Bloomberg: Nokia’s Asha handsets are a hit and buying more time for a comeback (+Nokia Asha 311 video review)
Bloomberg are reporting that Nokia’s rebound with Asha’s is giving them more time for a come back. The growingly popular Asha series are providing consumers with smartphone like features as basic handset level prices making them a hit amongst consumers. Apparently for India and China, Asha boosted Nokia’s basic phone market share to 35%.
These Asha series are also apparently winning first time buyers looking to upgrade to a more expensive handset. In total the basic phone unit for Nokia brought in as much as 49% of Nokia’s revenue last quarter. Bloomberg notes that shares of Nokia have increased 66% since the July 19th results.
Whilst we’re praising Nokia Asha, let’s take a look at CJ’s (of unleashthephones.com) review of the Nokia Asha 311. It’s quite nice to see how far Nokia’s S40 platform has come.
It’s surprisingly slick and can give similarly priced Androids a run for their money on features and responsiveness.
Thanks Matthijs and lordstar for the tip
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It’s not really about the apps. It’s about the user experience, something Apple hit on the head back in 2007 for the high end, and what Android and Nokia is providing for the low end in 2012.
Nokia providing a smooth experience on its feature phone lineup sounds like a good deal to anyone, and honestly, these are smartphone-lite phones that can do plenty for the average user.
One can hope Nokia begins the fightback on the high end soon.
+1
+2
Not multitasking but technolgy streaming,applications that are android title should have to come in asha touch.
This is a truly great success for Nokia!
Great work Nokia! Great work Elop!
But Asha series is anti Elop’s philosophy of Ecosystem ecosystem ecosystem. Elop fail.
Actually it isn’t. Series 40 always had a fairly strong ecosystem for what it was – the Java ecosystem with all the locally relevant app development Nokia had been doing and sponsoring.
Janne if that is the reference ecosystem then Symbian deserves some respect which was dump for exactly the same reason. It’s easy to draw a conclusion for Elop then?
But S40 didn’t fail. Symbian did.
@Sefriol
Symbian didn’t fail. Up to and including the quarter it was EOLed, it helped pay the bills and bring in profit. something the replacement isn’t doing.
S40 was the “old” Nokia. Symbian was just something Nokia purchased along the way.
@shallow ocean shoal
They bought it, it’s their tech. As is NAVTEQ. Not something they license.
Exactly. So let’s stop talking about what’s “real” nokia and what’s fairy tales.
Symbian was failed if you consider the huge R&D revenue
@Weirdfisher
And yet, bills were paid, and extra money was made as profit.
Now that they are saving money, they are posting losses. Nokia, the paradoxical company.
I doubt Symbian was dumped only for the ecosystem, I think its competitiveness as a technology (or Nokia’s ability to develop it) was quite as much in question too. This was never an issue for Series 40 which was in much better shape internally.
Symbian was a mess that was already beyond repair.
Only ting keeping it afloat was the Symbian stronghold in 2004-2010 that dried resources and such from other projects when Nokia had unlimited amounts resources.
Only thing done wrong was that Nokia didn’t go for Qt or similar back in 2008 with an actually BIG investment and intention to truly replace it.
Again, back then with the resources and brand they could have done anything if they really wanted to.
That, and they also put it in a lose-lose internal competition with MeeGo!
Then there’s also the stories of Nokia managers spending all summer in the sauna, while Apple managers had nose to the grindstone getting 3 hrs of sleep on weekends.
Interestingly, even Samsung appears to be struggling with both Bada and Tizen and Intel and the eocystem build up.
All the best of luck to Jolla though.
Except for Elop ecosystem encompasses much much more things that just apps. The S40 (and what Meltemi was supposed to be) is actually antithesis to all what Elop says and does in phones. Nokia develops the OS internally, without connection to other computing platforms, without any marketing or platform support from MS, etc.
By Elop logic Nokia shouldn’t be able to do this at all.
