Nokia vows to regain smartphone vendor crown

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 06 July 2010 12:52

IT Industry - Strategy

The newly appointed head of Nokia Mobile Solutions, Anssi Vanjoki, has vowed to re-instate Nokia as market leader in high-end mobile devices.

In a long posting on Nokia' blog site, under the heading 'The fightback starts now', Vanjoki said: "it's my aim to ensure Nokia stays as the market and intellectual leader in creating the digital world'¦I am committed, perhaps even obsessed, with getting Nokia back to being number one in high-end devices."

Nokia has copped a considerable amount of negative commentary from analysts in recent months. In March Ovum analyst, Tim Renowden, said: "Nokia appears to be lagging behind the performance curve, with'¦a specification gap opening between it and rivals'¦with only the niche N900 handset sporting a next-generation chipset."

According to Renowden, "The majority of Nokia's current smartphones - including the flagship N97 and N97 mini - run on ARM11 at below 500MHz, with an anaemic 128MB of RAM: a point that most other platforms have abandoned.

"Nokia's mainstream models are lagging significantly behind the cutting edge: the current market high-end is a Snapdragon chipset at 1GHz, with 448MB of RAM (the HTC HD2), and other manufacturers are queuing up to announce handsets with equivalent specifications."

He said Nokia's screen technology was also lagging. "Of the 20 handsets with highest screen resolution, Nokia has just one - again, the N900."

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