Where Next For Nokia??

So we are now officially in 2010 and many of us have taken a look back at the last 10 years and been amazed at what has happened in the mobile phone market.

Many of us especially in the UK think of 3G as the normal now with even 1.8mb/s HSDPA being not as fast as we expect now when in fact 10 years ago when the clocks hit 00:00 in 2000, 3G or HSDPA was just a plan for the future.

Nokia had a very bumpy 2009 with profits dropping by massive amounts, handsets being delayed over and over again, and even some of Nokia’s biggest fans starting to question just what has happened to the once nearly invincible company.

Highlights in 2009 were very few between with the Nokia N900 getting some of the credit back for the company but that was only towards the very end of the year and only a miracle could have got Nokia way from the online beatings it had been given for the N96 and N97 disaster.

The N86 was ‘sort of’ announced but this more or less slipped through the press release with many people not even realising the N86 existed until a day or so after Mobile World Congress and as Rita aka Dotsisx from Symbian Guru said recently ‘N86 8MP has been treated this whole year as the forgotten bastard child of the Nseries family’

Comes With Music has been a disaster signing up very few customers due to over priced handsets or a very limited range on offer, only now improving with the Nokia X6 which could help turn things around.  The problem with Comes With Music is customers just dont get/understand the idea and even if they do it is far too much hassle to go out and use the service.  Those of us with Apple Mac computers are left out in the cold with no access via computer to Nokia Music so we have to download all the tracks OTA which at first sounds great but after say 20 tracks the fun stops and at times you just cannot be bothered to download over a mobile network, especially when you look how easy iTunes is for Apple users.

N-Gage although in theory a great idea was under used, under advertised and as such will come to an end in September 2010 after heavy investment in 2008 and 2009…… and now onto the real killer…. OVI!.

Even from the start OVI has been a nightmare for Nokia (even getting people to say the name right is hard enough).  The whole OVI Rebrand has fallen flat on it’s face with Nokia Maps being changed to OVI Maps, Share On OVI becoming OVI Share and so on.  Then comes the biggest headache for many Nokia fans this year… OVI STORE!.

At launch this video made every Nokia fan cry with laughter and every Nokia employee cry in pain because it was spot on (and every funny).  OVI Store has improved recently as demand has died down but has now had a complete re-launch penciled in for March 2010 when hopefully the problems will be resolved.

So yes, 2009 was a bad year for Nokia but this is 2010, a new year and a new decade for them to put a big stamp on.  Symbian Foundation is really picking up momentum and Nokia have already announced some of their early phones using touch screens this year will have Symbian 3 on them offering a better UI experience and faster more smoother actions.

There will be another Nokia Booklet this year with higher specifications, at least 1 or 2 new Maemo devices and Maemo 6 has already been refered too by many Nokia fans on Twitter and the internet.

As a big Nokia fan I really hope 2010 is the turning point for the company before they go down the road that Sony Ericsson and Motorola have been for the last few years and are trying to hard to get out from.

If I can offer any advise to Nokia for 2010 it would be to listen to your customers.  If we are asking for you a 12 megapixel camera phone for Xenon flash to replace a normal camera it’s because we want a 12 megapixel camera phone with Xenon flash!.  We don’t want another 5 megapixel camera with LED light because ‘it saves space and power’, especially as the Nokia N900 is already a larger than normal device.

Social Media is going to be even bigger in 2010 with Word of Mouth advertising becoming more and more valuable around the world.  If something is poor then everyone will comment on it and let you know just WHAT is wrong with it, use this advise wisely and maybe, just maybe Nokia will have a great 2010 in both devices and services.

If Nokia do not improve things in 2010 Apple, Android and RIM will be right on their tail more than willing to take customers off their hands.

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