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Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

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Re: Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

#21

Post by sounddust »

I haven't seen a Nokia phone that has the kind of intuitive, well-organized, attractive, and responsive UI that we see with the iPhone and Android phones. I have some friends who have expensive Nokia phones and like to brag about their capabilities, but when you actually see these phones in use, they just aren't as enjoyable to use due to the OS which seems unrefined (I'd go so far as to say it seems unfinished).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpEuMidcSU is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. If you were to make a list with checkboxes, it would seem that the N97 is as good as an iPhone. But if you actually use it...

I don't think it's a U.S. vs Europe thing; it's just that Nokia had a headstart in Europe. I would bet that they're losing market share here in Europe as well. At least in France, it seems that everyone has an iPhone these days.

That having been said, I do think Nokia makes excellent hardware, particularly the actual phone functionality (voice quality, not dropping calls, etc). If they could just bring their OS up to par, they would see some attention and success in the US.

Re: Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

#22

Post by john_conroy »

1) I consider Apple and Android to be the future of phones. Nokia, Microsoft, RIM and all other phone OS's are treated more or less the same, relative to Apple and Android. The fact that it's pleasant to write apps for Nokia doesn't matter when you can write better apps for Apple or Android.

2) As you pointed out Hacker news is US centric. Historically, Nokia has had a smaller presence in the US. There are many factors which contributed to this, off the top of my head - * Motorola was based in the US, and took market share from Nokia. * Nokia was slow to make flip phones, and the US went through a flip phone craze. * Nokia is a strong brand, and US carriers favored no name phones that they could brand themselves, companies like HTC or LG were amenable to this. Also, European carriers were slower to do this. * Apple went for the (relative) mass market, they forced AT&T into offering the iPhone for a cheap initial price, and a cheap data plan (again, relatively, starting with the 3G). Contrast this with Nokia's somewhat lackadaisical approach to launching a new high end phone - announce a couple of new phones, release them months later, sometimes not on any carrier, often with different os's. * Nokia took a break from making progress, roughly around 2003. They started making very different phones, as if attempting to start or catch fads. They started treating phones as fashion accessories. The 2 year gap between their "professional" phones (the 6310 and the 6230) was horrendous.

Personally, I think Nokia made the best phones, of the last generation.

Re: Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

#23

Post by jboydyhacker »

Two Big Reasons

1. Bad Software design. Nokia needs to pick up some solid software talent. Nokia isn't used to having to compete on software yet while U.S. companies have been doing that for years. That doesn't mean Nokia has to acquire a U.S. co, just get aggressive about some great hacker talent. 2. Carrier deals. Even when Nokia does come out with a decent phone, it rarely gets any share gain in the U.S. because of inadequate carrier deals. Usually the few people that know about them acquire them from Europe, or by the time it does land in the U.S. somebody has already launched something better.

Re: Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

#24

Post by marssaxman »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #13
sram wrote: post #5

One Word: Symbian. Make that two: Ewww

I did not downvote you, but if you asked the next 100 people ,whom you do not know and own a cellphone, "What is Symbian" noone will answer.

one or two kinky sorts will answer "isn't that kind of a fancy vibrator?"

Re: Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

#26

Post by omnipath »

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that to get most of Nokia's smartphones, you have to pay full price? It seems like most people here in the US don't want to do that. They would rather get 60%-80% off at the beginning and stay with the seemingly standard 2-year contract.

That, and it seems like most of Nokia's smartphones only works on T-Mobile's network. While T-Mobile has nice customer service, it isn't the most reliable network in US.

Re: Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

#27

Post by notauser »

aidenn0 wrote: post #9

[edit] Quick clarification: The OP compared Nokia to Apple and Android, so my answer was specifically about Nokia smartphones. Nokia feature-phones have always had a decent market share in the US, and I think that the average person in the US thinks of those feature-phones when they hear the word Nokia, and has no clue that the E or N series phones even exist. [/edit] I live in the US. I've never actually seen a phon…

Which is odd because BestBuy used to sell unlocked E71 handsets (one of the best phones Nokia ever made) for 60-70% of the European retail price! They are like BlackBerries but actually good.

I got mine for $250 SIM free, no contract. It worked fine on AT&T and T-Mobile (US).

They also made an AT&T specific locked version called the E71X which had horrific software deformities and was much more expensive.

Re: Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

#28

Post by joe_the_user »

aidenn0 wrote: post #9

[edit] Quick clarification: The OP compared Nokia to Apple and Android, so my answer was specifically about Nokia smartphones. Nokia feature-phones have always had a decent market share in the US, and I think that the average person in the US thinks of those feature-phones when they hear the word Nokia, and has no clue that the E or N series phones even exist. [/edit] I live in the US. I've never actually seen a phon…

I developing desktop QT app currently.

I'd love to get a phone that supports QT just to start looking at a mobile port. My current provider, Sprint, doesn't seem to have any and I can't see any other providers who do.

There's talk of a port of Qt to Android port but I haven't gotten any details (obviously Java versus C++ is an issue).

Re: Ask HN: Why U.S. people dislike Nokia?

#29

Post by zyb09 »

Well quiet simple, it has something to do with how the cellphone market in the US is much younger then Europe's. Back in the mid-to-late 90's Nokia made the best cellphones out there. They were clearly superior and pretty much everybody was buying Nokia phones. At least pretty much everybody in Europe was, because at that time having a cellphone in the US was still considered somewhat unusual. Thous Europe got into into the habit of using and trusting Nokia phones, while the US did not. When Apple, Google and RIM joined the market, Nokia phone were really nothing extraordinary anymore and without a large user-base trusting your brand, there's just no reason to buy one. Edit: RIM has the opposite problem, btw.
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