It’s a snowball. That’s what you need. You need a snowball of information and opinion, gently gathering pace. Then you need a bit of timely good luck. And before you know it, you’ve got the high ground and everyone around you is left staring as you race away into the distance.
Is Nokia gathering a head of steam?
Quite possibly.
But the team there appear to be working hard to avoid upsetting anyone. They wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
That’s not to say that, when you talk to them individually, they haven’t got assertive and robust opinions (many of them aimed at my posts last week). The problem is the robust and direct opinions — underpinned by factual evidence — are dismissed when the cameras are switched on, in favour of a wane, limpwristed and dull set of talking points.
Only today, speaking to a Nokia chap on camera, I prompted him with the question, ‘And how many active users have you got?’
The chap’s eyes lit up with excitement before he remembered the party line.
‘I can’t answer that,’ he said.
‘Er,’ I said, ‘It’s on the big screen when I came in the door there?’
‘Yes, we don’t talk about that though,’ he responded as his PR minder nodded sagely.
Right.
I was only trying to help by asking a question that would enable the company to puff it’s chest.
The chap, by the way, was yet another example of an eminently capable Nokia executive, tied to the corporate say-nothing-do-nothing-dont-upset-the-apple-cart line.
Contrast that to the widely reported remarks this week from Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki. As Chris from CNET reports:
In a delightfully expressive commentary on the wisdom of using Android, Nokia’s outgoing chief smartphone person, Anssi Vanjoki, declared that those who use Android are, philosophically speaking, “peeing in their pants” like Finnish boys do to keep warm.
There seemed to be no explanation why it was only boys who perform this peculiarly Finnish ritual. However, he did offer that cell phone manufacturers who use Android are only giving themselves temporary relief, being somewhat blind to the stinging possibility that Android-use will not bring them long-term profits.
What’s brilliant here is that Anssi speaks the truth. Or a version of the truth, depending on your perspective. You can’t argue with the fact that Symbian is reliable. Or that it’s proven, it’s written by serious people with serious beards.
Anssi’s comments were received by a wall of silence in the West. Frankly, the chap has a point. Further, he’s also speaking from experience, given the company still ships a million handsets a day.
And how did TechCrunch, bastion of the double-As (Apple and Android) react? By publishing this:
And they included a rather weird looking mashup video (which includes some of the footage I shot of Anssi back at Mobile World Congress this year).
Is this the best the Android community can do in response to a rather direct, cutting remark from Nokia? Brilliant.
More please Nokia.
Let your team off the leash. Push the snowball. Start talking about all the good news — and start the offensive playing.
It’s been happening, slowly. But we need to see the CEO and every VP getting into the mix. The market will pick up on the energy.
And can’t we have the stuff posted front-and-centre on Nokia.com? 😉
That’s a yellow snowball, presumably?
no, because Symbian and MeeGo people are not peeing in their pants, right?
I really don’t get this. Just exactly *why* does Android mean long-term loss of profit?
How is a (more or less) open-source OS, that lets handset manufacturers to cool icing-on-the-cake things, bad for profits? How is giving people what they want bad for profits?
Ewan, you wrote last week about MNO’s staying out of the value-add not-a-bitpipe game. If a vendor ships a lovely Android device (e.g. Desire HD, Galaxy S) so fast they can’t keep up with demand, how is this bad for long-term profits? After shipping the device, should the vendor be seeking to hold on to a relationship with the customer? a la still-born Nokia attempts to buy up billions in service providers, try to charge for everything, then end up giving it away once Google launches a free competing service?
Surely it’s Nokia with this strategy that has long-term profitability issues.
Or do one set of rules apply to MNO’s and another to handset vendors?
I was wondering that. But maybe because if you decide you like Nokia’s version of a Smartphone (Ovi Store, maps etc) when it’s time to upgrade you’re going to buy another Nokia.
If your first Android phone was a G1, say, and it’s time to upgrade you’re not necessarily going to stay with HTC but might be tempted by a different brand in the knowledge that most of the functionality will be familiar and third party apps identical.
Your need sugar in your tea…. Anssi did not say Android users pee in their pants, he said Sony Ericsson and the likes pee in their pants and I tend to agreen with him.
Roger!
> Just exactly *why* does Android mean long-term loss of profit?
Why? Differentiation, that’s why. They can’t differentiate from each other on the basis of the OS, and because Google calls the shots with regard to development of Android. So they’re all relegated to being Google’s bitch/slave, AND not being able to make their products better than other Android-choosing manufacturers, other than hardware. It’s like a bunch of rats in a cage quite frankly. Or, like Finnish boys being in their pants, getting momentary warmth from the current Android buzz, and then rapidly freezing as reality sets in.
Meanwhile Nokia indisputably leads on the hardware front (it’s almost always better in terms of features and robustness than anything else on the market – and please no one regale us with tales of your broken Nokia – they’re the exception not the rule) AND has Symbian (primarily, although also MeeGo to a lesser extent) to differentiate with. And it’s easy to differentiate with Symbian because it’s technically the most superb mobile OS ever seen by some way (yep, I’m standing by that hyperbole) and now has the user experience on a par with the best competition (and which many people actually prefer to the competition).
One day the game will be up for Android, you wait and see….meanwhile Symbian will trundle on to ever greater heights unless Nokia do something immensely stupid and switch platforms, which is currently very unlikely.
