Outsmarting rivals in ‘smartphone’ wars Cheche Moral Philippine Daily Inquirer
September 25, 2009
MANILA, Philippines--Nokia is out to lay claim on who’s the boss in the “smartphone” wars as it rolls out its new mobile devices—one of which a Nokia exec firmly described as “a computer, not [just] a phone”—beginning next month.
At its annual product showcase held earlier this month in Stuttgart, Germany, the mobile-phone maker presented two new additions to its N Series of “smartphones,” the N900 and the N97 Mini, the latter a streamlined version of the highly successful N97. Nokia World 2009 also saw the debut of the company’s first entrant into the netbook market, the Nokia Booklet 3G, and a couple of music phones, the X3 and X6.
While the world’s largest mobile phonemaker claims to have the biggest chunk of the “smartphone” market at 45 percent, even bigger than its rivals, Apple and Research in Motion, combined, the general perception is that the iPhone and the BlackBerry are the market leaders in the category. Nokia is bent on rectifying that notion.
With its Linux-based Maemo 5 software and Mozilla-based browser, the N900 is designed to work fast like a PC but in the size of a handset; in short, a multitasking pocket computer, with up to 48G of memory. It has all the features of a mobile cellular device, a right-click button feature, a 5-megapixel camera, a touch-screen feature plus a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard that, Juha Kokkonen, director for Nokia Devices, Explore category, said is its one big advantage over the popular iPhone.
Designed for the active social networker who values style and looks, the compact version of the N97 does away with the navigation button to achieve its sleeker and sexier form. Compared to its forerunner, the N97 Mini has an 8G memory (expandable up to 24G), versus the N97’s 32G; the latter’s 3.5-inch sliding tilt display is reduced to a 3.2-inch one for the new slimmer version. With the Lonely Planet application, the N97 Mini is also poised to become anybody’s “slimmest travel companion.”
Style and design
“It’s more about style and design,” Kokkonen pointed out, or, as another Nokia exec described it, “for people who spend the day saying ‘I am important.’” Kokkonen noted that the N97 Mini isn’t likely to compete with the N97, as some consumers still prefer the latter’s bigger memory capacity and larger screen. Aside from cosmetic changes, the two versions are essentially the same, and run on similar software. For the Asian market, he added, looks and style are key. The resistive touch-screen (stylus-based) also works well as most Asians still write longhand.
The N97 Mini is pegged at 450 euros, the N900 at 500 euros.
The growth of social networking sites Facebook and Twitter decidedly plays a huge part in fueling the “smartphone” wars, the blurring of the lines between mobile phones and computers. Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia EVP for markets, noted that Twitter alone grew 1,182 percent via mobile phones.
N97 and N5800, according to Nokia CEO and president Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, sold 10 million units in 10 months, the bulk of it only in the last three months. “We’re the market leader,” Vanjoki stressed.
But Vanjoki said the game is not about one-size-fits-all solutions, such that the company continues to create specific products for specific market needs. For instance, the Web is no longer the exclusive domain of the elite. “Being [wired] is integral to daily life, not just for the elite,” he said.
Under its so-called Life Tools, Nokia has prepaid, SMS-based education and entertainment services aimed at emerging markets, say, specific content for farmers like market prices for crops, or applications that teach, for instance, a new language using the mobile phone.
Trade function
Via its new program called Nokia Money, small businesses without access to credit-card system will also soon be able to conduct their trade using their cell phones. Users will be able to buy or pay their bills, or even send money, using their handsets. In short, what the company’s chief exec calls as “empowering people.”
In line with its services-based strategy, the company also honored the winners of its Calling All Innovators Awards, which recognizes third-party application developers from 85 countries. There are four million developers at the moment, according to Purnima Kochikar, VP of Forum Nokia and Developer Community, nearly half of which are from Asia. The company has tie-ups with universities to encourage and give opportunities to young mobile-application developers around the world (the software can be downloaded for free from www.forum.nokia.com).
Most application tools created in Asia, including the Philippines, are entertainment-based aimed for the global market, Kochikar said, with a smaller number so-called “useful” tools, including a mobile-spam filter created for the Chinese market, one of the top downloaded applications at 10 million downloads in only eight months. Overall, messaging-based applications like Facebook and Twitter are still the most popular, she said.
Nokia has also jumped into the netbook bandwagon with its Booklet 3G, a sleek beauty in a 1.25 kg, all-aluminum body (available in three colors). It has a 1G RAM and 120G hard drive memory and runs on Intel Atom Z530. A lot pricier than most netbooks in the market at 575 euros, the Booklet 3G’s biggest selling point maybe its 12-hour active battery usage time, so work is uninterrupted even on a long-haul flight.
Music phones X6 (450 euros) and the more streamlined X3 (115 euros) will also debut next month. The former has a 32G memory, a music playback time of up to 35 hours, 5-megapixel camera and a 3.2-inch touch-screen LCD display. The simplified X3 has 46MB memory, 3.2-mega pixel camera and 26 hours of music playtime. In the Nokia store, www.ovi.com, users have a “music buffet” with up to six million tracks, not just from global acts but also from artists in their locale.
At the moment, Nokia has 55 million active users. But it’s not stopping there. According to Kallasvuo, the target figure is 300 million by 2012.
