The Outsidr

Quite some time ago, I was chatting with a group of people about Nokia’s effort to break into the US market with its high-end smartphone lines. Among those in the group were two well-positioned higher ups from Nokia, two bloggers and a handful of people I hadn’t been introduced to.

At one point during the conversation, we began talking about advertising and marketing. Being a marcom guy, I jumped right in. Nokia had hardly been aggressive up to that point in time (not that it is aggressive now) and I began talking about what might help the company position its devices a bit better in the US. Directly addressing the Nokians, I talked about apps.

There are only a handful of factors that separate one phone from the next in the eyes of the typical US consumer. Styling and form factor are among those factors; camera quality and dedicated multimedia keys are not. Why not focus on some of the amazing applications that have been developed for Nokia handsets? Why not bring some of this functionality – that is entirely unheard of where the typical US consumer is concerned, mind you – before the consumer and wow him/her? Show him that his handset can automatically switch profiles to silent or vibrate when he arrives at the movie theater to catch a flick. Show her that she can snap a picture and upload it instantly, without pressing a single button, to her Facebook page. Show them that they can actually speak to their handsets and their speech can be converted into text, to then be emailed/posted/texted and so on.

They looked at me like I had an arm growing out of my forehead.

Nokia’s advertising plan stresses the strengths of each device and outlines the areas where our devices are superior to the competition. Right on guys, right on.

And now we have the App Store.

Apps have taken center stage in the onslaught of Apple’s advertising and rightfully so. The Shazaam commercial has played twice on the TV behind me as I typed out this post in fact. How fascinating that I can hold my iPhone up to a speaker and have it identify the song for me! How amazing that I can see where my friends are and even view status updates right on my iPhone! And so on, and so forth. These things aren’t overly impressive to a power user; hell, any S60 handset can do those things and do them well. The problem? No one in the US outside of S60 enthusiasts and gadget fiends is aware that Nokia’s handsets can perform these functions.

Nokia attempted to highlight apps, sort of, with its Open to Anything campaign but it was too little, too late. WAY too little and FAR too late. It was also an attempt at a viral campaign which is hardly where Nokia should be focusing its efforts, in the US at least.

It seems like Nokia simply won’t ever get it when it comes to selling smartphones in the US. The question becomes, does it care? Even as I type this, the homepage of Nokia’s US website is open in another browser tab and a welcome video is repeating front and center. Here is a screen capture:

And another:

Should you click through, the N96 product page is headed with, “Designed for video and TV entertainment.” Did I miss something? Did DVB-H become widely available in the US while I was sleeping last night? Why would a company put so much focus on a feature that is essentially unusable in the market being addressed?

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

It is fantastic news for Nokia that the E71x will be coming to AT&T at some point, hopefully soon. The E71 is a terrific handset and it should sell quite well as long as a carrier is doing the heavy lifting. Nokia simply can’t handle this market on its own. It seems almost uncomfortably incapable here in the US, almost to the point of being morbidly fascinating. The shame in all this is that Nokia has A LOT to offer the US market. The US market however, will probably never learn of 95% of it.

Then there’s Apple; a company with the prowess and supporting talent to make an iAnything a success. Low and behold, this marcom powerhouse is now focusing on apps. Is it working? I don’t see any signs of iPhone 3G sales slowing down, that’s for sure. Fantastic idea, Apple… I wish I had thought of it (wink wink).