I don't think many of us are particularly against Nokia or want Nokia to fail. Most of us want healthy competition in the phone industry as it pushes everyone to improve.
The Nokia vs Apple debate started with the announcement of the iPhone in January 2007. Many Europeans would come on AI and list all of the features on Nokia phones and declare the iPhone inferior based on a feature list count. Many of us who defended Apple's choices were saying that Apple will slowly add features as the OS matures. Apple will only add features that can be integrated in an intuitive and easy to use way.
Now as the maturation of the iPhone OS comes, iPhone sales grow, it has proven Apple's choices correct.
Worse than that, many were saying it wouldn't do well at all.
I remember, quite clearly, that before the ver. 2.0 OS, and the App Store, Jobs stating that the iPhone was not a computer, was not a smartphone.
For marketing reasons Apple probably won?t ever officially refer to it as a smartphone, just as they don?t refer to the Mac as a PC, when it clear has been since day regardless of using x86 and now having the ability to run Windows natively. I can see Apple mentioning how they have tackled the smartphone market in this way or that, just as they clearly compete with other PC vendors in the PC market, but to refer to their actual device as a smartphone would be a bad marketing for a device that is suppose to transcend the actual market segment.
For marketing reasons Apple probably won?t ever officially refer to it as a smartphone, just as they don?t refer to the Mac as a PC, when it clear has been since day regardless of using x86 and now having the ability to run Windows natively. I can see Apple mentioning how they have tackled the smartphone market in this way or that, just as they clearly compete with other PC vendors in the PC market, but to refer to their actual device as a smartphone would be a bad marketing for a device that is suppose to transcend the actual market segment.
Maybe.
It's interesting that if you type "smartphone" in the search box in Apple's site, it goes to the iPhone. It says "about 264 results found for 'smartphone', but in the quick read I made of a number of them, the word "smartphone" itself isn't used.
Yeah mileage can vary on the sophistication of OS, UI, and apps of each platform. But I thought that was a broad definition that covered the basic differences.
Yes the Pre SDK has turned out to be exactly like the original iPhone web apps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
I think that is a good general definition, but we can't read it as absolution. I don't think S60 would be considered by many as being a sophisticed OS in comparison to newer mobile OSes even though it often can do more than some of these newer OSes, and the Pre would mostly fail on te 3rd-party app front as the SDK was just publically released with an app store planned for later this year and it still doesn't give its developers "sophisticated" access to the HW so the GPU and other HW are going unused by developers. Yet the N97 and Pre are, without question, smartphones.
Yeah mileage can vary on the sophistication of OS, UI, and apps of each platform. But I thought that was a broad definition that covered the basic differences.
Yes the Pre SDK has turned out to be exactly like the original iPhone web apps.
I hope, for Palm's sake, that they heed their developers who are calling for more ability to get to the hardware. If not, they will have problems competing in programs.
Yeah mileage can vary on the sophistication of OS, UI, and apps of each platform. But I thought that was a broad definition that covered the basic differences.
Yes the Pre SDK has turned out to be exactly like the original iPhone web apps.
In the Palm’s defense, it is an actual development platform with a simulator and you won’t need internet access to run the apps.
In Apple’s defense, the iPhone SDK was a proper SDK at launch, not the crap setup that Palm released. And more importantly, the iPhone can do HTML5’s DB caching, which wasn’t available at the time of launch, without the need for an SDK. This means that sites can offer games and other webcode-based setups easily.
Google is the only site I have under Settings » Safari » Databases that actually utilizes it. I wish that there was a way to tell which site was caching while in Safari.
The benefit of Apple’s setup is that it isn’t proprietary. The problem with Apple’s setup is that you still can’t run apps it in the background, even though Safari actually now loads webpages in the background with the 3GS (I’m not sure if this is a v3.0 or 3GS feature).
I hope, for Palm's sake, that they heed their developers who are calling for more ability to get to the hardware. If not, they will have problems competing in programs.
