Nokia Exec Admits N97 User Experience Failure

Who Would You Do...3G[s] or N97 or Pre?

Here's some key specs on the hottest smartphone celebs on the market...Pre released last Saturday, iPhone 3g[s] announced yesterday, N97 goes on sale in the US today (click to enlarge the image). I've highlighted the objective winner in each category. Let me know if y'all notice any errors or omissions.

Walt & Nokia's "OP" Kallasvuo Chat About Symbian, N97 & US Carrier Relations At D7

1. Symbian is a great OS and I hope more hardware manufacturers adopt it for more devices...but it has no hotness factor. Android has the OS hotness factor right now.
2. N97 rocks (I want one)...but it will get no market traction in the US if it costs $700.
3. There's a lot of blah, blah, blah here about building carrier relations in the US...but, what's actually happening? My feeling is that Nokia needs to re-build the aspirational nature of its brand with US consumers by supplying operators with cool, high-end devices (e.g. N-series, 5800 Xpress Music, E-series). I think many Americans associate Nokia with some of the low-end crap on T-Mo (1680, 2760) and/or their first "Nokia brick" handset.

3 Key Takeaways From CTIA Spring 2009

1) Buggy BlackBerry App World store.

RIM finally launched its highly anticipated BlackBerry App World store to kick-off CTIA last week. Many of us in the mobile content space downloaded the application within hours of it being available (I did it right before RIM Founder/Pres/Co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis' uninspired/ing keynote on April 1st). Overall the application has a nice UI, but that was offset by myriad glitches including seemingly random Search results, a Games folder that claimed 171 titles but only rendered 1 (to the benefit of MTV Networks) & connectivity problems. Things improved as the week wore on for me, but others must have had recurring issues because RIM has already rolled out 2 updates to the software (versions 1.0.0.27 & 1.0.0.28). My favorite App so far is the music recognition tool Shazam (available in UK 100 years ago , Apple months ago), which is available for a free trial period. But I must say, in digging through the catalog the current offering seems more similar to that of a carrier deck (or Magmic's Bplay site) than the iTunes App Store. Besides creating an exciting retail environment for consumers, and building consumer awareness, the biggest challenge BlackBerry App World will face will be on the billing front. RIM elected to use PayPal...which could prove super-klugy (and may be a deal breaker) for those consumers who don't have existing accounts.

2) Nokia N97 Widget Homescreen

Got a demo of the N97 at the Nokia booth on the showroom floor. Pretty damned impressive device. Really attractive form factor, rockstar specs and a nice tactile QWERTY keyboard...however the thing I liked the best was a very cool, customizable, widget-driven desktop/homescreen. Very, very slick looking. Unfortunately, once you leave the homescreen you're subject to Nokia's classically arcane UI and navigation. The device will be available in the US in Summer or Fall...but not with a carrier (or its subsidy) so expect a price somewhere between $500 - $1,000 (yikes!).

3) Content Providers Abandoned The Showroom Floor

It seemed that no one I knew from the mobile content side spent any meaningful time on the showroom floor of CTIA. Many didn't even get a pass to the show, instead opting to have meetings in hotel conference rooms, suites, bars or restaurants. Those who did venture to the convention center would find a small, somewhat pathetic cluster of content provider mini-booths stuck in a far corner of the South Hall (which you can only find by accident). Sad. Clearly CTIA has to do something drastic to re-energize the content component of the show or risk losing that constituency of exhibitors & attendees altogether. In the meantime I'm establishing a competing, content focused mobile show at the Parasol Up bar at The Wynn.

Whole Lotta Handset Hullabaloo

Two stories getting major play today across the trades and blogosphere:

1) Apparently DoCoMo has stopped sales of RIM's BlackBerry Bold in Japan, where 30 customers have complained about the keyboard overheating during the recharging process. Odd that this is only happening in Japan. Hopefully this won't derail RIM's nascent business in that market...where foreign handsets (including the iPhone) have had a hard time getting any market traction.

2) UK operators are reportedly freaking out about Nokia's plans to preload the Skype client in their highly anticipated N97 and future N-Series handsets. No one who reads this blog is surprised by this development, right? (Note the first bullet in my post from February 18th).

1.8mil YouTube Views of Nokia N97 Demo

This is a crazy amount of traffic/interest in a non-iPhone handset demo video, right?...AND btw, there are more than a few other N97 videos with pretty decent traffic on YouTube. Someone (not me) should put together a regression analysis of the correlation between demo/fan videos of handsets and sales, or perhaps the time would be better spent watching the many random quasi-sexy & RickRoll'd videos tagged with popular handset names.