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Every time I come here to the US I find very disapponting that Nokia is not pushing the sales of their high end phones.
As both Darla and Phoneboy highlight, Nokia’s brand in the US is way behind the iPhone or the Blackberry. Why? Try to get a high end Nokia smartphone in California and here is the answer. As noticed already, it’s almost impossible to find, let’s say, a N-series phone here in California (I bet it’s worse in other states) and only recently I could see a Nokia N95 8GB on BestBuy’s shelves priced at about $750, three times the most expensive “locked” phone in the same shelf.
Customers here are not used to unlocked phones and they are not certainly used to spend all that money to get a phone without a SIM card. Even pay as you go phones become locked as soon as you activate them.
All that said, I’m curious to see what the strategy for the new Nokia touchscreen phone is going to be. The so-called “tube” which will be introduced on October 2nd, is not a high-end phone but rather a “music” phone priced much lower than the competition. On the other hand, this will be just the first and according to a Nokia’s spokeperson more models in different market segments are going to be released in the following months.
I’m also curious what Nokia’s strategy will be in terms of the OS. Nokia recently bought the remaining shares of Symbian but according to trusted sources would be in the process of planning to put together a serious Android team depending on how the market responds to G1, the just announced Android phone by T-mobile.
Poll: would you like a Nokia Android phone? I personally think that a serious re-engineering of Symbian could lead to a definitive competitive advantage by Nokia but there is still much work to be done. At this time and in my opinion, Symbian is still way behind the iPhone in terms of usability and applications.
Here at Mobilize Steve Lee, Project Manager at Google and responsible for Google Maps for mobile, just revealed that when users have the ability to get their current position either by a GPS-enabled device or through the data network, the usage of the application doubles.
He said this happens especially when people search for a route to get to somewhere, since they don’t have to waste (about) 1 minute to insert their current position manually. This is an important point, since mobile applications must all be about simplicity given that when we are on the go, we are usually rushing, in our car or, in general, with very limited time, and even one minute is very important.
Google is working hard in this space and yesterday they just announced a new version of Google Maps featuring Street View and Walking Directions, the latter being something I was always looking for. Here is a video.
Again, the main problem any application like Google Maps faces is battery life. Those apps are the future but there’s still a lot of work to be done in the field of power management and the challenge is to make batteries last at least 15 to 20 hours even with an intensive usage of the device, so that device can be recharged over night. What do you think?
If you want to get the latest news and keep an eye on the new trends of next generation mobile applications and services, the Mobilize ‘08 conference is an event you can’t miss.
Mobilize ‘08, organized by Om Malik & the GigaOm team, is an event focused on next generation applications for mobile devices, with a special attention to everything in the space of mobile web.
Mobilize will explore the advancements driving the development of the mobile web as well as the implications and opportunities, for both entrepreneurs and their investors. Indeed, despite big plans and visions, the promise of the mobile web—and a truly untethered Internet—has not yet been realized.
The speakers’ list is impressive, ranging from the co-founder of Google Android to the CTO of Cisco System. The topics to be discussed at the conference are the hottest you can find both in terms of innovation and business in the mobile world:
Next Generation Networks, Handsets and Chipsets
Rethinking Products in the Age of Hyper-connectivity
The Economics of Mobile Development Platforms
LTE or WiMAX: Which One Owns the Future?
Mobile Browsers
Location-Based Services
Emerging Mobile Business and Revenue Patterns
Mobile Investment Trends
Moreover, many new companies will be launching their products at the conference during a special LaunchPad session. Among the others, Pinch Media, a company which claims to help iPhone developers to grow and track their business, and Fonolo, a service launched during eComm ‘08 which promises to announce a new hot new application during the show.
Mobilize ‘08 will take place in San Francisco on Sept 18th at the Mission Bay Conference Center. I should be around during these days so I’ll do my best to make it.
In the effort of pushing their mobile platform, Google announced yesterday the launch of Android Market, a place where people can easily download and buy content for their Android-powered device.
Anyone familiar with Apple would compare this new marketplace to the mobile App Store, but I don’t think they have that much in common.
Currently Android Market is no more than a developer thing, through which early developers on the Android platform can easily reach a “decent” user base, even if it is certainly the first step to provide operators and handset manufacturers (which will bet on this new mobile OS) with a comprehensive set of online software services to immediately create a new revenue stream coming from value added contents sold to their users.
Some question arise, as Alec Saunders points out on his blog as well. Developers are currently focused on Apple which is performing amazingly with the recent launch of the iPhone 3G in different markets and with a huge user base of owners of the new Cupertino’s toy willing to fill it with new applications. Moreover, only HTC and LG are, to my knowledge, the only big players developing android-powered handsets and HTC alone is going to deliver a number of handsets which is only a small slice of the market owned by Apple with its iPhone (and HTC will release Android handsets with a huge delay).
The other problem for Google raised by the report is that software developers are said to have their hands full with the mobile phone software that’s actually available for development, such as Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, and the iPhone. HTC is worried enough about a lack of attention as to demand a “minimum revenue guarantee” from Google in exchange for launching an Android handest.
What’s next with Android? Is Google talking with too much fanfare about its mobile platform despite developers are looking elsewhere?
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