To me, it seems as though Nokia is being conservative with its phones. The model they use, which is to add everything they can think of into their product, goes against Apple's long held belief of simplicity first, and only add a feature if it can be made to work easily, intuitively, and properly. Nokia also wants to please everyone, while Apple understands that this isn't possible, and is willing to lose some possible customers in order to make its products better for the rest.
This is why, when some people keep telling us that Apple's product doesn't have this feature, or that feature, I get saddened that they just don't understand the point to it all.
Apple's products will never hold up on a pure feature to feature basis. They aren't supposed to.
I'm sure that when you get ypur phone, you will see this as well. The N97 has lots of features, but in the areas in which the N97 and the 3Gs converge, are the N97's features better, the same or worse, in general. Who has done a better job with those features? Thats the real question.
Now, if you're used to doing things the way Nokia does them, then you might still prefer them. That's something that difficult to access.
But when people who have never had a smartphone before will compare the two, which do you this THEY will prefer?
That's the most important question to ask, as most people HAVE never used a smartphone, and as a result, most new customers will be from that crowd.
It's not impossible for Nokia to capture that very important customer base, but they must change the way they look at phones. Can they do that?
Totally agree with your points here. Nokia looks as if it's trying to change the way they look at phones, though I'm not sure their use of the terms "user experience" and "solutions centric" fully capture Apple's secret sauce.
In addition, it's not clear to me what they're trying to do in the US market, where they lag behind. Of course, the US market is not a precondtion to dominating the world.
Let me make one point about N97 and 3GS. Those of you who live in America, probably think the 3GS has a price tag of 200 dollars? Did you know the real price is 700 dollars. In Italy (where handset subsidies are illegal) they pay 700 dollars for both the 3GS and the N97. What the subsidy allows, is for your carrier AT&T in the USA, O2 in the UK etc, to hide a monthly installments plan that they force you to eat.
Imagine if you go to a car dealership to buy a car. It has a sticker price 25,000 dollars. They have financing terms that allow you to pay 20% down, and rest on 3 year contract. So you only pay 5,000 dollars today, and the rest is a monthly payment. The car did not suddenly became a 5,000 dollar car. You still bought a 25,000 dollar car, you only are committed to paying the rest in installments.
So please do not think for one moment the 3GS is a 200 dollar phone. It is not. It is almost identical in price, 700 dollars, as the N97 (coincidence?). And to show how unfair the world is, in the UK you still pay about 200 dollars (a bit more actually) for the iPhone via O2, but on the rival networks, they offer the N97 for free. How twisted is that?
The point you miss to mention: The person buying the N97 for 700 USD will still need a contract with a sufficient allowance for data (if he/she intends to use it). Most carriers do not offer you a single cent discount, if you bring your own phone. So, looking at the lowest comparable tariffs: The iPhone is 299 + 24 * 70 = 1,980 (I use the 32GB model here, as the N97 has 32 GB as well) and the N97 is 700 + 24 * 70 = 2,380. So, in the end, the N97 is still 400 bucks more expensive and your car analogy does not work at all. If you do not make use of the "subsidy", you are throwing money away. The only real benefit with an unlocked phone is, that you can use local SIM cards when traveling to foreign countries. This can eventually make up for the higher price, but as 75%-85% of US citizens do not even hold passports (depending on which statistic you believe in), it is not a severe issue for most of the market (if this would be the case, EVDO would be dead in the water).
For me, the best way for Nokia to change would be to follow the Apple model to some extent. I would always go with what works for the other guy but do it in my own way so it does not appear as though I am copying. If Nokia is smart, they will shell out a ton of money on maybe one or two Apple guys. Tell them they can have all the reindeer meat they can eat, and not to mention Finnish women are pretty hot (it's summer. had to throw that in), give them the keys to the vault. Buy the talent you need to get it done. Apple is a prove UI leader. No one can top them. Nokia can compete technologically so, use the Nokia tech, Apple UI and come up with something that people will shell out money for.
