Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

It's possible. Cincinnati Bell, for example, has carried some nice mid-level phones like the Nokia 5800. I don't know how that carrier is with crippling phones in general, but as a point of comparison both Cin Bell and T-mo carry a version of the Sony Ericsson TM-506. Reportedly, the Cin Bell version is much less crippled than the T-mo version (for example, the Cin Bell version retains access to the FM Radio, while the T-mobile version blocks it for some bizarre reason).

I would venture to guess that a small regional carrier would be less likely to cripple a phone simply because they wouldn't have the leverage that a national carrier would have to demand customization.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Maemo doesn't have similar environment as S60 and S40 for making operator variants. So if operator demands specific backgrounds, custom menus, icons and colours for GUI, answer is: No can do. This might cause some cough in operators, but this doesn't stop them to take N900 to selections like iPhone case. iPhone doesn't have any operator/carrier specific icons/menus and operators happily sell it.

For iPhone CDMA version I have great doubts...CDMA=Qualcomm and iPhone CDMA = royalties to Qualcomm, which doesn't sound like Apple style.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

THE US operator selling it doesn't really need branding. If you have an iPhone in the US they're 99.99% certain you are on At&t. They also have some pull on what makes it into the app store. That's why there's no Google voice. Sure you can jailbreak it, but you might end up making a nice shiny paper weight. Comparing the iPhone to the N900 is basically saying the N900 is jailbroken from the factory. I can see why the US carriers are hesitant on bringing this phone stateside. They all look at At&t's problems with the iPhone. No one thought it would take off like it did, not they are playing catch up to keep up with the network load.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Not the issue at all.

You will never find a Business person who worries about "too many sales" = too much revenue

Thats what techies worry about silly. Im Sure if TMO thought they could increase market share by 50% the CEO would give his let testicle and let someone else worry about the network problems. :p

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

iPhone was a sure sell, the iPod created so much hype and took over, the iPhone was a no brainer to carry. Nokia hasn't had any massive market buzz in the US yet, the n97 was a quiet launch, the n95s and the e-series phones were just "there", people liked them, but nokia has never had a real hype/buzz beyond people who are tech heads.

Nokia strategy in North America needs to change. Starting with at least making their products available in Canada. *sigh.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

I don't disagree, Nokia's marketing in the US sucks. The challenge is that they don't often partner with carriers and selling a phone for >$600 doesn't go over well in the states. If they got carriers to promote their high end phones AND they promoted themselves they might make a dent in the market.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

I rwad an interview with someone from Nokia and that person (don't remember its exact position) a director of sales or mktg for North-America said Nokia wants to be #1 in US...

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

They had better get busy big-time. There's only room for so many players in the game. Right now it's a 3-way competition between Apple, RIM and Android with Palm struggling to stay on the roster. The more entrenched those become the harder it will be to get noticed. Time's a-wastin'...

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

There's a long road from some marketing guy talking smack to having even a noticeable presence in the US market.

The only place I regularly see a large number of Nokia phones is in the displays for prepaid phones at discount stores. The major carriers offer one or two models of Nokia phones at a given time, and they're usually low-end phones. Nokia smartphones have no mindshare among the general public. The only Nokia smartphone for sale by a major carrier at this moment is the "Surge", at AT&T.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Not true. Check the E71x.
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The problem isn't with Nokia, it's the deplorable position and power of the carriers......collusion, MASSIVE amounts of lobbying, the hold-over of the Ma Bell mentality, etc.
Nokia's vision of the industry is completely at odds with the U.S. tel-co's practices. Sure, Nokia throws out a little sacrificial lamb of a phone every now & again, and I know that there's a U.S. division of Nokia that I imagine "must" continue to try and work with the U.S. carriers.
But basically, Nokia is the only handset device manufacturer that has the ways and means to be able to tell the U.S. carriers, "FU."

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Another piece of the story is Nokia's history in America.
Check this quote from Texrat in post #184 of the following thread:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=31293&page=19
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"I've said this numerous times so please forgive the repeat:

Nokia TRIED to change the US model. Competitors saw an opportunity to grab market share as Nokia worked toward a more open, retail-based service. The effort worked against Nokia and in favor of LG, Samsung, Moto, et al.

Cracking the crazy US market would take more than Nokia-- it would take the combined effort of every single manufacturer getting on the same page and standing tough (or the FCC and FTC doing their jobs). I don't see that happening."

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

You say that the N900 would be targeted at the European or Asian markets but seeing the trends here (I am based in the UK and actively work in the Asian markets), that just doesnt seem to be happening. In the Uk as of now no network has come up with an announcement about the N900 and after extensively calling all of them, the general consensus is that it is highly unlikely. The same story is about Germany, Italy and Holland as well, where again no network wants to claim the N900. Now coming to the asian markets, something which retails for 500£ in the UK around 850$, amounts to a very expensive phone and the asian markets arent ready to spend that kind of dough where 3G and wifi is a big question mark. True Nokia has a prescence there but its only for the general handsets they do. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Iphone has been out in India and Vodafone and Airtel, 2 exclusive apple partners are having a tough time selling the Iphone.
What I believe is that this handset is more like a trial Nokia is doing a small player if you will in the more grander Nokia world domination plans.
I read somewhere ,and I just forgot the webpage will post if I find it, that a highly placed executive at Nokia said this phone is for the geeks(He actually used the words geeks,not techies but geeks).
This phone wont be coming out in large numbers and only a very select few with the money to spare could probably afford this and that will be probably it.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Many things need to happen in order for Nokia to make a winning incursion in the US market:

a) The carrier with Nokia phones has to agree more or less to not cripple the devices and become a dumb data pipe for them. How they could achieve this, no idea, but is going to be hard.
b) For a) to happen, they need a powerful device to try and cover as many user cases in the most flashy way possible. Something that is at odds with Nokia's position that "one size does not fit all". So maybe this would be a family of devices.
c) They need a robust developer community ready to launch app after app, each one with quality and polish.
d) For the above to happen, they need a simple yet powerful development platform, and that's not gonna happen until Qt finalizes its entrenchment (in Maemo case, Harmattan).
e) They need a very fancy and expensive marketing campaign.

