Nokia's Present & Future

[zed]

using statcounter (I believe the most accurate usage meter)
mac osX is 7.05% worldwide
mac osX is 14% USA --- 17.93% if iOS is included
mac osX is 1.4% china

The iMacs are going the way of the dodo

check out amazon.com ATM WRT desktops apple is #2,#4 best seller, though that is worse than last time I looked when they occupied the top 3

 

[warmi]

The thing is, the US phone market is not that big compared to others (such as the china market). If Nokia loses in the US but wins everywhere else, Nokia wins.

I am not sure about that ...

China has 4 times as many people but only 1/6th per capita income that of US ( 8 K vs 48 K)

I would suspect the US to be a much better market for higher end devices.

 

[Gubbi]

I would suspect the US to be a much better market for higher end devices.

Especially when you factor in apps and services for a given platform.

Cheers.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I am not sure about that ...

China has 4 times as many people but only 1/6th per capita income that of US ( 8 K vs 48 K)

Does that mean each US citizen buys 6 smartphones?
I don't think so.

 

[french toast]

I'm pretty sure China has already overtaken the US in smartphones...at least that's what I remember reading..

 

[warmi]

Does that mean each US citizen buys 6 smartphones?
I don't think so.

Nope, but it means Americans have lot of disposable income, and thus can buy more expensive phones, upgrade to new models more often and have lot more money to spend on apps etc...

Ironically, for a nominally communist country, China is a lot more polarized in terms of individual incomes - there is a relatively small group of well to do people and vast numbers of folks who survive on a few bucks a day.

On the other hand the so called "poor" in the USA are living pretty darn well ...

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty#_ftn3

 

[tuna]

I am not sure about that ...

China has 4 times as many people but only 1/6th per capita income that of US ( 8 K vs 48 K)

I would suspect the US to be a much better market for higher end devices.

A phone is something even less well of people are willing to invest in. Also, currently Nokia does not even make higher end phones, just look at the screen resolution of the Lumia range.

 

[eastmen]

A phone is something even less well of people are willing to invest in. Also, currently Nokia does not even make higher end phones, just look at the screen resolution of the Lumia range.

Well hell look at apple , they don't even make higher end phones , just look at the size of the screens.

 

[Mize]

It's been shown that smartphones defy income demographics, particularly in China where 3G service is much cheaper than voice service...Then again, anyone who thinks Apple isn't doing well in China hasn't been there recently. iPhones abound...grey market no doubt, but they're huge.

 

[zed]

nov 2011

Apple Inc. (AAPL) said China has become its largest market after the U.S. as the iPhone, iPad and iMac computer maker opened an online store last year and six retail outlets in the past three years in the Asian nation.
China, the world’s most populous country, accounted for 16 percent of Apple’s fourth-quarter sales, or about $4.5 billion, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said on a conference call yesterday. Revenue in the nation was almost four times the year- earlier level, he said.

 

[wco81]

Aspirational brands do well there supposedly.

But even if a fraction of their population has a Western standard of living, that could be a higher number of people than most Western nations other than the US.

 

[silent_guy]

You realize that Apple is a comeback brand, right?

So was nintendo...Marvel...Volkswagen...Lego...etc.

So much for that theory.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/06/02/does-the-phone-market-forgive-failure/

... any company in the mobile phone market that ended up losing money has never recovered its standing in terms of share or profit (i.e. AMP index value has never recovered).

Marvel, VW, Lego were always playing in mature markets where marketing is more important than technology. The phone market is moving too quick to recover from failure. Nintendo is a more interesting case.

 

[tuna]

Well hell look at apple , they don't even make higher end phones , just look at the size of the screens.

Apart from the size of the screen and the weight, everything is pretty highend on the 4S. But everything on the Lumia line is pretty low end.

 

[eastmen]

Apart from the size of the screen and the weight, everything is pretty highend on the 4S. But everything on the Lumia line is pretty low end.

and yet the programs and OS run smoother than the highest end andriod phone .



So we have apple phones with the smallest screens

We have andriods with the least optimised software that runs worse than the other OS's on weaker hardware.

Then we have windows 7.5 which has screen sizes rivaling the best of andriod and we have an OS and programs that run as smooth as IOS .

But only the windows phones are low end
Got it.

 

[Florin]

and yet the programs and OS run smoother than the highest end andriod phone .



So we have apple phones with the smallest screens

We have andriods with the least optimised software that runs worse than the other OS's on weaker hardware.

Then we have windows 7.5 which has screen sizes rivaling the best of andriod and we have an OS and programs that run as smooth as IOS .

But only the windows phones are low end
Got it.

Finally. Phew.

Yes, the iPhone has a higher resolution screen than any Windows phone, and a more powerful GPU than most mobile devices. Android offers by far the most advanced hardware overall (which seems appropriate, considering that it is the only multitasking resolution-independent OS out of these 3). And indeed, high end WP7.5 hardware does not exist.

But trying to compete in 2012 with specs that are 3 years outdated was always the master plan. Keep the faith, the next OS that will change everything will be right along, as usual.

 

[function]

Got to say, I'll take the lower specs and faster, smoother user experience over higher specs every single time.

I'm a Windows Phone 7 user, and it's things like the god awful camera*, lack of multi-tasking, awful battery life (once you put a sim card in, even in flight mode), and general shittyness of the the Zune software that bother me. The specs don't bother me at all.

