Molecularist

Hugues J. De La Vergne, from Gartner, has come out with a brief report, suggesting what Nokia can do in North America. On one side, he’s right. On the other side, he’s just so wrong. On the whole, the analysis is not new, but at least a year behind everyone else.

Link: Nokia Can Avert Disaster in North American Mobile Phone Market.

Nokia is fast losing ground in this market. To turn things round, it must offer clamshell designs, bolster its CDMA range, expand its midrange and high-end portfolios, and meet carriers’ demands for customized phones.

Where he’s right: Yes, Nokia can do well playing by the historical
rules of the North American market. Indeed, the same rules can be
followed in the rest of the world to – do exactly what operators want,
deliver what users think they want today.

Where he’s wrong: This recipe is formulaic and reactionary. It only
addresses the market today and sets up for disaster any company who
follows this recipe. The more control we allow the operators to have,
the more they will think they have, the more they will dictate the
whole ecosystem. That’s bad for innovation, for growth, and for
everyone who is not an operator. And, yes, I have my own view of how
Nokia can kick some serious butt in the US, but won’t talk about it
here just yet.

Credit where due: Hugues is quite right in that the other half of the
argument is simply Nokia doesn’t seem to have a broad enough offering
in CDMA and GSM in North America in general. I think they are offering North America
phones designed (separately) for the European and Asia market. Also,
they just need to put out more phones in CDMA – though, in that market,
that means designing phones for operators.

 

Well, it’s not all that bad to design phones for specific operators. And I think it would be cool for Nokia to do that. But, I feel that the operators and Nokia are trying to do a fusion of different opposing product creation techniques instead of choosing one (let Nokia design it) or the other (let the operator design it) for specific phones.

 

Oh, and get off this thing of clamshells. That’s so 2004! To suggest Nokia make clamshells at this point in time is well over a year past due.

Here’s a good conversation thread basically saying Web 2.0 is not about technology, but about attitude. Indeed, for a company like Nokia (where I am still working at), where the industry is still young and in a closed proprietary money-grubbing lock-in-those-customers state, it will be a nifty challenge to take on the open and linked attitude of Web 2.0.

Link: peterme.com: No. Really. It’s not *about* the technology..

APIs facilitate openness, but they’re meaningless if your organization doesn’t have the conceptual underpinnings to take advantage of it.

Sigh. I have so much to say on this topic, but it’s a jumble of notes.

Some day. Some day.

Some interesting data on word-of-mouth. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m really big on WOM – it’s what I did in the past year.

But, thinking a bit, I am really also advocating companies participating in the conversation of the community they sell to and work with. Might WOM also be extended to include how the company interacts with its customers? Instead of WOM being about (in the end) selling a product, might it not be the way to do all your business?

Link: Church of the Customer: The science of word of mouth.

In our last podcast, we chatted with Dr. Walter Carl, an assistant professor at Northeastern University who is researching organized word-of-mouth programs and whether they alter the medium’s natural ecosystem.

BzzAgent provided Walter with a big chunk o’ data to study and today, the company released some of his findings in a six-page whitepaper. (We’re mirroring the 229kb PDF here.)

I have noticed recently that I have become more rabid that we are overserving the mobile user.

Link: MobHappy: Wow, Somebody Might Be Listening.

Their argument is clear, concise and cohesive: the business is still too focused on technology, and this gets in the way of serving users. People are presented with too many features on their devices, none of which are especially good nor easy to use. When it comes to services, setup and provisioning is currently horrible, and the services themselves aren’t presented in a helpful manner.

The best test is to give an advanced smartphone to someone outside the
industry (as I do regularly) and come back later to interview them on
what they use on the phone.

My findings are pretty consitent, regardless of phone. People mostly use (usually in this order):
– Voice calling – might seem stupid to highlight that here, but it’s essential to understanding where the money is
– SMS – not MMS, not email
– Alarm clock
– Contacts
– Camera
– Maybe, calendar

And that’s it.

Heck, I’m a power user and there is a boat-load of krap that I never touch. Can’t the manufacturer let me get rid of those apps to free up space in my menu? Also, phones nowadays seem to have so much krap that is put in simply to tick off a feature list for an operator! Argh, it’s so annoying.