Tag: Android

Can you hear Steve screaming too?

Interesting article on BBC News about the impending iPhone 5 launch by the chap behind the “fake Steve” blog.

Definitely some valid points made, especially with reference to the leaks in the run up to the launch about how potentially unremarkable the iPhone 5 could be, that Apple’s share of the smartphone market that they helped to define is being thumped by the nimbler Asian companies’ Android handsets, and that Apple’s spend on R&D as a percentage of revenue is a paltry 2% under Cook’s leadership. There’s a good argument which says that for a company like Apple, it needs the yin and yang balance at the top – both the eccentric visionary to keep driving new ideas and push to take risks, and the number-crunching expert to keep the corporate feet on the ground once in a while, and stop the money running out. Very rare you find these qualities in the same person, if you ask me.

But there’s one comment which doesn’t sit right with me, and that’s the comment that the UI hasn’t changed in years, and that is somehow a bad thing.

I don’t know about you, but people who lead busy lives don’t appreciate having to start on a whole new learning curve just because they’ve updated their device. People like familiarity, which seems to be something Apple haven’t lost sight of.

The “familiarity” aspect is a huge selling point for those who don’t have time to to re-learn, or if you’re someone like my parents, don’t really want to have to re-learn, because they a) don’t much like change, and b) are a bit technophobic, usually because just as they get the hang of something, the UI changes on them.

But, I’ll go one step further. The entire smartphone market is, at first glance, pretty unremarkable now. They are all hand-sized rectangles with a capacitative touch screen on which you can read your email, a half decent point-and-click camera, and you can even make and recieve phonecalls.

So, does this give grist to the “upgrade the UI” mill? Maybe there’s some way of keeping both camps happy – like a “simple” and an “expert” mode?

As for Steve? I’d say he’s screaming and spinning in his grave.

I am the market Nokia lost

Remember when more than 50% of mobile phones in people’s hands said “Nokia” on them? When 50% of those phones had that iconic/irritating/annoying signature ring tone – often because folks hadn’t worked out how to get them off the default – long a prelude to yells of “Hello! I’m on a train/in a restaurant/in a library“.

Well, this week, a memo from the new Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, has been doing the rounds online, which sums up the ferocious drubbing the once dominant Finnish company had in the handset market, at the hands of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android OS, and how it is now poised on the telecoms equivalent of a blazing oil platform.

I am part of the market that Nokia lost, maybe even forgot. I have a drawer which could be called “my life as a mobile phone user”, littered with old Nokia handsets, many of them iconic in their own right… the 2110, 6110, 6150, 6210, 6310i (probably one of the best handsets Nokia ever made), 6600, and three Communicators, the 9210i, 9500 and E90.

Why did I stop using Nokia?

Well, the last Nokia handset I tried was the N97, and since then I’ve been an iPhone convert.

While those around me used swishy iPhones, my previous loyalty to Nokia was rewarded with a slow and clunky UI, a terrible keyboard, and the appallingly bad software to run on your (Windows only) PC for backing up and synchronisation.

Nokia couldn’t even focus on keeping up with the needs of it’s previously loyal and high-yielding power users, for whom migrating handsets was always a pain, never mind the fickle throwaway consumer market.

Is it any wonder folks have deserted Nokia?

They have made themselves look like the British Leyland of the mobile phone world.

On a complete sidebar – any guesses on which airline will start up a HEL-SFO service first? There have got to be yield management folk looking at this in the wake of this news!

Update: 11 Feb 2011, 0855

As the pundits predicted, Nokia have announced they have aligned themselves with Microsoft, and their Windows mobile platform.