Nokia exec "obsessed" with retaking lead from Apple, Google
updated 07:50 am EDT, Fri July 2, 2010
Nokia's Vanjoki vows better, Symbian4 phones
Nokia's new Mobile Solutions head Anssi Vanjoki today launched a renewed effort to improve Nokia's standing in smartphones. He acknowledged that the company had lost its technical lead but said he was "obsessed" with getting the company back to the top spot. Among the fixes would be a higher emphasis on quality, to avoid fiascoes like the N97's poor launch firmware, and getting phones to market faster rather than Nokia's usual tendency to leave several months between unveiling and shipping.
The upcoming N8 wouldn't have the benefit of an accelerated launch time, but it should "surprise a lot of people" with its performance, he said, and especially with its 12-megapixel camera. He nonetheless saw Nokia as an underdog having to compete with Android devices and the iPhone, even as it still has the larger market share of the three. The Finnish company lost two of its more vocal supporters on Thursday as Symbian-Guru's key members gave up on the site, in one case making the leap to Android.
"As a challenger now, we have a fight on our hands," Vanjoki said.
In addressing how Nokia would come back, the executive debunked some rumors. Nokia won't use Android and is committed to Symbian and MeeGo. He also suggested that Nseries smartphones wouldn't switch to MeeGo alone and that the N8 would be the only Symbian^3 Nseries phone. A future Nseries phone with the more dramatically revised Symbian^4 was a "very strong possibility," Vanjoki hinted.
MeeGo would still reach pocketable devices but was treated as more of a computing platform than a strict smartphone OS.
A more definitive turnaround may be important for Nokia in coming months, as it has already lost large parts of the European market to Android, BlackBerry and iPhone devices, and is only likely to get worse in the short term. Where Apple has been enjoying record sales, Nokia has had to warn about its outlook and may lose significant worldwide share when it reports its results this month.
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Spotlighting their 12MP camera...
All they're doing is offering technical specs. How well does the camera take pictures is what consumers should care about. So far it is being shown that megapixels aren't always a guarantee of picture quality. I know that Nokia uses high quality lenses, but that also adds to the cost. Nokia smartphones had been getting the reputation as cameras for the older set and Nokia is going to have to try to change their image. It appears as the economy is heading for the toilet again so Nokia should be prepared on keeping costs low. They'd better be concerned about more companies than just Apple taking away their market share. With Apple it's more than the device itself. It's the whole iOS ecosystem and it's getting stronger by the day. There's nothing Nokia can do to combat that.