The other day, when Nokia finally announced its new flagship Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 smartphone, many if not most of us were underwhelmed by what Nokia delivered. We didn't pay any attention to the lesser offering Nokia also put out there, the Lumia 820 – which we doubt will get any traction in the United States.
Any user who may want one would be smart to simply wait until Nokia is forced to cut the price on the Lumia 920 (and trust us, it will need to) and then make the purchase of the much more advanced phone instead.
A key problem we hinted at in our review of Nokia's announcements the other day is the fact that Nokia did not provide any information on likely price points for the devices. But we can certainly expect it to be in the same general vicinity as the Samsung Galaxy S III (relative to what carrier subsidization costs will be and what the ultimate price to the consumer will be), who its carrier partners will be (or whether there will be any exclusive/special relationships afoot), and last but most important, when exactly the new smartphones would ship.
Well, the word is now at least out on the latter issue: the likely ship date will be in the first week in November. To say the least, that ship date is highly problematical. Why?
Consider the following:
Samsung is now approaching 20 million Galaxy S IIIs sold since June 2012 - that is one very powerful sell-through number, which means that Samsung "cachet" is growing, which in turn means that Nokia will not only find itself fighting Apple, but also Samsung at an equally fierce level.
The Galaxy S III has now been in the market long enough that both Samsung, and its carrier partners, will be able to bring new contract prices down from where they currently sit, as the holiday buying season begins in earnest – putting Nokia immediately into a defensive pricing posture just as it begins to ship.
There is a dilemma between what Nokia needs and what its close partner Microsoft needs. Nokia needs sales of the hardware at price points that will help it achieve some means of reviving its ability to generate revenue – this is critical to its survival. Microsoft merely wants to be able to claim significant market penetration – its goal is to be able to say that it has 300 million Windows Phone devices out in the market place.
Whether Nokia makes a profit or takes a loss on its Lumia 900 (and cheaper siblings) and the new 920 and 820 is almost irrelevant to Microsoft!
The 820 may ultimately prove more important to both Nokia and Microsoft as its cheaper price may open more doors in Asia and other emerging global regions - especially where Nokia is looking to regain its footing in replacing feature phone sales with smart phone sales. This helps Microsoft, but Nokia won't see any revenue gains.
The greatest threat, however, is the anticipated ship date of the new iPhone – that being September 21, 2012. The new iPhone is already anticipated to become the single greatest smartphone launch ever, which is bad enough news for Nokia. But the fact (or purported fact) that Nokia won't ship until November means that Apple will have a six week window to more or less wipe any memory of the Lumia 920 from the minds of consumers.
A key issue to Nokia's success or lack of it longer term will be in whether or not the enterprise mobility world moves to adopt the Lumia devices for the workforce, whether driven by BYOD or through IT departments that long to easily integrate smartphones and backend software that is primarily Microsoft software. At the moment we can only be skeptical about Nokia's chances here, even with Microsoft behind it.
Sherpas aside, can anyone climb Mount Everest without a huge assortment of protective gear and oxygen tanks? Going up against an Apple with a six week lead time, this is what Nokia faces as the first week in November arrives - it won't have any oxygen tanks and it won't have any protective gear - and Nokia will certainly have no Sherpa capabilities.
We have to wonder how Nokia and Microsoft (to a large degree) developed their strategy for the Lumia 920. Surely Nokia could have guessed even last year that in September of 2012 there would be an Apple iPhone announcement. For the company to announce its new flagship without the ability to say that it would be available immediately strikes us as complete folly.
It is a case of asking if either Nokia or Microsoft understand that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Can one reasonably ask if Nokia and Microsoft shouldn't have invested in the necessary resources to push the delivery date of the Lumia 920 up six weeks?
Yes, we can – and we deserve an answer.
The smartphone market needs a strong Nokia (a strong Research in Motion as well) in order to offer the competitive market environment to drive innovation. Technically both Microsoft and Nokia are almost there (though not quite, for the reasons we outlined in our review of Nokia's announcement). From a business perspective they have a long way to go.
We hope Nokia is able to survive long enough to put both the necessary technical and business capabilities in place to offer the smartphone world some balance. We hope.
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Edited by
Braden Becker 
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