Versatile Amphibian

Nokia announced three new Asha handsets yesterday to great fanfare, in addition to a new, lower priced Lumia. I played with all four devices at Mobile World Congress, a process that got me thinking about Nokia’s current range. My conclusion is that, despite being great products and well engineered, they’re not addressing a serious problem with Nokia’s range – the lack of credible smartphones in the crucial $150/ €100 price bracket. This part of the market is important as it is outside of the typical average selling price of contract smartphones and therefore not impacted by the distortion of operator subsidy that so damages the success of high end Lumias by making them effectively equivalent in price to the unassailable iPhone. For those who haven’t encountered it, Asha is a low-end device based on Nokia’s venerable Symbian 40 “smart-ish” platform that is aimed at feature phone users upgrading to a more feature rich device, either in emerging or developed markets. All three of the new ...

Besides a slight naming problem , there were few surprises in the launch of the Lumia 800 at Nokia World today. I was a bit unimpressed by the stage show, which felt very forced, but the hardware looks good and, according to early benchmarks it offers very respectible performance. A few thoughts from me: I think Nokia should have been more aggressive in its pricing. I'm firmly of the belief that the mass market smartphone customer makes a simple choice. If they can afford an iPhone, then they buy one - its a trusted choice in a rather confusing world, not to mention its status symbol er... status. Those who can't afford iPhone then choose a monthly payment they can afford and go from there. By pricing the 800 at the same point as iPhone, I think NOK are in for an uphill battle. Rebuilding their brand requires shifting a lot of units and becoming the "next best option" after iPhone; not going head to head with Apple just yet. If it was me, I'd have accepted much l...