Crunch time
Nokia has announced that its latest high-end smartphone - the N8 - has started shipping. This is possibly a few days earlier than expected and certainly sooner than some feared when Nokia said it was delaying shipments for a few weeks.
The reason anyone even gave a damn whether the N8 was delayed a bit, or not, is Nokia's relatively weak position in the smartphone market. Still the world leader on handset sales by volume, Nokia has yet to produce a high-end smartphone that captures the imagination in the same way as Apple's iPhone or Android equivalents such as the HTC Desire have.
This is a big problem for Nokia, as that's the direction the mobile phone market is headed in, and if it doesn't persuade the market that it has at least a viable smartphone alternative, it risks being left behind.
The big problem is the operating system. Symbian is still the biggest smartphone OS by volume, but this is as much a product of inertia as anything else. In terms of popularity, both with consumers and developers, it has already been supplanted by iOS and Android, with the likes of Windows Phone 7 and webOS about to make their move too. But Nokia insists that the latest version of Symbian measures up, even though it's focusing on MeeGo for its future high-end smartphones.
"With the N8, and the new Symbian software, we are bringing a familiar, faster and more intuitive user experience to the world's most popular smartphone platform. The Nokia N8 has received the highest amount of consumer pre-orders in Nokia history and we are thrilled to start shipments of the N8, the first of Nokia's new Symbian smartphone range," said Jo Harlow, SVP of smartphones at Nokia.
Incidentally, Techwatch has noticed that Phone4U will start selling the BlackBerry Torch tomorrow. While RIM is perceived as doing better than Nokia in the smartphone market, it faces similar problems with an OS that's viewed by many as inferior to the big two. Its latest tablet features a new OS that will apparently become the phone OS in time too, so you could say RIM is at a similar juncture to Nokia.