European carriers are dissatisfied with the Nokia Lumia phones, Reuters has found out. According to the carriers, the Lumia phones are simply “not good enough” to compete with the iPhone and Android phones. Nobody comes into stores asking for windows phones, and one carrier executive said “if the Lumia with the same hardware came with Android in it and not Windows, it would be much easier to sell”. Ouch.
Perhaps the carriers could try a bit harder. I have a Lumia 710 and in my opinion it’s better than the equivalently priced Android phones by a wide margin. I can’t imagine going back to Android now.
Why should the carriers try harder? If Nokia and Microsoft want to sell more phones, then it’s up to them to try harder.
OK, up to a point I agree with you, it’s up to the manufacturers to come up with a desirable & functional product.
In this specific case I think MS and Nokia have already delivered on their side of the bargain, the available phones seem at least competitive with similarly priced Android phones, so the carrier dissatisfaction just reads like corporate whining, they don’t want to carry any burden of educating their staff and potential buyers about a newish platform, they would rather continue to sell bucketloads of Android phones with which people are familiar. Again, OK I suppose.
I’d just rather they did put some effort in and we ended up with 3 viable mobile platforms rather than 2.
Instead of reading tech blog pundits (Verge, Engadget, Techcrunch and whatnot), everybody should read a real specialist:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/12/dont-mess-with…
(Yes, this guy is completely biased and has a long-winded writing style, but he knows in-depth what he is talking about and he has the arguments to back his (strong) opinions.)
Wow, that’s a long article.
That article makes a lot of sense. I don’t think sales to networks was the only reason that Nokia crashed, but it definitely was an important reason.
Samsung, Huawei & ZTE have been growing because they have managed to build relationships with the networks. I bet most of the phones Huawei & ZTE sell are rebranded with the networks names.
There’s nothing wrong with Lumia. WP7 is just ill suited for being for running a flagship phones, because WinCe doesn’t (by design) support multiprocessing.
WP7 is an middle end featurephone like os at best. If SElop wasn’t blinded by MS KoolAid running in his veins he would have predicted it and toned down his Windows strategy until WP8 is ready, heavily promoting PlanB MeeGo devices (N9, N950) for a year already.
The fact is with WP7 Nokia has nothing to offer on the high-end (that it desperately needs to regain) and low-end (that it desperately needs to keep). SElop will be remembered as a man that ended European competitiveness in digital era.
That else he should have done is to licence Miguel de Icaza Silverlight runtime on MeeGo so that selected WP7 apps could run on it. This way he would have had a cake (sales of desirable, future proofed N9 ) and have eaten the cake (door open for joining whatever ecosystem that proves itself on the market).
Edited 2012-04-18 13:31 UTC
No, I agree with blue_fox there, that’s too simplistic.
Manufacturers can only do so much. In a modern marketing environment it’s impossible to get the right products to the right market without the proper support of the channel.
Now I understand that those in the channel prefer the easy money first. But to justify their lack of willingness to invest in products and markets with a simple ‘the manufacturer should try harder’, that’s a bit steep.
To see just how short-sighted that is, just look at Apple retailers and distributors: they sell a product with a huge mind share and market pull, but with almost no profits left for anyone actually selling it.
Ummm… your example proves the exact opposite. Apple had no presence in the mobile phone market, but then they came out with a fantastic product, and people bought it. That is why they are so profitable now and command such high margins.
At the time that the iPhone was released, Apple was a much smaller company, far smaller than Microsoft & Nokia, but they succeeded because they made a great product.
The Lumia & Windows Phone 7 are good, but they aren’t good enough to succeed. Maybe once Windows 8 launches, a lot more apps will be developed for Metra and Windows Phone 7 will finally have great apps. But until then, it doesn’t make sense to buy a Windows Phone, especially, since there is no guarantee that they will be upgraded to the NT kernel.
I’m not arguing the merits of the product — I don’t own an Android or Lumia device — I’m just stating that to negate the role of the channel is way too simple, and that was what blue_fox’ post was about.
