Paul Thurott: Explaining Nokia’s Lumia Exclusivity Strategy
Paul Thurott’s blogpost linked below attempts to explain Nokia’s rationale for having carrier exclusives for their new Nokia Lumia devices. I can see both sides of the argument, though I’m one to wish things weren’t exclusive to one carrier.
Apparently the sales of the 900 went better because of carrier exclusivity as opposed to the 800 which wasn’t carrier exclusive. But wait a minute, the Nokia Lumia 800 wasn’t even on a carrier in the US. Was it?
Paul Thurott doesn’t actually agree with Nokia’s strategy either. Neither do a lot of MNB readers leaving comments or folks commenting on other blogs. What about the networks they’re on?
Exclusivity may have temporarily worked for iPhone in a time when it was a very unique/different device. Now the iPhone and its competitors are everywhere on pretty much all networks. I can only see it working if the carrier puts significant resources into trying to sell your product with you.
Rebuilding relationships with carriers by getting a flagship Nokia on the network was a good first step. But don’t we need more now? What’s going on with Verizon/Sprint? Where are my Nokia Lumia for Verizon?
About the Author (Author Profile)
Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Fully agree with you Jay, and I do get that nokia is struggling with carriers to get them to sell Nokias and this might look to them as the only way out, I do how ever think that an exclusive deal with carrier 1 is more problems with carrier 2, and ending up with reduce mindset and for the phone on the exclusive deal, Nokia IMO should avoid it specially with flagships. That end up pushing sales of the lower range phones.
The lumia 800 didn’t sell well compared to the 900 because it was not subsidized and mostly available from ms stores and bundled with headphones etc that drive up the price.
That’s why it didn’t sell. Not because of carrier exclusivity.
He’s talking about the 800 in non-US markets, where it WAS subsidized.
Can we wait with the witchhunt to see what Verizon/TMobile get, and how long the exclusitivies are for.
Paul Thurott is comparing the 800 and 900 sales strategy and results, inside AND outside u.s. markets.
The US market is unique enough to where.. I don’t think you could do what he did.
How about doing what he thinks ?
“”"
that Nokia’s relative lack of success with the Lumia 800 had more to do with locale exclusivity—they never even launched the damn thing in the US
“”"
Elop talked about the 800 subsidized on multiple european carriers. Thurrot even quotes the exact passages.
The 800 was launched in the us.
“they never even launched the damn thing in the US”
That is Thurrot’s quote, not mine.
Pleas enlighten us, where could one get the Lumia 800 in the US. (Since it’s the US, being able to buy a full price import does not count, since you can buy any phone anywhere that way, that’s not what “launch” means).
it was sold in ms stores. it wasn’t launched by any carrier, but unlocked and unbranded it was available in the us with support for us umts bands. paul is mistaken
That’s not a “launch”, the total amount of devices sold in that way is completely insignificant in the US.
Note sure what point you’re trying to prove again with these semantics.
yeah but the european and american market works differently. having exclusivity in europe doesn’t raise your sales.and i don’t think it raises them in the us either. the point was that in the us there was a massive marketing effort and a lot of build up in the wait before the lumia 800 launch in europe and the 900 in the us. by then people were fascinated with the desing, with the colors, they wanted to try the os, the price was lower than in europe, so all of this factors accounted for the 900 to be the 2nd best seller on att selling more than any android counterpart untill july.
right now i hope they will have variations of the 820 as rumoured for the other carriers. i don’t expect pureview, but a hd screen in the 4,3 form factor, maybe unibody without sd slot but bigger memory. things like that.
if we account for the future we may have in the us, the 920 and 820 on at&t, the 822 on t mobile and verizon, plus whatever phones they will release at mwc, next gen 808 and lower end wphones. this compared to this past year where they had the lumia 900 on at&t and the 710 on t mobile. so it’s a strong possibility they will sell a lot more this coming year in the us. also internationally, now that the lumia brand is getting recognized and they are able to launch more phones at different price points. this year is make or break for nokia,no matter what strategy they will apple
I didnt read the article. Does it say that 800 beat 900 globally? That might be the case in the us, but I doubt it in ROF. In northern Europe L900. To me it seems that 610 is the hero device. In other price points WP7 was losing in features, but in lower end the fluidity beat the competition.
