Mobile Leadership Strategies

Nokia showed off its two new Lumia devices, the 920 and 820, at a press event, highlighting the latest devices to run on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8. However, the company hasn’t locked down a definitive availability date or a price.

Immediately following the event, Nokia’s stocks fell 13 percent according to the Wall Street Journal. Before the event started, a company representative stated the phones would be available later in 2012 and that pricing and carrier information would be announced in a few weeks. The Lumia 920 features wireless battery charging as well as an eight megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. The 820 can also be charged wirelessly, but that is an add-on for the device. Both phones operate on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon s4 chip and have Pure Motion HD displays. Nokia just missed out on being the first manufacturer to unveil a smartphone running on Windows Phone 8; Samsung announced its phone last week at a Berlin electronics show.

Yankee Group Senior VP of Research Wally Swain comments

“We expected a phone that played to Nokia’s strengths in optics and location/maps, so we weren’t disappointed. Nokia claims the Lumia 920 has the best camera available on a smartphone and it’s probably right based on a motion-cancelling technology that almost eliminates jitter and allows longer exposure times. We could say Nokia ‘finally’ launched its own augmented reality software well after other companies but with the depth of Nokia’s ‘Points of Interest’ database, ‘City Lens’ will no doubt be a good one.

Samsung’s announcement last week beat Nokia to the punch on a Windows Phone 8 phone, but Microsoft’s user interface is unique and should contribute to the appeal of the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 (a lower powered mid-tier model). Android vendors will have to move away from static icon displays, and Microsoft has already staked out a territory that is both unique and useful.

If Wall Street dumped Nokia stock because of the lack of a carrier announcement they were right to do so. AT&T was mentioned en passant, but no one was on stage with Stephen Elop so there is no clarity about when the phones will hit the stores. But if ‘the street’ dumped the stock because the announcement failed to convince Apple-mad Wall Street analysts to dump their iPhones that is crazy: Wall Street analysts do not represent the average smartphone customer.”