A study in contrast: Apple and Nokia

The numbers do justice to the sentiment towards both these companies at this time. Apple is clearly shinning bright and is the toast of the bourses.

Ref: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124821056118269783.html; http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/07/21results.html; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124820913514969595.html; http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10002677/can-anyone-out-app-apple/

Even the staunchest critic would not count out Nokia but it surely seems that Nokia has lost its way in the Smartphone race and needs to retrospect its strategies and approach to user experience. N 97, which was being touted as the most advanced multimedia computer has failed to impress and unless, one is die hard Symbian S60 fan, there is very little reason one would opt for the N 97. With no other significant touch screens from Nokia at the moment, there is nothing that customers and investors are looking forward to from Nokia.

http://gizmodo.com/5308440/nokia-n97-review-nokia-is-doomed

The rumour mills are running abuzz with the theory that Nokia would do well to acquire Palm because palm offers Nokia all that it really needs desperately at this point of time. http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2007/03/nokia_possibly_interested_in_palm.html

Even LG, which doesnot feature as a serious contender in the smartphone business seems to be getting its acts right in that market. http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/22/lg-nokia-sony-markets-equity-technology.html?partner=msn

Nokia seems to be walking the path of Motorola 3 years back. http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/17/nokia-apple-iphone-markets-equity-mobile.html?feed=rss_technology

It’s been a heck of a ride for Apple investors. The stock, which has nearly doubled so far this year and over the past five years the stock has gained an average of 56% a year, an extraordinary achievement. It cannot keep its supply commitments for iPhone. It has already sold 7 times the number of iPhones this year as it did last year. In a extremely competitive smartphone market, Apple is using all its legs to score above the competition: Its Device, the software/UI/Browser and the Applications! Interesting to see how Apple would get the most of this now…

Profiling the slide at Nokia (Part II)

Nokia’s Age of Denial

While touch-screens had always been around, it was the iPhone in June, 2007 that had caught everyone’s imagination with its form, function, features and applications. Till then, Nokia’s N and E Series devices were the ultimate in technology. In Q2,2007, Nokia launched the iconic N 95, a do-it-all smart-phone that captured the imagination of the world. Nokia missed the trend, as it was basking in the glory of N 95! Nokia regarded the Haptile feed as a fad which would mellow down. That was not to be and Nokia realized it the harder way.

August 2008: Nokia launched an offensive against the iPhone 3G by announcing the successor to N 95, the N 96! By then, Nokia had taken note of iPhone’s initial success in US. However iPhone without operator subsidies outside the American shores was a doubtful starter (as proven in the case of India, where the iPhone could not live up to its hype because the carriers (Airtel and Vodafone) did not subsidize it). Positioning the N 96, which was only a few additions to N-95 against iPhone 3G was only a subterfuge. Nokia was trying to play the game on its own terms where as iPhone appeal to the consumers was becoming painfully evident.

July 2009: This was the first time that Nokia played Apple on a level game. The N 97 which was Nokia’s haptile flagship device fared badly against the Palm Pre and the iPhone 3GS. Nokia’s smartphone portfolio was getting depleted and except the E 71 and its other versions, there was a serious lack of a smartphone from the Nokia stable! The fight between N 97 and iPhone was already dubbed as the fight between device and software. Apple with its sexy and neat looks, brilliant browser and UI and Apps store turned the game on the N97. Even Palm Pre with its WebOS was cooler than the N97!

What lies ahead

Nokia will now have to re-think its smartphone strategy in order to stay in the game.
Product design: Most of the Nokia phones look and feel like some other Nokia phone. E71 was a success, they augmented it to E 63, E 72.

A new OS that would make UI and browsing experience pleasurable. There is a space to learn from Apple, Android and even the Palm!

Need to look at open sourcing solutions. While they had the first Apps market (Forum Nokia), they lost the plot mid way and allowed Apple to get away with the Apps Market. Failure to differentiate on Apps and Services was a big mistake on hindsight.

Need to be more collaborative rather than closed in its approach. Nokia’s stiff approach to working with the other partners in the eco-system has cost then dear in the Developed markets.
Mobile Internet may well be the next in devices. Enabling a superior browsing experience is key to greater user acceptability. That is again something that Apple and Palm have perfected.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10545980/1/tech-rumor-of-the-day-nokia- needs-palm.html

Profiling the slide at Nokia (Part I)

Nokia’s slide in the smartphone segment has been well documented and the latest results from Nokia do not inspire confidence about a quick revival. Nokia’s slide draws a sharp contrast from Apple and its Apps store. Here’s profiling Nokia’s smartphone story.

Nokia’s Decline
Nokia announced a 66 percent yearly drop in Q2 profit while lowering its 2009 market share target for its cellphones. Originally, Nokia had expected market share to rise in 2009, presumably based on a successful launch of the N97 flagship device. However, outside of a core group of S60 diehards, the N97 has been universally panned in both reviews and user forums alike. And with nothing but rumors of an Atom-based Nokia Netbook on the immediate horizon.