The Lumia 800 didn’t sell because it wasn’t all that great a phone. Besides the design (for which the N9 was even more perfected) it offered a whole lot of nothing.
Nokia is pushing itself in a small corner where it won’t be able to get out easily.
They need to sell individual units now, not get the best deals.
I also don’t agree with the strategy to make hero phones, Apple can do this, but Apple is Apple, how many people have the money to buy a 920 in the US? I’ll tell you, not many.
I wish Nokia would just stop their WP contract and just release like Samsung, that’s what they’re good at, they are not good at playing Apple trying to focus on 1 platform and doing hero phones.
But we cant blame nokia to much for that, I mean everybody was pushing Nokia to go into that direction. And I’m 100% that that’s what Microsoft wants Microsoft investors want Microsoft to go head to head with apple.
Also nokia does need hero phones to boost the other phones sales. And that is one more reason to not let those hero phones be exclusive to one carrier.
they need to maximize mind-share not limit it.
and it was the Meego N950/N9….was it not ? and look what happened
reviving all of the mistakes of Elops management is something that we will probably do wen we know nokias future, for now I will stick to comment present errors as he does them.
But the U.S. market reentering is definitely on the plus side of the Elop’s management era.
It was the mission impossible. And it happened. The exclusivity for AT&T (or Verizon) was just necessary.
And that was such a great deal.
Sacrifice your main money making market and world leading sales, to gain miniscule and temporary now decreasing sales from the USA. That’s such a brilliant plus and pure business genious only a man like Elop can manage. /s
Lol. Sooooo Stupid.
Good you put up the /s
Some people here would have really thought you were praising Elop.
The US is the key market that you have to have for smartphones. Yes, Nokia is making growth in South East Asia and Africa with feature phones. Elop had Nokia continue doing what they were doing where they were actually successful. But Nokia’s smartphone efforts were a total cluster**** and needed to be entirely revamped – and yes, they needed to be US centric.
It is totally unimportant market for nokia because they do not make money there. They should leave US because they have only made loss there for past 10 years or so.
US as a market is totally overrated. Nokia should leave the market and rest of the world would love it. Make their own OS that is not connected to US their sales would explode in Asia and Europe.
Yes, because people who buy phones care if the OS made in the US.
Hence why people only Windows and OS X in the US, and are using Linux in the rest of the world (mind you none of the distributions that are from the US, and without any of the patches applied from Americans).
Some people would care and it is much bigger portion than the potential of WP.
I am not saying that Linux does not have American patches or anything. The idea is to have more open environment that people feel more equal around the world. It is about control and who is controlling.
No shit we’ve seen that crap ever since and it’s getting worse and more noticeable
This is crazy from Nokia… This is american approach where mobile phones are branded with the service provider… This is not working in the rest of the world and is even unlegal in some countries like France …
R.I.P.
Sure, they had another option: Ignore the U.S. market.
Carriers have some 20 or so shelf slots… Every carrier sells just a small subset of available phones.
it being illegal is the only reason it doesn’t happen. if it were legal, it would be happening in france.
Maybe they had little choice, ATT may have said they will only take the 920 if it was exclusive.
Honestly, that’s for sure.
In fact, they had to choose between:
1. Exclusivity for ATT.
2. Being sold by T-Mo only.
Paul Thurrott and others steadily underestimate the power of carriers.
Sorry, this comment should rather apply to Lumia 900′s AT&T exclusivity, not 920′s. Nokia was a poor underdog with 900 and its situation is just slightly better with 920.
Then sell it on Verison. Bigger and better network.
Anyway, ATT are not treating it exclusive also stocking the HTC 8X, Samsung (and iPhone etc etc) ! Double standard??
Two words HTC OneX.
I mentioned this earlier in the week on twitter but the OneX was ONLY available in the US on one carrier but there were a number of variants available on other carriers with mild modifications to the underlying message and overall design.
Elop hinted at this MONTHS ago, saying that each carrier would need a unique proposition in order to consider carrying the devices.
Anyone remember the original Galaxy S when Samsung were trying to create/cement a position in the US?
