Will Nokia Rise?

The dominance of Nokia in India was comprehensive.

Once, buying any other phone was not just stupidity but plain ignorance. This was not without reason as well. Good, sturdy phones with long battery life and of course most importantly, good signals.

These were the features of a feature phone and Nokia excelled in them. Then it faced a two pronged attack at the same time. In the lower segment dual sim cheap phones captured people’s pockets.

On a higher end it was made to realise that Smartphones were not its cup of tea. Even earlier, Blackberry ruled the roost but after the new breed of smartphones (read iPhone and Android) Nokia really lost its way.

Old ideas were thrown away and it was time to come up with something new or perish. The other alternative was to join Android bandwagon.

Every phone maker succumbed to the Android pressure. Even Blackberry (once the dominating king of smartphones) is bringing android apps to its new BB OS 10.

Nokia, the leader in phones decided to go the other way. Microsoft, a no-force in mobile market became the OS supplier and the fruits of that merger (which is deemed fateful and doomed both) are coming out now.

This was the past…

During this past, WP 7.5 came out. Nokia lost a lot of market share during this process in both higher and lower segment.

In lower segment, Nokia has seen a slow recovery now. They amended their mistakes with the Asha series which is doing remarkably well.

The damage that has already happened might not go away so quickly but the road to redemption is in sight now. Smartphones though are the arena now. With Micromax like companies launching sub-5K Android phones Nokia, with WP 8 has to fight Android all the way from Rs. 5K to 50K.

All this builds up to today when Nokia has shown the new windows phones. Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820 are the phones that supposedly will lead to Nokia’s salvation along with Microsoft’s.

Having features like dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz ‘Krait’ processor, Adreno 225 GPU, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage, 7GB of free SkyDrive storage, built in NFC and LTE, access to Nokia Music, wireless charging, Nokia maps etc. they hold everything a typical high end device should have and more.

On the hardware front I can confidently say that Nokia will not lag. They were never a slouch in the yonder days as well.

It is all up to Microsoft’s OS to bring these phones at par with Android and iPhone.

It is an uphill task to say the least but the refreshing change from the usual suspects will bring in some users. The question is will the experience for them be great enough for having a good word of mouth. If the reviews turn out to be even average the phones are not going to succeed.

To make a dent in the market they have to be ravishing!!

Also, they need to be launched soon. No pricing or availability date has been set and these are not good signs.

People who want to buy a phone in 2-3 month do not know whether Nokia’s phones will be up for offering.

Do you think you will go back to old-trusty Nokia once they launch their new breed of Windows smartphones?

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