Last week we published a review of Nokia’s latest ‘Lumia 800’ based on technical specifications of the mobile. However to our surprise, it attracted number of comments, mostly abusive, from none other than Nokia and Microsoft employees and associates
Yogesh Sapkale
Last Friday, I wrote an article about the newly launched Nokia Lumia 800. The article was aimed to educate and inform readers and buyers about this latest smartphone from Nokia so that they could make a smart decision. However, this review ruffled some feathers and we saw an orchestrated pile of comments. The common factor in all these comments was use of abusive language that explains the motive.
However, the biggest surprise came when I decided to check the back-end for the origin of these comments. And was I surprised? You bet. The first comments that appeared were posted by none other than the employees and associates of Nokia and Microsoft. Especially one commentator, Harish, who later realised his mistake of posting comment from his official IP address (from India) and changed it later, is the one who had written the maximum (nine so far) abusive posts. I wonder, if this is called good PR practice at Nokia and whether they believe that everything can be bought like the ad-extravaganza they created in newspapers and TV channels?
Here is what Mr Harish says...
Name = harish Email Id = [email protected] Ip Address = 192.100.117.41
What an crap review!! it's one of the best phone available, iphone is so dumb compared to this.... Guess some one is paying you lumpsum, congrats..
The IP address ‘192.100.117.41’ belongs to Nokia Corp.
Same is the case with other commenter, Aditya Agrawal. While Mr Agrawal has refrained from using abusive word, he had tried hard to convince us that 512MB performs better compared with 1GB or more memory. Since this argument is from somebody from Microsoft, I am really missing my good-old Win98 that used to run on just 32MB RAM unlike the latest Win7 that requires 4GB RAM on the lower side. Hope, Mr Agrawal will tell those guys at Bellevue in Microsoft to make the next Win8 run on less memory so that it can perform better and we all can bring back our discarded systems into some use! Similarly, he should also try and convince the guys at Intel and AMD not to make any better processors as their old ones would perform better with Microsoft OSs. Here is the comment of Mr Agrawal and his IP address...
Name = Aditya Agrawal Email Id = [email protected] Ip Address = 207.46.55.31
dude, gone are the times when actual consumers just use to care about the technical specificiations of mobiles. today, people want devices which are beauitful, fast and easy-to-use. for most of the consumers, it does not matter if the phone has 512mb or 1gb ram. if the 512mb performs better in real-life, that't the one customers are gonna prefer.
just a small advice, go to a store and use windows phone 7.5 for 10 mins, the last thing you will care is whether the phone has a single or a dual core.
The IP address 207.46.55.31 belongs to Microsoft Corp.
Coming back to the original article, I had clearly mentioned at the start of that article that the review was completely based on technical specifications. The only phone I found matching technical specification of Lumia 800 was from Samsung and hence was used there. Let me make it clear again that India is a very price sensitive market when it comes to spending hard earned money. This is the mistake many manufacturers, especially from the western countries, has made in India. Obviously they are still paying the price for this overlook. Most Indians prefer to save money and then spend it rather than taking credit for a smartphone that may cost them a month’s salary. It is the same reason why iPhone 4S, which is available at Rs42,000, is still unable to see better sales in India.
Nokia, which first sensed this factor back in 2000, reduced handset prices in order to make it more affordable and was able to increase its market share phenomenally, until it faced stiff competition from China-made but locally branded handsets. While the world was embracing newer operating systems (OS) for mobile handsets, Nokia decided to stick with its age-old Symbian platform. Symbian is a good OS, but only for basic phones and could not compete with the likes of BlackBerry, Android and Apple’s iOS. This resulted in Nokia losing its market share across the globe, especially in smartphone category.
Just a few days ago, Exane BNP Paribas conducted a survey in the five European markets where the Lumia 800 has gone on sale. Out of the total 1,300 people surveyed from the five markets, around 456 said they were interested in buying a smartphone. “With only 2.2% of surveyed buyers firmly intending to purchase the Lumia 800, Nokia's first flagship Windows Phone is ... far behind the current blockbusters, Apple's iPhone 4S and Samsung's Galaxy S II,” analyst Alexander Peterc wrote in the report. Need I say more?
Strictly speaking on the pricing and technical specification terms, if somebody offers a SUV (sports utility vehicle) at a price of a mid-sized car, then over 95% people would prefer to buy the SUV. Don’t believe me? Go and ask any dealer of Mahindra & Mahindra and they will tell you the overwhelming response to their newly launched XUV500 that is attributed to its competitive price with other mid-size cars in the market.
Similarly, if for about Rs30,000 somebody is offering a mobile handset with better technical specifications (like dual-core processor, more memory, dual camera and larger screen) do you think anyone would buy Lumia 800? I doubt. Just to give more choices, for the same amount, you can buy, Samsung Galaxy SII, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, HTC Rhyme, HTC Sensation and even BlackBerry Torch 9810, that are much superior in technical specifications and features when compared with Lumia 800. As of today, Samsung Galaxy SII is available at around Rs27,200, which still is the top seller in this price range.
We are also clueless about the kind of ‘Kolaveri di’ (rage over) generated by readers (?), especially from countries like Singapore, the US, UK and even Poland. We had traced back the origins of all the comments and would publish, if necessary, at suitable time.
Among the best known financial journalists in India, in 2006, Ms Dalal was awarded the Padma Shri, India government s third highest civilian award, based on her outstanding investigative journalism since the early 1990s. Her 35 years of investigative reporting spans the Harshad Mehta scam, CR Bhansali scam, and expose of Enron among others. She was the Financial Editor at The Times of India and has also written for Business Standard, The Economic Times, Indian Express and Financial Express among others. She served as a member of SEBI s primary market advisory committee, the Narayana Murty Corporate Governance Committee and as a member of Investor Education and the Protection Fund of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs . She has co-authored the best-selling book The Scam: From Harshad Mehta to Ketan Parekh and a biography of A D Shroff, a Titan of Finance.