> Or, like Finnish boys being in their pants
Being in their pants? Where’s the edit button!? I meant peeing in their pants of course…
*splutter* you are joking, right?
If you think Android means no opportunity to differentiate then that’s all your cred shot in the first sentence Alex. Have you *seen* HTC’s Sense vs. SEM’s X10 Xperia nonsense? You cannot be on the same planet if you think those aren’t very, very different experiences.
I’ve seen eye-wateringly cool things done with Android, that make Symbian look like the decade-old interface that it is.
The X6. Defend that. Go on, I DARE you to. Give one to any normal human being and ask them to add a WiFi connection. Make a coffee. Mow the lawns. Then come back and sweep up the bits of X6 all over the floor where it was dashed in rage.
Nice hardware, granted. Sometimes. But the HTC Legend and Samsung Galaxy S are also damn near art as well. And the X6 is bloody shoddy, in both design and execution. It’s not alone, and Nokia aren’t perfect. I was the world’s biggest E71 fan, still am, but sitting on your laurels just makes your bum hurt.
> that’s all your cred shot in the first sentence Alex
My cred was shot years ago mate – I’m way past that stage 😉
Sure there’s UI differentiation but there’s no fundamental differentiation in the sense of doing whatever they like that say Nokia can with Symbian if they want. Google still calls the fundamental shots. Android is not truly open.
> Symbian look like the decade-old interface that it is.
3rd ed yes. S^3 is on a par with Android and in advance of iOS, easily.
> The X6. Defend that. Go on, I DARE you to
No, I can’t and I won’t 🙂 My girlfriend has some trouble with it to say the least! But it’s not an S3 handset – let’s be fair and give them a chance eh before we get the knives out?
> But the HTC Legend and Samsung Galaxy S are also damn near art as well.
No they’re not. That I’m afraid marks you out as a fanboy straight away. As does the general vehemence and indignation of your response, incidentally 🙂
> And the X6 is bloody shoddy, in both design and execution
Why are you picking on the X6 specifically?
> It’s not alone, and Nokia aren’t perfect.
Agreed on both counts.
Well that’s all great, but you’ve said nothing to really contradict Anssi’s point – that you can’t differentiate enough with Android to really make the difference. Yes, you can implement a crap UI and a good UI on top of it as you suggest. So what? Going on about Symbian’s out-of-date UI (which everyone agrees with by the way regarding S60 3rd ed) is not answering Anssi’s point. He’s still right IMHO.
Yes of course some money will be made off tweaking Android UI and dumping phones on the market. What Anssi’s saying is that like peeing in one’s pants, that warmth will leave you very soon. It means that apart from confusing consumers with a bunch of different UI’s all on top of the base Android OS, Android manufacturers can’t really compete much on the basis of OS.
The key point is Nokia can differentiate (i.e. in attempted superiority) with Android manufacturers (not to mention iPhone, RIM, WinPho 7) WAY more than Android manufacturers can differentiate from each other and all the rest. Anssi’s argument is that this is an important, if not critical, business factor going forward. Nokia and Symbian already lead in hardware and market share, and now also have the differentiation (i.e. competitiveness) factor significantly in their favour too.
Furthermore, Android is permanently and fundamentally hamstrung by it’s architecture running in a VM. There’s a reason Android devices boast things like 1GHz processors, and it’s not a good one. It’s because you’d get a crap, laggy user experience otherwise. It is also still slowly adding in features that Symbian perfected years ago (whether or not it had a slightly clunky UI on top for a while).
What’s more, the real growth in the smartphone market is down further and further into the low end – into the top of the featurephone market. Who wins here? Nokia/Symbian because they will continually offer more power at a cheaper price than Android as cheaper devices get more powerful at a certain price point, Android can only ever trail Symbian by some way because of it’s weaker and less efficient architecture (not to mention poorer battery life as a result too). Then you have the fact that much phone/smartphone growth is into emerging markets where Nokia is already hugely popular (and noticeably, it’s featurephones – i.e. S40 – have been made to visually look and function like Symbian for some time now, offering users a familiar upgrade path).
Further, Android store is widely known to be restricted, and broken. Ovi Store offers a much larger reach both geographically and in numbers of potential users. So again, the outlook is better with Nokia/Symbian.
Symbian^3 now offers a user experience that by most non-biased accounts lays to rest all the old clunkiness.
Too many geeks and developers believed the anti-Nokia/Symbian, and pro-Android hype, and it’s going to get messy as Android fails to deliver vs an increasingly strong and powerful Nokia/Symbian. I wouldn’t rate Android’s chances long term.
Wow – and you though *I* sounded like a fanboy 😉
Android store ‘broken’? How? Search > find > install. That’s not broken.
I guess if you call what HTC and Samsung have done in the last year ‘tweaking Android UI and dumping on the market’ then we are at an impasse. Android sales have grown like no other OS in history, month on month. I guess all those tens of millions of dumb consumers turning from Nokia, BB, iPhone and others must have forgotten to ask you first 😉
Maybe they are all geeks/nerds. Maybe Android is only owned by geeks/nerds, and the market captured was previously running Linux on hacked Moto RAZRs to control their botnet empires.
There’s a reason Nokia’s stock is in the toilet, why the CEO was sacked, why their arguably most visionary exec walked. Having a particular OS isn’t going to stop the rise of the droid.
Is it game over for Nokia in the short term then Mike?
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