Well, by Elop’s logic and during his tenure Nokia has released two generations of Asha, each better than the previous and both better than OPK’s Series 40 stuff. That’s got to count for something.
As for connetions to computing platforms and the like, that isn’t something that is yet as important in the emerging markets these phones target. The ecosystem issues are different.
Arguably Series 40 has been in a better shape both as an OS as well as an locally-relevant ecosystem (for the markets it was targeting) than Symbian was. However, even if both things were equal, there was still the issue that Symbian was a mess and too hard to fix.
But we both know our opinions on this, so I won’t try to argue it further. I can respect you disagree.
@Janne
Well, that’s the party line anyway. WP7.x apparently wasn’t in better shape, after all, it’s been chucked out by MS.
At least Symbian earned its keep. WP7.x, not so much.
Right, because nothing from 7 is in 8. It wasn’t an evolution from 7, it just came out of the blue. Do you really believe that?
@shallow ocean shoal
It’s a new OS. They changed the kernel, the program interfaces, the driver model.
Just because it looks like 7.x and may be able to run its apps, doesn’t mean that it’s an evolution of it.
yasu, and all your other screennames,
It’s called Intellectual Capital. It can be at the individual level, or it can be institutional.
I take it you’ve never written a line of code in your life.
When you write code, let’s say version 7 of the code, you learn about what you did right, and what could have been better.
If you get the rare opportunity to start fresh at something, you get to take the good bits with you, and everything you and your former and current colleagues learned along the way. You can leave behind the bits you don’t like.
That is EXACTLY part of the reason why Symbian failed. Squared to Cubed to Quad versions, they couldn’t ditch the bad parts.
His point stands, it’s still a clear break, a needed one but a break nonetheless.
The same could’ve been done for Symbian but I tend to agree, it still needed to go eventually* in favour of MeeGo, & perhaps WP running in tandem.
*it had been MORE THAN ENOUGH chances over the years
Yes, and during his tenure Nokia also released N9 and several Symbian phones, so what’s your point?
I agree that what Elop calls ecosystem isn’t much important in emerging markets with the little twist that it’s the same situation as in other markets. And Elop wants to push his WP phones even to these emerging markets, as is evident from the 610 efforts or from the replacement of Meltemi with future WP, so he doesn’t seem to think these markets are so different after all.
Still telling that where WP failed S40 seems to be getting some success.
Lol. Selling 610s in emerging markets in no way negates the importance of a comprehensive ecosystem NOR indicates that emerging markets are not different.
Selling 610 (and planning to sell even lower price WP phones) underlines Elop’s vision of importance of comprehensive ecosystem in emerging markets AND it clearly indicates he thinks they are the same as advanced markets in that regard. Because why bother with inflating the price of phone with features that people doesn’t care about?
LOL again. They WILL be. Second, what exactly are the features (ecosystem related in particular) inflating the price of the 610 that people don’t care about? Third, there ARE already MILLIONS of people in the emerging markets (in fact, many more than in your country, which I am guessing is Finland or something similar) that can already afford all the features and more, and even the expensive 4G/3G plans, data costs etc..
Would it blow your mind if S40 and WP wound up sharing parts of the same ecosystem somehow?
Wont happen for both technical and political reasons. Ashas will get bit of Nokia locations and that’ll be all.
nn, yasu, tomi ahononenenonenen, whatever your name is,
You need to understand that an “ecosystem” is a lot more than simply cross-compiling code. There are no technical limitations here. Indeed, cross-compiling code isn’t necessary at all.
You only need services to talk to each other.
The longer-term agenda here is to ensure S40 doesn’t do well (they wont need to try hard, it’s not suitable LT*), part of that (as you’ll eventually witness) will involve S40 not being tied into large chunks of the “ecosystem” for seemingly erroneous reasons.
Then when it starts to falter they can easily shoe-horn WP into those segments.
*Meltemi wouldn’t have had this issue
Shaune, they don’t need to “make it not do well,” it is simply not an OS that was designed for 2012+, whereas there are alternatives that are. It’s not going to falter, it is simply going to naturally fall out of relevance.
