Even as Apple and Samsung fiercely dominate the smartphone market, leaving no room for competitors, are Nokia’s glorious days a thing of the past? Having failed to manufacture worthy phones after the N95 in 2007, the new Lumia range launched by the company might be their last chance at trying to bounce back into the market.
Nokia’s phones are being compared with the iPhone, glitches are being pointed out and several of faithful Nokia users are now switching over to Apple, doubting if Nokia will ever be able to regain their hold over the market. In times like these, users are willing to give the new Lumia 920 a chance, in some cases, over the iPhone 5 even. Nokia has to ensure that the Lumia phones, powered by the Windows Phone 8 platform, turn out to be nothing less than perfect. Considering how Nokia’s attempts so far have been futile, they seemed to have missed the point when it comes to the touchscreen and apps. Firstly, they failed to invest enough in developing tools that were easy to use and secondly while Google and Apple were working on the touchscreen technology, Nokia chose to ignore it, releasing their mistake too late.
In an attempt to save their dwindling status, Nokia announced a bold move from the Symbian platform to the Windows Phone platform in 2011. The result, Nokia’s Lumia 710 and 800, failed to woo buyers despite the company spending whole heartedly on the marketing. One can only hope that the latest range of Lumia phones do not meet the same fate. Analysts are anything but optimistic about this. Apart from high-end phones, Nokia needs to manufacture phones costing $150 in order to get them to sell in Chinese and Indian markets.
For the new Lumia phones to work well for Nokia, it is important that the Windows Phone 8 platform gets accepted. The failure of the Windows Phone 7.5 as an operating system that lacked essential features was the reason for the failure of the earlier Lumia phones. Hopefully Microsoft has managed to make required tweaks in their latest version of the OS, sufficient for it to compete with iOS and Android.
Amidst the intense competition that currently surrounds the market, Nokia needs to effectively build a connection between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 through their new Lumia phones. If everything fails, Nokia could consider selling themselves away to Microsoft, Sony, ZTE or Huawei!
