“In a press release issued at 3:01 a.m. Monday morning, Microsoft Corp. announced the first – and quite possibly the last – mobile phone to bear the name of the Finnish handset maker that has now become a division of the Redmond, Washington [company],” 24/7 Wall St. writes.
“The Nokia 130 may be the cheapest phone ever to carry the name. It costs just €19 (about $25) and will be available in selected markets, including China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam,” 24/7 Wall St. writes. “The [feature] phone is aimed at the first-time phone buyer and… it is not a smartphone.”
24/7 Wall St. writes, “The phone does not offer Internet connectivity, but Microsoft seems willing to take a chance that the phone will be a hit among first-time buyers in developing countries.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Apple’s iPhone is a “niche product.” — Nokia’s then-CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, April 17, 2008
Olli-Pekka is currently “spending time with his family.”
Sad, sad, commentary. MDN take is apropos! But, I love it.
Who would have thought that Nokia goes away as a bottom-tiere phone manufacturer.
Goes away with a distinct but barely perceptible whimper like Trelane in ST:TOS “THE SQUIRE OF GOTHOS.”
Goodbye Nokia! and good riddance…….
Pardom me, but why “good riddance”? What did they ever do to you or to the guy who gave you the upvote?
Simply they laughed off Apple’s smart phone, as so many did disingenuously, to their ultimate foolishness and demise. Nokia was never going to push the envelope and raise consumer expectation and delight with their own devices and for that they SHOULD die.
Companies that don’t move with the times or make some attempt to forge ahead deserve nothing but our contempt and death wishes. They deliberately tread on mediocrity. Can’t do that no mo.
they laughed off Apple’s smart phone
Exactly. Just once I would like to see a competitor respond to a new product from Apple with something like this: “Apple’s new product is worthy competition, and it’s going force us and all our competitors to step up our game. But we welcome this challenge, as it’s going to make us even better. I think you’ll be surprised by how we respond.”
But no. Never. It’s always “Apple? Ptthhpt. They don’t stand a chance. We’re the number one in this category. In 12 months, you’ll be laughing at the iPod-folks and still buying our stuff.”
So yeah, we really really love it when Apple shoves their disrespectful words down their collective throat.
——RM
What is publicly said and what is said behind closed doors are two different things. While “Apple’s new product is worthy competition, and it’s going force us and all our competitors to step up our game, etc” might sound noble and nice, it wouldn’t go over well with stockholders and would probably send marketing directors into paroxysms of rage, panic, despair and possibly out a few windows.
So while it >might< be said in the boardroom, it might only come out years later in interviews of ex-employees.
No, they'll denigrate the product and Apple and then scurry to copy them as quickly as possible. That's just the way business works. Look at Microsoft and Ballmer as an example. They tried to copy (badly) EVERYTHING they laughed at.
Just realize that if a company goes through the trouble of disparaging a product, you know for certain their engineering department is in high gear trying to duplicate it.
I don’t think telling the truth, that your competitor has released a good product, is going to freak out shareholders, as long you follow up that statement by saying that you think your products are competitive and will become even more competitive in the future.
It’s not a binary choice between “Their product kicks our ass” and “Their product is a laughable trainwreck”. There’s plenty of honest options in between.
——RM
Funny, well-put observation. And so true. They haven’t appeared to learn the lesson of “laugh it off at your peril now, cry about it later.”
What are they going to say? “Wow, what a great phone. Go buy theirs instead of ours!” No, they HAVE to make light of it and then try to copy it. They got part A right but part B wrong. I’ll even give them credit for trying to do it with Symbian and MeeGo before scraping the bottom of the barrel for Android and Windows.
See the other comment from Lord Robin who I think assessed this problem correctly.
I appreciate the sentiment, I just think it’s silly to expect gracious human behavior from competing corporations. I mean, I’ve never heard Ford telling the world that Toyota just built a great truck.
Apple graciously welcomed IBM to the PC market way back when in an open ad and that worked out well yeah? D’Oh!
