Struggling Nokia and Microsoft Corp jointly unveiled the Lumia 920 and 820 Windows 8 phones on Wednesday in what may be their last major shot at reclaiming market share lost to Apple and Android smartphones especially of Samsung make.
The new flagship Lumia 920 has attractive and bright colours, a bigger screen and sports innovative features like pureview technology, wireless charging, and technology that reduces blur and shakiness in pictures and video, which will give it enough strength to pose stiff challenge to its competitors. But the investors have opined that it lacks wow factor, which resulted in its share sliding and was downed by almost 13 percent in Helsinki.
Nokia’s new devices have failed to make its investors enthused beause of many factors. Nokia failed them by not disclosing its prices, availability and carrier partners. Nokia announced no partnerships with wireless service providers, leading some analysts to worry this was a sign of weak carrier support. The Finnish handset maker said it would announce pricing and roll-out dates for the new Lumia later on a country-by-country basis. Nokia should release these phones latest by second week of November to get advantage of holiday shopping season.
Another reason for the limited success of Windows phones so far is that they support only 100,000 or so apps, compared with about 500,000 or more for Android or iPhones. Apple’s iOS and Google’ Android OS have established themselve in their respective handsets and consumers have already invested heavily in apps and content, which discourage them switching to a new mobile system- Windows 7.5 latest Windows 8. In order to be successful with Windows 8 phones, Nokia must first win over consumers, who so far have shown little enthusiasm for Windows smartphones, and this is the reason that Nokia could sell just 4 million Lumia phones in the second quarter, a far cry from the 26 million iPhones that Apple Inc. sold, 20 million sale Galaxy SII achieved by Samsung in the last quarter.
“People were looking for something that would dazzle. Most investors will view it as evolutionary, not revolutionary. Nokia has made some good progress, but investors were looking for quantum leaps,” commented an analyst.
The success of new Lumia range of handsets is also important for Microsoft. Its good sales could convince more handset makers and carriers to support Windows Phone 8, which promises faster performance and a customizable start screen. Samsung last week became the first to announce a smartphone running that software, which it said it would begin selling as early as next month.
Only the coming months will clear the doubts of investors when the new Lumia range hit the retailers and the reception accorded to it by the consumers. But one thing is amply clear that Nokia should not delay its commecial release otherwise they will have no chance to make a mark in this fierece global mobile war.
