Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (CEO) and Rick Simonson (CFO), discussed Nokia's smartphone strategy during today's Q4 earnings call. Nokia intend to further expand S60 on Symbian OS to new categories and market segments as well as continuing to push it on to lower cost devices. As a result they are expanding the S60 investment when compared to Series 40. Furthermore they believe the combination of Nokia's five services (Ovi) with a larger portfolio of such devices will see a change in the definition of smartphone. Read on for more details.
Read on in the full article.
Probably a good idea to point out smartphone defintion has more than a bit of baggage, but I guess that's not really the point. Personally I tend to refer to open mobile platforms more than smartphones these days...
Putting S60 onto ever-cheaper devices is exactly the right idea:
-Nokia's biggest strength is making cheap phones, they sell something like 300 million a year. This is an area that they do extremely well, and they make most of their money from it.
-S60's biggest rivals (Win Mob, iPhone, Palm, Android etc) tend to use very expensive hardware, so they wouldn't be able to directly compete with ultra-cheap S60 models.
-The biggest growth in phone sales is in developing countries, where cheaper models do best.
-The world's economy is going down the toilet, more people will be buying cheaper phones anyway, even in rich countries.
-Ovi's profits depend not on device sales but on userbase. The more people use Ovi, the more money it makes. The best way to build userbase is to reduce the price of accessing the service, which cheap S60 devices would do.
If something like the 5800 can be sold at a profit for 300 euros, I'm sure they could do a bog-standard no-frills S60 3rd Edition device for about 100 euros. Just as an example, the 6120 Classic is currently available SIM-free in Finland for about 150 euros, which isn't a million miles from the one hundred euro barrier.
Blah, blah, blah is all I hear from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (CEO) and Rick Simonson (CFO). Right now, at this moment, Apple (I hate saying this) is literally eating their lunch. Ovi is a complete disater, Downloads is so pitiful that it borders on uselessness. Just having phones is not going to win the war. Nokia is only winning battles here and there. Apple and the other seem to have a longterm strategic vision of integrating the hardware with software and then having a services layer. Nokia has only one part of the 3. Yes S60 is trying to mature and provide a more userfriendly experience and hopefully it will, but who ever is in charge of the services side at Nokia needs to be fired or given a room with a view.
Case in point. The 5800XM has been talked about for about a year and has been on sale for a few months. Where is it on Ovi? No where and when you ask Nokia about it, you get the standard line: "Thanks for your inquiry. As you know the (x device is new and we must test it to makes sure compatibility, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada.) Testing if fine, but still to date no one bothered to test this so-called media phone with a so-called media service before the phone was launched? Incompetence on the part of Nokia. However, I have worked for several Finnish companies and this tends to be the pervasive attitude sometimes. Workinig can be more of a social club atmosphere rather than a place of business where real work has to get done. While not a fan of either, I can appreciate the work ethic of M$ and Apple. They both continue to act as though they are start-ups and have to fight for every dollar. Nokia sits like the big behemoth and figures that size alone will get them through. I really am having my doubts about the future with Nokia.
Although I agree, Nokia Download is indeed an area which needs to be completely overhauled, or revamped, however, OVI is still really in its infancy, and is fast becoming popular.