I just think you can still respect the competition without making it look like you just got caught with your pants down. In the Internet era, no foolish CEO statement ever dies, it haunts forever, and contributes later to the perception of (lack of vision) incompetence than sound competitive stragedy. Laughing should be avoided before you become the butt of the joke.
Did Ford loudly tell the world that Toyota’s new truck was a joke and would never be any competition to Ford’s products? That’s what we’re talking about here.
——RM
I’m sure Olli is doing fine. It’s the rank and file Nokia employee that I feel bad for. I’m happy that Apple has been so successful, but I know the pain at Nokia has to have been profound. I empathize with anyone that loses their job; especially after a Microsoft takeover.
The management was blind😵. They couldn’t believe that if you offer your pinky to the 😈devil he will grab the whole hand…😧😩
This is exactly the trouble with all those iPhone-disdaining CEOs: they were so very certain they could identify a “niche” product — forgetting that their very own product at one time was itself “niche”.
Not every small fracture reorders the landscape, but Apple’s grew into the San Andreas Fault.
Actually, it’s not such a bad idea or design. It is what it is… old school. Bold move to leave out a camera. 🙂
You can store and play up to 32GB of music and videos, on an MIcroSD card. It has dual-SIM slots (for two phone numbers). And really long battery life per charge. Oh, and it makes phone calls… For $25.
This is what the Motorola “ROKR” (the “iTunes phone”), from those days before iPhone, could have been. I think there is a place in Apple’s product line for “a phone that is not an iPhone.” Not quite so “minimal” like this Nokia phone, but a true “cheap iPhone” that does not cannibalize iPhone sales, because it’s designed and marketed to NOT be an iPhone.
Such a phone would have Internet connectivity (over cellular), but only use built-in apps to access specific content, such as email, texting, FaceBook, Twitter, etc. (no general “web browser”), things that are lower in data volume. No WiFi. A basic still camera. No third-party apps, but it has built-in apps for common “smartphone” functions. Media-playing (and other) functionality of the current iPod nano, including a small touchscreen interface.
A device that has “known” functionality can be optimized (in hardware design) to do ONLY the things that are “built in,” but do those limited things very well. Not designed to be “open-ended” like an iPhone, with a lot more power (and expense) than many users need. That would make it a true low-cost Apple phone, and popular with customer who would not otherwise consider a “real” iPhone.
My wife is one of many people who might want such a phone. She continues to refuse a touch-screen device, and wants a “dumb”-phone that can do text and has a decent camera. Nothing else matters. Doesn’t care about e-mail, FB, google Maps, nothing. I had to buy a long-discontinued, refurbished Sony-Ericsson (for $70, no less!!) on eBay because the old one broke down. I could have bought her iPhone 3GS for that money, but no way, she simply didn’t want it.
There may be few people out there who prefer phones as simple as this Nokia, but these people do exist, even in the developed world.
Once you give it cell data, email, texting, Facebook, Twitter, camera and basic common smartphone apps built-in, you’re pretty much all the way there for just going ahead and building a full iPhone with components that are less expensive because they’re a couple of years old.
You’d be losing additional revenue from loss of 3rd party apps, and each sale would add less to the ecosystem than a full iPhone would.
All of this to offer a phone that has tiny margins and competes with free in areas where there are subsidies.
I can understand the market demand from the bottom with a totally dumb phone that only makes calls and every incremental step up to flagship phones, but the low-end phones just don’t make sense as a business for Apple to be in.
Well, no… You’d be making a phone with components that are equivalent to components used for an iPod nano, not older iPhone components. And those are much cheaper, while being up-to-date (for what they are).
Because all the apps are built-in, there are no “unknowns.” An iPhone (even an older model) is what it is (an “overkill” hand-held computer), because Apple’s designers do NOT know exactly how the customer will use it. And the expectation is that there will be major software upgrades over its useful life (more unknowns). It has to be “over-designed” to meet these expectations.
