26th
February 2011
It's been a couple of weeks since Nokia announced that it was
going to partner with Microsoft for its primary smartphone platform,
and the initial shock (which wiped 25% of the share values) has
subsided a little.
There are several unanswered questions - and perhaps some
unquestioned answers - about Nokia's new smartphone strategy, leading
to some apparent gaps in the whole picture.
But there are other gaps - those gaps in technical specification
which will make Nokia's strategy a little harder.. and some worrying
gaps until these new Nokia powered Windows Phone handsets come to
market.
Windows When?
Let's start with the big question first - when can we see a Nokia
WP7 device? At the moment, all we have are some renderings of what
is a very nice hardware design, and nothing more. The lead times
and challenges in designing a completely new class of device are
likely to be significant. So the smart money seems to be that we
might see a Nokia Windows smartphone sometime in 2012.. a long time
to wait while Nokia is struggling in the high-end smartphone market.
Part of the problem is the sheer technological step up to a Windows
Phone 7 class device from what they have at the moment. The minimum
specification for WP7 is significantly beyond anything that Nokia
have done before, especially when it comes to display technology
and processors. Nokia are a generation behind the current WP7 minimum..
and that's just the minimum specification which other
rivals will be easily beating by next year.
As this table shows, even the flagship Nokia E7 and N900 handsets
have significant shortfalls over a basic WP7 handset. So Nokia's
hardware designers are going to have to play catch up before they
can move forwards.
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Series 40
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Nokia E7
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Nokia N900
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WP7 minimum
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WP7
2012?
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Screen
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320 x 240 [1]
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360 x 640
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480 x 848
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480 x 800
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480 x 800
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Touch
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Resistive [2]
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Capacitive
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Resistive
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Capacitive
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Capacitive
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CPU:
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465 MHz ARMv6 [1]
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680 MHz ARMv6
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600 MHz ARMv7
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1GHz ARMv7
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1.5GHz ARMv7
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RAM
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64MB [2]
|
256MB
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256MB
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256MB
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1GB
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WiFi
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Yes [3]
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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GPS
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Yes [1]
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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Camera
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5 mpx [1]
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8 mpx
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5 mpx
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5 mpx
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8 mpx
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FM radio
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Yes [2]
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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[1]
Nokia 6700 Classic [2] Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type [3] Nokia
C3-00
Symbian
Squeezed?
Nokia's intention is to squeeze the existing Symbian
OS out of the range.. eventually. They anticipate making 150 million
more devices.. but bear in mind that they sell 100 million of the
things a year. At a guess, perhaps Nokia is aiming to stop selling
Symbian by about 2014 or so, after which they will concentrate on
the more basic Series 40 platform at the bottom end and Windows
at the top end.
But this strategy is likely to lead to an enormous
gap in Nokia's product range. If we go back to the table, we can
see an aggregate "top specification" for a Series 40 device..
yes, some might have a small and rather crude touchscreen, WiFi
and 3.5G and even GPS, but the gap between Series 40 and Windows
is huge, covering all of the upper midrange market and a lot of
bestselling Nokia devices.
Nokia's previous strategy was to push Symbian down
into handsets where Series 40 was used previously.. but because
Nokia sets teams up to compete, Series 40 ended up with touch support
and GPS added instead. So instead of Series 40 being killed off,
it has actually strengthened its position in Nokia's range.
The distinction between Symbian and Series 40 will
be lost on most consumers.. but basically Symbian is a fully blown
but slightly awkward mobile OS, and Series 40 is much more stripped
down in its capabilities.. a "feature phone" platform
rather than a smartphone.
Can Nokia beef up Series 40 to fill the gap that
will eventually be left by Symbian? Well, perhaps.. but what would
be the point? It seems to us that Symbian will be very hard to get
rid of because it's actually quite a good and flexible OS for mid-range
devices where Windows won't run. Remember that Samsung recently
created its own Bada OS which more-or-less fits into the same slot
in their range.
Pragmatism
vs Paralysis.
Stephen Elop, Nokia's new
CEO has his work cut out, but the controversial decision to
switch to Windows shows pragmatism in the face of Nokia's recent
paralysis.
Nokia's calamitous decision to drop Maemo, as used
in the promising N900,
and start on a completely new project called MeeGo
which delivered exactly nothing at all for Nokia and killed off
the N900's successor and any really significant interest in that
platform. Given this dead-end situation, the Windows choice was
a difficult but practical one for all sorts of reasons. You can't
spend more than a year producing nothing in the high-end smartphone
market and hope to compete.
But pragmatism should apply throughout Nokia's range,
not just at the top end. If nothing else, Symbian accounts for an
enormous amount of volume. Stripping down the Symbian range to a
smaller number of handsets that can bring smartphone features at
a feature phone price is surely a better long term strategy than
ditching this operating system altogether.
However, perhaps if Nokia was being really
pragmatic about sales they'd produce an Android phone as well. All
the current WP7 manufacturers also make Android devices..
and it would do no real harm to Nokia's Windows strategy to have
an alternative product line with real consumer appeal.. would it?
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