Anyone who cares about fostering a dynamic, competitive tech industry
should be rooting for Nokia. Even if you’re not as gaga for Windows
Phone as I am—I think it’s the best-
designed mobile OS on the market—you’ve
got to concede that the Finnish phonemaker has the capacity to be a
genuine force for innovation in phone and tablet hardware.
Indeed, Nokia may be the only company capable of playing at Apple’s
level. Who else is there? Google may one day do wonders with Motorola,
but so far all we’ve seen is more bizarre product names. (
The Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx HD: The extra X is for Xwasted opportunity.)
Samsung, meanwhile, is only as innovative as the spec sheet
allows—its m.o. is to stuff enough top-end components into
generic-looking hardware to win the numbers war, but otherwise its
devices are uninspired. Don’t bother writing in with your fulsome praise
for Samsung phones; I think the Galaxy SIII is just as good as any
phone on the market. But I’m looking for mobile makers that aim for the
stars, giving us brilliant innovations—like the Retina display—before
others in their class. Samsung isn’t the kind of company that does that
sort of thing. Apple is one such firm. Nokia could be another.
Well, it has to be. A couple months ago I praised CEO Stephen Elop
for making a big, bold bet on Windows, but I warned that Nokia looked to
be “
entering its death spiral”
anyway. Its only chance at survival was to keep wowing us, to keep
making devices that get people to take a second look at a brand few of
us think about anymore. Now, the plain truth is that Nokia could do
everything right and
still lose. So there’s absolutely no room for error, no chance to misfire. It’s got to hit it out of the park every single time.
And Nokia is not doing that. It’s not even close. This week we saw a
company snatch defeat from the jaws of getting on the field. (Forgive
me, I don’t know sports.) Nokia unveiled a phone that should have been
the toast of the industry. Not only is the Lumia 920 quite
handsome—especially if you’re a neon yellow fetishist—but it packs
legitimately interesting features: Its camera does seem to take
significantly better low-light pictures than competing phones, as
The Verge documented. Then there’s wireless charging, a feature that Nokia isn’t the first to offer, but one that could now be ready for prime time.
If Nokia had managed the launch well, the Lumia 920 could have been a
phone that worried Samsung, piqued Apple, and inspired hordes of
customers around the world to at least take a look before signing up for
the new iPhone. But none of that happened, because Nokia made a hash of
the whole affair.
I’m not just referring to its marketing department’s mind-bogglingly
stupid decision to fake a video documenting the Lumia’s
image-stabilization system. The revelation—again, documented by
The Verge—that
Nokia was pulling one over its customers was only the most conspicuous
error in what seems to have been a disaster from the start.
That’s because, if you look into why the marketing department had to
fake its video, what becomes clear is that the video-stabilizing
technique that Nokia talked up on stage
doesn’t actually exist. After its fakery was revealed,
Nokia offered The Verge
a chance to test out the 920’s camera against rivals. But the company
only showed off low-light shots, prohibiting any testing of the touted
image stabilization for video. There’s only one thing to conclude from
that: Nokia may have gotten the image-stabilization for video working in
its testing, and it may well be ready when the phone launches, but it’s
not working well enough yet. And if it’s not working well now, it’s not
working.
That gets to the larger problem: The entire phone isn’t ready. On
stage, Nokia had nothing specific to say about when the Lumia would go
on sale. A day later, perhaps after noticing that providing a launch
date for its make-or-break phone could be somewhat important to the
future of its entire business, the firm leaked word that
it is planning to launch the 920 in November.
That’s about a decade from now in mobile time. In particular, it’s more
than a month after the new iPhone will go on sale, a month during which
Apple could sell 20 million or more devices around the world.
This is inexcusable. This phone should have launched now; I should be
able to assess it side by side with the new iPhone, because the only
way the Lumia will win is by turning iPhone users around. I suspect that
if Nokia were able to speak candidly about the launch timing, they’d
blame Microsoft, which set Windows Phone 8′s launch date for late
October. What’s more, as
Ars Technica’s Peter Bright points out,
that release date is looking shaky because Microsoft has been delaying
the release of its SDK for third-party developers to build apps for the
phone. That’s a big deal because programming for Windows Phone 8 is
going to be different from doing so on 7, and developers need time to
prepare. They’re not going to get it.
So, sure, blame Microsoft. Redmond should have gotten the OS done
sooner. It should have had it done in the summer so that manufacturers
could have released their devices early in the fall. At the very least,
Microsoft could have given Nokia—its primary hardware partner and the
only remaining hope for Windows Phone’s success—some kind of
dispensation to release phones carrying a not-quite-final version of the
OS, allowing for launch alongside the iPhone. In hands-on videos with
the Lumia, after all, Windows Phone looks pretty much done, and its
“release to manufacturing” date is next week—so it’s not like Microsoft
and Nokia couldn’t have done
something, given their terrible market positions, to accelerate the launch.
In the end it doesn’t matter which of these firms should shoulder
responsibility for the delay. All that matters is that Nokia missed its
chance—perhaps its final chance—to make a big impression. Just watch:
When the Lumia launches on Nov. 2, it will win glowing reviews. Critics
will praise its beauty, its stylish and intuitive interface, its
unmatched camera and handy innovations like wireless charging.
And you know what the raves will amount to? Nothing. No one will
care, because—once again—the launch will fit into a storyline that has
dogged Windows Phone from the beginning:
Fantastic stuff, pity it’s so late.
Pity indeed. Two months ago, I was declaring Nokia dead. This week
might have been—should have been—a chance for resurrection. Instead it
was a royal screw-up, and now Nokia looks even deader than before.
Read:
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