3 relatively mildly different designs with the same internals and a single HW-keyboarded device for Sprint.
Now that they’ve convinced carriers that they’re capable of selling well (thus making carriers a killing) they can bully the carriers into carrying the same device across entire markets. THE ONLY OEM besides Samsung doing that?? Apple: it took YEARS of exclusivity to build that sort of position where they could mandate that sort of contract from carriers.
Is it annoying?? Yes, most certainly but it’s the way of the world right now. OEM’s need to get the power back but it won’t happen until some other technology(ies) threaten the carriers.
I mean, what other business makes 20-40% profit margins then decides to raise costs while decreasing the quality of service.
the iPhone NEVER had a carrier logo on it…not even during the first ATT run.
You know that has bugger all to do with the fact that it was an AT&T exclusive until last year.
It was Cingular for the first run.
Cingular are AT&T and have been the same entity since 2005??
HTC 8X,
When it was showed off it was mentioned that t-moile, At&t and Verizon are getting.
Explain how HTC were able to get all the carriers to agree to carry what is essentially the same phone.
HTC and Verizon and Sprint have had brilliant relationships in the past. The Evo 4G on Sprint being the first “4G” device to hit the market and was a massive seller for them.
HTC and the Incredible and it’s variants for Verizon were also very big sellers. These carriers know HTC and will know how to get what they want out of them while HTC is often more than willing to bend to their demands. Is it a shock then that the 8X is on Verizon? They’re a known quantity in the US with a decent sales rep and decent reputation as far as quality is concerned.
The same cannot be said of Nokia who ignored the US market for much too long, especially when it became the crucible of growth for the smartphone industry in Europe, Latin America, Western Europe South East Asia and much more.
Bullshiittt!! I’ll give an example : a store sees huge profits in a product , the store will do everything possible to get that product . How do you explain that all operators want an iPhone or Galaxy S3 ? because these products sell a lot. after all no matter the quadcore , maps, exclusives , what matters is the customer and what they ask for, the iPhone is a great example . if other carriers do not want to sell the 920 is because they do not see something profitable
Half of what he said is true and half of yours is true.
Relationship and brand is a very powerful factor in the US Market and Nokia doesn’t have or have burnt that bridge with the N9 abandonment and Nokia as a brand in the US is actually a big joke.
A store will only sell products it knows will sell, often that’s based on products from the company having sold exceedingly well.
You think Samsung would have the same device everywhere (Galaxy S3) if the S and S2 didn’t sell exceptionally well (in part due to being carriers’ only other option and top end device to the iPhone at the time.
Interesting that nobody seems to be asking why Elop’s WP phones aren’t selling the normal way, and why even this restrictive nonsense generates better, although obviously still catastrophic, sales.
Because carriers carry a large number of different devices, they need to have devices that fit into certain price/functionality niches within their portfolio and with a new OS, a new manufacturer(to US consumers) and a waning presence in the public eye, carriers are loathe to put up the big bucks and commit to a 1m+ phone purchase if they don’t think it’ll sell very well.
AT&T is confident the Lumia 920 will sell to their customers for whatever reasons and were willing to pay a lot of money, commit to a lot of devices and contribute to manufacturing to the point where Nokia couldn’t refuse or had other devices built for other carriers.
May also have to do with the fact that Verizon hasn’t carried a proper Nokia handset in it’s entire history whereas AT&T have had multiple soirees with Nokia in the past, ditto for T-Mobile.
That’s really an end of it.
@Andre…I couldn’t have said this better myself. Not only has Verizon not had a relationship with Nokia for years, but Verizon has been lukewarm towards WP in general – no WP devices on that network at launch in 2010, but then one device 7 months after launch, and no devices since then!
With Verizon’s history towards WP and Nokia, I don’t see any possible way how Nokia could be confident that Verizon would satisfactorily embrace and promote the Lumia 920. Yes, they are giving WP a chance with HTC, and rumored to bring a Lumia 820 variant, but I think that Nokia was wise to give their flagship to ATT as AT&T has been the only U.S. carrier to carry multiple WP devices since 2010, and actually contributes to some of the advertising.
The Lumia 920 will do well on AT&T.
