Summary: Nokia is the General Motors of the cellphone industry.
Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#12If offering user choice is a bad idea, why is Android doing so well? I believe they're out-gunning apple in market-share now, and there are tons of Android phones to choose between.
> If offering user choice is a bad idea, why is Android doing so well?
Android isn't a triumph of user choice. Android is a bunch of carriers and manufacturers choosing to use something free instead of licensing or developing software for themselves.
Nerds choose Android. The vast majority of consumers choose their carrier, then take whatever the cheap phone is.
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#13I went into this article deeply skeptical because every tech journalist out there is trying to make their mark on this story. But I think Elgan is exactly right about what strategies can win the mobile market, what Nokia has done wrong, what it can do in the future.
All that remains to be seen is which way Nokia chooses to go.
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#14Oh look, an American talking about Nokia.
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#15The article says pretty much what I've been thinking: too many choices, consumers have no idea which Nokia phone is any good. However, I'm not so sure that this thinking is any good in the long run for Nokia, everybody says that company X should emulate Apple, it is just the easy thing to suggest because Apple is currently winning.
> everybody says that company X should emulate Apple, it is just the easy thing to suggest because Apple is currently winning.
That's like saying "it's the easy thing to suggest that Johnny will only win the foot race by emulating Jimmy, who is running instead of taking a bath then playing video games." As though there's more nuance to it than that.
Apple is doing what is necessary to win. If someone says a company should emulate Apple, it's a shorthand for saying that Apple has consistently won in the markets they've entered for the last decade and their approach is excellent for selling consumer electronics.
Apple wins through focus. Is there any argument against having focus? What is the benefit of avoiding focus and smearing your efforts around a dozen different projects?
Apple wins through quality. What would be the argument for making shit instead of quality?
Apple wins through integration. What would be the argument for making devices that weren't well integrated, from software/hardware perspective or a user experience/ecosystem perspective?
Want to know who is emulating Apple, proving the value of its example? Look at Amazon and the Kindle. Supreme focus: Maximum of two hardware variations so far. Excellent quality: great hardware, decent software. Incredible integration, with Whispernet allowing you to buy any Amazon content anywhere in the world, tied to your existing Amazon account, which is pre-loaded onto your Kindle when you open it.
Kindle is now Amazon's best-selling product.
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#16[deleted]
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The browser is not part of the core of the operating system. And it was far less an important part of the user experience at that time.
"At that time" Microsoft ruled everything except for the browser. The public internet was emerging as a surprisingly powerful force against the desktop and the argument before the courts was that the browser WAS part of the core operating system and could not be removed. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft : Microsoft stated that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the…
Well... At least IE wasn't an integral part of MacOS...
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Apple did make Microsoft Internet Explorer the default browser on the Mac, which was Microsoft's battlefield at the time.
The browser is not part of the core of the operating system. And it was far less an important part of the user experience at that time.
Yea, it was nothing compared with the attempt to integrate IE with the Windows shell and make it's renderer a core system component. BTW, WebKit is also a core system component on Mac OS X now, yet it is updated as part of Safari.
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#19> There is huge, unmet demand in the world for a phone that does nothing but make calls.
The Nokia 1100 [...] is a very simple GSM mobile phone produced by Nokia [...] the world's best selling phone handset as well as the best selling consumer electronics device in the world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1100)
IMO the author has a point about the smartphones, but completely misses the mark here.
It's very possible that low-end smartphones will take over the dumphone market soon and/or that cheap Chinese phones will overrun it, but what the author proposes doesn't address that either.
Re: Mike Elgan: Why Nokia is toast
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The browser is not part of the core of the operating system. And it was far less an important part of the user experience at that time.
Yea, it was nothing compared with the attempt to integrate IE with the Windows shell and make it's renderer a core system component. BTW, WebKit is also a core system component on Mac OS X now, yet it is updated as part of Safari.
hmmm? not that it is the slightest bit relevant, but I dont think webkit is a core component on mac os x, unless you are using the word differently than I would have expected?