What Nokia really needs to do is figure out what comes next after iPhone, and work toward that. Though it may require doing much of the same stuff that Apple already has done just to lay the foundation for what comes next.
Who care? Don't you get it? There is still enough money for Apple and Nokia. Only someone with a myopic world view would expect Apple or Nokia to get 100% of market share.
Shareholders should care. Small trends can start to snowball, and become vicious cycles, very quickly. We have seen that repeatedly (and not just in the tech sector, although my examples will only mention those). Here are just a few examples: Netscape, Alactel, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, Ericsson, Sony, Siemens, Xerox, Ciena (and just about everyone else in the optical networking sector).
When a long-standing company and a market leader like Nokia goes from $140B in martket cap to $50B, one should be worried.
I quoted this entire post because I found it to be so very interesting. Much more so than quoting numbers.
The one thing we agree on, and disagree on, is what the word "innovation" seems to mean in this context.
Does innovation really mean that every time some "feature" is added that few people use, or can even understand, in some cases, that the manufacturer has innovated?
Or does it mean that a company takes a hard look at those features, decides which ones are the most important for the largest number of customers, and attempts to implement them in a way that makes them much easier, and pleasurable to use, while working on others of lessor importance to most customers in order to get them as "right" as possible, so as to enable them in a more useful manner?
To me, the latter is what "real" innovation is. This is the Apple approach, while the former is the approach that most other companies seem to prefer.
Now, with Apple's success, other companies are attempting to copy Apple's model, at least in the area of copying the iPhone and App Store as much as they can.
If you, and others, keep commenting on all the features some phones have, out of the context of usability, then you are going to lose sight of what really matters, and it isn't the largest number of pixels, or an FM tuner.
I notice that in this post, other posts, and in the rebuttal itself, a small part of which I quoted, you do give credit for the actual fact that Apple has innovated. You also give credit to the fact that Nokia's phones are hard to use, especially when compared to Apples'.
That's part of the debate you admit Nokia is losing.
This is really all that we've been saying.
And by the way, in mentioning, in this thread, that only the 3Gs has really caught on in Japan, are you forgetting that Nokia pulled out of Japan? Or have they changed their minds?
And, I am quoting this whole post because it gets to the heart of things, and I think it deserves to be reread.
melgross, you make a devastatingly eloquent and convincing set of points.
Incidentally, turning to a slightly different set of products, I believe similar circumstances will start the process of another market leader's undoing -- yes, Microsoft.
Google is the only site I have under Settings » Safari » Databases that actually utilizes it. I wish that there was a way to tell which site was caching while in Safari.
Under Safari Databases, my phone has:
talkgadget.google.com
m.gizmodo.com
google.com
forbes.com
m.cnet.com
curbed.com
mail.google.com
macworld.com
Quote:
The benefit of Apple?s setup is that it isn?t proprietary. The problem with Apple?s setup is that you still can?t run apps it in the background, even though Safari actually now loads webpages in the background with the 3GS (I?m not sure if this is a v3.0 or 3GS feature).
I'm sure that's a 3GS feature, likely because of the memory increase.
What exactly does the "converged device market" mean? In the 2009 2Q they simply said "smartphone".
From Nokia's 2009 2Q Interim Report, page 4:
"Of the total industry mobile device volumes, converged mobile device industry volumes in the second quarter 2009 increased to 41.0 million units, based on Nokia?s preliminary estimate, compared with an estimated 37.1 million units in the second quarter 2008, and 36.0 million units in the first quarter 2009. Our own converged mobile device volumes were 16.9 million units in the second quarter 2009, compared with 15.3 million units in the second quarter 2008 and 13.7 million units in the first quarter 2009. Nokia?s share of the converged device market was an estimated 41% in the second quarter 2009, unchanged from 41% in the second quarter 2008 and up from 39% in the first quarter 2009. We shipped 4.6 million Nokia Nseries and 4.7 million Nokia Eseries devices during the second quarter 2009, up from the combined 8.2 million Nseries and Eseries devices we shipped in the first quarter 2009."
