Nokia has released its brand new smart phone, the Lumia
900, and it’s basically mimicking what Apple pioneered a few years earlier
except that it’s running Microsoft Windows – doesn’t work as well, but costs
half as much.
Nokia could easily have slipped out of the collective
consciousness of the cell phone market. After watching its shares soar at the
start of the 21st century, the tech company slipped and fell by the wayside,
letting competitors pass it by. Now, Nokia is making a serious bid to return to
relevance with its Lumia 900 smart phone. This move is probably to prove a
point especially with the recent ownership structure that has so far put
Microsoft in the Nokia driving seat.
While the smart phone market is currently more than dominated
by Apple and Google, some might scoff at the idea of Windows-based phones
making in-roads. But then, those people may be forgetting the history of the
company. Apple was once one of the strongest computer companies in the world,
offering a widely available computing system based on a visual interface with a
mouse before anyone else and cornering the market.
What happened? Microsoft and Bill Gates imitated the
idea, undercut Apple, and eventually relegated Steve Jobs’ company to a maker
of high-end, niche computers with a relatively small market share.
Now, with the market for smart phones still in its
infancy, Nokia appears to be rolling the dice on a similar strategy, offering
their well-regarded new phones at prices much lower than Apple’s iPhone. And,
once again, it’s Microsoft and Windows that are trying to take a shot at
Apple’s dominance.
The new Nokia Lumia 900 is available for $100 retail,
with Amazon offering an ever better deal with the phone going for just $50. In
its first day of release, the phone showed solid sales despite coming out on
Easter Sunday, a day when many retail stores were closed. No doubt buoyed by
its attractive price, sales helped catapult the phone to the top of Amazon’s
smartphone rankings on Monday after the phone debuted at number five on Sunday.
The Windows phones are entering into a market that is
still largely undefined as the product has only been available for about five
years. While windows phones are clearly coming in a distant third to iPhones
and Droids, where things will go over the next few years is hard to say. With
attractive pricing (costing about half what a new iPhone would), Nokia could be
seeking out a potentially untapped market of users who weren’t early adopters
but are now ready to buy.
However, Michael Miller of PCMag seems to believe that
the Lumia 900 is not the device that will take Windows phones to the next
level. “People who follow mobile phones often talk about ‘hero phones’—high-end
devices that truly define a platform and get people into the stores. Apple’s
iPhone 4S is one, of course, and Apple is unusual in that the bulk of its sales
come from that phone (though the 4 and the 3GS are also still sold),” he
writes.
After describing the phone and its features, Miller comes
to a firm conclusion: “So overall, the Lumia 900 is a very attractive phone,
but not quite the “hero phone” that Microsoft and Nokia seem to need here. If
you’re in the market for a Windows Phone, the Lumia clearly sets the standard
with its modern design and LTE support.”
Whether or not Microsoft will be able to undercut Apple
once again, offering a very similar if lower quality device at a much lower
price, has yet to be seen. For the time being, Nokia and Microsoft are still
clawing for a piece of a market that Apple itself invented and continues to
dominate. However, for the folks at Apple, the $100 price-tag on the Lumia 900
may have some worrying about a case of de-javu.
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