Changing names and switching platforms?

Sun, 11/07/2010 - 11:09

nower days we all could see that a lot of Nokia enthusiasts and hardcore fans

are changing their names to more generic or even switching to other platforms or brands for good.

[i will not change my twitter name for instance, but as you can see i was always open for other mobile gadgets, OSses and brands.]

is this the so called: "The rats are leaving the sinking ship"?

i don't think so. there is an evolution is going on.

these days are very fast living ones. the bloggging scene is accepting the recent ongoing in the mobile industry.

now, let's see what was going on in the past:

there were only a few mobile manufactorers who were splitting the cake. f.e. Siemens, Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson...

Siemens was struggling due to many mistakes and sold the mobile brand to BenQ to bleed it out.(short version of the long story).

Ericsson were great, but one false decision was following another, so they had to merge their mobile devision with Sony, who entered the market a few years before and was struggling with mobiles on the market, too. today they still try to get in the game (with some success i believe).

Motorola was once the greatest phone company, but they tried to rest on their laurels and made some mistakes. then they could land a hit with the RAZR and were suddently back in the game. today they are growing again with Android phones after some drawbacks.

and now? there are more players, who entered the game:

RIM with Blackberry, who still dominates the business market.

Apple with their iPhone, which has done such a big impact to the mobile world, like no other phone. Microsoft, who are still searching for their big bang.

HTC, which were quite brilliant in the supplier markets for the mobile carriers. and now their brand is so strong, they can sell the phones with HTC on it quite successfull.

Samsung, who were always trying to get a bigger part of the market and they're seems to be very successfull at the moment with their strategy i think.

there are many more mobile companies who are more or less successfull with their handsets: LG, Asus, Sagem, Acer, Google, Dell, Sharp, Philips, Palm, Mitsubishi and the brands from the mobile cariers like Vodafone, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, O2...

Last, but not least: let's look at Nokia. Nokia is still the biggest fish on market, but in some categories they're loosing ground (if there is enough space for all, even the biggest fish can die).

Nokia has got some competitors now: in Business there are RIM and Microsoft, in the smartphones there are Apple and Google. Nokia has is still big and growing in the emerging markets, but this is a buzz, which is not loud enough. and you could still make not enough money with selling millions of handsets, but have not enough profit out of each deice. there are confusing decisions made regarding the platforms, the design of the handsets and the very long phase in developing and bringing out new phones. there are so many things i could write about, but there are other, who already done it (symbian-guru, zomgitscj & many others) and i don't want to repeat them or myself over and over again.

the first hit was RIM with their BlackBerry. the business market was shaking because of push mails. then there was Apple with their iPhone, which some companies are still trying to copy. and now there is Google with their Android.

Nokia was known for innovation and there were leading the way in the market and showing what the future might look like. but now there are others who show Nokia the possible way. the market is still changing and changing. evolution. there will be some dinosaurs, who might not stand the heat and leaving the scene dead or ripped apart...

in fact the market is so fast that the hardware manufactors couldn't make it in real time with the software requirements. there were times: you were waiting for a new firmware for your precisous little phone one year or so. now it's hardly 6 months. you kept your phone for 2 years at least due to the contract. now you're switching phones every 6 months.

today the service is everything. you could build the best phone on earth, but when you can't offer the customers some services, like music, app market, video or pic platforms and messaging like email, social services, you're on loosing ground. and this is exactly what Nokia is trying to change, but this time the others are even better and faster. it's easier to turnaround a small boat then a big tanker. Nokia has to reinvent itself again, but this time even faster.

the software development is even faster nower days, but the developers are even sloppier and the firmwares are not quite stable like before. it seems like they want to be the first who brings out a new particular feature without even test it in the real world. just to be the one who's making the buzz in the media. people forget such things, but they never forget some big mistakes and bad service (customer, software, hardware).

i think that only these companies will survive this jungle, who can take it all at once: Hardware, Software and key Services. f.e. MeeGo (with Qt) will run on pretty much everything, iOS is making changes to run on desktops, mobiles and tv. Android is changing from a mobile platform to a overall platform and changing to a real OS. WebOS could make the difference and could run on anything, too. Even Blackberry OS is changing and heading to tablet computers and Bada could be a small success, too. i think there is room for Symbian, too. but they need to reinvent themselfs fast and cut off some old strings.

there will be only the big seven manufators left:

Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Apple, LG, Sony-Ericsson and Motorola.

this is what bloggers are realizing now and trying to diversificate their blogs to be more independend and generic. because you'll never know what will be in one year.

but this is my opinion. let's see what the future will bring us tomorrow :-)

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I agree with most of your

Submitted by @greeniesd (not verified) on Sun, 11/07/2010 - 14:35.

I agree with most of your accessment. I further think that the slowness of new hip fones from nokia and the biggest reason why why people are leaving (and not really understanding this issue) is that there really was no choice before. The choices that were out there were very limiting and sucked. Of course you became a Nokia fan, Nokia had the most progrssive fones. Within the last four years there has been a seachange (most laymen now care about smartphones, it is not just biz people and geeks anymore) and now we acually have a real choices besides blackberry and winmo. If one was given three types of ice cream only the majority would choose chocolate and say that is their favorite. With the introduction of iOS and Android we could now choose Chunky Monkey or any other yummy flavors from Ben and Jerry's. I still believe that Nokia could change for the better but it will just take a while like you said they are a big tanker.

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