This type of paragraph has been in every Nokia report as far back as 2004. After not using the word smartphone in any of its 2008 interim reports, Nokia used smartphone once in reference to the 5800 in the 1Q 2009 report. In the 2Q 2009 report, Nokia used smartphone several times, including references to N97, E75, 6210, and 5800.
Conclusion? For Nokia, smartphone is interchangeable with converged device. At a minimum, it includes all Nseries, Eseries, Expressmusic, and 6210 phones.
"Of the total industry mobile device volumes, converged mobile device industry volumes in the second quarter 2009 increased to 41.0 million units, based on Nokia’s preliminary estimate, compared with an estimated 37.1 million units in the second quarter 2008, and 36.0 million units in the first quarter 2009. Our own converged mobile device volumes were 16.9 million units in the second quarter 2009, compared with 15.3 million units in the second quarter 2008 and 13.7 million units in the first quarter 2009. Nokia’s share of the converged device market was an estimated 41% in the second quarter 2009, unchanged from 41% in the second quarter 2008 and up from 39% in the first quarter 2009. We shipped 4.6 million Nokia Nseries and 4.7 million Nokia Eseries devices during the second quarter 2009, up from the combined 8.2 million Nseries and Eseries devices we shipped in the first quarter 2009."
This type of paragraph has been in every Nokia report as far back as 2004. After not using the word smartphone in any of its 2008 interim reports, Nokia used smartphone once in reference to the 5800 in the 1Q 2009 report. In the 2Q 2009 report, Nokia used smartphone several times, including references to N97, E75, 6210, and 5800.
Conclusion? For Nokia, smartphone is interchangeable with converged device. At a minimum, it includes all Nseries, Eseries, Expressmusic, and 6210 phones.
That confusion on their part could be why there is a discrepancy between their 41% for smartphone share for Q2 2008, and the 45.1% reported by Bloomberg.
Perhaps Bloomberg is using a more focussed description of the category, while Nokia is including feature phones. If they are including feature phones in their numbers, then their share of the smartphone category could be much smaller.
That confusion on their part could be why there is a discrepancy between their 41% for smartphone share for Q2 2008, and the 45.1% reported by Bloomberg.
I assume Bloomberg got their figures from Gartner or other such reliable source.
Quote:
Perhaps Bloomberg is using a more focussed description of the category, while Nokia is including feature phones. If they are including feature phones in their numbers, then their share of the smartphone category could be much smaller.
They haven't included any feature phones in their figures. Please read the report. Nokia doesn't make any E or N series feature phones and most of the XXXX models included are explicitly stated.
I know it's very hard for an American to comprehend how many smartphones Nokia sells but please try.
Explains a lot of what's happening to the market value of these companies, esp. Apple and RIM with 3% of market and yet, 35% of the profit share! Amazing.
I would say what largely blurs the line of these categories are the fact that many of the features that used to be exclusive to smartphone are being moved down to multimedia phones and basic phones.
What still differentiates smartphone's are sophisticated operating systems, sophisticated user interface, and sophisticated 3rd party apps. These are features that will not so easily be adopted by cheaper phones. And three area where the iPhone excels.
I suppose, but really this is just more categorization, using terminology which ultimately is quite meaningless to most people. The trick Apple has become so adept at pulling off is designing products that people didn't know they wanted until they saw one. They did the same thing with the iPod. The iPhone wasn't designed to be the better smartphone, it was designed to be a mobile platform unlike any that had come before it. So what I'm trying to get across here is that the iPhone doesn't lend itself to easy categorization. It's being purchased in the millions by people who don't even understand the concept of a smartphone.
Comments
I don't think many of us are particularly against Nokia or want Nokia to fail. Most of us want healthy competition in the phone industry as it pushes everyone to improve.
