I can't stop thinking that either somebody in Nokia is hopelessly stupid or they are deliberately torpedoing market share. The have now unleashed a giant Lumia 800 ad campaign here in Greece. But

1. They have pulled all other nokia high-end smartphones from the shelves. So there is no synergy from the NOKIA moniker appearing everywhere. No E7, no N8 no X7.

2. They have placed the Lumia in stores next to the iPhone 4S. There is not one spec in which the Lumia is better than the 4S, and the 4S screen looks way better in store. (I love AMOLEDs, I would choose one every time, but a brightly lit operator store does not help to show off the awesome blacks of amoleds, and the superior color and resolution of the Retina LCD is winning there)

3. The Lumia is actually more expensive than the 4S subsidised. Maybe this is under 1year vs 2year lock (unsubsidized the Lumia is cheaper) in but this was nowhere stated clearly (not even in the small print) so the consumer wouldn't know until they've made their desicion.

4. The ads are teenager oriented. Current nokia owners (NOKIA is no teenager brand, more of a mercedes of phones, that makes durable, reliable phones with good battery life and good cameras. "With contact groups your dirty pictures and your mom will never meet". Their words. Teenagers have less money to spend on phones, read tech articles, and love iPhones. And everybody else is left out in the rain to go android. Where will former E7 or N8 users go? They will be completely driven off with such a campaign.

5. IE is all over the place, as if it's a killer feature. Everybody knows IE is crap, especially teenagers. You don't advertise IE, you hide it. IE has less than 25% market share in desktops, behind firefox and chrome here in Greece. People do not like IE, most of those who use it, are forced to (workplace) or don't know any better (probably non smartphone users anyway)

So all that ad money goes to... iPhone. Even me, who's been changing Nokia handsets since the N-Gage, if I was drawn to a vodafone store and saw the iPhone next to the Lumia, better and cheaper, I would buy the iPhone.

I fear this ad campaign will be the swan's song for Nokia. They don't seem to understand simple market rules. We 'll see.

Oh my... after reading this, i can't decide if i should chuckle silently (@office right now) or "set mode +sad" instead.

After the news about Nokia probably shelving everything Symbian-related but one N8 successor, i was actually expecting a stunt like this: axing most of their devices in that category/device class, to prevent possible customers choosing Symbian/other devices instead of the Lumia apeshit. "Those are not the devices you are looking for..." *swipe*

Yeah, as if artificial market restrictions had helped previously...

Firstly, This is opinion, not fact. It isn't born out by the current global figures. All the major stat counters (StatCounter, Net Application, W3 Counter, Clicky etc) show IE being ahead globally. Yes, there are regional variations and yes IE's market share has dropped over the years, but that does not support your above contention.

Secondly, the version of IE on Windows Phone 7 is actually IE Mobile 9, which is not the same thing as desktop IE9 (just as the Mozilla-based MicroB on the N900 is not the same thing as Mozilla Firefox); they could just as easily called it Fred.

Lumia ads here on tv are horrible. E.g. this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DE-ocFoKTA

does it get more impersonal?


I still think wp7 sucks at winning customers in store. First thing you see are those ugly tiles (how somebody can say they're not ugly is beyond my comprehension), and while everything is nicely animated there is no immediate emotional attachement.

For example its difficult to see when an UI element is clicked. Something to get used to I guess but every customer out there expects a big fat visual hint.

Maybe I'm too conservative, but everytime I touch a wp7 handset it feels alien somehow. In constrast to ios, android, webos and meego.

Problem is buying a mobile phone is not a rational decision, in fact its something very emotional for most people out there. I guess MS does not understand this.

It pretty much is the same, only reskinned, just as microb is the same as Mozilla Firefox. The web browser engine is still the same. Microb and Firefox are still Gecko, IE and IE Mobile are still Trident.


Exact same ad is everywhere, only translated.

Fragmentation. Plus still the fact that symbian would be the #1 of costs no matter how much you make meego, android and wp phones...

how about the hardware?

what about adapting the "free" linux to hardware? If I remember correctly, Maemo project still costs some millions per year. That is bit much from "free" OS IMO.

when was the burning platform stuff again?

The US T-Mobile ads featuring the 800 and 710! are even worse. Especially the ones including that NBA league game as a live stream.

I was specifically talking about Greece. Here IE is not a strong brand. And the stats are real for Greece. I just presumed, with good reason, that the stats are even less rosy for IE in the teenager segment. Finally IE mobile is not really mobile, it's just a IE9 cramped down to 800x480, no touch events, or other mobile specifications.