It's an important question, and one that will help define the smartphone manufacturer over the next few years. Tinworth draws on the New York launch last week, as well as quotes from Nokia's head of design Mark Ahtisaari, and Jeff Bezos's Amazon Kindle presentation to look at the positioning of Nokia in 2012.
...the dialogue between company and customer is changing. It’s very noticeable that Apple have moved their discussion away from hardware specs in their product launches these days. Try finding out how much RAM the new iPad has – or the clock speed of its processor. They are carefully controlling the conversation to emphasise what the user does with the device, not what the device is made from...
Nokia is clearly trying to do this with the launch of its new Lumia phones. Much of the marketing, and the launch announcement, focuses on user-interaction issues like the allegedly great camera (somewhat undermined by some dumb marketing decisions), but things rapidly lean back towards product design issues – like the bright, distinctive colours (although we haven’t yet heard if matching nail varnish is coming…)
You can read Tinworth's full article here.
Meanwhile, the dialogue between company and customer is changing. It’s very noticeable that Apple have moved their discussion away from hardware specs in their product launches these days. Try finding out how much RAM the new iPad has – or the clock speed of its processor. They are carefully controlling the conversation to emphasise what the user does with the device, not what the device is made from.Look at their advertising, for example.
Nokia is clearly trying to do this with the launch of its new Lumia phones. Much of the marketing, and thelaunch announcement, focuses on user-interaction issues like the allegedly great camera (somewhat undermined by some dumb marketing decisions), but things rapidly lean back towards product design issues – like the bright, distinctive colours (although we haven’t yet heard if matching nail varnish is coming…)