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Apple’s Siri declares iPhone as best phone, Nokia gets pissed

By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 at 3:40 PM
apple-crushes-nokia

Last week, as you’re probably aware, news vastly spread about how Siri on the iPhone 4S not-so-secretly recommended the Nokia Lumia 900 as the best phone using data from Wolfram Alpha. As of yesterday, it appears Siri has flip flopped worse than presidential candidates at GOP debates and now informs users upon request that the best smartphone is the iPhone.

Well Nokia isn’t very happy that Apple modified Siri to its own advantage. Think about it though. A company modifying its own product to its advantage? I, for one, am astounded! 

“Apple positions Siri as the intelligent system that’s there to help, but clearly if they don’t like the answer, they override the software,” said Nokia spokeswoman Tracy Postill. Another spokesman later remarked that Postill’s quote might have been “taken a bit too seriously” by the media.

Siri originally told askers of the question “What’s the best phone?” the Nokia Lumia 900 because it gathers data for certain questions from third-party resources like Wolfram Alpha and Yelp. For this query, Wolfram Alpha used overall ratings from Best Buy to determine the answer. The Nokia Lumia 900 has a perfect 5-star average rating from 4 reviewers while the iPhone 4S has an average rating of 4.7, but from 86 reviewers. That’s how the mixup occurred.

Can we really blame Apple for getting rid of free Nokia promotion? There’s not a single doubt in my mind that any other company to accidentally recommend a competitor’s product would attempt to reverse the action too. Nothing personal — it’s just business.

Since we’re on the topic, I might as well start a war about it: iPhone 4S vs. Nokia Lumia 900. Fight in the comments below!

[via CNET]

About The Author

George Tinari

George has followed technology news for quite some time, but he only started writing about it a few years ago. He particularly enjoys covering Apple, but that doesn't stop him from reporting on a wide range of topics in the mobile area. When he's not reporting for IntoMobile, you can usually find George listening to a wide array of music, trying to be funny and sarcastic, eating, or voicing his opinions about all things tech on his personal blog, GT Daily.

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  • Guest

    Wow, all 5 people who bought a Lumia recommended it? Cool.

    • Radoken

      Excellent point.  What I’m surprised about is that they only sold 86 iPhone’s.

      If Siri is skewing the search results in favour of the operating system and hardware manufacturer, it’s a nice anti-trust / monopoly case (not a legal expert, but hopefully that makes sense).  IE on Windows seems pretty timid compared to skewing search results on top of the mandatory voice search engine on top of the mandatory OS of the hardware manufacturer.

      • Ianflemmings2021

        They sold way more than 86 iPhones. That’s just how many people gave it a review.

  • michael dobak

    uh please dont get political. you just piss off half of your readers when you do. just give me the news, and leave your opinions to your friends.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Curtis/100000738846118 Michael Curtis

      you assume he has freinds…. anyone who is so blind that they cant see obama as the biggest flipflopping flop of a pres since       ….. well bush, obviously has judgement issues

      • http://www.gtdaily.net/?source=disqus George Tinari

        I didn’t say Obama didn’t flip flop. It was just a small joke about the debates — nothing more.