“The good news about Nokia’s newest touch screen phone is that it has an attractive price tag [unsubsidized cost: 279 euros (US$390)]. The bad news: Customers the U.S. and most of Europe won’t be able to get one this year,” Lionel Laurent reports for Forbes.
MacDailyNews Note: As with other knock-offs, “touch screen” does not equal iPhone’s Multi-Touch™. Gizmodo has a hands-on review of the thing today. It’s here: Gizmodo tests Nokia 5800: Don’t lose that stylus; single-touch screen far less accurate than iPhone.
Laurent continues, “This unexpected twist to the Nokia touch-screen saga left industry-watchers shocked on Thursday, as the Finnish handset-maker revealed that its first ever keypad-free phone would only be released in Asia, the Middle East, Russia and Spain before the end of 2008. Although these markets accounted for more than half of Nokia’s sales in the second quarter, Europe and the U.S. could have contributed a sorely needed boost to end-of-year trading.”
“‘This will be a major setback,’ said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with Global Crown Capital. ‘Usually, individual models don’t affect share prices, but this is the phone that we’ve been waiting a year for,'” Laurent reports. “Why no worldwide launch? According to a company representative, the issue is one of operator customization.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “JES42” for the heads up.]
<u>Nokia 5800 Tube</u>
3.2-inch touchscreen display with 16 Million colors (not Multi-Touch)
3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus (nice)
Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM/EDGE radio-3G UMTS/HSDPA
Bluetooth 2.0
WiFi
GPS (nice)
3.5mm headphone jack
TV-out port (um, o.k., whatever)
140MB on-board storage (Yikes. Not good.)
111 x 52 x 14.5 mm
104g
Jeesh! These competitors to the iPhone are certainly stumbling all over themselves with this.
Apple will have another year on them before they’re out of the gate. Incredible incompetence.
They just don’t want to be embarrassed by side-to-side comparisons with the iPhone! (probably not really, but I wouldn’t be surprised).
The most important sentence:
“…the issue is one of operator customization.”
That is the essence of the difference between the iPhone and every other phone. Apple does NOT allow any carrier customisation. Carrier is a commodity, when it comes to iPhone.
Other handset makers are at the mercy of the carriers. They may even one day manage to design a reasonable “iPhone killer”; however, as soon as they begin making deals with carriers for distribution, features will be slashed right and left, until the device looks exactly like all other devices on that carrier, with unintuitive, illogical menus (leading to the carrier’s WAP portal), charging extra for every single individual little feature, etc, etc, etc.
Makes you wonder how Jobs was ever able to twist AT&T’s arm to totally give up on the traditinal carrier control. One must give credit to someone at Cingular/AT&T for vision, which is an incredibly scarce commodity in the mobile world.
A page from the Google book, beta test to where the puck is at the moment and let’s not worry about where it’s going to be.
As long as you sold the idiots in WS with a catch phrase like Don’t be evil, all betas are perpetual reinvented wheelovation.
Legions of cheap, opinionated and vocal Indian beta users, who’d rather memorise the Linux bible online than part with a pretty penny for convenience and taste. Don’t make me invoke Deepak Chopra if you don’t agree with me.
Nokia – the business plan remains – if you build a lot, some will stick.
So, meshing all this crazy ass metaphors together: If you can’t create/innovate/predict the future then just go clubbing in the dark instead, you may miss the puck, but not the goalie.
“Makes you wonder how Jobs was ever able to twist AT&T;’s arm to totally give up on the traditinal carrier control. “
iPhone BITCH.!! LOL
12-20 million customers many NEW. Period.
ne
Nokia’s design skills seem to have gone down the pan.
Who would have thought the one of the most forwarded thinking handset design businesses would revert to photocopying the iPhone.
They really have gone down in my opinion.
Not that im at all bothered, the only way I may buy a mobile phone for any other maker is if Apple stops making the iPhone.
Th iPhone is the ONLY phone I ever want and I dont give a flying fuck what any other maker is doing.
In an effort to compete with recent offerings from Nokia, Rimm and others, Apple has decided to downgrade the iPhone.
These guys should just quit.
The iPhone is about 5 years ahead of them, and by then, Apple will be another 5 years ahead.
Please, Apple, make a car!
Shit, MAKE EVERYTHING!
Are the producers of all goods so lost in space that Apple could improve EVERYTHING?
Yes.