Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

downloadsquad.switched.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 88 posts

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#71

Post by huertanix »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #66
teamonkey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia has very little presence here in North America for reasons I haven't been able to fathom. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that most people in the UK will have have owned a Nokia at some point in the last 10-15 years. The brand really is that common. It's the cheap first phone you get, or a fast replacement if your smartphone dies and you still have a contract to uphold, or the phones parents buy their ki…

Nokia owns much of the GSM standard, and thus dislikes making CDMA phones. This limits their major models to the AT&T network in the USA. Nokia also dislikes selling phones trough carriers -- they prefer marketing directly to consumers, not tying their phones to carrier-specific plans. Together, this means that in the US there is only one carrier where their major model phones work, and that carrier considers Nokia's…

Nokia also doesn't cut deals with carriers to subsidize the cost of their phones like many Android phone manufacturers do. "$520 for a phone? I can almost buy a laptop for that!"

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#72

Post by Joeri »

latch wrote: post #6

Isn't there quite a bit of data though to make this very static picture of the market somewhat irrelevant? I'm not trying to spread FUD. I would seriously like enlightenment if I'm wrong, but these are the conceptions that I have with respect to the more fluid nature of the market: -The trend, throughout the world, is going heavily against Nokia -Nokia's margins on each unit is a fraction of the competition -Nokia's…

"Nokia's relevance is largely in a market (phones) which is being overtaken, faster in some parts of the world than others, by SmartPhones"

Nokia's 40% slice is of the smartphone market, not the overall phone market. The article's whole point is that nokia is the biggest smartphone seller in the world, and everybody's pretending they only make feature phones.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#73

Post by gyardley »

Whenever I read an article like this, I wonder what exactly they'd like me to do. Build software for customers whose markets I'm not familiar with, languages I don't speak, and customs and tastes I'm ignorant of? Sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#74

Post by lie »

eli wrote: post #31
nobody_nowhere wrote: post #5

Nokia has a pretty unparalleled manufacturing/delivery/logistics chain for low end phones. They like to claim they can put a phone on a shelf anywhere in africa for less than competitors' manufacturing costs. That's pretty impressive, if true. But we're talking about phones that retail for $35. The smartphones are a joke. But the software! I sure hope Qt is starting to pay some dividends for them. When i was dealing…

The big threat there isn't Motorola or Samsung figuring out a way to ship phones around the world more efficiently -- it's local competitors in emerging markets. For example, India-based Micromax is gaining serious market share in the country at Nokia's expense.

This is not true. Micromax phones are just re-branded chinese/korean knockoff phones. There was a craze for these phone two years back because of dual-sim capability. Now everybody realized that the quality is very bad and started buying nokia/samsung/lg dual-sim phones instead.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#75

Post by enjo »

nobody_nowhere wrote: post #5

Nokia has a pretty unparalleled manufacturing/delivery/logistics chain for low end phones. They like to claim they can put a phone on a shelf anywhere in africa for less than competitors' manufacturing costs. That's pretty impressive, if true. But we're talking about phones that retail for $35. The smartphones are a joke. But the software! I sure hope Qt is starting to pay some dividends for them. When i was dealing…

Although their smart-phones (which predate the iPhone by many years) have had commercial success world wide that would make any manufacturer extraordinarily jealous.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#76

Post by jokermatt999 »

huertanix wrote: post #70
bergie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, Nokia N900 is the only phone accomplishing that :-) For example, Android and iOS browsers skipped the rather useful contentEditable functionality. On my N900 I have it.

The N900 also has the only implementation of Firefox Mobile. Adblock Plus is in my pocket.

Actually, it's on Android as well. I haven't tried it for a few versions (it...needed some work then), but it is available.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#77

Post by samstokes »

latch wrote: post #6

Isn't there quite a bit of data though to make this very static picture of the market somewhat irrelevant? I'm not trying to spread FUD. I would seriously like enlightenment if I'm wrong, but these are the conceptions that I have with respect to the more fluid nature of the market: -The trend, throughout the world, is going heavily against Nokia -Nokia's margins on each unit is a fraction of the competition -Nokia's…

Nokia makes smartphones. Sure, they make (a lot of) dumbphones, but they also make (a lot of) smartphones. That graph was of app store visits, and thus only counts smartphones.

I've not heard an agreed definition of smartphone, but by all the various definitions I've heard, Nokia devices like the N8 are smartphones:

* Downloadable apps? Check.

* Downloadable apps written in a language that can segfault? Check.

* App store? Check.

* Large colour screen? Check.

* Touch screen? Check. (This one's a pretty debatable requirement though.)

* Desktop-equivalent web browser? Check.

* Flash? Check. (Hehe.)

* Sends and receives email? Check.

* Share your 3G connection over USB, Bluetooth or wifi? Check.

* Called "iPhone"? Ch... ah, damn.

I'm not trying to get into an argument about which device is a better smartphone, but I cannot understand when people say things like "Nokia can't compete against smartphones".

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#79

Post by rospaya »

samstokes wrote: post #77
latch wrote: post #6

Isn't there quite a bit of data though to make this very static picture of the market somewhat irrelevant? I'm not trying to spread FUD. I would seriously like enlightenment if I'm wrong, but these are the conceptions that I have with respect to the more fluid nature of the market: -The trend, throughout the world, is going heavily against Nokia -Nokia's margins on each unit is a fraction of the competition -Nokia's…

Nokia makes smartphones. Sure, they make (a lot of) dumbphones, but they also make (a lot of) smartphones. That graph was of app store visits , and thus only counts smartphones. I've not heard an agreed definition of smartphone, but by all the various definitions I've heard, Nokia devices like the N8 are smartphones: * Downloadable apps? Check. * Downloadable apps written in a language that can segfault? Check. * App…

The definition of smartphones has gone to hell ever since the iPhone came out.

Re: A brief glimpse of Nokia's popularity outside the Western world

#80

Post by daliusd »

huertanix wrote: post #71
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia owns much of the GSM standard, and thus dislikes making CDMA phones. This limits their major models to the AT&T network in the USA. Nokia also dislikes selling phones trough carriers -- they prefer marketing directly to consumers, not tying their phones to carrier-specific plans. Together, this means that in the US there is only one carrier where their major model phones work, and that carrier considers Nokia's…

Nokia also doesn't cut deals with carriers to subsidize the cost of their phones like many Android phone manufacturers do. "$520 for a phone? I can almost buy a laptop for that!"

My coworker from USA couldn't believe that I have paid 200$ for smartphone. I'm from Europe.
Post reply on HN