All of this to enter a market that have some carrier practices that are almost unbelievable, is in the middle of a retail crisis, and values form over function (once again, at odds with Nokia philosophy).

You can see that the cost-benefit ratio of this incursion may not be favorable in the short term. In the long term, maybe.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

That is an erroneous statement and also some wild speculation on your part.
With the N900, Nokia included the 1700mhz band for 3G. 1700 is usable only by T-Mobile U.S. (at this time.)
So I would surmise that they do want to sell some of these units in the States.
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Nokia's number 1 and 2 markets (in terms of volume) are Asia and India, but with lower priced phones. It's my understanding that their smartphones are generally aimed at their #3 market, Europe .

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Sure they could brand it. It just wouldn't stay branded once into a consumer's hand that doesn't like or want the branding. Though given that most consumers never bother with this sort of thing (even with the iPhone which has software that does it for you) I'd say there's still an environment for branding.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

It seems there are rumors afloat of a potential buyout of Sprint Nextel by Deutsche Telekom. Considering DT already owns t-mobile and Nokia is buddy buddy with DT lately, this could bode quite well for nokia in US market

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

You say "Nokia is buddy buddy with DT [Deutsche Telekom] lately"... Why is that? Because look, Nokia cannot even sell through T-Mobile (owned by DT) its N900 custom made for T-Mobile frequencies (N900 which does not work on AT&T 3G network)...

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Nokia is buddy buddy with DT, they were in Nokia World and mentioned as one of their critical partners.

That, for whatever reason, Nokia doesn't want to move quicker in the US is another story. Can't blame them. They got one shot at this, and they have to be sure it is going to work.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

they shouldn't have done this whole media blitz, pre-order thing.

They should have figured out relationships, standard software packages etc before making any public statement on it. Look at the trending on searches (http://www.google.com/trends?q=n900&...ate=mtd&sort=0)

Having worked for a German firm, I thought that German marketing was some of the worst in the world, maybe I should look north before giving that title away:mad:

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

The fact is they didn't. If something, what Nokia has done is to underscore the N900 all around, specially in Nokia World.

That the device itself is so good that generated so much blitz despite Nokia's effort to underplay it, is a whole different issue.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

I'll defer to you on the "nokia world" part of it, and blame my perspective on my environment, the us market. In the US market, hardware providers tend to have all that other stuff figured out before announcing products.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

I do believe that the N900 have all that stuff figured out for their selected markets. What would be painful for a lot of people here is that, for whatever reason, the US is not considered between those markets.

I share your pain, because even if I don't live in the US, 3G in my country has the AT&T frequencies. Gotta be patient, I guess (even more since I am waiting on Harmattan).

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

I think with the n900, nokia really doesn't care, so to speak, if joe and mary smith are gonna go to the wal-mart and see that there are not any nokia n900s in stock and be pissed. This is the most expensive device nokia is selling right now and probably one of the most expensive on the market today, so, no, it is not for everybody at all.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

More likely joe and mary never heard of the n900 so they wouldn't even know they should be upset... Maybe the n900 will catch on because of how underground and exclusive it is... Isn't that how Rap music started?? next thing you know all the kids will be doing it?! :rolleyes:

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

wow the N900 is going to be shipped to US retailers on the 27th of this month its official.
http://thenokiablog.com/3438

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

*this date represents the best estimated date provided by the vendor....

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

I agree with the point you're making but I also have to add that N900 is nowhere near the most expensive device Nokia has. N900 is in high end of smartphones but it's quite cheap compared to other Nokia models (N97, E90, 8800, etc.). (And of course there's also Vertu)

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

when I go here

http://www.nokiausa.com/find-products

the n900 preorder is the most expensive item

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Wow, I wouldn't put the N900 and rap in the same statement. Like they say, you can't have crap without rap.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

quipper8: not if you only look at the MRSP. There can't be any discounts on an unreleased product.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

But it is an estimated day provided by the vendor aka Nokia. And it's something a bit more definitive than a lot of the other dates I seen posted (emphasis on 'a bit' ;) ).

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Here is a summary of Canada frequency coverage:

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_ca.shtml

The more i try to figure out coverage for the N900 in Canada, the more i get confused... for example Videotron is listed as 3G 1700... does that mean that AWS can actually operate on the same band for up/down ? Can the N900 operate on any of its supported frequencies independantly?

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Do you listen to rap? Fool. Please shut up.

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

I'm not sure about how this all works either. All I know is that T-Mobile USA handsets should work on the new AWS networks in Canada (Wind, DAVE, and Videotron). That should mean the N900.

So Quebecois will have an N900-compatible option sooner rather than later with Videotron. That's good news. At least Quebecor didn't sit on their hands. As for prices, who knows?

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

Re: How serious is Nokia about making a dent in the US/Canadian Market?
 

I wrote to Vidéotron to check if by chance they could say more.

They wrote back that they were actually working on setting-up their new 3G+ network. And they said that in the beginning of 2010 they will have more informations about the network and the services.