Is Nokia about to fall on hard times?

[Ben]

You may have seen on Twitter that Nokia continues to lose high-profile 'fan sites' dedicated to the manufacturer's hardware and the Symbian OS. Symbian Guru is the one I'm talking about specifically: http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2010/07/symbian-guru-com-is-over.html

I do recommend reading the post, I concur with a lot of what has been said about Nokia and Symbian, only I came to the realisation some years ago ;)

Will MeeGo arrive in time to save Nokia's top end? Even if it does, will it be good enough?

[The Mullet of G]

Can't say I'll miss symbian-guru much to be fair, never really rated it. His closing rant was pretty hilarious, I gave up reading about halfway through, seriously his only major beef seems to be the N97, honestly some people need to grow a sturdier chin, one bad phone and they start stamping their feet and closing down their websites. Also he appears to be completely oblivious to the N8's spec, and seems to feel the only way he'll find out anything is to pay $500, why not just look at the spec or better still try one when its released. If that guy had any decency he would have deleted himself from the internet upon buying the N97 and again having no clue about its spec or what it was actually like, isn't this guy meant to be fairly clued up on all things mobile and more so Nokia?

I personally think all the Nokia doom mongering is more than a bit silly, sure the N97 may have been Nokia's Windows Vista, and they may have had a bit of a down turn at the high end, but all it takes is 1 or 2 decent phones to put them right back there, and I think it would be again silly to think this is beyond a company of Nokia's scale and experience. I also wouldn't write off Symbian^3 or N8 just yet, as they still present a pretty compelling package to an awful lot of people, lets not forget Symbian's comfortable market share position. :)

[Ben]

Perhaps with MeeGo they will hit back, and it's understandable that new software would take time to get right. But if they can't turn the tables by the end of this year and show us some signs of hope then I think the talk of Nokia falling upon harder times will start to gain some kudos.

[getti]

What you need to remember is Nokia's market share is made up with all the cheap handsets they produce for abroad, if you look at the expensive phones (from say £300+) there are not many happy people and have moved to either Android or iPhone.

If Nokia think this is not a big thing they REALLY need to think again as the once diehard supporters of the company like myself and Ricky/Rita who are now leaving is for a simple reason and that is Nokia has lost its way and are just producing crap after crap.

We all know the N8 spec but the underlying problem will be the fact it still uses a Symbian OS which is just not good enough even in the latest version, why else have Nokia stated after the N8 all NSeries phones will be MeeGo instead.

I can't remember the last time I recommended a Nokia product to someone because the OS is buggy as hell and just not worth the hassle.

[DBMandrake]

It's funny how the wheel turns - in the days before the iPhone I was not a Smart Phone user and if anyone ever asked me what phone to get (where phone means what we consider a dumb phone or an early feature phone today) I would say without a doubt Nokia.

All my phones before the iPhone going right back to 2001 were Nokia's. The first two were work supplied, admittedly, but my third phone which I bought myself some time around 2003/2004 was a Nokia 6100, which is possibly the smallest phone I'd ever seen. It had a colour screen and J2ME and that was about it.

Despite being dropped on concrete and tar-seal at least 30 times it was still going strong when I got an iPhone in late 2008, even the original battery was still good. I only needed to charge it once a week and it had brilliant reception out in remote areas. It was full of dust and sand from going to the beach but even that didn't stop it and a new front plate for $5 and a few seconds work made it look like new again.

Despite my advice to get a Nokia my mum got herself a Samsung, and when that got lost she again ignored my advice and got a Sony Ericsson - and she never could figure out how to use anything other than manual dialling on those two phones, they just weren't user friendly in the slightest! Even me as a Geek found them confusing and convoluted to use, with something as simple as adding a contact being a complete chore.

Finally when she lost that phone (yes my mum looses things, mainly phones, cameras, and keys :D ) she got an entry level Nokia - a lower spec model than even the 6100 with a monochrome screen, but finally she had a phone that was (relatively) user friendly.