Actual phone performance is great.

*Not talking about megapixels, talking about the broken colour, wash out, black crush, inability to take pictures unless it's really bright, and useless video camera mode indoors. And uneven brightness across the image. And no zoom while filming. And high image noise in every mode. My £80, 80MB Nokia Symbian 2MP camera is better at everything, in every situation.

 

[french toast]

Yea I think in the end the fact wp was optimized on mid range hardware for its time and still manages to be the slickest experience out there will stand the platform in good stead.

The only issue I see that is already going to piss me off is the lack of proper multitasking....with an os as slick and resource friendly as that you would imagine multitasking would be a great experience...yet they leave it out??...wp7 gets terrible batterylife as it is...so what's the advantage??

Besides although I think the features implemented into jelly bean are more of an inefficient plaster to the problem of android lag and 'smoothness'...(Needing powerfull hardware rather than simple ui priority)
...I do think it will finally make that argument a dead one when it arrives...and as android carries the post powerfull hardware by default there is plenty of resource to go around.

My only gripe is what are those new optimizstions going to do to battery life?.

 

[Mize]

To win my interest WP needs to open up with things like file system access, USB disk mode, an openvpn client, ssh client, vnc client, true tethering that doesn't use the carrier's tethering APN (I use very little data on the rare occasion when I tether and shouldn't have to fork out for a second data plan).

Toss in either two working day battery life or a replaceable battery and an off contact SIM unlocked version and I'm listening.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

and yet the programs and OS run smoother than the highest end andriod phone .



So we have apple phones with the smallest screens

We have andriods with the least optimised software that runs worse than the other OS's on weaker hardware.

Then we have windows 7.5 which has screen sizes rivaling the best of andriod and we have an OS and programs that run as smooth as IOS .

But only the windows phones are low end
Got it.

Why the huge focus on the screen?

The most expensive WP7.5 devices use old S2 SoCs which are more than 2 years old.
The iphones only have a ~yearly refresh so they tend to become more out-of-date than the current androids when they reach the end of their lifetime, and even then the 4S is using a dual-core A5 with less than a year.
Top-end Androids are using months-old quad-core SoCs.

The only Androids using a 1.4GHz S2 SoC are mid-end at most. The most expensive I can think of is the Xperia Arc S and it's a mid-range model by now because it was launched a year ago.

Furthermore, screen size isn't everything. The Alcatel 995 has a 4" screen and it's certainly not a high-end device.

In fact, I'd say that a much more determining factor is screen resolution and pixel density. The iphones stand at 960*640 and top-end Androids have 720p screens.
WP7.5 models all have a measly 800*480 resolution, be it with a 3.7" or 4.7" screen. Resolution for WP7 models has stopped in time since 2010, when the O.S. first launched.



And it isn't hard to get a mid-end dual-core Android (U8500, for example) running at the same speed as a WP7 device. Just find an app that limits the number of running apps to one, limit the homescreens to one, turn off most on-line notifications and disable any wallpapers (dynamic or not)

Sure, it'll be as fast as a WP7, but then it'll also be as boring as a WP7 too.
There's no "magic code" running in WP7, it won't do that much more than Android with the same hardware.

 

[function]

The only issue I see that is already going to piss me off is the lack of proper multitasking....with an os as slick and resource friendly as that you would imagine multitasking would be a great experience...yet they leave it out??...wp7 gets terrible batterylife as it is...so what's the advantage??

I like the way WP7 tombstones stuff - a well written app will behave like a windows program that you alt+tab back into. And if the phone were to keep the last app in any spare memory that wasn't currently being used the app could recover into that state very quickly.

Tombstoning is fine for most apps, it's just there's no way to switch rapidly between apps you've been working in. Back or Home, that's your lot. Of course, multitasking would be good for something like a media player. I don't like Zune on WP7 because it has no equaliser and my headphones - which sound great on my £80 Symbian with just a little tweaking - just sound like ass on WP7 and there's nothing I can do about it.

Battery life on my phone is weird. 8 days "standby" with no sim card in, and a full charge will let you game for 2 or 3 hours. Put in a sim card and even with flight mode on standby drops to less than 4 days. Enable 3G and wifi and actually use the phone for stuff and you're looking at charging it every 1 or 2 days.
My trusty Nokia Symbian cheapo device can give me a week of standby with the same sim in (and not in any kind of flight/offline mode) despite having a much smaller battery.

To win my interest WP needs to open up with things like file system access, USB disk mode, an openvpn client, ssh client, vnc client, true tethering that doesn't use the carrier's tethering APN (I use very little data on the rare occasion when I tether and shouldn't have to fork out for a second data plan).

Toss in either two working day battery life or a replaceable battery and an off contact SIM unlocked version and I'm listening.

My phone is an unlocked, off contract device and I think I can get a larger battery (probably some dodgy third party thing). But that's where the good news ends.

Oh god, I've just remembered another huge gripe: one volume control: can't set ringer/alarm and music/game/video volume independently. Don't want to annoy everyone on the train with your gaming, or deafen yourself listening to music? Remember to set the volume back to a level where you can hear the ringer in your pocket in a busy place then, because otherwise you're stuffed.

Thanks for all those missed calls, WP7.

So, err, why did Nokia go WP7 exclusive again?