Symbian Sells Millions, Despite Nokia Pushing Windows Phone 218
Nerval's Lobster writes "During the fourth quarter of 2012, Nokia sold 4.4 million Lumia smartphones—a significant rise from the previous quarter, which featured sales of 2.9 million Lumia devices. The Lumia line runs Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, which largely replaced Symbian as Nokia's smartphone software of choice. Despite that shift and Nokia's emphasis on Windows Phone, however, the company still sold 2.2 million Symbian smartphones during the quarter. The question remains whether Nokia should have gone with Windows Phone in the first place, or embraced an alternate platform such as Android; an anti-Elop camp has emerged in recent months, arguing that Symbian was still a viable platform before Elop consigned it to the dustbin of tech history. For now at least, both sides seem to be right: Symbian still sells despite Nokia's attempts to take it increasingly offline, and Lumia phones are selling well. It'll take more time—perhaps a lot more time—before the ramifications of Elop's bet become clear."
Windows phones are junk by default (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows phones are not user friendly. There user screen cannot be properly configured (as with other mobile phones today). They have no options of setting a background image. They are hard to configure, missing features that have existed for years on Symbian, Android and Apple. It is battery unfriendly by nature (a lot of power usage).
For this reason I am never going to buy a Windows phone. I rather move to Android. But I would prefer to continue to use Symbian. But that is not a option I am afraid of. Since Nokia has almost been destroyed by the Microsoft zetaloid that was hired by Nokia board few years ago. But he did work for Microsoft, so he going for Windows Mobile is no surprise at all.
Nokia is going to be missed if it goes bankrupt. The lesson here is however is that never go into a deal with Microsoft. It is going to ruin our company in a record amount of time. It is a fact and a rule. I did see a list of companies that Microsoft made bankrupt with there bad deals. Too bad I can't find at the moment.
Re:I guess most didn't know what they were buying! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, in Brazil the Nokia brand carries a lot of weight. People will buy a phone because it says Nokia here. True or not, around here people believe they need to buy Nokia if they want a phone they don't need to charge every days (sometimes, twice a day).
I have no reason to doubt it is the same in at least some other countries. And regardless, Brazilian cellphone market is huge.
What about Nokia's other OS? (Score:5, Interesting)
They say numbers about Windows 8 and Symbian, but what about Meego/N9? If a platform that they declared dead and buried basically at the moment of launching it, in just one phone, performed in a not so different way than Win8 phones, that would be a big message. There were some numbers around N9 sales for Q4 2011 [osnews.com] and Q1 2012 [blogs.com] that could point that it was selling better than Lumias, but not sure how it evolved. What is possible is that if Sailfish or Ubuntu gets ported to it (have a good shape for the swipe gestures used in those incoming mobile OSs) it could be even start selling back.
Anyway, speaking about dead and buried OSs, Microsoft killed and buried the Window OS bundled in most Lumia Phones when announced Windows Phone 8, saying that present and close enough in time Lumias won't be able to run it, and that apps for Windows 7.x won't be compatible with it neither. Is not so amazing that it sells badly, even for being a Windows phones. You had to wait till Lumia 920 to have a Windows 8.
Re:Astroturfing (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a Nokia Lumia 800 ( It's basically the N9 with WP7.8 , minus the front facing camera )
It is a very good phone and I like it.
Re:Good bye (Score:4, Interesting)