Monday, September 3, 2007

Nokia: The Technology That Makes Us Lazy?

To this day, I'm still somewhat puzzled by the claim of nokia mobile phones being the easiest to use, the most user-friendly. I don't think it's true. During the early days of GSM phones, yes, maybe it was true. After all, with competitions like Ericsson, Siemens, and Motorola, Nokia really was the "child's play", what's with the others being "technology rich, yet arrongantly thought the users would take the time to learn and understand their products." Nokia, on the other hand, correctly calculated that the users at that time would be quite blind to the technologies available to them, and were willing to buy mobile phones that were easy to use from the first go, regardless of the price. Or, in short: Nokia thought the users were all stupid and lazy.

Now, this may be a bold claim from my part. But I'm sure it's true. People would (and still will, even) choose user-friendliness over price-friendliness. Because they don't want to learn. Manual? What manual? "I don't need no steenking manual!" stance can still be found among us, even more so today.

But it would be wrong to only blame Nokia for this. The other companies should be held responsible as well. If their products were a little bit more "down to earth", Nokia wouldn't have the position they're enjoying now. And remember, at that time, the other products had comparatively lower price compared to Nokias. But since the Nokias were more user-friendly, the mindset have been cast. Nokia is just reaping the benefits of others' miscalculated strategies now.

Nokia's stategy of throwing everything but the kitchen sink (or maybe they do now?!?!) at the market also makes a contribution. Not satisfied of having series of number (from 1 to 9, excluding 4 due to superstitious), Nokia now have "N" and "E" series as well. They even have to resort of reusing model number (6110 comes to mind).

Now let's see at what they're offering. If we talk about features, those found in the N and E series can already be found in the PDA-phones of O2, Dopod, HP, and the likes. Are Nokia phones really the most advanced mobile phones? Not by a longshot. Most mobile phones now are as user-friendly as Nokia. But the users are already convinced that Nokia phones are very easy to use, they turn a deaf ear to others.

How about the "Symbian" Nokias? They're not really the easiest to use. If they were, users wouldn't have to go to "Roxy" and the likes to install applications and games (not to mention that it's actually illegal to do so). They would do that themselves! If they were really intutive, we wouldn't hear any news about virus infecting them. And if they were really sophisticated, we would be able to easily sync them with our computers. Or maybe that's the reason Nokia now promotes their latest phones as "computers"? We have become lazy!

Since users would buy any models Nokia is throwing at them, it doesn't matter that no Nokia phone is complete in terms of features. Nope. Not even the Almighty E90 is complete, by any means. Yet, we're still willing to spend so much money to buy one.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not a Nokia basher. I use Nokia phones. My CDMA phones are all Nokia, and I still use N-Gage (even though it's breaking up now *sigh*). What irritates me is that now whenever people ask for my opinion on mobile phones, I would "judge" them based on what I think of their "tech-savviness". If they're sophisticated enough, I'd recommend Sony Ericssons. But if I think otherwise, I'd recommend Nokias. See, now I'm dividing the smart people from the less-fortunate one.

But that's how the things are now. I think it's cast in stone. We can't go back. Nokia is the undisputed ruler of the world of mobile communications. Me, I'm still content with my Sony Ericssons. Go figure.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Blackberrryyy!!!!! hehehe.

But i agree with you mas, in terms of OS, Nokias are probably the most user friendly of the bunch. I've never used Sony Ericssons before so i can't attest how it works, but don't they use symbian too?

What i hate about Sony Ericcsons are the numerous variations of phones that they pump out in huge quantity (actually Nokia does this as well). You got the Cybershot series-the K series-the P series-the XYZ series hahahaha, its just seems like they're trying to capture every sub demographic there is. You like 3 MP cameras on your phone? check, how about 5 MP cameras? check, how about camera and mp3 player on your phone? check, how about camera+mp3+smart phone ability??? check, and so forth and so forth.

but who knows, maybe in 10 years time, RIM (Blackberry's parent company) will probably do the same thing hehehe try to cash in on everything. Its tempting for companies, like the touch BB they're developing now called the Thunder, that's clearly breaching into iPhone territory.

-step- said...

Yes Bud, SE do use Symbian for the P-series smartphones. Dunno what will happen now that Nokia has full ownership of Symbian.

I may be biased against Nokia here, but their price is very unreasonable. You get a bit of this, something else is cut. At least in SE phones, you get everything. In Nokias, you can get everything, but for a price!!

But I guess it's a trend yah. After all, Nokia is the market leader. Who knows, like you said, RIM will do the same once it gained enough popularity. And I think it's gaining...

Anonymous said...

"But the users are already convinced that Nokia phones are very easy to use, they turn a deaf ear to others."

---> am one of those. hehehe =D