You and your rationality!
Btw, who knows if Verizon has a nice exclusive Nokia model lined up for launch say in Q1 or Q2 – e.g. a PV Phase 3 phone perhaps?
Well, at the very least the 822 is apparently on its way for Verizon, unless something has changed:
http://www.wpcentral.com/nokias-carrier-exclusives-verizons-lumia-822
And perhaps very soon:
http://wmpoweruser.com/htc-8x-and-nokia-rm-878-pass-through-fcc/
So the reason is that carriers don’t want to commit to phone if they don’t believe it will sell. Well, I can agree with that.
I appreciate how you are trying to make it look as if ATT had to fight tooth and nail for the privilege of selling Nokia new phone, that they had to offer huge marketing commitments, big pile of money and lot of other things.
After all the balance of powers couldn’t be clearer. As you conceded, other carriers aren’t interested in the phone and with the absolute importance Elop assigned to US market, it’s obviously ATT who will lose if the deal isn’t inked, not Nokia. Therefore Elop is free to dictate the terms.
Also, as far as we know, the exclusivity is coming to Europe too.
Let me guess: people think Elop is a poopyhead and hate Microsoft.
Let me guess: people think Elop is a genius and loves Microsoft.
I think the best AT&T can do to Nokia’s flagship is market it , which if you followed the Lumia 900 you’d see that AT&T succeeded at handling it.
I hope it’s the next Iphone for AT&t
Yep. Nokia sucks at marketing. That’s probably the best part of these exclusivity deals.
wroooongg!!! Succed because the price. $50 if you can call that a success , for me that is a complete fail !
the price was possible because of at&t … seeing how we don’t see cheap lumias anywhere else in the world. This is marketing…
Plus the buzz that at&t can create in the us is much better than all the buzz Nokia made in the last 5 year’s
The thing is, at&t and Nokia goes deep. Anybody remember the training and free phones Nokia gave to the at&t employees? And how heavily the devices were promoted in at&t?
I guess not.
To replicate this cross an entire spectrum of carriers might not be feasible. Both with the money an$ the manpower required.
ELOP JUST HANDED HTC AND SAMSUNG ALL THE POTENTIAL WINDOWS PHONE 8 CUSTOMERS ON VERIZON IN USA.
AT&T is a minor player. Verizon is the BIG RED DOG in the US market!
It’s over. Nokia is finished!!!!!
Well, not all:
http://wmpoweruser.com/htc-8x-and-nokia-rm-878-pass-through-fcc/
http://www.wpcentral.com/nokias-carrier-exclusives-verizons-lumia-822
And probably more to come.
Sometimes thinking helps.
Do you actually read articles from those sources makes me feel sick even to think to enter those pages of the dark side.
Not to mention the minute fact that, again, at&t is the largest carrier.
AT&T is a minor player? Hah! That explains why Verizon finally caved in to Apple’s demands to carry the iPhone?
Paul Thurott, the man who said the htc 8x beats the 920 out of the water.what a dumbass
Nokia leaving Symbian/meego and going WP was ok with us, but this crap of exclusivity will really hurt you. If you’re looking at first, 2nd and 3rd gen iPhone’s success at AT&T as reason for going exclusive then you’re forgetting one thing, at that time people didn’t have much choice in terms of smartphones, which ever phones were available in market, they were just trying to do catch up with iPhones, but then also experience on those phones were not at par with iPhone, so people left other carriers in drove to try something new and unique. But in today’s scenario there are lots of choices available to consumers and most of them are better than iPhone or other smartphones out there, so exclusive deals are not gonna work today. If you have niche device and want to test the water, before jumping in with your full might, then it’s okay, but users can get same experience from other WP8 phones also, so chances of them leaving their carriers are very slim. Last year samsung launched Note 1 only on AT&T because it was new device and samsung wanted to test how well it gets received by the public, and once they learnt that public is loving their new category, then this yr. they are launching Note 2 on every carrier in US……………… so Nokia think on your strategy once again, and make Lumia920 available on as many carriers as possible…………….
Guys, before going into that Symbian, Meego crap again. Consider this :
WP only has 3% marketshare. This phone, as good as it is, will never sell itself in volume if it’s next a SG3 or an iPhone5. Even worse, it will probably be put somewhere in the back next to the older 900.
