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CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market

By | January 10, 2012, 3:05am PST

Summary: Nokia is trying its darndest to achieve a comeback in the the U.S. mobile market game, but is it too late?

LAS VEGAS — Nokia unveiled its new Lumia 900 smartphone on Monday, which is basically the company’s big attempt to win back consumers in the United States.

It also might be the company’s last opportunity — at least stateside.

The Lumia 900 does have a fighting chance. The specs are top notch, and it is the first 4G LTE phone (set to operate using AT&T’s expanding network) running the Windows Phone OS.

But then it became very obvious during Nokia’s presentation at CES 2012 that Nokia is riding on the operating system as the major selling point.

It must have been a bit surprising to some attendees that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would step out and promote the new Nokia handheld merely hours before his own keynote at the trade show.

See also: CES 2012: ZDNet’s news and product coverage | CES 2012: CNET’s news and product coverage

Certainly, Microsoft is betting big on a Nokia comeback as well, but it always has other partners to rely on, such as Samsung and LG — both of which are the top two mobile OEMs in the United States as of October 2011, according to comScore.

Of course, there is one glaring problem that might be evident to anyone who follows mobile news. That would be that while Windows Phone 7 is lauded by many for being aesthetically pleasing and fairly well functional inside and out, WP7 overall has not sold very well since its debut in October 2010.

Thus, while this might be the first Nokia device to incite any excitement among U.S. consumers in the last few years, this success or failure of the Lumia 900 could determine the fate of the Finnish phone maker as a major contender in North America (and possibly beyond).

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Nokia Corp., Intel Corp., TVs, Tv & Home Theater, Sales Strategy, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Sales, Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

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Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
fastwriter 13th Jan
Don't count Nokia as out. They are a huge company with worldwide impact. Read their history on Wikipedia....Many have come and gone but they have been around for at least a hundred years with many different products. Tightly held family background.
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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
Heenan73 10th Jan
How does the pricing compare to comparable phones?

Unless you are Apple, top specs isn't going to trump value for money. In Europe, that is why Nokia ruled. with the M$ tie-up, I fear they may have forgotten that wink
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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
ccrockett@... Updated - 10th Jan
It is not too late. The mobile space moves very very fast. Android is proof of that, in two years it went from underdog to top dog, it is not far-fetched to think that the same type of thing could happen again. If Nokia covers all price-points like the various hardware manufatures did with Android you could see WP7 rise just as fast as Android. Remember here in the U.S. consumers are on a two-year upgrade cycle.
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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
symbolset 10th Jan
@ccrockett@... How are they going to cover all price points when the software only supports one core? That's basically a prepaid or entry-level phone in 2012.
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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
Rama.NET Updated - 10th Jan
@symbolset
Sheesh, last time when I checked an average joe smartphone user never really cared about how many cores a phone has and I think that number of average joes rule over the geeks like us. So having more than one core in a phone is technically moot point. Even at dual core, most of the Android phones lag the smooth scrolling of both iPhone 4 (which is single core btw) and Windows Phone 7 (even the ones running on older version Windows Phone 7). It is not even the User Experiece of a system that decides the sales, it is the carrier representatives and their paid bias.
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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
Rick_Kl 10th Jan
@Rama.NET no matter how you slice it Windows mobile Phone 7.x has more overhead than iOS. The iPhone 4 had a 1GHz Arm chip the was down clocked to 800 MHz Windows mobile Phone 7.x couldn???t not run on that without performing worse that your complaints about Android. The iPhone 4s may have dual cores but they re also down clocked( to improve battery life) while to runWmP7.x the best bet is to over-clock the CPU, creating more heat while reducing battery life.
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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
Rick_Kl Updated - 10th Jan
@ccrockett@ lets see
iPhone: the phone people lust after, but not everyone can afford.
Android: The Windows of the mobile world, not as nice as an iPhone, but a lot of choices, some good, some not so good.
Windows mobile phone 7.x: Fanboy phone! Offers nothing the better choices cant do, but combines the worst features of both.
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Mix and Match
Robert Hahn Updated - 10th Jan
Here's why Nokia is hosed in the U.S.:

If I'm the Samsung salesman, or the LG salesman, or the HTC salesman, I go to AT&T, Verizon, et.al. and I say, "When computing the discount you get, we count all your handsets, whether they are Android or WP. So, for example, if you sell a million of our handsets next year, you get them at the 'quantity million' price, 62% off list."

Nokia only has WP phones to sell, so they can't do that. And since the buyers at the wireless carriers have no idea how well WP will do, and hence no idea what their mix of Android and WP will be, the deals from Asia sound a whole lot better -- and less risky -- than the one from Yurp.

Bottom line: to stay competitive, Nokia has to be willing to sell phones at 'quantity million' prices even when they know they're only going to sell 200,00 or so units. That way lies a huge loss.
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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
Rick_Kl Updated - 10th Jan
@Robert Hahn if you look at the last 5 quarters as any type of indicator, the carriers will only order the minimum number of Microsoft Lumia phones, as WmP7.x has not been a spectacular success. When Apple sells more iPhone 4s in one quarter than the total number of WmP7 phones sold in the last 5 quarter, I would not place any bets on the Microsoft Lumia phones being a big hit.
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RE: CES 2012: Nokia relying on Microsoft to get back in U.S. market
fastwriter 13th Jan
Don't count Nokia as out. They are a huge company with worldwide impact. Read their history on Wikipedia....Many have come and gone but they have been around for at least a hundred years with many different products. Tightly held family background.

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