Thread: Would you pay for a firmware upgrade?
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arbitrabbit is offline arbitrabbit
2010-06-01 , 13:16
Posts: 171 | Thanked: 114 times | Joined on Feb 2010
#67
Originally Posted by Matan View Post
I expect that out of the 100,000 (or more) N900 users, almost anyone who is willing to pay, voted yes in this poll.

This question is moot, since Nokia won't do this for two reasons: they do not intend to spend time developing for N900 and they made it very clear, and there is no sense in doing something that makes a few hundreds of thousands of dollars (at most) and costs millions in bad PR.
Matan, so you think every N900 owner reads maemo.org :-) Given that maximum people who have been online on this site at any given time is c.3.5k, I would say you are off massively

As for why should Nokia do it, as I have already mentioned, it is for three reasons:
  • If they don't do it, they piss off their core customers, who would have otherwise bought new Nokia handsets in future
  • It gives them a new revenue model to try, on a very small user base, which can then be rolled on to others. As someone who has led NPD for about 10 years, I would love to have a small base to try things on which can then form the basis of whether to roll it on to others
  • Lastly, it gives Nokia an excuse to get out of the low profitability hardware business and get into the more profitable (in the longer term) services business. Also, this can hopefully change the mindset in the Nokia top management who probably still don't get that it is no longer about hardware that you sell and forget, but all about after sales service and how to monetize it
Regarding bad PR, I think the the bad PR they are getting among the N900 owners by not doing anything is probably worse than what would happen if they at least offered them an alternative.