This phone and the OS neeeed exclusive deals to make sure it gets enough marketing. Once WP is over 10% or more, phones will generate consumer buzz, but now? no way, it will not sell itself. The internet is full of techies and not representative for a normal consumer.
Believe me on this one : Nokia and WP8 need exclusive deals to even have a change to create consumer awareness.
OK, go back to your talking about the past
We should be able to include the past when we talk about the future..
I agree, these deals are essential, and the more of them the better. If Verizon does a droid like marketing blitz in the US, it will help WP A LOT…. they just need a flagship device to carry the initial push, and we were all hoping that would be e Nokia..
“Once WP is over 10% or more, phones will generate consumer buzz, but now?”
10%?!
That will never happen.
“OK, go back to your talking about the past
”
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And Nokia’s Elopian past is not worth repeating. Just saying.
I guess it’s a marketing and a technical requirement. Easier to make a bigger splash with AT&T because they’re bigger and they use similar standards to European telcos.
Nokia is a dead man walking. This exclusivity deal is a good example of how bad Nokia’s marketing situation is. Nokia used to be the king of marketing in mobile, the came Elop with his Effect and here we are, relationships to carriers destroyed and Nokia forced into exclusivity deals. Elop should have been fired over a year ago before he was allowed to destroy the whole company.
Now that Nokia is no longer, I’m just waiting what Jolla has to offer. Hopefully they get the support of the people and MeeGo lives on regardless of Nokia’s (read Elop’s) hostility towards it.
I dont think that Jolla will support US market in the first wave except via online store. And they even shouldnt: too competitive market with somewhat hombrew competition. China is the market to go together with Northern Europe. Remember, N9 was not really available in US and they cannot use that story beyond Maemo enthusiasts. Also, a lot of the local apps seem to be available for China, not so well to US, already.
*yawn* The usual parade of negativity going around here, it seems.
Exclusivity could pay off in the long run. When the iPhone was a Cingular exclusive and only available in the US, people were trying very hard to get working elsewhere. It became desirable because it was something you couldn’t have. When the iPhone 3G became more widely available, people jumped on it because they could finally have an iPhone.
Same thing worked for Gmail being invite only, Facebook being for university students only, the iPod being Mac only. By constraining it, it makes it something people really want. People on networks other than AT&T in the states will be wishing they could have a PureView camera. When it shows up on Verizon, they’ll gobble it up.
Also, traditionally, each iteration of a flagship phone sells better than the last, but the first couple runs won’t be that strong. The Lumia 920 were it available everywhere wouldn’t do as well as the Galaxy S, so it’s a better strategy to use it to create desirability for a subsequent model that’ll sell better.
AT&T is the easiest carrier to focus on in the US because they use GSM/UMTS and LTE, just like the carriers in Europe and most parts of Asia. T-mobile uses some weird GSM band variant that only Nokia’s pentaband devices can access while Verizon is on CDMA/EVDO/LTE. It’s a mess of incompatible standards and users locked in to contracts… not like Europe where you can easily buy an unlocked device and put in whatever SIM you want.
I don’t know of any manufacturer that makes a single device that can access all GSM, UMTS, CDMA and LTE bands used in the US. The iPhone 4S covered the first three but the iPhone 5 has three SKUs for the US and international markets. Samsung also has different Galaxy S3 models on each carrier.
Nokia has a CDMA variant of the Lumia 800 for the China market called the 800C and they also sell the regular 800 and 900. They could adopt the same strategy in the US market but their AT&T partnership seems to be the best starting point so far.
We haven’t heard from Verizon and TMo yet. Both should have Nokia devices in their lineup, TMo probably 820, and Verizon is still a bit or a surprise (is the 822 only an 820 variant? Does it have some extra features?)
I assume Tmo will get the 820 as is because the phone can use the 1700 Mhz AWS band. Lumia on Verizon would require a new device for CDMA support.
Specs for the 800C:
- Qualcomm MSM8655 chipset
- GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 bands
- CDMA 800, 1900 bands
As for the 820/920:
- Qualcomm Snapdragon S4?
- GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900
- UMTS/WCDMA 850, 900, 1700 (AWS), 1900, 2100
- LTE 700, 800, 850, 900, 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2600
The 800C was also released a few months after the 800, to little fanfare
I don’t know of a Qualcomm chipset that supports all GSM, UMTS/WCDMA, CDMA and LTE bands in use, so looks like it will be multiple variants for Nokia.
There hasn’t been any info released suggesting either the 820 or the 920 will be getting AWS.
http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/lumia920/specifications/
http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/lumia820/specifications/
WCDMA Band IV (1700)
Otherwise known as UMTS Band IV. That’s AWS for you
“Paul Thurott: Explaining Nokia’s Lumia Exclusivity Strategy”.
What strategy? AT&T has a bunch of exclusive phones from other OEMs too. How is the Lumnia getting any extra special positive push from AT&T?
remember the 900? it was a big deal for a while
big deal to whom?
and that wasn’t about the points I raised.
that depends a lot who put the money into the campaign. Ofcourse an operatot will take anything they get for free for themselves and their employees. If Nokia & MS got ATT to invest their own money, it makes sense to offer exclusivity.
I didn’t read the article yet, so this is merely a comment on the comments.
On unannounced deals:
There is one major theme that has been prevalent for the past weeks and months here and on other sites. The mistaken notion that when something isn’t announced, it doesn’t exist. Believe me when I say, there is much yet to be announced about Nokia’s WP8 rollout and none of it means things are late or deals are missing. Nokia is keeping things close to their vest until the right time.
On carriers in the U.S.:
Nokia was crap in the U.S. So whatever they did under Ollila and OPK, wasn’t working. OPK was tasked to fix this, he failed and it is one reason he was out. Nokia never had good carrier relations in the U.S., because they refused to play the carrier game and when they finally started to try, their products weren’t competitive anymore (with iPhone and Droid).
I don’t like carrier exclusivity any more than most of the guys here. I abhor it, absolutely hate it. I don’t like Nokia doing exclusive deals and I find it risky too. But unless you have a commanding position (like Apple, perhaps Samsung now) in the U.S., you have to play with the carriers to get somewhere. Not even the Nokia of old could bypass that, let alone the Nokia weakened by half a decade of transition to “something”.
Having said that, I don’t think Nokia is ignoring other major carriers. Again, just because something has not yet been announced does not mean it won’t happen. Very likely Verizon and T-Mobile will get their own devices and Nokia will play the BlackBerry card, customizing variations of their devices for different carrier exclusive deals.
As for Europe and rest of world, while there may be exclusive carrier dealings in certain key markets, I doubt the usual way of selling Nokia devices changes much. In places like Finland, most of us will pop in a major store and buy the device full price, unlocked as usual.
Yes Janne. Well said but … how do u know all this? Guessing up the facts.
Sorry, I am not going to mention it here but these words of yours just confirmed something to me.
Now I know why u keep twisting arguments and now I understand your real reasons for “overly” supporting the WP stradegy.
…and it is?
If you are referring to me “knowing” about Verizon or T-Mobile Lumias, that is hardly a secret. The leaks have been out there for weeks, if not months now. Heck, some of them are even linked in these comments. It is not hard to deduct the rest.
I have no insider access, but I do think I have plenty of insight from closely following Nokia’s progress. None of it is insight others doing the same couldn’t have. Of course it also helps to live in the land of Nokia, because some leaks happen in Finland and in Finnish.
The thing is, people keep repeating this myth that I’m “overly supporting the WP strategy”. I don’t think I am, though. Yes, I am rooting for Nokia – that’s a given, considering this is a Nokia fan blog for, well, Nokia fans. But that’s pretty much the extent of it. I want Nokia to do well.
But I see a lot of danger-signs too in the new strategy and many missteps along the way. Just because I like WP too (I bought my first in December 2010, an LG Optimus 7, not knowing anything about Nokia’s future), doesn’t mean I’m blind about these things. I’m rocking Android, have had iOS devices and pretty much all platforms in my use.
I’m a Nokia fan, a gadget fan, and I pay attention, which means I know quite a few things about Nokia etc. That’s my reason for wanting to set straight some of the misconceptions that I think are floating around here.
