The top 10 important Nokia news in 2008

2008 was a silent year for Nokia, by all measures. With the ongoing reorganization of Devices and the new Software & Services divisions, the reaching of Nokia’s previous long-term goal meant that Nokia did sit around the whole year asking “And now what?”.

Thanks to this puzzled look on the face, it was not until the end of the year, when we started to see early signs of the new Nokia and it will still take the better part of 2009 to see how the future looks for our favourite Finnish company. So, what were the 10 news in 2008 which have the biggest importance regarding 2009 and beyond?

1. Nokia 5800, the first S60 touch device shipping

The first S60 touch device was leaked, shown, announced, announced and announced and finally shipped to the first countries. Far from revolutionary, the 5800 is a very solid device and one of the sleepers of the year – seemingly surprising even Nokia with it’s initial success.

2. The announcement of the N97, the first flagship touch device

The second S60 touch device – and a flagship one – was announced in Barcelona, but there will be a much too long wait until it ships. However, do not underestimate the importance of the N97. While the form factor is nothing new, it is a true pocket computer as well as the first Ovi Device. The realization of the Ovi concept will come to life with the N97 and I also expect a bunch of other services to first show up on it. The “Media Store” of Nokia with movies and everything, Maps 3, Messaging (with IM), a Nokia App Store, Point and Find will be released together with the N97.

3. E71, fast, pretty and makes the US happy

While touch being the new craze for 2 years now, the E71 has shown something even more important. Nokia can actually make a device, which is fast, looks good and pleases the US market also – while running Symbian! It is often part of the 4 devices to choose from in the US (iPhone, BB, G1 being the big three) and mentioned 10 times more than any other device. So, here is hoping, that the E71 team is actually cloned and used for all future devices in Nokia.

4. Mail on Ovi, a move into Google area and 100 million user potential

Amidst all the S60 announcements, most sites missed the news in November about Nokia becoming a mail provider for the masses. The scale of the opportunity is indeed enormous. Don’t think “will the 5800 sell one million” – think “will Ovi outgrow Gmail in 1 or 2 years”? While Nokia so far has been making rookie mistakes in establishing its services and using the windows of opportunity, this one means using the 400 million email-enabled devices sold before 2011 and turning them into 60-100 million Ovi users. Can Nokia reach a 15% conversion rate? I believe it can do even better.

5. Maps on Ovi, clearing the field in location services and preparing for elimination

Maps on Ovi is coming to life with the third version of Nokia Maps. It is currently in beta, but despite opening with a public relations fiasco it is in fact an important move by Nokia into web-based location services. Google Maps is currently the only real player in this field, but with Nokia easily conquering around 60% of the GPS market (standalone units included!) in the next two years, it can be the major player in this field.

6. Ovi Sync, how true mobile synchronization should look like and the door to Ovi

While the main part of Ovi Sync is the resurrection of My Nokia Backup functionality, it also shows a unique understanding of “being mobile” by Nokia. It is how the world will look like in a year: no cables, everything going over-the-air. Quick and simple with a nice web interface – my belief is that even if Nokians think of Share (Twango) as the starting service of Ovi, it will be Sync (besides Mail), which will reel most of the users in.

7. Comes with Music, all your base belong to us

Comes with Music is the all you can eat music bundle of Nokia, slowly being released on a country-by-country basis. It is currently only running in the UK with limited success, but Q1 2009 we will see more markets starting up with new devices. The service is indeed revolutionary and – if Nokia does not screw it up – has the potential to change the online music industry. It is also a bold move to break up Apple’s iPod ecosystem – the sooner the better.

8. Qt, the promiseland for developers

Nokia has announced the acquisition of Trolltech about a year ago, to bring easy cross-platform development to S60 and many other platforms (mobile, computer and web). While adding one more development tool wouldn’t make it to top 10, attracting developer mindshare and speeding up development of visually attractive applications does – as it addresses one of the biggest shortcomings in Nokia’s past software strategy.  Qt was used to develop Google Earth, Skype and KDE – which shows the potential of the application framework. It is also available for Windows mobile, embedded Linux, Windows, Linux (and all X11-based systems), Mac (Cocoa API) – promising only a couple of hours of porting work across platforms!

9. Symbian Foundation and the battle for developer mindshare

As with Qt, buying Symbian and immediately transferring it to a common governing body is mainly driven by keeping the 50% share of Symbian and attracting developers. But just think for one moment about what Nokia has done here! Paying $410 million for the market leading OS, just to open source it is simply unprecedented.

10. Touching 40%, aka Nokia’s Dream

With Nokia passing Motorola for the first place in 1999, but commanding only 29% of the market in Q1 2004, the announced 40% target market share might have been a long stretch for many. The mobile market has doubled since 2004, yet even with stronger competition from Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson, Nokia has managed to reach its target. With the rise of RIM, Apple and Google, it’s time for Nokia to announce a new target. I vote for a 100 million Ovi users in 2 years.

Do you agree? Feel free to leave your opinion in the comments or to write a Re: The top 10… post if you have better ideas.

Are you interested in The top 10 mistakes Nokia made in 2008? Subscribe to the RSS feed or return next week.

január 1. Nagy népszerűség reményében megszülte: Amby, 2009. január 1. csütörtök napján, beskatulyázva , , , , , , , alá.
Jöhet a vélemény lent vagy egy trackback: Trackback URL. View EXIF Data
  • great post nokia all the way,i just started my blog and i will like to know what you think of it
  • @Ravindra, thanks for the comment. Which one(s) did you miss?
  • Wow a great collection of 2008 articles,wonder how I missed some of them.
blog comments powered by Disqus