And then came the iPhone, and everything changed. Suddenly I found myself using a Smartphone, and although I called and text'ed about the same amount as before (maybe a bit more texting since it was so much easier to type than T9) but 90% of the time I was using the phone for other things like email, music, and games. Sure, I had to charge it every day, but I didn't care. I also knew with a glass screen that a single drop on concrete would be the end of it, so I got a rubber case for it. I couldn't put this thing down, it might as well have been sewed onto my hand, and it's still the same today ;)

Meanwhile Nokia has really struggled in the Smart phone arena - and I don't consider them a viable contender at all. Yes the N95 was a good phone, but only in the sense that it was a traditional phone with smart phone features - with a screen that size and a numeric keyboard it couldn't really compete with the iPhone or Android, and battery life was terrible. The N97 is more or less a disaster.

I'm hoping that Nokia are still making small, simple, rugged easy to use basic feature phones in the ilk of the 6100 - because if they are, that and momentum are all that's keeping the biggest phone maker in the world afloat!

When we picked out a small simple Samsung slider as a birthday present for my girlfriends mum recently (should have got a Nokia, doh!) it was a real wakeup call for me just how far behind the user interface is on some phones after being spoilt by two years of iPhone - the menu based navigation and the complex navigation buttons on the thing is just a nightmare - trying to explain to someone older how to edit their profile to change their text notification sound is almost impossible - and completely impossible to do over the phone when they ring you up for help when they have mysteriously lost their text alert sound! (I still have no idea if it's a bug, an accidental key press or what, but it's happened several times now...)

Even as a Geek, finding my way around the menus on that thing gives me a headache, and what WERE they thinking making using the context menu button and then selecting edit necessary to enter most settings screens ? Far. Too. Complex.

Nokia seemed to be ahead in user interface design in dumb/feature phones, but they really seem to have lost their way in the smart phone age...and I really could not recommend them to anyone anymore.

[The Mullet of G]

Perhaps with MeeGo they will hit back, and it's understandable that new software would take time to get right. But if they can't turn the tables by the end of this year and show us some signs of hope then I think the talk of Nokia falling upon harder times will start to gain some kudos.

There is no doubting that things aren't exactly all rosy at Nokia right now, but I think you Apple guys like to add a bit of spin to the mix. I figure its a lot like the doom mongering that came with Windows Vista, people said Microsoft was pretty much dead with no hope of long term survival and it would be the year of Linux or OS X, where are they now? Windows 7 eclipsed the market share of both in its first weekend of sales alone. Likewise Nokia are still shifting a ridiculous amount of phones, and while they might not suit you folks there are a lot of happy Nokia customers out there, sure there are unhappy ones, but in fairness I don't see the press making a major fuss about disgruntled Nokia customers, I do however hear rumblings of disgruntled iPhone 4 owners though ironically. :p



What you need to remember is Nokia's market share is made up with all the cheap handsets they produce for abroad, if you look at the expensive phones (from say �300+) there are not many happy people and have moved to either Android or iPhone.

If Nokia think this is not a big thing they REALLY need to think again as the once diehard supporters of the company like myself and Ricky/Rita who are now leaving is for a simple reason and that is Nokia has lost its way and are just producing crap after crap.

We all know the N8 spec but the underlying problem will be the fact it still uses a Symbian OS which is just not good enough even in the latest version, why else have Nokia stated after the N8 all NSeries phones will be MeeGo instead.

I can't remember the last time I recommended a Nokia product to someone because the OS is buggy as hell and just not worth the hassle.

You didn't buy an N97 too did you? :)

Symbian has been reaching the end of its lifespan for quite some time, pretty much everyone knew it was going to be replaced by Maemo/MeeGo on high end handsets, I'm pretty sure Nokia themselves even said this long before the N8 or MeeGo ever existed, if not they at least alluded to it in a blatant fashion, so the N Series announcement is hardly a surprise. It still doesn't change the fact that in the first quarter of this year 44.3% of smartphones sold were Symbian OS, while the combined market share of RIM, iPhone OS and Android only make up 44.4%, its clear that Symbian isn't going to be dying anytime soon, and people are still more than happy to use it. Love it or loathe it you have to remember that what you want from a phone isn't necessarily what the majority of people want, the fact we're posting on what the majority would probably consider a geeky phone website, we clearly aren't the average user nor the majority. :)