Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
In addition, Nokia continues to develop successful new products at a
rate that other handset makers simply cannot match. According to Ovum,
Nokia said that 30% of Q4 2007 revenue and profit came from new products
that only started shipping in that quarter.
If Nokia has a weak spot, then it is the North
American market, particularly the US, which has a comparitively
backward cellular infrastructure compared to Europe and much of Asia
where Nokia reigns supreme. However, it is a stark demonstration that
to succeed in the vast global mobile phones space companies must have a
global focus.
At the beginning of 2007, Apple signalled its intention to be a mobile
phones player - or at least a smartphones player - when it unveiled the
iPhone. Despite being hailed as an innovative and even revolutionary
product and being hyped to the moon, sales have been relatively modest.
Part of the problem could well be that Apple still hasn't brought out a
3G model, which outside the US is mandatory to the success of a product
like this.
Another problem for Apple could be the disposable global mobile phones
culture that prevails outside the US. While Apple users are content to
hang on to their products until they practically die and need to be
replaced, mobile users are used to shelving perfectly good but outdated
phones for the latest Nokia, Motorola, Samsung or Sony Ericsson for
nothing up front as soon as their contract expires. And of course the
handset companies, led by Nokia, are only too happy to feed this
mindset by bringing scores of new products to market each quarter.
Apple is an innovative company but the cut-throat mobile phones market
requires innovation and the release of new products at a breakneck
pace. This is a market that moves six times as many units as computers
each year.
When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone in 2007, he described it as a
revolutionary product, a mobile phone, a portable Internet device and
iPod all in one package. He may be right about the iPhone being the
best iPod ever, although iPod sales continue to dwarf iPhone sales.
However, as far as the mobile phone and Internet device part goes,
Apple's revolution compared to the Nokia juggernaut that rolled on
relentlessly through 2007 resembled an ant armed with a toothpick
trying to attack an elephant.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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