Once a mobile handset leader, Nokia’s miseries are increasing day by day and no good news is emanating from its stable. As per latest reports from US, Nokia has cut the US price of its flagship smartphone in half, barely three months after its launch, in an effort to minimise losses in market share to rivals such as Apple and Samsung Electronics.
The cost of the Lumia 900 Windows phone has been reduced to $49.99 from $99 with a two-year agreement, Nokia spokesman Keith Nowak said on Sunday.Nokia’s phone is sold at AT&T Inc stores. Nowak said, “…the price cut is part of our ongoing lifecycle management, which is jointly done between Nokia and carrier customers.” The spokesman also said a price cut is not unusual at this time in a smartphone’s life cycle, noting that Samsung has cut the price for its Galaxy S II, launched before the Lumia 900.
That the life cycle of a product is just three months and the product has not been released in niche market of Nokia like India does not speak well for the product and the company.
Nokia Lumia 900 features a 4.3″ inch screen, 1.4 gigahertz processor and 8 megapixel camera, and runs on Microsoft Windows software, which is still not popular among mobile users. Sales have been slow, and Nokia took a further hit when Microsoft said current phones will be unable to run its new Windows 8 software, rendering them obsolete.
Nokia has very good hardware but was slow to embrace smartphones and that too with untried Windows software. Nokia seems to have missed the bus of smartphones. Nokia still has a chance to turn the tables of smartphones if the company can revisit its policy of embracing Windows software for its phones. Google,s Android is well-established and liked by majority of mobile users and if Nokia can adopt this software in few of its handsets then it can still create buzz in the market and with its sold hardware and Android operating software, it can still be a force to reckon with. But can or will Nokia do it? It is a million Dollar expectation?