And how do you know that things are on track and Nokia has tons of new announcement prepared? It’s from your sources inside Nokia? Considering the September launch fiasco, it seems to be little bit far fetched to say that Nokia keeps things to the vest until the right time.
Well, Elop says there will be changes. After all it seems pretty ilogical if you declare that we tried broad sales and exclusivity, and we learned exclusivity works while broad approach doesn’t, and then retain the same strategy as before, i.e. exclusivity essentially just in US. So the exclusivity is coming to Europe too.
Of course it will be only in the few key markets. Elop abandoned the rest of the world, which means he doesn’t care if carriers in these other countries will offer Lumias and with how big subsidies or marketing.
I don’t know if things are on track. I assume they more likely are, then are not, based on what I know. The U.S. operator exclusives and schedules, for example, are playing out exactly as I predicted in September. I expect Verizon news to follow. I don’t know the timing of T-Mobile news, though. Sprint is not on board.
That is my assessment of the facts, leaks and whatnot known. As for September timing of Lumia WP8 unveil, to me it seems very much planned and intentional – to keep Lumia 920 in the headlines. I think it worked, although of course it is unoptimal the product schedule did not allow selling them in September. You don’t agree, fine. We disagree.
Exclusivity is definitely coming to certain markets in Europe too, I agree, because Nokia has already said so. However, because Europe is far less operator-driven, its impact will be less and quite different from the U.S. model.
As for abandoning markets, I don’t think they are – we have disagreed on that before and still do – but yes, their focused push will be less broad this time. Other markets will receive less push or the push will come from local partners more than from Nokia itself.
Again, I expect this to be how it plays out. I’d call it certain enough to say I know so. However, as always, something surprising or disrupting might happen that I didn’t take into consideration. But that is a far cry from people going on and on about how Nokia has no operator deals and Lumia 920 is coming god knows when… No, it is coming in November and Nokia has plenty of operator deals. Just wait and see.
I don’t have any inside sources, all I have are public information, public leaks and my own experiences. But I do pay a lot of attention and have a relatively vast knowledge of Nokia’s past and present as well as current mobile events. It’s a hobby.
nn:
By the way, since you keep claiming Nokia is abandoning markets for WP8 Lumia… Name some, please. What markets is Nokia taking Lumia away from?
My assessment is that they are not literally abandoning any markets. They are, of course, making their push more directed and choosing less markets for the large push. Some markets might see local distributors instead of Nokia personnel handle the sales etc., but I see no indication of lessening global reach for Lumia.
If anything, I see the global reach of Lumia growing in Q3 and more so during Q4 and after (I don’t expect all countries to get WP8 Lumia in Q4, some probably only in Q1), as new countries are added. I haven’t seen any proof of Nokia walking away from any markets with Lumia. Perhaps there is some you can name, so we can follow those countries?
A lot of people don’t seem to understand that the carrier has more power than the manufacturer in cases like this. I can almost guarantee that Nokia didn’t make the call on some of these exclusivity deals.
So please, stop spreading hate and FUD about things we know very little about.
The US market has a lot of clout because of US-centric blogs and media, yet it also has the craziest telco industry. Most people buy on contract because it’s cheaper up front (not in the long run though) and they tend to stick to one carrier depending on the quality of local coverage. The CDMA carriers also don’t allow devices not purchased from them to be used on their networks.
You can’t easily switch carriers and phones because of contracts and the different, incompatible standards used – GSM/UMTS, CDMA, and a few LTE bands.
Actually, Verizon will let you use a CDMA device that they sell that you bought from another carrier on their network. That’s an exception though. All other CDMA carriers are as you say.
hmmm what? strategy??? Limiting is not a strategy, it is a straight way to build own ghetto and self close in it. And Nokia seems to treat the US market as the whole market on this planet, so this is hilarious rather then strategic thinking IMHO.
“Nokia seems to treat the US market as the whole market on this planet”
Care to explain how exactly?
well, now i understand why they put the nokia logo on the right side (on l920, previous nokia phones is always on the center), so they can put at&t logo at the left side
Or any other carrier logo. Smart.