Weekend Read: Two years later, Elop’s strategy panning out.

Here’s a nice write up by Nabkawe about his thoughts on Elop’s/Nokia’s WP strategy and how its panning out, taken from the WPC forums:

Mr. Elop was criticized a lot for his transition strategy that angered lots of fans and employees.

But what was Elop’s strategy? well when you look at the WP8 portfolio you’ll notice WP8 Lumia range is special.

Its the only range of products that directly competes with the Apple products range (sans the Ipads) .
But instead of repeating it self over and over like the Apple range does, Nokia elected to use a design language that is Pure. in every sense possible which doesn’t just help Nokia financially as simple means cheaper production process. but it allows them be distinctive about it. and colorful too.

How does the Lumia WP8 portfolio competes with Apple in the hardware department
*Feel free to skip ahead this part if you’re familiar with the hardware of the Lumia WP8 range.

Lumia 920
The flagship the Lumia 920 the Swiss army knife of WP8. dubbed a tank for its steady construction, heavy profile and its fighting spirit.
This 4g beast is colorful in a sea of black and white , has a world first OIS smartphone camera for steady videos/blur free daylight pictures, amazing low light performance, its the first ever to come with wireless charging built in, and its 4.5″ HD/LCD high refresh rate display has all that amazing Nokia adjustments for sunlight readability, also a world’s first it has Supersensitive touch so you could use fingernails/gloves and keys to interact with the screen
the fact that Verizon still wants a variation of this phone 5 months after launch should tell you something about how well received this phone is.

Lumia 820
Then there is the Lumia 820 which boosts a smaller screen 4.3” with an AMOLED this time which looks great on WP because of the high refresh rate , a 480p res to keep things light while maintaining the same Processor/Ram/GPU/4g/supersensitive/Carl Zeiss as the 920, the 820 sports a smaller/lighter and thinner profile and while it lacks native wireless charging it can be added on via exchangeable covers which can also be 3d printed.
the 820 has two variations the 822/810.

Lumia720
last month the world got introduced to the amazing midrange Lumia 720 a phone that deserves the Pureview title yet it wasn’t given to it as Nokia set the bar a little bit higher for that, this slim and light phone doesn’t have 4g but in every other way its the fit younger brother of the Lumia 920 ,with a 1gb dual core processor 512mb ram and an IPS LCD 4.3″ 480p display again with all the Nokia adjustments for outdoor use and sunlight readability and Supersensitive touch too , the big attention grabber however is the phone’s cameras, the back one’s carl Zeiss 6.7mp with a 1.9 aperture will guarantee amazing daylight pictures/ wider dynamic ranges and a great low light pictures (nearly bested the HTC One even without OIS), the FFC uses BSI its the same tech behind the 920 and the 720 back camera which is again a first for FFCs. 720 also sports a big 2000mah battery and the ability to wirelessly charge through clip on covers.

Lumia 620
Then comes the Lumia 620 , a fully featured Entry level device with Front Facing Camera, and NFC a 3.8” screen a great double toned back exchangeable shell (Waterproof shells soon too), I haven’t heard a bad review about this one , its a great back up device and is expected to do really well with young customers.

Lumia 520
Finally in that awesome range of devices we have the newly born Lumia 520 , the best entry smartphone ever packing a 4″ screen with super sensitive touch and a 1gb dual core processor with 512mb of ram, 5mp camera with no FFC to cut cost a little bit, its designed to outshine and out class some major mid ranged and some times high end smartphones while being at a price point that is very reasonable.

Now that we know that every Lumia is differently innovative hardware wise while being fully featured phone on the other hand(unlike Apple’s products) .

What happens when you hold a Lumia phone?
When you hold a Lumia phoneyou’ll always know where all the buttons are , they’re all the same , much like holding an Apple product.
But the differentiation becomes clear once you dig in.
You’ll use all of Nokia exclusive apps/services/lenses (Sans Glam me for the 520*) without any noticeable lags to speak of, and the 720/620/520 lumias won’t create a fragmented experience. you’ll only have fewer apps opened at a time**

All Lumias down to the 520 enjoy great camera experiences both hardware and software wise through amazing lenses.(Smartshoot,Cinemagraph,Panorama,Glam me and Burton’s Sequencer) + Microsoft’s own Blink and Photosynth.

You’ll have Nokia Music service that is free with no registrations with a Music+ option that goes as low as 4$ a month , along with cross-platform Xbox Music you’ll get a combo that can eclipse Apple’s music offerings.

You’ll enjoy what WP8 brings in terms of inter connectivity with social networks and SkyDrive goodies like photo sharing/file sharing/cloud document editing/music streaming and videos. .

You’ll have a people’s hub and schedules that travel with your MS account. anywhere (W8,W8RT,XBOX,otherWP8s)

You’ll be able to enjoy free Here location services on all of these devices regardless of the price point with all the offline voice guided navigation goodness, head turner Live sights (City lens) and useful Transit app. and with the hard push Elop is making to establish Nokia as the Here location service, Nokia/Here Maps are even on other platforms now to bring in even better POIs and amazing traffic data so your location experience will be simply Amazing.

All of those experiences will not share the same boring design , they’ll be enjoyed in a variety of colors and will not share the same rigid pricing nor the over pricing.

This is Elop’s plan for Nokia, to be an IOS/Androidish hybrid. a TRUE third ecosystem with truly innovative software/hardware that is distinctively Nokia.
Personally I think its a damn good one , it focuses on all ages unlike old people IOS or Collage and young kids Andorids.

was it a good plan ? sound off in the comments.
feel free to connect with me anytime @nabkawe5 .

*Nokia Lumia 520 I don’t think Nokia can’t just let the 520 use the back camera for the Glam me app , will know about that soon though.

** except in the case of power hungry games, but that’s hardly bad considering the price points can’t really get you Androids that could run such games anyways. and the price points even for cheap Apple products are high enough to allow power hungry games to work.

Category: Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone