It has been a busy week for all those on Nokia’s mailing list. The cellphone behemoth delivered release after release into our mailboxes, with details about its messaging service going totally free in India, changes in production volume, introduction of Ovi Music Unlimited services in India and most importantly (for us, at least), details of no fewer than five new devices. It was an imposing array – the first S40 device with a QWERTY keypad, the C3; the touchscreen and QWERTY combated C6; the business and social networking-friendly E5; the extremely musically inclined X2; and of course, the next flagship device to look forward to from Espoo – the 12MP camera-sporting N8.
The problem is that none of these devices is close to being available in the market – the C3 and C6 will come in Q2 2010, while the other three will be available even later in Q3 2010. Yes, some people will say that that is after all not so far away, but surely it would have made more sense to make noises about these products (all of which are extremely promising) a bit closer to their release? Right now, what these announcements have done is raised public interest for a while – interest which will, however, fade away if not satiated with products soon. Remember what happened to the original Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and the Satio?
Both were excellent devices but were released months after they were announced. By the time they arrived in the stores, not only had consumers lost interest after the initial hype but had also been distracted by products from competing brands. Now, we wonder if Nokia is not falling into the same trap. It had happened late last year when it announced the low cost 5230 well in advance of its actual release in the market, allowing the likes of LG and Samsung to come in with their own devices like the Cookie, the Star and the Corby in the interim, effectively carving out a significant chunk of the touchscreen market that Nokia had been targeting.
Even a month is a long time in technology these days, and while it pays to look ahead to the future, ignoring the present can be a recipe for disaster. Not every company can do an Apple and announce a product months in advance and still hope for customers to line up for it. We love Nokia, but we genuinely wish that the company would let its products do the talking in the stores, rather than as prototypes in demo zones.