Overall YOY sales for Nokia have fallen by 25% to 9.9 billion Euros in Q2. This is 7% higher than Q1, 2009.YOY Nokia shipped 103.2 million devices during Q2, 15% less than an year earlier, but 11% more than Q1,2009. The average selling price was also down from 74 Euros Q2 last year to 62 Euros currently. In Q1 2009, Nokia had recorded less than 100 million shipments for the first time in 2 years. Q2 2009 was slightly better in terms of volumes but the ASPs are southward bound still.

Inspite of aggressive job cuts and other measures such as moving out of non core activities, Nokia is now cutting down its profitability and market share outlook. It is now predicting its mobile phone operating profit margin will match the first half at 11.3% (less than the analysts prediction of 17.4%) and its market share will stay the same as last year (compared to original forecasts of a rise).The stock took a 15% plunge after the results were announced last week.

Analysis
The significant volumes from the lower end have helped maintain the market shares although it is pulling the ASPs down. However it is the smart-phone market where Nokia is taking a big hit in terms of both volumes and numbers. Thus, Nokia is finding harder to stay profitable because of increasing competition in the high end phone segment from the likes of Apple’s iPhone, Palm Pre, Toshiba’s TG01 against Nokia’s N 97 and 5800, which are key support to its margins. Nokia is suffering from low operating margins because it does not have really competitive products at the high end of the portfolio.

Analysts are dubbing this period as Nokia’s Motorola Moment. http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/17/nokia-apple-iphone-markets-equity-mobile.html?feed=rss_technology.

Once a giant of the handset industry, Motorola got stuck with its Razr handset model longer than it should have done, failing to catch on to other innovations that were taking place in handset making, before losing market share in China to Nokia and in the US to Apple.
Nokia seems to now be falling in the same trap. It was late to realizing the popularity of clam shell phones, late to touch screen and now late to the application store as pioneered by Apple’s iPhone, as well as high quality web browsing. The fact that remains is that Nokia has not been innovating and has only been a fast follower.

Services Company
2 years back, when Nokia had suggested a move into services based businesses, the Wall street had welcomed the efforts by a stock price spike. That was the right thing to do. However, Nokia has taken long to do what it set out to do. And its efforts have been largely diffused. Instead of getting one thing right, Nokia tried many and more different things. It launched into Nokia Music Service and Comes with Music, N-Gage Gaming and Ovi Services, Ovi Share (networking platform) and the latest being Symbian horizon (an apps store). Was Nokia doing too many things at the same time? With Nokia’s kind of ability, it could probably carry the gambit as well. The problem perhaps was Nokia trying a plethora of business models, without really doing anything really meaningful. It was a follower and not the original in most of these services. In effect, it was trying to compete, by its sheer size and presence, and not basis its technology leadership.

In many cases, the platforms existed at Nokia, long before competition had stepped in. N-Series phones were regarded as the ultimate edge in technology for a long time. Yet Nokia never regarded applications and software as a differentiating element unless Apple came along with the Apps Store. It was Apple who pioneered the iTunes and Nokia has been playing catch up with its Music store and Comes with Music.

The problem is complicated with Symbain OS. While Symbian is the most robust mobile OS and leads the smart-phone OS market share at 40%, Nokia probably needs to look at a second option to compete with the likes of Web OS (Palm), Android and Apple OS.

Will N 97 do it for Nokia? (gain Tech leadership)

The 3rd week of June 2009 is momentous in terms of the ground breaking new launches that we would have redefining the smartphone space. Palm is alll set for a return with its highly touted Pre challenging the iPhone. There are guesses and second guesses on whether Pre would be the iPhone killer. iPhone gets the 3.0 makeover which essentially puts it in par on many other departments as far as smartphone capability is concerned. However, iPhone will all be about the Apps that they can bring to the table. Nokia N 97 on the other hand is Nokia's flagship salvo to claim its own technology leadership space in the smartphone category. In as much as it will be against the iPhone, the battle between N 97 and iPhone will be one between Device and Markets. This article com compares the N 97 against the formidable iPhone on various departments.

N 97 versus iPhone
The fight between web-based and mobile-based players has officially started this week. On Monday, Apple announced its latest phone, the iPhone 3G S, which will go on sale next week. And on Saturday, Palm started selling the much-hyped Pre.
This comparison seems like one of hardware vs. applications. If this is a smartphone device market, the iPhone is four year late. If this is an app awareness market, Nokia is one year late. Analysts world over are watching these launches as a toss up between Device driven smartphone market or Apps driven smartphone market.
The Nokia N97 seems to have better hardware, where the iPhone 3G S and its App Store are second to none. The latest iPhone marketing campaign was smart enough to pinpoint the main competitive advantage into their next wave of customers: "there is an app for that."
The average iPhone user seems to behave either as a teen or a teen at heart, and loves having fun with useless and exciting apps thrown away as rapidly as they are downloaded, like a Facebook app. More than 1 billion downloads later, less that 5 percent of those who downloaded an iPhone application are actively using it after 21 days and only 10% of apps retain the audience attention, according to a PinchMedia survey. Nokia's target market demographics may be different, more for professionals and professional use.
The other differentiator for Apple is the "user experience": Understanding it, being in control of it and finding joy in handling it. Something that Apple does perfectly, and Nokia's Symbian-Interface does not do as well. Apple's forte is their vast experience with user industry-leading GUIs.
Neither T-Mobile and AT&T, the two US operators that could have subsidized the Nokia N97, has picked it up (yet?). As a consequence, at more than $600 Amazon price, the N97 is unlikely to be a threat to the latest iPhone in the US
Each of these devices can be bought for far less than the Nokia N97. The 16GB iPhone 3G S will sell for $199. And the 32GB model, which has the same amount of built-in memory as the N97, will cost $299 when the phones go on sale next week. Apple has also cut the price of its 8GB iPhone 3G, introduced last year, to only $99. The Pre, which also has a slide-out QWERTY keypad and a touch screen like the N97, is $199 with a $100 mail-in rebate.But there is a catch; these low-priced smartphones come with strings. Consumers must sign a two-year contract to get the discounted prices. And in the case of the iPhone and the Palm these phones are exclusive to one carrier. Subscribers are also charged an early cancellation fee if they terminate their contract before it ends.Even with early termination fees, the iPhone and Pre are still less expensive than the N97. For example, a new AT&T subscriber buying the 32GB iPhone 3G S will pay $300 for the device. If this subscriber cancels his service before the two-year contract ends, he will pay at most $175. Adding the early termination fee to the cost of the phone, the iPhone subscriber will still only pay $475 for the device. This is about $225 less than what he'd pay for the Nokia N97.
Just look at Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1, which went on sale last year in the U.S. with a price tag of $800. The phone has largely been a flop in the U.S.
Nokia must realize that it can't really compete in the U.S. smartphone market without a carrier subsidy. And it's difficult to understand why the company would not be able to strike deals with U.S. carriers. After all, it is the largest cell phone maker in the world.Perhaps Nokia doesn't think the U.S. market is worth the trouble. Even though the U.S. offers the biggest growth opportunity in smartphones, which also happens to be fastest growing segment of the mobile market, analysts say that Nokia could still maintain a market share position in the 30 percent to 40 percent range by selling devices throughout the world. But the U.S. market represents an untapped opportunity that could prove very lucrative for Nokia. And the longer it takes Nokia to bring an affordable hit phone to the U.S., the harder it will be for the company to get its fair share of the pie.

Hottest Gadgets: The T3 Hot Gadgets countdown

Voila! Palm was dead long time back... and now its back and How! It tops the 100 hottest gadgets on this planet list and the Palm Pre assumes the "iPhone Killer" title beating Nokia N 97 which comes third in the list (the next best Nokia is at 24 and is the Nokia 5800). Surprisingly Apple DOESNOT feature in the top ten (Can you believe it?). The first Apple is the iPod Touch at 12 and iPhone trails at 14. Sony is the comeback kid this time, with its age old Walkman X Series taking the cake at No 2, PRS 700BC Sony Reader at 6 and theP Series VIAO at 10! Bravia and others also make the ranks.
Read the full list here: http://hot100.t3.com/category/top-10/

Return of the Prodigy:Palm (featuring Pre and WebOS)

Palm pioneeered the PDA and the smartphone scene way before RIMs and Apples of the world were in the scene. However, over the years Palm lost its way and is almost out of contention. Almost! The recently announced web OS and Pre have been appreciated and its time, we shall see whether Palm has any fight left in it or not!

For a start, Palm Pre makes a point. It has the works and it works pretty smartly!. It starts with a 3.1 inch 320*480 res screen with a built in accelerometer and a QWERTY keyboard. Inside is a 8GB storage and a 3 MP camera with a LED flash. It has a neat multitouch screen and it supports WiFi.

However, it is the UI based on the new WebOS that Palm introduces with the Pre which seems to be the "meat" of things. WebOS is based on the webkit which uses the Synergy data integration combining data from outlook, Google and Facebook to provide a universal address book and calendar. It also auto updates these sites for changes made in the device address book. The new App store that Palm is making would provide other applications. From the first look Webkit outclasses competition in terms of smoothness, speed, application, switching and menu views.

Palm from the very introduction of the WebOS and the device seem to have the Apple iPhone i its sights! We will wait to see how this one shapes up when it is shipped somewhere around the first half of this year.

Go Palm!