The Apple phone (that is intentionally NOT an iPhone) can be “optimized” in its hardware and software design to do exactly what its built-in features allow; nothing more and nothing less. It will do those limited thing in typical Apple fashion, and provide great user experience. The expectation is NO major software updates, like with an iPod nano (except for “firmware updates” to fix minor bugs).
This allows the designers to use component that EXACTLY meet the needs of the built-in software and features, and that reduces production costs significantly. And when I say “cheap,” I’m talking about the “under $200” range (compared to around $400 for the lowest cost new “real” iPhone that is feasible), not $25 like this Nokia device.
Apple could not make any money on a dumb phone like that, because nobody does. In the meantime, it would water down a world class brand. This is a terrible idea.
If there were money to be made, and Apple was the kind of company that followed money, the way to approach it would be to develop a separate brand for the dumb phone. But there is no money to be made there anyway.
Also, you are not considering what a terrible corporate effect a low end phone would have. It would mean that Apple would now have a division with engineers, marketing people, sales people, all incentivized to market something low end. These are the B-players. Once a group like this grows it competes for attention, resources and strategy with the A-player best-product-possible team. It is poison.
It is equivalent to having an Mac mini, when Apple also makes iMacs and Mac Pros. It is equivalent to Apple (still) having an iPod nano and shuffle, when Apple also makes iPod touch (and iPhones).
Low-cost (or “lower” cost) does not mean it’s “dumb.” It takes A-players to do a product like the Mac mini and iPod nano the RIGHT way. I’m not talking about a $25 near-zero profit phone here. It’s a different type of phone, for a different group of customers, but still a high-quality product, just as an iPod nano is a high-quality product. Just as a customer will buy a Mac mini now, and later (after liking the experience) buy in a more expensive Mac, they will buy an affordable Apple “iPhone” now, and later (after liking the experience) buy a more expensive “real” iPhone. Others will prefer their simpler more affordable Apple phone, and stick with it, just as customers keep buying Mac minis and (media player) iPods.
“The Apple phone (that is intentionally NOT an iPhone) can be “optimized” in its hardware and software design to do exactly what its built-in features allow…”
Now you sound like you’re describing something that would cost more than an iPhone.
Here’s the problem… Either you’re building a general-purpose mobile computing platform or you’re building something that’s optimized around specific tasks. You mentioned what would be included, and specifically mentioned things like Facebook.
The problem with that is that you’ve got feature-creep before you’ve even started. You’d need to make sure the phone is capable of so many things to support Facebook and the other features you mentioned, that they’d be better off going to cheap general-purpose oriented components.
If you’re supporting Facebook, that hardware involved is perfectly capable of supporting a web browser. You’d only artificially be removing the web browser for the sake of???
Even not allowing 3rd party apps, besides the decrease in revenue and ecosystem impact, it’s still an artificial restriction if you’re building the hardware to support the other features you mentioned.
Even lack of WiFi is somewhat ridiculous since the cell chipsets already include WiFi, and it’s a very tiny incremental cost to include the antenna.
It would be one thing if you said Apple should add a mobile chipset and the related functionality to the iPod Nano. That would still be over $200 and wouldn’t be suitable for email, Facebook, Twitter, etc… Pretty much it would be what the Nano is now, but with phone and simple texting capability.
“Olli-Pekka is currently “spending time with his family.””
Hanging by his thumbs in a Finnish dungeon?
One approach, if you are short on money is to buy a cheap feature phone and an iPad mini wifi only. That way between the two devices you have everything you really need except 24/7 web/email (you need wifi for internet access). When you think about it, while at work, if you work in one location, the above combo covers it most of the time.
Of course, for “just a little more money” you can hang on to your current iPhone or purchase a two year old iPhone.
Now having said all this, there are two things to consider: 1) every phone I ever had that wasn’t a Nokia phone was way better then any Nokia phone I had and 2) my Mac is way better then any Windows machine I ever had.