And yet they’re acting entirely like that’s not going to happen.
They had a replacement which was very close to being finished-off, that would’ve ensured they never hit that brick wall.
I’d say that alone is “making sure it won’t do well”.
correction: This is NOT a success, this a fraction of what Nokia has been before, maybe you live in a country where people think Nokia is a chinese food or something
but yeah great job MS! Great job Elop!
And it’s still more than where they were before that.
Time rolls on, nothing is forever.
lol. What the fuck does S40 Asha success have to do with MS?
S40 success will be sponsoring WP8 lineup.
Err.. What? Second, he said “great job MS”. Wtf?
Exact words to describe the Nokia situation going on here.
You are fucked up too then if you think his comment was an accurate description of Nokia’s situation.
elop cock sucker?
funny how asha stands for hope
It’s not funny or co-incidence. The name was chosen for the very meaning “hope”, which was meant to be a hope for Nokia to make a comeback. Which they seem to be doing.
Yep exactly, should’ve named lumia the asha hahaha
Poweruser reports- Sammie pulling plug on Bada and Tizen on the maybe, maybe not. Meego falling in this economy.
anyway meego sucks, so nice to see samsung realising its mistake and spending more time and resources on the big two OS’s: android and WP.
meego is better than bada,BBOS,symbian,WP and had a shot with iOS and android ….wtf are you on cause i’m stoned on weed and weed doesn’t make you a friggin idiot
meego better than tizen respeeeect
Never saw or used an actualy MeeGo phone so can’t comment on its quality, but as I seriously hate the ineffectiveness that is HTML5 and JS on mobile, and even if the Tizen is an evolution of MeeGo, I’d say MeeGo > Tizen.
I just think Samsung is now talking ecosystems as well.
Tizen != MeeGo(MeR), not even close, organisational/administrative structure similar, that’s all.
They’re not ditching Tizen & Bada was always going away (a merger of sorts), Sammobile (which reported this) is FAIL.
There may however be some truth to them redoubling efforts on WP8, but not at the expense of Tizen, if anything it’d be Android.
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Lol. No it doesn’t. Merely “swiping” from one start screen to another does not a N9 make.
That’s actually a really interesting question… how many people actually only care about swipe vs. everything else about n9?
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The Asha series does prove to a point that people appreciate a Nokia with it’s own OS.
Yes, and it also proves people are cheap bastards
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asha have the n9 factor!!!
was it really a sucess??.i think samsung still sells more galaxy y than combined sale of all ashas.
Me too.
+1
I agree. Am hell fed up of asha 311. The dumbest model ever by nokia. I bgt it on d basis of trust upon nokia. Samsung is better. They cal 311 to b smart ph.. I disagree wt ..nvr evr smrt
Impressive UI flow better than S60 I guess. Great improvement by Nokia…
If I had to get my mother a phone, and it was between this and let’s say a 700 (that’s bellefp1)…I think this guy wins…simple and elegant
What do you guys think?
Now what would u get your mother if compared to the 701 (WP7)… Maybe the Asha wins… Simple and elegant.
No, I think definitely a windows phone in that case.
C’mon now that’s being silly, the 700/701/710 are a entirely different class of phones.
If you’re being totally impartial there’s no way you can assert that the 311′s a better phone than the 700/701, same for 710.
Shane, I am flattered that you are officially trolling me now.
Thank you for informing me what my opinion should be, I will take it into consideration.
No trolling buddy, it’s simply a fact that the 311 does not come even close to the 710 or 700/711, they’re entirely different classes.
The fact that you’d even try to suggest that is really quite sad, & indicates you’ve become somewhat drunk with irrational fanboy goggles.
Do you even recall what the original question was? Thank you for informing me what I should think.
Good thing you’re not a salesman, amiright?
Sure, I can concede that it’s an excellent choice in that scenario in many instances.
As always things aren’t always B&W ofc, & depends more on detailed usage requirements.
