bad. Apple and RIM were brilliant (depsite not even having the same market share as Nokia combined) ... and everything else that was foreign (e.g. HTC and Saumsung) were neatly wrapped in the Android mantle (despite different skins of varying success and almost no native Andorid UIs) as the proof. Nokia would do well to not worry too much and sell a 'world friendly' message regardless of the US market.
"but it has very different go-to market strategies and target user bases to those of Apple."
-> Best comment of all. Nokia has traditionally been driven by the business segment of the market. However, with things like smartphones (and laptops/tablets) coming done in price and no longer being the preserve of business - the features are now driven by the consumer market. Both Apple and 'Android' have been churning out 'consumption' (infotainment) devices ... yet the key business requirement is 'creation' (productivity). I have seen WPM comparisons of touch vs. mechanical keyboard and on *avergae*, typing speed halves on touch screen (and I don't mean the Jo Soaps personal blog, but mutiple subjects using multiple devices). Likewise, I know many colleagues who bought an iPhone, but now are back to aslo carryign their (gasp) Nokia or Blackberry. In most cases, the iPhone has been relegated to being an iPod Touch for entertainment on flights - because you cannot travel and be worrying about running out of power continually and you cannot last out the office for a long time using just an on-screen keyboard. If Apple had bought out an offering with a mechanical keyboard, I would probably have taken the plunge and got an iPhone -- but then I recognise that Apple are producing consumer media conbsumption devices and NOT productivity devices for business. The reality, however, is that almost everybody works, and in Apples target market segment (Yuppies in services dominated markets), there is a need for mobile content creation devices for productivity. Personally I think the segmentation will evolve into a far clearer one with time as the consumer market features feed back into being innovation for the business user, and that is when I think players like Nokia will benefit most with its strong established enterprise relationships.