When we heard that press release about Nokia firing 10,000 employees and other executive changes,it also mentioned tough Q2 and even predicted bad Q3. Q2, we can understand will be worse because Lumias weren’t able to match Symbian’s reach and features lure (Lumia 900 and 610 yet to reach everywhere). But Q3? It should have been better than Q2 given release of Lumia 900 and 610. But announcement of WP8 makes the picture clear. It is obvious that ,many future buyers of Lumia will hold on and wait for Lumia running on WP8. So that’s what Nokia already anticipated. That led them to release 808 PureView in even USA market. But isn’t that a half-hearted approach to tackle the current situation of falling sales.
Ok, lets analyse the future scenario and from where Nokia is supposed to get sales.
- Even in Q3, Symbian will be responsible for major chunk of sales, given that many prospective buyers will hold for WP8 devices
- In Q4 when Nokia launches WP8 devices it will be in worse situation, overall sales share wise if Symbian is not given due support and wide release. Also HTC amd Samsung must be ready with multicore phones in the same period. So how much share Nokia will get out of the small windows phone market share is anybody’s guess.
- Similarly Q1, Q2 2013 will need Nokia to succeed wildly with WP8 devices if they have to survive. But with competition from Samsung and HTC it is still not very rosy picture.
So that leads to a question, if Nokia has to survive through all these quarters from where they are supposed to generate sales. So let us try to find answers. Symbian has got a chance with 808 PureView to get back interest of many buyers. But If Nokia has to make Symbian count post 808 then it needs to evolve it rapidly as to make it a viable platform at least till end of 2013.
- First of all Nokia must get rid of that “shelf life blunder” which stops many from even considering Symbian. Which means Symbian should be accepted by Nokia as a secondary platform without a life cap of 2016.
- 808 PureView must be followed by some more interesting devices. Better display resolution, Multi cores, Unibody design, 12-18 mega-pixel resolution PureView camera etc are required for a good fight.
- Browser, Social networking are few of Symbian’s weaknesses. I don’t know but if N9’s browser can be ported then it will be awesome to see Symbian getting a very competitive browser in one go. Social integration is where Nokia needs to learn from applications like Gravity,Facinate, Fmobi and implement it.
- Nokia has already done a half-hearted attempt at Symbian but was that sufficient. It needs full-blown effort to revive it. Is it necessary? Yes if Nokia has to survive through stormy times. It is must.