It’s nice to see a smooth, friendly user interface made by Nokia. I would definitely recommend an Asha 311 because it’s cheap and fast. Buyers at this price point don’t want a million apps, they just want basic functionality to work well in a device that’s easy to use. Cheap Android devices are slow with crap specs, apps be damned.
It’s also sad to realize that if Nokia had reacted fast enough, Symbian S60 could have been a lot faster and smoother than today’s clunky Belle release.
Agree but not that sad, they were out sweating at saunas. They didn’t care, why should we?
where are all the haters who said asha are doomed to fail?
it’s only going to get better from this point with asha. more features for the same price
apps are sh*t.they need put some decent gpu such that it can play some decent games.like angry bird HD or fruit ninja.
A cheaper, less capable N9. Just imagine what Harmattan could have done for Nokia..
Well, the village idiot elop screwed the pooch and everyone is stuck with either wp or Asha..
Asha wins!
“A cheaper, less capable N9. Just imagine what Harmattan could have done for Nokia.”
Nothing much since in the high end it’s all about apps from developers that never bought into Qt, and never would have between iOS and Android having greater unit sales and Microsoft offering more $$ for the 3rd place ports.
Nice way to ignore the fact that we’re talking about entirely different price segment/s here.
Look you don’t know what would’ve happened, nobody does now, nice little theory though.
diff price segment? true.
now if Nokia had put as much effort into promoting harmattan as it did wp, where do you think it would be? even if Nokia had spent as much as they did on Asha, where would it be?
there’s no way to argue that wp is better than harmattan, be it ux, usability or design. ecosystem, maybe. but if the village idiot didn’t screw with the devs by ditching Meego… who’s to say.
my point is to Joe average, Asha is new, harmattan was new, Belle was sorta new, wp was new to Nokia at their respective launches. guess which ones had the best reviews and consumer response? so why in the world stab yourself in the back? stupidity? ignorance?
carriers here are promoting lumia, yet phone shops don’t even have working models of lumia 800 or 900 because no one is buying. and these are the independent resellers with prominent Nokia branding. shops are pushing Asha instead, and that only if you ask for a Nokia. if not, s3. the best part of the whole shebang? N9 prices have dropped 10% since launch. 800 20 to 30%.
gist of it all, give the consumer what they want, or they will go elsewhere when you try to shovel things down their throats. in essence, that’s why Nokia/wp is going to fail. hopefully someone who can actually make a difference realises this and does something about it before it becomes too late for Nokia.
Not going Meego was and is a big blunde by Nokia. People here try to add their spin and twist for ditching Meego. The truth is Meego was much more ready and better then Wp, but here keep talking about Symbian fragile and whatever, but never a valid reason for ditching Meego and going all out Wp7.
Probably because very few of us think MeeGo had to be ditched. I certainly don’t. It could have worked. Symbian, not so much.
I have to remind you that the first MeeGo device was supposed to be in customer hands in December 2010. It was way late.
That alone was never a good enough reason to “entirely ditch” the program…
If resources hadn’t been dropped considerably starting from Feb, the N950 could’ve been out at least 2mth before the N9 (end of July).
And future devices (at least 2 Harmattan’s in H1) would no longer have had the same sort of slippages, the biggest bug-bears would’ve been surmounted.
Agreed.
At best elop and the board were misinformed. Harmattan devices could have come out in various models targeted at a wider range of consumers. Would have been no different than the lumia launch, except for a lot less cheaper and better reception by consumers going by the reviews.
Pity Nokia didn’t move fast enough, or smart enough, to capitalize.
They were only informed by the people that worked for them.
Doesn’t make it the best information, far from it.
People have agendas & competing interests, those with the most power to influence get to haves theirs pushed ahead.
It’s as simple as that really….
why dont put a good JAR and HEAP to have multitask in asha series
Get used to little true innovation in the S40 series over the next few yrs, only superficial changes, not total restructuring of it’s UX/innards/core/dev_libraries.