The Nokia vs Apple debate started with the announcement of the iPhone in January 2007. Many Europeans would come on AI and list all of the features on Nokia phones and declare the iPhone inferior based on a feature list count. Many of us who defended Apple's choices were saying that Apple will slowly add features as the OS matures. Apple will only add features that can be integrated in an intuitive and easy to use way.
Now as the maturation of the iPhone OS comes, iPhone sales grow, it has proven Apple's choices correct.
Worse than that, many were saying it wouldn't do well at all.
I remember, quite clearly, that before the ver. 2.0 OS, and the App Store, Jobs stating that the iPhone was not a computer, was not a smartphone.
For marketing reasons Apple probably won?t ever officially refer to it as a smartphone, just as they don?t refer to the Mac as a PC, when it clear has been since day regardless of using x86 and now having the ability to run Windows natively. I can see Apple mentioning how they have tackled the smartphone market in this way or that, just as they clearly compete with other PC vendors in the PC market, but to refer to their actual device as a smartphone would be a bad marketing for a device that is suppose to transcend the actual market segment.
For marketing reasons Apple probably won?t ever officially refer to it as a smartphone, just as they don?t refer to the Mac as a PC, when it clear has been since day regardless of using x86 and now having the ability to run Windows natively. I can see Apple mentioning how they have tackled the smartphone market in this way or that, just as they clearly compete with other PC vendors in the PC market, but to refer to their actual device as a smartphone would be a bad marketing for a device that is suppose to transcend the actual market segment.
Maybe.
It's interesting that if you type "smartphone" in the search box in Apple's site, it goes to the iPhone. It says "about 264 results found for 'smartphone', but in the quick read I made of a number of them, the word "smartphone" itself isn't used.
Yes the Pre SDK has turned out to be exactly like the original iPhone web apps.
I think that is a good general definition, but we can't read it as absolution. I don't think S60 would be considered by many as being a sophisticed OS in comparison to newer mobile OSes even though it often can do more than some of these newer OSes, and the Pre would mostly fail on te 3rd-party app front as the SDK was just publically released with an app store planned for later this year and it still doesn't give its developers "sophisticated" access to the HW so the GPU and other HW are going unused by developers. Yet the N97 and Pre are, without question, smartphones.
Yeah mileage can vary on the sophistication of OS, UI, and apps of each platform. But I thought that was a broad definition that covered the basic differences.
Yes the Pre SDK has turned out to be exactly like the original iPhone web apps.
I hope, for Palm's sake, that they heed their developers who are calling for more ability to get to the hardware. If not, they will have problems competing in programs.
http://hunter.pairsite.com/blogs/20090717/
Yeah mileage can vary on the sophistication of OS, UI, and apps of each platform. But I thought that was a broad definition that covered the basic differences.
Yes the Pre SDK has turned out to be exactly like the original iPhone web apps.
In the Palm’s defense, it is an actual development platform with a simulator and you won’t need internet access to run the apps.
In Apple’s defense, the iPhone SDK was a proper SDK at launch, not the crap setup that Palm released. And more importantly, the iPhone can do HTML5’s DB caching, which wasn’t available at the time of launch, without the need for an SDK. This means that sites can offer games and other webcode-based setups easily.
Google is the only site I have under Settings » Safari » Databases that actually utilizes it. I wish that there was a way to tell which site was caching while in Safari.
The benefit of Apple’s setup is that it isn’t proprietary. The problem with Apple’s setup is that you still can’t run apps it in the background, even though Safari actually now loads webpages in the background with the 3GS (I’m not sure if this is a v3.0 or 3GS feature).
I hope, for Palm's sake, that they heed their developers who are calling for more ability to get to the hardware. If not, they will have problems competing in programs.
http://hunter.pairsite.com/blogs/20090717/
I, too, hope this SDK is a stopgate while they build a proper SDK with proper access to the HW.
edit: Have you tried the SDK?
Apple and Nokia go different ways.
