The devil is in the detail: Nokia E7 delayed
By The Prodigal Fool, published on 13 December 2010
In our view, there were two stars at Nokia World back in September: the first was departing executive Anssi Vanjoki. The second? Espoo’s new flagship communicator, the E7.
While the former is – we hope – smoking a big stogie on a golf course somewhere warm and counting his cash, the latter is preparing for its commercial launch.
Today, the news broke that Nokia has decided to delay that launch until “early 2011”. We’ve been very critical of Nokia in the past for releasing products before they were ready so, all things considered, we’d prefer that our Finnish friends took the time they need to get it right. The problem, of course, is: how much longer can they survive without a compelling flagship smartphone?
A couple of weeks ago, Nokia held a press event in London to remind us all of what makes their latest creation their best yet. Were we in the front row, ears pricked up and ready to report back to you? You bet we were…
It was down to Ilari Nurmi, Nokia’s vice president of the Eseries line, to give us the low-down on the E7.
Nurmi opened by telling us that he thought sales and marketing the Eseries was one of the most exciting areas at Nokia – we can’t disagree, we’ve always been rather taken with the Finns’ enterprise range – and he proceeded to give us a persuasive argument about what makes the E7 best in class. In many areas, we agreed with him. In others, we thought he was missing the point or glossing over obvious problems. Our overwhelming impression from the session ultimately boiled down to this tired old cliché: the devil is in the detail. So, perhaps it’s no bad thing that Nokia is taking a few more weeks to get the details right.
Marketing
Nurmi – rather oddly in our view – opened by focusing on the very close partnership that Nokia has forged with Microsoft. (Yes, of course, we cracked the joke about them even having a staff exchange programme that reached to CEO level but it met with little more than a polite Finnish smile.)
He told us that Eseries shipments have increased by 200% since H1 2008. In H1 2010, Nokia shipped 12 million Eseries devices. He went on to talk about Microsoft porting their entire productivity suite over to Symbian, the 70% market share still enjoyed by Microsoft Exchange, the cost advantages of not having to “pay the RIM tax” (Nokia’s case studies show that companies can save 30-40% using Symbian devices instead of RIM), the integration of Microsoft Sharepoint and the joint B2B sales tactics that the two companies are implementing. So far, so zzz…zzz…zzz… Oh, sorry, did we doze off there for a second? Look, there’s nothing wrong with any of this it’s just that…
When it comes to marketing high-end smartphones, the devil is in the detail.
People want a little sex with their spreadsheets. Honestly, when you have a gorgeous Clear Black Display, 4 inch screen and simply the best physical keyboard ever to come out of Espoo, start with that. Start with the gadget porn. You can get down to telling us how much money it will save our boss later.
Many big, traditionally conservative, firms – JP Morgan springs to mind – have been moving to iPhones. Why? Is it because Apple has some fancy marketing partnership with Oracle to integrate database technology? No, we thought not (they don’t, by the way). It’s because the ‘consumers’ who work at JP Morgan et al want them. It’s as simple as that. Nokia, whether you like it or not, even enterprise decisions are increasingly being driven by individual user preference and you need to accept that the distinction between Eseries and Nseries is therefore increasingly incongruous.
Unique selling points
As we’ve touched on above, the E7 is not without significant appeal. In addition to the wonderful hardware, the key selling points for us are: the system of three homescreens that can contain live widgets, the good camera and the social media integration.
These widgets, as Nurmi rightly highlighted, are a great way to get a snapshot of what’s going on in your life at any one time. From upcoming diary entries to your latest Twitter messages, connected widgets offer a compelling advantage over BlackBerry and Apple.
Except…
When it comes to USPs, the devil is in the detail.
We salute Nokia for their USPs while berating them ferociously for not having implemented them with more thought. Some examples:
- The homescreen widgets: why do they make such poor use of screen real-estate? The email widget only displays a very truncated version of the latest two emails. There’s space on that screen for far more.
- The social media app: the font used is so small and the app so slow that no one in their right mind would use it for more than a few minutes before firing up Gravity instead. What a shame.
- The camera: it’s good; but it could have been great. It could have blown iPhone and Android out of the water. Why not fit the same camera as on the N8? People with jobs want to take amazing photos too you know, Nokia. (We put this point to Nurmi who responded that in all product design “trade offs need to be made”, that you need to find the right balance between features, size, weight and cost. Perhaps. But what we know for sure is that we’d love an N8 with a proper physical keyboard and don’t much care what it might cost or weigh.)
