Are handsets homogenising around the same form factor?
Interesting to see Nokia execs coming over all pugilistic at Nokia World this week. They'd obviously decided to be more aggressive in their response to the hit their firm has taken from Apple, RIM, HTC and all the rest. Thus, we saw Anssi Vanjoki proclaiming 'we are fighting back!". And Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo didn't even have a jacket on. Gosh.
Trouble is, neither of them is really Steve Ballmer. They're Finnish. They're nice. They don't sweat quite as prodigiously as Steve. Now, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't like to fight Vanjoki. He's a big unit. He'd crush me like a grape. But it's just hard to buy these quietly spoken Nordic types socking it to the man. Still, this is what they attempted to do.
And they did it through the medium of portable computing.
There were whoops when the Booklet was revealed, more so when the €570 price tag was mentioned. The laptop itself was pitched as a natural progression for Nokia into a growing mobile comms sector. In a briefing with the R&D team, ME learned that much effort had gone into making the Booklet a distinctly Nokia-esque device - through colour, materials and the gently curved casing that it terms the 'Nokia smile'.
In truth, it is a pleasingly sleek and clean bit of kit. And at €570, I'm sure Nokia will sell loads. But how many people will buy one because it's a Nokia? The fact is, there's preciously little brand loyalty in the netbook market. For all Nokia's efforts the Booklet is still a rectanglar box with qwerty keyboard and Windows on the screen.
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Laptops have become commoditised. So, will the same homogeneity come to mobile phones? Maybe. Here's my thinking. Virtually every phone that comes out now is a touchscreen or a touchscreen with qwerty slider; they all look alike. Meanwhile consumers are personalising their homescreens with links to web-based brands - Facebook, Twitter, eBay.
So, if the form factor is the same and the 'desktop' is populated with third party brands, what can the handset maker bring to the party? Possibly the UI. But even this is coagulating around the swipe action.
Now, you could say that this is a smartphone-orientated analysis, and that there are billions of mid-range users out there unused to touchscreens and mobile Facebook. But I refer you to the new and wholly mid-range X3 phone, a snazzy little touchscreen that costs just €115.
It seems to me the pressure is on phone vendors to find a way to differentiate their devices and their brands, and to prevent them becoming inter-changeable boxes like netbooks.
A radical re-think of the user experience might work.