To me, it seems as though Nokia is being conservative with its phones. The model they use, which is to add everything they can think of into their product, goes against Apple's long held belief of simplicity first, and only add a feature if it can be made to work easily, intuitively, and properly. Nokia also wants to please everyone, while Apple understands that this isn't possible, and is willing to lose some possible customers in order to make its products better for the rest.
This is why, when some people keep telling us that Apple's product doesn't have this feature, or that feature, I get saddened that they just don't understand the point to it all.
Apple's products will never hold up on a pure feature to feature basis. They aren't supposed to.
I'm sure that when you get ypur phone, you will see this as well. The N97 has lots of features, but in the areas in which the N97 and the 3Gs converge, are the N97's features better, the same or worse, in general. Who has done a better job with those features? Thats the real question.
Now, if you're used to doing things the way Nokia does them, then you might still prefer them. That's something that difficult to access.
But when people who have never had a smartphone before will compare the two, which do you this THEY will prefer?
That's the most important question to ask, as most people HAVE never used a smartphone, and as a result, most new customers will be from that crowd.
It's not impossible for Nokia to capture that very important customer base, but they must change the way they look at phones. Can they do that?
Totally agree with your points here. Nokia looks as if it's trying to change the way they look at phones, though I'm not sure their use of the terms "user experience" and "solutions centric" fully capture Apple's secret sauce.
In addition, it's not clear to me what they're trying to do in the US market, where they lag behind. Of course, the US market is not a precondtion to dominating the world.
Let me make one point about N97 and 3GS. Those of you who live in America, probably think the 3GS has a price tag of 200 dollars? Did you know the real price is 700 dollars. In Italy (where handset subsidies are illegal) they pay 700 dollars for both the 3GS and the N97. What the subsidy allows, is for your carrier AT&T in the USA, O2 in the UK etc, to hide a monthly installments plan that they force you to eat.
Imagine if you go to a car dealership to buy a car. It has a sticker price 25,000 dollars. They have financing terms that allow you to pay 20% down, and rest on 3 year contract. So you only pay 5,000 dollars today, and the rest is a monthly payment. The car did not suddenly became a 5,000 dollar car. You still bought a 25,000 dollar car, you only are committed to paying the rest in installments.
So please do not think for one moment the 3GS is a 200 dollar phone. It is not. It is almost identical in price, 700 dollars, as the N97 (coincidence?). And to show how unfair the world is, in the UK you still pay about 200 dollars (a bit more actually) for the iPhone via O2, but on the rival networks, they offer the N97 for free. How twisted is that?
The point you miss to mention: The person buying the N97 for 700 USD will still need a contract with a sufficient allowance for data (if he/she intends to use it). Most carriers do not offer you a single cent discount, if you bring your own phone. So, looking at the lowest comparable tariffs: The iPhone is 299 + 24 * 70 = 1,980 (I use the 32GB model here, as the N97 has 32 GB as well) and the N97 is 700 + 24 * 70 = 2,380. So, in the end, the N97 is still 400 bucks more expensive and your car analogy does not work at all. If you do not make use of the "subsidy", you are throwing money away. The only real benefit with an unlocked phone is, that you can use local SIM cards when traveling to foreign countries. This can eventually make up for the higher price, but as 75%-85% of US citizens do not even hold passports (depending on which statistic you believe in), it is not a severe issue for most of the market (if this would be the case, EVDO would be dead in the water).
For me, the best way for Nokia to change would be to follow the Apple model to some extent. I would always go with what works for the other guy but do it in my own way so it does not appear as though I am copying. If Nokia is smart, they will shell out a ton of money on maybe one or two Apple guys. Tell them they can have all the reindeer meat they can eat, and not to mention Finnish women are pretty hot (it's summer. had to throw that in), give them the keys to the vault. Buy the talent you need to get it done. Apple is a prove UI leader. No one can top them. Nokia can compete technologically so, use the Nokia tech, Apple UI and come up with something that people will shell out money for.
