If you've been following my channel for a
while now, you probably know I'm generally very excited about the return of the Nokia brand. I have the Nokia 9 as my main phone right now phone, I had the 7 Plus before that, I loved it, I've talked about the Banana phone, about the success of the
business and I've generally been very positive about the company. But in the last couple of months I've started
to get a little worried about them. So, in the 47th episode of The Story Behind
series, let me explain why. And thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this
video. The first 500 students to use the link in
the description below will get 2 months of premium access for free. Since the revival of the Nokia brand, their
phones have always been a little rough at launch. My 7 Plus launched with multiple bugs including
Spotify and Google Maps that would randomly crash for example and the internet is filled
with people complaining about similarly random bugs in early software. But I've always cut them some slack. They were a new company, they had to figure
out and optimize their processes first and they launched a big portfolio right away so
they had lots of devices to support. Plus they do fix their bugs eventually, so
I thought it was OK as long as things improved. But the problem is, as the company grew, things
haven't really improved. In fact, they actually seem to have gotten worse. HMD Global, the company behind the revival
of the Nokia brand has not slowed down with releasing new devices, which means they now
have 22 smartphones to support. That's without even counting the regional
variants and feature phones, and as you can imagine, the company hasn't matured fast enough
to handle this new level of complexity. Remember, unlike most phone manufacturers,
HMD Global does keep all of their Android One devices updated for 3 years, so that's
a lot of devices to take care of. Though Nokia still outperforms most manufacturers significantly in delivering updates quickly, they have started missing their own deadlines,
there was recently a report of a major security screwup where a batch of phones mistakenly sent sensitive
user data to an activation server that they shouldn't have, and new devices still get
released with buggy software. Case in point, the Nokia 9, which is so buggy,
it actually prompted me to make this very video. This was supposed to be the crown jewel of
the company. A limited edition device with a ridiculous
5 camera setup that was created to generate hype and great headlines and get people to
start taking the Nokia brand seriously as a maker of high end stuff, not just a brand
for solid mid-rangers. And while I do actually like the phone overall
for its gorgeous design, the clean stock Android, and so on, this phone is incredibly unfinished. Especially the camera, the one feature that
actually should have blown people away right from the start. Just look at the reviews. Most of them range from a straight up "don't
buy it" to a more generous "wait until it gets updates". I'm in the second camp, because occasionally the phone does take great photos,
which makes me think software updates can eventually make this a great phone, but the amount of bugs and slow processing and
inconsistent results are not excusable for a phone that's actually been shipping to people
for a good while now. Which is stupid. This phone had the potential to be a big PR
victory for Nokia and instead they botched the launch and got a PR "meh" at best. Ugh. Add to the buggy launch software that the
company just has so many devices that it is unable to create any clear differentiation
between them, and has a naming strategy which makes it even harder to figure out how these
phones relate to each other, and you are left with a device portfolio that's a bit of a
mess to say the least. Both of the buggy launch devices and the confusing
portfolio appear to be coming from the exact same problem. A management team that has prioritized
launching many new devices as possible instead of launching a few very good phones. And apparently, these issues have started
impacting the business as well. Starting with sales figures. If we look at the overview that Nokiamob has compiled,
we can see that after a meteoric rise in their first year, growth has essentially flatlined. To be clear, it's still very impressive of
a 2 year old company to sell over 17 million phones a year, that's way more than brands
like Google, OnePlus or Sony managed to sell, but it appears that HMD Global's growth has
hit a pretty hard ceiling in 2018. Nokia is entering new markets like the US
where they partnered with big carriers, which might bring them a much needed boost, but
in many existing markets, especially Europe, they have actually started losing market share already. And here comes the real trouble. On the company rating website Glassdoor, where
HMD has a pretty terrible rating of 2.2 starts, multiple employees claim the business is now
under extreme pressure with multiple reports of people getting fired and downsizings throughout
the organization, especially in Europe. Similarly, HMD Global's most influential partner,
FIH, which is currently the exclusive manufacturer of the new Nokia phones, has announced that they lost 368 million Dollars
in 2018 from the Nokia handset business as their margins continue to get squeezed due
to the tough competition. FIH will therefore start refusing to manufacture
Nokia models it deems unprofitable, forcing HMD to either cut down on the new models or
find alternative manufacturing partners. Given that FIH is a subsidiary of Foxconn,
the largest electronics manufacturer in the world making stuff for just about every consumer
electronics company on the planet, this is likely a huge blow to HMD. So the huge positivity we've seen around the
business last year seems to have faded quite a bit. Now, to be clear, none of what I've just said
means that Nokia is doomed, or even that hard times are unique to the Nokia smartphone brand. Almost every mobile brand apart from maybe Huawei and Xiaomi had a rough year as global smartphone sales are declining and competition is intensifying,
and HMD, even with these troubles still pulled off a 120 percent growth year
over year, becoming now the 9th biggest smartphone maker in the world. But it is clear that their breakneck growth
has started grinding to a halt at the end of this year and the company has run into
some serious challenges with supply, product pipeline and software development. And I think there are two main factors to
blame here. First, the "oh look, Nokia is back" factor