- Ovi Maps: Having free navigation with voice guidance for the life and the ability to use it without needing to download maps on the go is a killer feature with which to take the fight to Google and Apple. But why, oh why, is Nokia’s POI database still so unreliable?
Our meeting with Nurmi did deliver a few other interesting insights that we’d be remiss not to mention:
- New features for E7: Firstly, you’re going to see the capabilities of the E7 increase in time with over-the-air firmware updates. The next things in the pipeline are increased security (yawn!) and a portrait QWERTY virtual keyboard (yay!)
- Successor to E72: He wouldn’t admit to it directly, but his smile said it all: you’re likely to see a successor to the E72 pretty soon too. The Finns are working on a new ‘candy bar’ QWERTY. We suspect it will have a capacitive touchscreen like Nokia’s Touch & Type range. We’re looking forward to that.
- The future of Nseries: The N8 and the E7 are the closest that the Nseries and Eseries have ever got. The hardware and software are very, very similar. That’s going to change. Again, Nurmi wasn’t allowed to say so but, from the knowing smile we got with the question, we suspect that in the future the Eseries and Nseries will be more heavily differentiated by operating system. You’re likely to keep seeing Symbian on Eseries devices while Nseries will be adopting Meego.
The bottom-line: We don’t want to give Nokia too much of a hard time. After all, the E7 is one of the most promising devices to come out of Espoo for a very long time. Line it up next to a BlackBerry and it wins hands down: it has the bigger keyboard, the bigger screen, a slim beautifully designed, anodized aluminium case, a decent camera, HDMI out, a better app store, free navigation and offline maps.
So, we wish Nokia well and hope that the next few weeks give them the time they need to knock it out of the ball park.
The devil is in the detail: Nokia E7 delayed
In our view, there were two stars at Nokia World back in September: the first was departing executive Anssi Vanjoki. The second? Espoo’s new flagship communicator, the E7. While the former is – we hope – smoking a big stogie on a golf course somewhere warm and counting his cash, the latter is preparing for [...]
3 Responses to “The devil is in the detail: Nokia E7 delayed”
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Chris I
14 December 2010
My favorite phone of all time, or perhaps it’s just nostalgia, is the E50. I bought my E50 about 5 years ago when I joined the Swedish company for which I still work. I needed something that was GSM, as one trip to Mobile World Congress (3GSM back in the day) with a rental phone cured me of Verizon and CDMA, and I wanted something a wee bit smarter then the Samsung flip I had been using. The E50 was the answer – it had a little Euro style with a candy bar form factor and Symbian. I was going native! Anyway…
I still have mine and every time I break my latest smart phone (I have gone through HTC Tilt, E71, and now onto iPhone 4) – I bring out the classic candy bar. The reality is there there is no comparison between an iPhone 4 and a Symbian-based phone. Ease of use, apps, camera, integration – the Apple wins hands down.
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[...] our friends at Espoo are aware of their strength because, in the run up to the E7′s oft delayed commercial launch, they’re putting their focus on the hardware design in a new marketing [...]
Ivan Y
14 December 2010
This is how I can tell you guys are a European publication — you actually care about Nokia enough to write a very nice and thorough article. Not that American tech press hates on the Finns, but Nokia is largely irrelevant over here and it’s their own fault. With a nonexistent US marketshare and ever-diminishing share of developing countries’ market (a lot of people in India, China, etc. are using phones form “homegrown” companies), Nokia’s long-term future is in peril even more than Blackberry’s (at least, BB has enterprise market).
Unless Meego surprises everyone and actually turns out to be an amazing OS with excellent developer support, Nokia is screwed when it comes to smartphones. They can’t just simply push out superb hardware and don’t give a damn about the OS. Since they didn’t buy Palm (for WebOS), they should just get on the Android bandwagon or even Windows Phone if they like MS so much. Nokia hardware + popular OS = win!
P.S. I know that Symbian is very popular numbers-wise, but when it comes to true smartphones, it’s iOs, Android and Windows Phone (WebOS is very good too and more polished than Android, but I’m concerned about HP being the sole supporter).