What Nokia really needs to do is figure out what comes next after iPhone, and work toward that. Though it may require doing much of the same stuff that Apple already has done just to lay the foundation for what comes next.
Who care? Don't you get it? There is still enough money for Apple and Nokia. Only someone with a myopic world view would expect Apple or Nokia to get 100% of market share.
Shareholders should care. Small trends can start to snowball, and become vicious cycles, very quickly. We have seen that repeatedly (and not just in the tech sector, although my examples will only mention those). Here are just a few examples: Netscape, Alactel, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, Ericsson, Sony, Siemens, Xerox, Ciena (and just about everyone else in the optical networking sector).
When a long-standing company and a market leader like Nokia goes from $140B in martket cap to $50B, one should be worried.
I quoted this entire post because I found it to be so very interesting. Much more so than quoting numbers.
The one thing we agree on, and disagree on, is what the word "innovation" seems to mean in this context.
Does innovation really mean that every time some "feature" is added that few people use, or can even understand, in some cases, that the manufacturer has innovated?
Or does it mean that a company takes a hard look at those features, decides which ones are the most important for the largest number of customers, and attempts to implement them in a way that makes them much easier, and pleasurable to use, while working on others of lessor importance to most customers in order to get them as "right" as possible, so as to enable them in a more useful manner?
To me, the latter is what "real" innovation is. This is the Apple approach, while the former is the approach that most other companies seem to prefer.
Now, with Apple's success, other companies are attempting to copy Apple's model, at least in the area of copying the iPhone and App Store as much as they can.
If you, and others, keep commenting on all the features some phones have, out of the context of usability, then you are going to lose sight of what really matters, and it isn't the largest number of pixels, or an FM tuner.
I notice that in this post, other posts, and in the rebuttal itself, a small part of which I quoted, you do give credit for the actual fact that Apple has innovated. You also give credit to the fact that Nokia's phones are hard to use, especially when compared to Apples'.
That's part of the debate you admit Nokia is losing.
This is really all that we've been saying.
And by the way, in mentioning, in this thread, that only the 3Gs has really caught on in Japan, are you forgetting that Nokia pulled out of Japan? Or have they changed their minds?
And, I am quoting this whole post because it gets to the heart of things, and I think it deserves to be reread.
melgross, you make a devastatingly eloquent and convincing set of points.
Incidentally, turning to a slightly different set of products, I believe similar circumstances will start the process of another market leader's undoing -- yes, Microsoft.
Google is the only site I have under Settings » Safari » Databases that actually utilizes it. I wish that there was a way to tell which site was caching while in Safari.
Under Safari Databases, my phone has:
talkgadget.google.com
m.gizmodo.com
google.com
forbes.com
m.cnet.com
curbed.com
mail.google.com
macworld.com
The benefit of Apple?s setup is that it isn?t proprietary. The problem with Apple?s setup is that you still can?t run apps it in the background, even though Safari actually now loads webpages in the background with the 3GS (I?m not sure if this is a v3.0 or 3GS feature).
I'm sure that's a 3GS feature, likely because of the memory increase.
What exactly does the "converged device market" mean? In the 2009 2Q they simply said "smartphone".
From Nokia's 2009 2Q Interim Report, page 4:
"Of the total industry mobile device volumes, converged mobile device industry volumes in the second quarter 2009 increased to 41.0 million units, based on Nokia?s preliminary estimate, compared with an estimated 37.1 million units in the second quarter 2008, and 36.0 million units in the first quarter 2009. Our own converged mobile device volumes were 16.9 million units in the second quarter 2009, compared with 15.3 million units in the second quarter 2008 and 13.7 million units in the first quarter 2009. Nokia?s share of the converged device market was an estimated 41% in the second quarter 2009, unchanged from 41% in the second quarter 2008 and up from 39% in the first quarter 2009. We shipped 4.6 million Nokia Nseries and 4.7 million Nokia Eseries devices during the second quarter 2009, up from the combined 8.2 million Nseries and Eseries devices we shipped in the first quarter 2009."
