Teenagers are putting Sony Ericsson and Samsung ahead of Nokia
By Stefan Constantinescu on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 8:49 AM PST In Research
Over 58,000 teenagers (ages 11-18) in 31 countries were surveyed about their mobile phone manufacture of choice by Sulake of Finland, operator of the Habbo social networking site for teenagers. In 15 out of the 31 countries polled Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is number uno, but in places like UK, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland Nokia loses to Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE), places where Nokia used to lead only 2 years ago. In the UK Nokia isn’t even number 2, that distinction goes to Samsung. The 40% global marketshare Nokia has doesn’t translate for this age group. Why is that?
Is the old sterotype that Nokia is a master of the low end, master of the high end, but ignore the middle still true today?
[Via: IT Wire]
Dosent sound too good for Nokia, but then if they where number one on those countires 2 years ago when in my opinion Nokia did produce shite they havent gone wrong(did use SE for couple of years back then).
Sony Ericsson has some pretty fresh looking devices so i can undertand why they do sell among teenagers. Many of the Nokia’s are pretty neutral look wise too and i agree Nokia’s mid priced phones arent anything special.
Would really really like to see some 6500s type of phones more.
In the UK alone, most low and mid tariffs are populated by sonyericsson or motorolla handsets and many of these are new phones with mid tier funtionality. These are the tariffs the teens go for, and thus they end up saturated in the sony world.
Nokia are missing a large market here and its only in the last year or two that they started targeting this sector, but with toyish looking express-music handsets that just dont appeal to the “cool” set.
If they had more like the 6500 slide and classic in theat field, elegant but powerful, at a greatly affordable price, then stories like this wont exist.
am i wrong?
looks aside (and it IS a big factor, from personal experience with teens and mobiles), i don’t think they’re too fond of messing with S60 in the higher-end devices. and a lot of teenagers where i am can afford n-series phones, etc, so it’s not always about the middle-tier. it’s about good experiences their friends have had. S60 needs to be more user-friendly, but it can’t, by design.
Toy phones, gentlemen…TOY PHONES.
Samsung has got the looks.
SE got battery life, which Nokia – incredibly – lacks.
But srsly, Nokia got PHONES. Just lately Nokia’s beginning to give a bit more attention to S40 devices. Nokia SHOULD take care of the S40 devices in the terms of looks and battery life…
See, SE and Samsung mainly look like toys, not phones, and that’s why teens are putting ahead these ahead of Nokia. Despite of the success Nokia has scored in the S60 and S20 devices, lets have a look at the S40 platform…pretty much neglected. S40 is the equivalent OS’s for the SE’s UIQ and Samsung’s OS…all of the S40 devices have no looks or has a design for businessmen (6233, for example) or the ladies (refer to the prism series) there is no “toy” phone in the S40 platform, also, battery life….tell me a S40 phone that doesnt last for more than 4 days after usage – or has more than 3 hrs of talking time (I know this because I own me belived 6233)
Give me a “toy” phone, with festive colours and longer battery life…then we’ll see what happens.
There’s a few Nokia expression (youth) models today unlike several years ago.
Today: 5310, 5610, 3500 classic, 5700, 5300, 3110/3109 classic, 5070, 5500 Sport, 5200
Several years ago: 3650, 3660, 3220, 3200, 3100, 3230, 3510i, 3120, N-Gage, N-Gage QD, 3410, 3310, 3330, 3350, 3510, 3530, 3610, 3315.