Nokia, Nokia, Nokia…
I have always loved Nokia. I think they produce high quality mobile phones that are user friendly. My first cell phone was the Nokia 8290, by far the best cell phone I ever had. I loved playing ‘snake’ in the black and green background color, and sending text messages to friends cool enough to have the same phone.
Sadly, Nokia, as it sits today, has lost over 10% of the US market share over the past few years and is down to approx. 7% of US market share[1]. However, globally, Nokia holds the largest market share at roughly 40%![2] The global monster has recently been involved with a myriad of rumors ranging from possible tag team collaboration with AT&T, possible tag team collaboration with Verizon, and as a total introduction into the US market as a new CARRIER! Currently, the only thing that we know that is accurate is their 2010 introduction of the NOKIA netbook. This netbook will be priced around $500.00 US, and will run on Windows 7 on the AT&T 3G network. Now, this may seem that Nokia would have no intention of teaming with anyone else, and would continue its strong relationship with AT&T, right? Wrong! Nokia, along with Verizon have wanted to create a device that would challenge the iPhone for some time now. Nokia lost a large portion of its shares due primarily to the introduction of the iPhone. Here is rumor number 2:
Rumor has it that Verizon has teamed with Nokia to create the first 4G mobile device. Everyone knows that this past month at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Verizon announced that it will test its new 4G network that uses a technology called Long Term Evolution or LTE[3], this year and will begin aggressive rollouts in 2010 (news.cnet.com). It has also been said at a recent conference in Texas, that Nokia has been recently testing with LTE technology. This tag team collaboration, weather true or false would help both companies gain ground on Apple and AT&T. IPhone’s popularity in the US market has definitely hurt Nokia’s share in the smart-phone market.
Nokia’s ability to produce high quality mobile phones and Verizon’s strong coverage could be the kryptonite to the iPhone. Personally speaking, I would love for that to happen.
[1] New York Time – ‘Nokia Tries to Undo Blunders in U.S.’ – Oct. 18, 2009
[2] Fortune Magazine – ‘Nokia’s North American Problem’
[3] Long Term Evolution or LTE technology is the last step toward the 4th generation of radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks. Where the current generation of mobile telecommunication networks are collectively known as 3G, LTE is marketed as 4G.