Nokia's perception problem continues
Matt Warman is the Consumer Technology Editor at The Telegraph. Today he’s published a post asking, What does Nokia need to do to become relevant again?.
I don’t quite think Nokia understands just how bad their perception problem is in the West. Their reputation is in utter, utter tatters. Almost everyone considers the company at best irrelevant and at worst, offensive. (As in the devices, the UI, the entire offering is ‘offensive’).
In Matt’s peice, he makes this rather large point:
3) Ditch Symbian for smartphones: Nokia claims that Symbian “democratises the smartphone market”. They’re saying that open source programmes make their phones more customisable and more relevant to a larger audience than, say, an iPhone. But Android is already by some measures outselling the Apple iPhone, it’s already open source and it’s already very good, when HTC design with it at least.
This is where Google have done a phenomenal job. Android is not at all open source. Well, let me put it another way: It’s open, but as long as Google are happy. If I wanted to contribute a new addition to the Android platform that, say, changed the default search functions so that users were continually sent to use the Taptu search engine, rather than Google, can you imagine Google agreeing to that?
No.
That said, you’d probably have a bit of a job explaining the need to the Symbian Foundation’s source control committee — but if you have a good idea, if you’re willing to help contribute ideas, time and code, you can play. Everyone can play with Symbian. But not with Google.
Matt continues:
Symbian 4 is, by virtue of its arrival later this year, surely not able to be a patch on Android 1.6, never mind the newer 2.1, and equally poor in comparison to iPhone OS3. What’s the point in backing the Symbian horse? Insiders say forthcoming OS Meego will be great. It’s too little, too late, when Android is already streaks ahead and Windows Phone 7 Series is on the way. (I’d love, by the way, to be proved wrong, but “the open source OS” Symbian 4 is currently a secret – you can take a look here at Mashable, however.
Symbian itself is a thoroughly efficient operating system.
I think Matt has an issue with the actual user interface layer. Me too. It’s definitely in need of a complete revamp.
The real issue, of course, is that Nokia is doing reasonably well. Yes there’s been a fiscal blip but the company is still making cash hand-over-first selling millions of handsets a day.
My key point, here, is to point out to all the Nokia High Command that Matt’s article is another example of just how badly the market rates Nokia. There’s a lot of people in Nokia who know this — and who have some really, really good ideas for how to fix it. But they don’t have the budgets or the authority.
Meanwhile — and as Matt points out in his last point — let’s hop the N8 actually works nicely… and let’s also hope there are legions of developers making applications for it right now.
I think that’s a far-fetched hope though, given that the application I made with the brilliant point-and-click Ovi App Wizard doesn’t apparently work on Nokia N97/N97 Minis. Not very useful.
