The Struggle of Nokia

I am quite upset with the recent news from Nokia which includes selling off Vertu and laying off tens of thousand employees across the globe. Apart from that, Nokia will be laying off more employees in the coming months.

Personally, I don't really understand Nokia anymore. Initially it started off by itself as the number one mobile phone manufacturer of the world only for more than 14 years until it was beaten by Samsung just recently. They have managed to release new and more advanced technological mobile phones at a competitive price. I would remember using a Symbian S40 or S60 mobile device from Nokia and I was really happy with it..until recently.

There were talks of Nokia is running low on its cash reserve and they need to think fast before they completely run out of money to survive. Personally, I don't know whether it is true or false but I do observe one thing throughout these two years - Nokia is losing its charm.

One could ask me why have I shifted my loyalty towards some other manufacturers and not stick with Nokia. Personally, I have not shifted my loyalty towards Android or iOS as I am using a Lumia 710 at this moment as my backup phone. Why would I not use a Nokia Lumia 900 or 800 instead? Well, I could answer that question by simply informing you that I believe that the Lumia 900 is below my expectation.

It has been a long struggle for me to use any recent Nokia devices which runs on the Windows Phone OS due to the lack of multitasking. Nevermind the small capacity battery on some of the Windows Phone powered Nokia devices but I was thinking about a better capacity and better cpu on Nokia devices. One thing for sure is that I could not understand why Nokia is still using a single core cpu for its Lumia 900!!! You could argue that there is no need for a dualcore cpu as it will most probably use more energy but if many manufacturers can overcome this problem, why not Nokia? I would love to see that future Windows Phone OS support multitasking. This is one problem which Microsoft has yet to resolve. Maybe the problem will be resolved with the upcoming "Apollo OS" by Microsoft. Even the latest Windows Phone 7.5 "Tango" does not support true multitaking akin to Symbian S60 series. It is like using Symbian S40 devices again which is so backwards. When will Microsoft realise that they need to release a true multitasking OS to draw in more customers? When will they finally realise that something needs to be done to encourage more people to use Windows Phone? I don't think it is wise for Microsoft to rely on the Nokia brand to market their products without true multitasking!

In conclusion, I would really hope that Nokia will survive. The question of whether Microsoft will buy Nokia might be still on the table but it might be rejected by shareholders taking into account the profitability of Nokia. Well, we'll see about it in the next 18 months whether Nokia will pull through. They need to release at least dualcore mobile phones with good graphics to draw the heat away from Android mobile devices e.g. the Samsung Galaxy SII and SIII.

Update:

29 June 2012
With UK carriers not going to release the upcoming Nokia Pure View 808, it might spell more trouble for Nokia in the UK. I have got in touch with Vodafone UK and Orange UK and they have no idea of when the handset will be arriving in the store, most probably not going to stock them; T-Mobile UK and O2 UK could not give me a straight answer while both Carphonewarehouse and Phones4u said that they will stock them earliest at the end of next month or early August 2012. This will mean that if consumers want to have a taste of the mighty 41MP camera mobile phone, they will have to go through a third party to sign on a contract for the phone. Well, alternatively, the phone could be purchased SIM free from £500 which is a little bit too much for a 4" single core mobile device.

04 July 2012
It is a sad day where Meego will be parting ways with Nokia. According to this website, Meego will be heading off to other companies e.g. Samsung! I sincerely wish them well! Well, Nokia, what's next? Can you see that you need to buck up and not just releasing budget s40 phones anymore? Where is your fighting spirit which you have shown previously before Apple and Samsung took over?