seems to be gone for the most part and the brand loyalists like me, who were really excited about the return of the Nokia brand have already bought their Nokia phones. HMD Global now has to convince people beyond
just the brand loyalists and has to compete directly against newer companies like Xiaomi and Huawei, and older incumbents like Apple and Samsung. And that, as we know, is a hell of a task for any smartphone maker. And two, as I said before, the management
team got a little too excited about expanding rapidly. They have too many devices and tried to enter
China, India, a bunch of other Asian countries, Europe, Africa and now even the US all within
2 years. That's insane and just seems a little too
much for the company to handle. The weird naming, the buggy launch devices,
the issues with software quality control and so on, they all point towards an organization that's
just stretched a little too thin. In other words, after the huge initial success,
I think HMD has hit a bit of a roadblock and needs to reevaluate its strategy. Looking at the business from the outside,
it appears to me that they should reduce the number of models they launch and instead focus
on making those few models better. They should make a few phones like the Nokia
9 with unique value propositions and make them great straight out the gate instead of
launching a tons of buggy devices that don't really manage to stand even from their own
crowded line-up. The good news is that if the brand manages
to focus, I really believe they can turn things around and return to the fast growth trajectory
they were on just last year. After all, they have plenty of building blocks
necessary for success. A beloved, unique brand, exclusive partnerships
with some of the world's best companies like Zeiss, and a promising Android One software strategy. Until then, I'll be sticking with my Nokia
9, and I'll be sure to share news of software updates and loads of camera samples, so if
you want to see those things, be sure to follow me on Twitter and on Instagram. This phone is all about taking pictures in
RAW and then editing them in post in a program like Lightroom, which is not something I'm
particularly good at yet, but I do reaaally enjoy lately. If you want to learn how to edit photos like
a pro yourself, I recommend this course on Skillshare that
not only explains how Lightroom works on a technical level, but also how you can create
your own style and to go beyond just bumping up the saturation and the contrast. You can watch it or any other one of Skillshare's
over 20 000 courses for free if you are one of the first 500 people to sign up using the
link in the description, so go there, get your first 2 months of unlimited access for free and start learning. Which really helps my channel out as well.
In my country the redmi note 7 is the same price as the nokia 4.2 but has sd 660 vs 439, fhd vs hd, 4000 mah vs 3000 mah and the camera will blow the nokia out of the water . ROM support will be good to compensate for android one so why should i buy nokia again?
HMD's phones have just been unexciting. The 9 was supposed to make a bigger splash but with last years processor, a bad camera user experience, awful fingerprint sensor and some other gripes it has failed to make an impact.
If it weren't for HMD slapping NOKIA on the front of all the devices to sell more through brand recognition all devices they've released don't have anything that sets them apart from the pack. Especially with the very plain and featureless android one.
Xiaomi (Redmi), huawei (Honor), oneplus and even Samsung now with their new M and A series devices offer far more interesting devices compared to HMD at the same or a much better price.
I want a Nokia phone but there are precisely four reasons that I've not bought one:
The camera reviews are poor
They released their flagship with the previous year's chipset but with the same pricetag as their competitors who used the current chipset. I'm not paying this year's price for last year's specs.
They plaster their branding on the front with insufficient spacing around it. It looks cheap and I'm not paying a premium for something that looks cheap
Their flagships have big bezels by 2019 standards. Even in comparison to their midrange. I'm not paying more for something that looks worse than their budget handsets.
Why I want a Nokia handset:
I trust the brand (but that is failing because of the horrible decisions above)
Android One
It's sad really, they had a great start, phones with great construction quality, clean Android, timely updates and this attracted a lot of fans, then they've joined Android One and people went crazy, this was at their peak, suddenly they've started launching new devices like every week, start delaying updates, stopped correcting bugs in a timely manner, kept launching phones with buggy software, then they had the hidden bloatware debacle, the phone to China thing in the 7 plus and at this point many of the brand loyalist are gone, these were the people that bought their phones and suggested other to buy their phones.
So I think they'll just tank, which is infuriating, had they kept a smaller lineup with Nokia 1, Nokia 3, Nokia 7 and Nokia 9 phones covering most of the price points and differentiating them enough, kept pushing timely updates and correcting the bugs, worked on the terrible camera software, they could be up there with Samsung and Huwaei in a few years, right now I see this Android Adventure as a small footnote on the tragic story of Nokia.
Why can't they go about copying/combining the features which other companies had built their business on and now have abandoned em to prevent cannibalization/monotony/preventing VFM products, to increase profit margins?
Bring something line HTC styled dual boom speakers at the front, capture that lively emerald green colour from Sony and craft that original Motorola X phone WITH SD card?!?
Oh and ofc Stop that ridiculous nomenclature, reduce the number of releases per year and keep supporting the phones for 3 yrs at the least.
Should propel them right onto the correct path.
there it's no Nokia, it's phones with R&D and manufacture from Foxconn and even chairman of HMD was until recently Foxconn guy, it's basically Foxconn owing Nokia sticker through HMD middleman which it's just for showing off and pretending through few former employees this company has anything to do with previous Nokia
but look at buggy software without testing and crap built quality, this has nothing to do with Nokia, and I say this as someone who worked on their former Symbian, Meego and WP projects
I imagine that the solution involves a time machine.
i still don't know a single person with a nokia phone now. i even know at least people with a sony, blu, and zte