Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledges Windows Phone as the third horse in the race. Could WP grow to be a threat?

 Saw this link in one of our reader’s (Mike) comment yesterday.

TheVerge reported that Apple CEO, Tim Cook, acknowledged Windows Phone as a legitimate competitor and the third horse in this race. Recently we heard a few Apple fans sharing their praises for Nokia Lumia for focusing on user experience first, in both hardware design and OS. Still, you wouldn’t expect the top man at their helm, Tim Cook, to acknowledge the Windows Phone effort based on current performance.

“There’s a horse in Redmond that always suits up and always runs, and will keep running.”

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/24/2730972/tim-cook-phone-market-isnt-a-two-horse-race-theres-a-horse-in-redmond

As well as WP, He also notes that “there are other players we can never count out”.

Could Cook be talking about Symbian? MeeGo? BlackBerry? Bada?

Midnight rambling…

I think it’s good never to count out your competitors. Doing so would put you in deep trouble, like say, ignoring those doing the clamshell or heavens, touchscreens even if at first they don’t look to be threats. Consider everything as possible threats and do what you can to make sure they never become a proper one (Nokia could have easily snuffed out iPhone/Android before they ever got famous but they moved much too slow, like a giant trying to stomp on an ant…but those Ants had time to grow and turned radioactive and are now bigger than the giant).

A lot of people are discounting what WP can do. It is still very, very early days. Limited market release, 1m+ sales? Not mind blowing but not really terrible. Nokia never intended Lumia to ship in volume in 2011. Note, the Lumia only became available initially at 6 countries mid October. Mid October. 6 countries. Mid October. I seem to need to repeat this. It’s still too early to say it’s a success or a fail, regardless of what naysayers or even fans try to paint one way or the other. Really it’s possibly Q3 that we’ll get a fairer indication of how things are panning out (and I think Elop has mentioned 2012 is still transition time – I think he mentioned this last year already anyway).

Nokia Lumia is essentially a good product. It needs more time to get to more markets and to have that brand established and recognized. Such recognition is absolutely very powerful in Sales. Consider how much of iPhone sales are going, not on merit, but on the brand of it (though I do agree the 4/4S are very excellent smartphones). It’s easier for people to look, pick up and buy something they and their friends are familiar with.

Nokia must also do their damnedest to make sure they continue to create great Lumia products for that project to be successful. Great not just by Nokia standards, but one that meets and possibly exceeds industry expectations. The Lumia 900 in a way pleased a lot of the media (surprisingly enough) but as a geek, I’m still itching for a super high end Lumia and by the looks of things, we might not get one until Apollo arrives. I hope by then it’s not too late and Nokia learns to announce and release before people forget thing you announced.

In the mean time…lower end Lumia’s may help fill in the numbers (especially Tango ones) as they compete on price, but still manage to deliver a great user experience (it’s a pain to get a cheap Android and have the same user experience as S^1 :s).

The 710 could do well on T-Mobile USA and Rogers Canada, especially since it’s generally accepted to be very good value for money. The 900 could also be a big hit for AT&T. We know there’s more Lumias on the way, more to be announced at least every 3 months or so. With more handsets available, and to more countries, we should hopefully start seeing these numbers pick back up.

If we remember all the way back from last year, the transition is expected to be 2 years; annoying since we’ve already spent 4 years in transition from non touch to crappy touch (and snuffing the awesome touch as we went and played with Intel). Note the side bar of the graph below says 100% eventually being Nokia Windows Phone sales. The biggest worry is that when that is true, the Nokia Windows Phone sales is completely negligible. Who wants 100% of 0? The midway point in the graph below is expected to take place this year according to Morgan Stanley’s estimates as WP shipments begin to equal Symbian – though to the overall detriment of lower total smartphone sales for 2012.

Concerns of doubters are valid, but so is the hope still of fans that things are slowly (go frikkin faster, Nokia!) but surely clicking in to place and working out (“no one will buy Nokia WP”, well there’s already 1 million).

I wonder what the prediction is now by those analysts that once predicted quite lofty sales by Nokia and MS. Quite a bit of an overestimate but nice to hope that it could significantly pick up by 2015 – it doesn’t even have to be number 1 as a couple predicted. At least still a major, independent player.

We really need Nokia to step up and give people more of a reason to choose their devices. When’s the ETA for that awesome camera of the N8 that should have been there on the first Lumia, huh? The longer they take to get stuff done, the more opportunity to break out with WP is lost. Any expectations for MWC? We were told they were coming back in a big way last year to 2012 MWC but I’m unfortunately not that optimistic.

Category: Lumia, Nokia, Rant