Nothing gets the blogosphere swarming like a secret. Nothing gets you a blogosphere thrashing like disappointing them
Everyone was guessing about Nokia’s big announcement. All the heavyweight blog sites were weighing in with speculation. Some of the blogging elite even flew all the way to Barcelona for Nokia week just to find out what it was — but even they were sworn to secrecy.
The following round-up was posted on Slashphone:
In a special link on the Nokia World Web page about the “Nseries in 2009″, it also reads: “Desktop. Laptop. Pocket.”
Below is some interesting quotes from credible sources:
what I’ve seen tonight from Nokia has, indeed, not been seen yet on the Internet and was pretty surprising to the bloggers.
“Nokia has the goods but I’m not allowed to tell you what or why until 9:45 a.m. (Spain time) today. Wow.”
Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, will unveil an “interesting” phone to strengthen its product and service offerings later on Tuesday, a company official said late on Monday.
“There’s going to be some interesting hardware,” said Udo Szabo, a senior manager for Nokia’s service business, in a speech at a Mobile Monday industry networking event.
Speculation is rampant online with most guessing that the announcement will be a high-end phone that combines a touchscreen with a Qwerty keyboard. Such a device would be a first for Nokia, which just began shipping its first touchscreen phone, the 5800 XpressMusic. A special link on the Nokia World Web page that teases upcoming news about the “Nseries in 2009″ offers subtle confirmation.
Other guesses making the rounds include a netbook or laptop, a motion-sensing device that can be controlled by gestures and an N-series device running S60, the latest version of the Symbian operating system.
Nokia said, “Nope. You’re all wrong.”
The problem with such a ploy is that if you get everyone hyped about a launch (they had a massive countdown clock that countless sites had embedded in posts) is that you better have something spectacular to show when the time comes. Apple are masters of this tactic, but could Nokia pull the sme lever?
Umm, this is Nokia we’re talking about, remember. This is the company that is in a death spiral, shedding market share faster these days than Wall Street sheds investment bankers.
So at the appointed hour, Nokia unveiled the most underwhelming phone of the year:
The N97. It’s got a 16:9 screen, a slide out qwerty keyboard, a great camera, gps, accelerometer, 64Gb of memory, etc.
Whoop-ti-doo. We’ve seen all these things on so many other phones this year.
Talk about being late to the party!
Even the interface looks like they stole the “panels” concept from the Sony-Ericsson X1. And the “tactile touch screen” looks like a BlackBerry Storm ripoff.
Nokia has just launched a revolutionary phone — for the year 2007. But sinice the N97 won’t be out until “the first half of 2009″ (late summer more likely), this phone looks pretty boring.
It may even prove to be a great phone — but with all the hype today, I was expecting something that levitated, or made cheese-on-toast, or did something I never knew I wanted, but then suddenly couldn’t live without.
I can live without an N97.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
everything has been about convergence. yes, manufacturers have been innovating. bberry w/ its haptic touch, sony w/ the panels on xperia and huge slider screen. Nokia has taken pretty much EVERYTHING that phones that have JUST been released in the past months and incorporated all the features into a slick device, even building on what’s out. 5 megapixel camera w/ DUAL FLASH, 16:9 screen, fm transmitter, etc…sometimes you don’t need to fix what’s good. Just look at nokia and s60, it just works. iphone interface is just that, a pretty face that masks underwhelming features available on most phones. symbian is relatively MUCH more open, and nokia has implemented all the hardware you could want into this phone, save for multitouch. all these features are “old hat” to geeks, but to the average consumer this device is pretty amazing. and i’m sure it is for plenty of other geeks out there, too.