SYMBIAN ON THE LINE

Nokia has a particular way of developing and marketing their mobile phones. It must be working OK to have been able to lead the world in production year after year. But, the way they design their phones – down to the way in which keys are designed in their keyboards – is very ‘European’ that resonates well outside North America but does not resonate well with consumers in the North America.

I blame much of the poor performance in the US market on design principles. If you look carefully at Nokia phones, they all use the same font on the display – the same font used in marketing literature. I don’t know why but the font is not attractive to many people in the US (from talking with lots of users and other analysts). It gives you an uncomfortable feel when you look at it without necessarily knowing why.

They keys in Nokia’s phones (both 10-key numeric in feature phones and alphanumeric in SmartPhones) have a square shape and no raised domes. All SmartPhone in the US by other manufacturers have rounded keys with domes & inter-key spacing which gives the fingers a more positive tactile feedback.

The Symbian OS, while very good technically, has a user interface style that seems foreign to those in the US.

Ewan from Mobile Industry Review (3.0, I believe) has posted an 'opinion' of what Nokia should do to 'win' the US market over. You know, the same old story, "but we're the greatest nation on Earth, if you're not big here we don't care". Well, the end of the article brings us the revelation of who the author is: Mr. J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D (yes, he lists his name that way himself!) - VP & Chief Analyst, Mobile & Wireless at Frost & Sullivan. Wow, having this guy introduced to you may take a while, so be advised if you're ever in the same room.

Oh, analysts... If bloggers are the trash of the web (or what was it?), I wonder where analysts go.

First off, congrats on the "the North America". Very cool. He's probably paid by the number of words in such an analysis. Wrote this amazing piece, but was one word short. Hence, the the.

I wanted to comment on the above excerpt, but what is there to say? I literally laughed out loud at some of his 'points'. Be sure to jump to MIR to read the whole thing, it's even funnier in other parts! Also, make sure you read the comments there too. Some interesting ideas.

So, I won't comment. I will however say what I think would be best for Nokia to do regarding the ever-troubled (in network quality) US market.

I actually found myself agreeing with one of Mr. Purdy's suggestions there. Just one, but still. Unbelievable.

So it goes like this. Nokia should buy Palm. Recent rumors suggest they might indeed be looking into this, which is good. It wouldn't be an expensive buy, and they have the money. So just do it.

Then, take the Nokia brand completely, I can't stress this enough, completely, out of the US market. Canada too. Have Palm as their North American brand. And only that, don't ever launch a Palm device anywhere else. Leave Palm there, and Nokia elsewhere.

Invest in Palm's R&D, bring them some cash so they can actually manufacture their products, and maybe, release 1-2 Nokia phones (with qwerty keyboards, no others please) in the US rebranded as Palm. But make sure to change the keys. And the font (sic!).

Also, release a GSM version of all Palm phones (Pre, Pixi and whatever comes next), actually two, one for AT&T's and one for T-Mobile's frequencies. Get the CDMA version on Verizon too. And make the Pre $89 on contract on all 4 US carriers.

In 2-3 years they'll have 15% market share. Or ten, or something better than now, anyway.

I don't think that will actually happen, because big corporations are always about integrating companies they bought. But not here, please. There's no integration necessary. I mean, sure, you can integrate at supply-chain level, which is good and expected (so you can reach that target price I set above), but other than that, what?

Yet another OS? No. Keep it simple. Make apps developed for WebOS installable on Symbian (that might be coming anyway).

The (sic!) North America loves North American companies, by default. Palm is one of them. Gizmodo only has one Palm-bashing post for every 20 Apple-loving posts, compared to, well, all posts on Nokia being anti-Nokia (though I haven't seen that many recently, and GigaOm is catching up - fair warning!). Did I mention Palm's UI is pretty? There's that too.

So do it. Now. Stop trying to understand the US market the way you understand other markets. It's different. Stop trying everything you try where your brand is already established, in the US, it's not. So none of that will work.

If anyone from Nokia is reading this, I can outline a much more detailed strategy starting from these points, so feel free to contact me. Alternatively, keep wasting millions of dollars on strategies that don't and won't work in the US. Best of luck.