On the 2nd of July, Mr Vanjoki put up an open letter to all of us, bloggers and consumers alike. He laid out some of his plans to us and promised that Nokia would return to it’s old discarded habit.
I read that post on Nokia Conversations quite a few times and This is my reply to the open letter by Mr. Anssi Vanjoki.
Dear Mr. Vanjoki,
Some very strong words from your end for Nokia. Being a pro Nokia guy for so many years, I honestly wonder what caused Nokia to suddenly stop listening. You’ve had some wonderfully engineered products like the N95, N97 and even the N90 for that matter but fared badly on almost everything else.
Nokia was once bold and leading the pack when it came to innovation. Better cameras, better software, better apps and better battery life, in short better phones. Then all of a sudden, everything started falling apart. The N82 which wowed so many people and firmly put Nokia as a serious camera phone manufacturer, suddenly thought xenon wasn’t the way forward – first mistake. When you had so many people like us telling you time and again that the N82 is the way forward you simply looked the other way and said no.
The market went a change in terms of OS in 2007 with the iPhone. I wonder why Nokia did not see this coming. For a company that is known to do thorough research (I’ve seen this in almost all the product launches, meetings with Nokia officials) for it’s devices. Nokia should have been working if not ready to counter this new threat. We stuck by you even then but the S60 5th edition really disappointed. So many updates later and it’s still not right/fixed. There was a time when a Nokia S60 device was robust and rarely did something crazy. Today, it’s almost impossible to have it function without reporting an error or two. – second mistake.
Employing the Symbian OS, meant that you had one of the most widely used OS in the market and yet you lost out to some younger OSes like Mac and Android. Don’t you think there was something wrong in the decisions taken then? Ovi Store too isn’t exactly a great solution. A website like Handango has been able to better catalog apps for devices. If Nokia is really serious about the appverse for its devices, it certainly is not showing in actions. When someone like Rita has to pull out an iPod touch for reference, it alone should make you wonder where did Nokia go wrong with the applications and developers – third mistake.
Mr Vanjoki, have you seen the battery life of the devices Nokia makes vis-a-vis the competitors. There was a time when Nokia was generous with the battery size and battery life. With the N97mini and subsequent products, it seems to have completely given up on that. With so many features on a device, I don’t know why did no one in Nokia not think of the battery life. There can be no excuses for this. If you want us to do things with our devices then give us the battery life to do it too. The N97mini just doesn’t last more than a day, the N900 half a day at max; the N8′s prospects don’t seem bright either. I hope Nokia realizes that equipping some of their best devices with puny batteries is like sending a bunch of soldiers to war with rubber bullets. Your competitors are fast grabbing this position which you have vacated. How long before it is completely lost – fourth mistake.
Hardware is another issue with the last bunch of Nokia devices. How is that the Eseries is doing things correctly and Nseries is bungling up one after the other? I thought the various teams always exchanged notes so as to create better products. Under-performing hardware will always create problems on the software front. The S60 is a very efficient platform when it comes to hardware. Something we know with experience. So when an N97 is made, and given so many pretty add ons, it quite natural that it will need more processing power and better RAM management and phone memory. It’s funny that nobody thought of it within Nokia. it might not be so different for many touch devices from Nokia. The non-touch devices on the other hand are still good and quite well equipped. Today’s devices need to be ready for tomorrow’s challenges. I guess Nokia forgot that. – fifth mistake.
Probably the biggest mistake lies in the fact that Nokia allowed itself to be complacent. It stopped reacting to competition, thinking that it was only a phase, atleast that’s the feeling I’ve had. No brand, in my knowledge, has so many bloggers writing for it out of choice, expect Nokia. As bloggers we cover all aspects of your device and a lot more. There is one thing that we also do, we give you feedback before your retail customers come to you with complaints. We are power users, early adopters and market mavens, it is in your interest to listen to what we bloggers say about your brand and your products and services. We don’t do it for money and therefore you can be assured this is genuine stuff we are saying. What’s in it for us… well we do it because we like your brand/product/service; we believe it might be a great thing; we understand the utility of it and also because as bloggers we stand to benefit from the little bit of recognition that accrues as a result of our actions. So all in all it is Nokia that stands to benefit more than us. So why has Nokia not been doing this? Free advice ain’t a bad thing you know. Listen to us, we only want the best for you and the consumers.
Mr, Vanjoki, I understand that it is impossible for you to follow each one us and our trains of thought. It is also very difficult to know who is right and who isn’t. But I think of late all of us bloggers have been saying one thing, in different ways. By stating the above issues as mistakes, I’m not saying Nokia is bad or trying to evoke any negative feelings, but at the same time I also want you to know how frustrated we as consumers are with the current offerings.
I have been a Nokia loyalist for quite sometime and my blog will clearly convey that, but lately it’s Android and BlackBerry that seems to be worth becoming my next phone. Imagine how many people around the world are thinking on these lines and how many have gone ahead and made that change.I wish you luck in your endeavor. I hope the slumbering giant awakens soon. Nokia has a lot to gain and a lot to lose and I honestly hope that it achieves the former.
Regards,
Aditya Singhvi
Chief Editor – Aditya’s Phones
Chief Editor – Symbian Life-Blog
Contributer – Fonearena.com
This has been posted as a comment on the post by Mr.Vanjoki also and I hope that he does respond to the same.