This type of paragraph has been in every Nokia report as far back as 2004. After not using the word smartphone in any of its 2008 interim reports, Nokia used smartphone once in reference to the 5800 in the 1Q 2009 report. In the 2Q 2009 report, Nokia used smartphone several times, including references to N97, E75, 6210, and 5800.
Conclusion? For Nokia, smartphone is interchangeable with converged device. At a minimum, it includes all Nseries, Eseries, Expressmusic, and 6210 phones.
From Nokia's 2009 2Q Interim Report, page 4:
"Of the total industry mobile device volumes, converged mobile device industry volumes in the second quarter 2009 increased to 41.0 million units, based on Nokia’s preliminary estimate, compared with an estimated 37.1 million units in the second quarter 2008, and 36.0 million units in the first quarter 2009. Our own converged mobile device volumes were 16.9 million units in the second quarter 2009, compared with 15.3 million units in the second quarter 2008 and 13.7 million units in the first quarter 2009. Nokia’s share of the converged device market was an estimated 41% in the second quarter 2009, unchanged from 41% in the second quarter 2008 and up from 39% in the first quarter 2009. We shipped 4.6 million Nokia Nseries and 4.7 million Nokia Eseries devices during the second quarter 2009, up from the combined 8.2 million Nseries and Eseries devices we shipped in the first quarter 2009."
This type of paragraph has been in every Nokia report as far back as 2004. After not using the word smartphone in any of its 2008 interim reports, Nokia used smartphone once in reference to the 5800 in the 1Q 2009 report. In the 2Q 2009 report, Nokia used smartphone several times, including references to N97, E75, 6210, and 5800.
Conclusion? For Nokia, smartphone is interchangeable with converged device. At a minimum, it includes all Nseries, Eseries, Expressmusic, and 6210 phones.
That confusion on their part could be why there is a discrepancy between their 41% for smartphone share for Q2 2008, and the 45.1% reported by Bloomberg.
Perhaps Bloomberg is using a more focussed description of the category, while Nokia is including feature phones. If they are including feature phones in their numbers, then their share of the smartphone category could be much smaller.
That confusion on their part could be why there is a discrepancy between their 41% for smartphone share for Q2 2008, and the 45.1% reported by Bloomberg.
I assume Bloomberg got their figures from Gartner or other such reliable source.
Perhaps Bloomberg is using a more focussed description of the category, while Nokia is including feature phones. If they are including feature phones in their numbers, then their share of the smartphone category could be much smaller.
They haven't included any feature phones in their figures. Please read the report. Nokia doesn't make any E or N series feature phones and most of the XXXX models included are explicitly stated.
I know it's very hard for an American to comprehend how many smartphones Nokia sells but please try.
41% of what?
What is the other 59% made up of, given that companies like RIM and Apple haven't announced their shipments for the comparable quarter yet.
This is interesting?
Nice chart.
Explains a lot of what's happening to the market value of these companies, esp. Apple and RIM with 3% of market and yet, 35% of the profit share! Amazing.
I would say what largely blurs the line of these categories are the fact that many of the features that used to be exclusive to smartphone are being moved down to multimedia phones and basic phones.
What still differentiates smartphone's are sophisticated operating systems, sophisticated user interface, and sophisticated 3rd party apps. These are features that will not so easily be adopted by cheaper phones. And three area where the iPhone excels.
I suppose, but really this is just more categorization, using terminology which ultimately is quite meaningless to most people. The trick Apple has become so adept at pulling off is designing products that people didn't know they wanted until they saw one. They did the same thing with the iPod. The iPhone wasn't designed to be the better smartphone, it was designed to be a mobile platform unlike any that had come before it. So what I'm trying to get across here is that the iPhone doesn't lend itself to easy categorization. It's being purchased in the millions by people who don't even understand the concept of a smartphone.