Editorial: Dear Nokia, you cannot be serious

MeeGo has a good chance of making Nokia a lot of money and they really don't want to talk about why.

Nokia has been losing wealthy customers for years, but they dominate the market in Africa and Asia. Symbian seems hopelessly out of date, but it's also very frugal, which allows Nokia to cram a lot of functionality onto very cheap hardware.

If you look at the market from the bottom up rather than the top down, you see what MeeGo is for. It's not there to take on the likes of Android and iOS, that's why Nokia have gone WP7 for that market. It's designed as an aspirational upgrade for S60 users. That's prime territory, for a number of reasons.

Nokia are the only non-Shanzai manufacturer to really understand developing markets. The Nokia 1100 isn't just the biggest selling mobile phone ever, it's the biggest selling consumer electronics device, having sold over 250m units. The killer features of that handset are a really bright torch, a dustproof keypad and 400 hours of battery life.

The N9 hardware is outdated by design. The Cortex A8 that powers it is a relatively very cheap part. The N9 is a high-end handset in other respects, but that is entirely consistent with Nokia's model. Expect to see a feature-stripped version of the N9 shortly, with a plastic chassis, cheap LCD, basic camera and so on. The early adopters pay for the R&D, allowing Nokia to launch the cheap version at a killer price. Look at the E71 and E63 for an example of this in action.

Nokia are playing a much cleverer long game than anyone gives them credit for. They have more brand equity than all other handset manufacturers combined, albeit mainly amongst very poor customers. Nokia's future success won't be found by beating Apple, it will be found by beating the Shanzai boys.

I often read on HN that Nokia has an edge in developing markets.

But guess what was voted the "coolest brand" in a May 2011 survey of South African youth? Blackberry[1]! Any self respecting geek could have/should have bought an Android handset, or an iPhone. But the vast majority of my friends family are on BBM, so I got one. It is the new Facebook, or Mxit[2]. After getting BBM, I was amazed by how many people have Blackberrys. My sister traded her new iPhone for a BB, after realising how isolated she was. My granny, and my maid[3] both have Blackberrys. If Nokia had a special insight into developing markets, they would have realised that they are vulnerable in the messaging space and launched a messaging app long ago.

[1]http://www.newstime.co.za/ScienceandTech/Generation_Next_Nam...

[2]http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/06/14/why-mobile-social-ne...

[3]The average middle class South African family can indeed afford a full-time domestic servant

It's also relevant because there's people lambasting Nokia for abandoning Maemo and wasting a couple of years on Meego with little to show for it.

Which is why I pointed out that my maid has a Blackberry as well. And the kids who voted for Blackberry as the coolest brand are probably largely in a similar demographic to my maid.