Good article.
Page 3 gets down to brass tacks:
“There is huge, unmet demand in the world for a phone that does nothing but make calls. Nokia can and should design and build the ultimate minimalist, tiny, super-reliable cell phone that does not connect to the Internet. It should have the best-possible call quality, have the best antenna possible and should measure battery life in days or even weeks. Nobody cares what the OS is.”
Very true That’s the one I would buy. When I want internet (which is not, for example, while I’m sitting in a restaurant enjoying a meal — hint hint iPhone aficionadoes) I prefer to use my laptop.
“Second, Nokia should design and build the ultimate smartphone based on Windows Phone 7. It should provide a much better call quality than the iPhone (not hard to do), have a better camera, better screen, better everything than existing smartphones.”
Also good advice for those who, unlike me, *do* prefer a smartphone.
I believe that the days of handheld phones are numbers, not just cell phones but the wired phones in homes and businesses as well.
We are quickly moving to "hands-free" communications. Already, my automobile has phone capability built into it and when somebody calls my house, their name and number flashes on our TV or computer screen.
My address book is maintained in the cloud and is constantly downloaded to any device I own (with any updates instantly uploaded to be synchronized elsewhere).
The end result is that all individuals will have a single phone number assigned to them and they can make/receive calls from virtually anywhere on the planet without even carrying what we think of today as a phone device.
On one hand he says, “In a nutshell, Nokia fails on design, branding and simplicity. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will solve none of these problems.”
On the other. “Nokia should design and build the ultimate smartphone based on Windows Phone 7.”
I think somewhere the author lost his train of thought.
I want it!!!
I'm not impugning your honesty, but I have doubts; would you really buy that phone if your cell provider was giving one with close-enough specs away for free with contract? If you don't have a contract or use pre-paid, how much would you pay, given that basic pre-paid phones are plentiful in the $10-$30 range?
First, I'd take issue with the notion that it's an unmet demand. It's a pretty decent description of the Motorola Razr, which ruled the roost before smartphones became mainstream.
Second, while there might be a huge market today, it's a shrinking one. It's commodity last-generation technology where it's difficult to differentiate based on quality, and where profit margins are minuscule. Nokia would have to compete with the cheapest handsets to come out of Shenzhen.
“Second, Nokia should design and build the ultimate smartphone based on Windows Phone 7. It should provide a much better call quality than the iPhone (not hard to do), have a better camera, better screen, better everything than existing smartphones.”
That doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, but what the author omits is that it has to be so much better that it makes up for the lack of software and accessories relative to other smartphones; and it has to be less expensive.
That's something that defines the low-end market for pre-paid phone service, where competition is on price only. The Chinese will dominate that.
I think the next big thing is an affordable phone that is a combination cell phone and satellite phone, something that will give you cheap minutes as long as you are near a cell tower, but will also allow you to make calls when you are far from cell towers (broken down in the middle of Death Valley, on a sailboat far out at sea, in the middle of a disaster area where cell service is disrupted).
Current satellite phones are around $1500, with service at a buck per minute, but there are times and circumstances when you REALLY want the peace of mind of being able to communicate from anywhere under any circumstance. And when more people start using satellite phone, economies of scale will bring the price down.
A nice wish list. Unfortunately, for those trying to provide it, there are the laws of physics to deal with. Current technology has yet to overcome them. Tiny device+great antenna+long battery life. At the moment those are mutually exclusive.