Must Nokia Go Android to Survive in the Smartphone Market?

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There are clear indications that Nokia is losing the smartphone market due to lots of reasons. For over a decade, Nokia’s dominance was almost undisputed as demand for Symbian OS kept rising till the emergence and rapid growth of  iOS and Android over the years. Nokia tried several updates to stay alive in the market by upgrading its Symbian platform but obviously, this hasn’t helped much. From Symbian ^3, we saw Symbian Anna and Belle which hasn’t made much difference.

Meego OS was discontined and Maemo too isn’t so much in demand. These are clear indications that Nokia definitely has to change its marketing strategy. According to its financial report published last month, Nokia recorded a loss of $1.7 billion in the first quarter of the year and this proves that the Lumnia series running Windows 7 are yet to pay off either.

 

From a personal stand point, I know a couple of people who used to believe so much in Symbian OS but not anymore. People now prefer Android or iOS and that is the real problem Nokia is facing. The competition from Apple and Samsung is suffocating Nokia and its native operating system which it’s not willing to give up. There are several factors responsible for this huge loss and the drastic drop in sales.

 

Sluggish OS

Don’t get it twisted, I’m not saying Symbian OS is that bad, but we all know phones like Nokia N96, N97 are so slow and Series 60v5 OS came with lots of bugs. That’s probably the reason Symbian OS underwent series of upgrades in such a little time but lots of people were already losing faith in Symbian OS as a capable operating system. Nokia N8 revolutionized Symbian OS for a while but I still don’t understand why Nokia N9, which should be a more powerful version of N8, came with Meego OS which was discontinued within a short time.

It’s like Nokia made it clear that it was losing faith in Symbian OS. Maemo OS too didn’t go down too well with consumers either.

Nokia looks and sounds old

Seriously, Nokia now sounds old school. This sounds like a personal thing and I don’t expect you to throw bricks at me for that. The Symbian OS still looks and feels the same and believe me, it’s getting boring. I’ve been using Nokia phones for the past five years and its like you get bored with the same old thing. You might want to argue that Nokia 808 Preview with 41MP camera is a great innovation and I’m not arguing that but instead of experimenting with all sorts of operating systems, Symbian OS should have been polished, improved and marketed the right way.

We all see how Samsung came from obscurity to dominate the smartphone market. Samsung knew what consumers wanted and became a force to be reckoned with when it comes to producing great smartphones.

Something wrong with the administration?

Stephen Elop has made some bad decisions and this has probably impacted greatly on the loss Nokia recorded. There has been lots of inconsistency lately and we’ve seen Nokia experimenting with all sorts of OS and more recently, the partnership with Windows which hasn’t been profitable.

Elop is from Microsoft but his administration hasn’t been the best, symbian is dying fast and the replacement isn’t doing so well.

Will Nokia ever bounce back from this decline?

Android is so much in demand now but I doubt if we will ever see a Nokia smartphone running Android OS. The focus now seems to have shifted to WP7 but then again, Nokia seems to be admitting failure with that by re-launching Meego OS and Symbian OS.

Bad decisions, which seems to come from the company “integrity” made Nokia fail to adopt Android as it’s OS and bet the whole future of the company on Windows Phone 7.

Announcing the death of Symbian and Meego OS in 2011 pronounced doom for the company and even if Android is adopted now, I guess it’s too late. Apple redefined what a smartphone should be like with the popular iPhone, Samsung understood that and followed suit, Nokia thought its users will ever be loyal no matter what and failed to catch up.The smartphone market is already crowded – HTC, Samsung,Motorola and the rest of them have already bombarded the market with Android OS. Nokia might not succeed jumping in…What Nokia needs is a capable and consistent OS and a very good marketing strategy. Nokia is still relevant and this is undisputed but lots of changes need to be made.

What do you think? Should Nokia concentrate and improve Symbian OS, focus on WP7 or switch to Android?