Obviously Apple did everything (business wise) right. They (and they alone) indeed make a very decent profit. No arguments there.
The position the carriers now take is to quote blue_fox ‘corporate whining’. If they are not willing to invest in selling competing products and developing new markets, they will end up in the same position as many Apple Premium Resellers now find themselves, that is selling a desired premium product, but not earning a penny from it.
The channel is important, but you are committing the same mistake that MS has doing so far: phone carriers don’t make a life out of selling phones.
They don’t care about margins when selling it, and indeed, THEY LOSE MONEY SELLING IT (or just severely reduces or nullify their margins) in exchange for long term gains from fidelity contracts with customers.
These contracts are the integral part of the carrier’s real product: phone plans. In particular now, data plans.
Carriers don’t give a dime if the smartphones have a single OS, or 1000 different OSs. They just play on top of the customer fetish for the “latest and greatest gadget” to push their real product forward, so the customer can pay them for decades to use the said gadget.
Its the manufacturer’s burden to make the customer desire their own product to a point that carriers try to get exclusive contracts with you.
So the chances that carriers ends up like these “Apple Premium Resellers” is zero. They are not in the same market. Carriers always profits, and is a delusion to think that manufacturers have any real power against them.
Thing is that they already have good competition in their stores. They like it. And the competition is not just iPhone vs Android. It’s iPhone, Samsung, Sony, LG, HTC, Blackberry, ZTE, Huawei and even Nokia
In addition, they don’t really care if they make much money from sale of individual devices. Their prices are higher only to make sure that devices are acquired by people signing contracts. Because their income is mainly via services, not device sales. That is why Apple can charge the operators $100+ more for the device than the off contract price.
Also, Google pays off the operators for Google Play(former Android Market) transactions. Not sure about Microsoft.
MS is accustomed to have “partners” (software companies and OEMs who invested heavily in development for Windows, and now can’t survive out of it) pushing their own software products forward to final consumers, not themselves.
Indeed, other than Xbox, i don’t remember a single product that MS seriously engaged in marketing for consumers (and marketing is not just airing commercials on TV).
Really? Yes, perhaps the 710 isn’t too far off. Unless, of course, you want a phone with a decent camera or screen. Then there are several better options. In fact, there is no really good Windows option. And not one of them has a decent CPU. Yes, I know you get smoother scrolling in the systems menus under WP7 than under Android, and no, smooth scrolling doesn’t mean your phone is fast.
What does your use of the phrase “equivalently priced” come down to? Because I’m pretty sure that you simply cannot buy the 710 for retail. You must start up or extend to a 2 year contract. Once you do that you get a nice phone for $100 and you can get your money back on the mail-in rebate.
For the $350 ‘list price’ of the 710 you can get a pretty nice Android phone. But the carriers don’t want people buying their own phones and not being bound to them with that fidelity contract. That’s not because they are lazy it’s because that’s where the money is.
Churn was the #1 issue when I worked for Cingular years ago. I suspect it’s still pretty important. That’s why the subsidies aren’t going away any time soon.
Yes, I realized afterwards that it’s dependent on the country you live in. My comments relate to the UK market, where buying from the carrier on “pay as you go” or SIM free on the open market is commonplace.
The Lumia 710 is approximately £180 sim free (which compares with the HTC Wildfire S (running with a 600Mhz chip) for the same money). I got mine via a carrier on PAYG for £150.
My experience at retail was fine, the staff had good things to say about the phone (if not the use of micro sim cards, where they are experiencing problems with availability).
If you buy a PC (excluding Macs), it’s very hard to avoid buying Windows; there’s enough consumer inertia and vendor lock-in that Microsoft are assured of a sale.
But the mobile market is different — people can make a choice, and I don’t know anyone who would actively choose to have a Microsoft phone.
The fact is that Microsoft have done enough wrong over the years that a significant number of people will make a point of avoiding their products wherever possible regardless of its quality.
The irony, of course, is that all those people buying Android to avoid Microsoft’s phones are actually paying MS more in royalties than they’d have received if you’d bought the MS phone anyway. But that’s not the point.
Hmm, in germany it is very easy to avoid preinstalled Windows. If you just don’t enter the major electronic discounters, but instead prefer the small shops.
The last Windows that came bundled for me was Windows 98.
.. to the 100 years of the sinking of Titanic.
Don’t people get that when you get married to Microsoft you will just sink? How many times has it passed already? Ugh!
WP is for pr0n!!!
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/windows-phone-has-a-nasty-porn-add…
I wonder how many more articles about his wonderful SGII and WP will TH link….
… But it seems it’ll never see the light of day in Ireland since all the operators are pushing the Lumias instead. A couple of O2 shops I’ve made enquiries in have tried to sell me the Lumia 800 instead – “It’s almost the same phone” I’m told… Despite their pushing however, I’ve yet to encounter anyone with a windows phone here. I’m sure they exist, I just haven’t met any…
Things have definitely changed. I’ve recently been hearing adverts on the radio pushing nokia/lumia phones. Makes me wonder how much $$$ is being dumped into marketing this stuff. I guess MS and nokia really have no choice since it seems that wp7 would plunge into total obscurity otherwise.
Yep, it’s all over the TV here, bus shelters, massive roadside adverts and the whole lot. Some money being spent alright! And it still doesn’t look like it’s working, with most people either on an iPhone or Android device, and an obscure few with older type feature phones.
The N9 is fairly cheap right now. Actually cheaper than the N8, or in the same class as Motorola Defy+ and Huawei Honor (€256 here right now). I’m considering buying one.
Where!?!?!? It’s about €400 where I’m at.
Here: http://www.elkjop.no/product/mobil-og-gps/mobiltelefon/NOKN9PINKTN/…
I have no idea whether they’ll ship to Ireland or elsewhere.
Have to admit … I ordered one yesterday. Today, the price went up a bit.
Is it just me or is anyone else glad that MS is failing in the smartphone market?
They already dominate the PC world after crushing, (or buying) nearly all the competition – I am pleased they are faltering – this is a good day.
I would love to see a strong third competitor in the smartphone market – Android has enough market share (no monopolies, please), and Apple is perhaps as big as they can get with essentially a single smartphone product.
But not Microsoft. Their abusive business practices ensure I would never voluntarily give them any of my money, though it’s hard to avoid with their widespread patent extortion racket scourging the computing landscape. I’d actually be surprised it they didn’t use secret Win8 contract clauses to try to ram WinP8 smartphones down the channel’s throat.
I love my N900, so I was a huge MeeGo fan. WebOS had promise, until their sponsor also lost all sanity. RIM appears unable to execute on a recovery plan. Nokia is frantically throttling Symbian.
All that leaves are Linux phones like Bada, which aren’t really sold in the USA, or the rather long shot hackables, or the promised Ubuntuphones.
I don’t mind buying a niche geek product (did I mention I love my N900?). I just hope I can find a carrier that will let me use one on their network when the time comes. Megakudos to T-Mobile for providing excellent if unofficial support for my geekphones thus far.
Then you should pay attention to Tizen.
Almost mentioned it, definitely wish the team the best, and will be delighted to consider any phones that run it. I’m just not aware of any serious products in the pipeline yet, and fear their window of opportunity may have passed.
I hope I’m wrong.
Tizen will feature dull TouchWiz UI anyway. Their use of rasterman’s masterpiece libs and wayland looks promissing. That’s the ultimate linux gui stack if you ask me.
Yes, Tizen could have the most fluid GUI in the mobile market: efl are super-optimized (well, I don´t know the HTML part).
I lost interest when Nokia announced they were ditching MeeGo and again when they said they were going with Windows phone, and yet again when they announced that the Lumia phones would be released on AT&T. That’s three strikes. Nokia, you’re out!
P.S. I didn’t like the name change from N9 to Lumia either.
Edited 2012-04-18 04:39 UTC