Apple leads, Nokia follows - but are we ready?

by: Tony Dennis Friday, April 25th, 2008

Rating: Music first, surfing next

Why on earth is Apple supposedly confident of hitting its sales target for the iPhone? Given that it needed to sell 10 million units within 365 days? Yet that’s supposedly what Apple COO, Tim Cook, is predicting. The question isn’t so much as will Apple really make it? As much as “Does it really matter?”Apple has just said it has sold 1.7 million handsets in its last quarter. Added to the four million it sold in the first 200 days, I reckon it will sell around seven million in the first year. Which was the original goal and not 10 million by the end of

That’s still an incredible achievement for a company to come from absolutely nowhere and sell that many smartphones. Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, commented “With over $17 billion in revenue for the first half of our fiscal year, we have strong momentum to launch some terrific new products in the coming quarters.” New products, eh? That sounds like a hint that the fabled 3G version of the iPhone might finally make its appearance.

Apple also sold around 10 million iPods. Now compare this with Nokia. At the recent ‘Comes with Music’ announcement, Nokia’s Tero Ojanpera said that out of the 347 million handsets that Nokia shipped in 2007, 146 million of them were music enabled. Add Sony Ericsson’s sales of Walkman phones to that figure and it’s easy to see why everyone’s gone music crazy in the mobile world.

So the iPhone has revolutionised mobile internet surfing and Nokia has yet to respond. No wonder there are rumours of a Nokia iPhone killer. One web site, Gizmodo – which says the handset has been nicknamed the Tube, even has a picture of it here.

Once the Tube arrives there’ll be a massive rise in demand for mobile content. And I’m currently not convinced the industry is ready for it yet.

3 Responses to “Apple leads, Nokia follows - but are we ready?”

Darryl Said:

I’m hoping that this response does not come across as a flame but…..I clicked on an read this article because, it’s title “Apple leads, Nokia follows - but are we ready?”, caught my attention.
Based on the title the subject matter sounded interesting because, I too wonder if the industry is ready for the paradigm shift that will take place as more companies produce better internet capable mobile devices.
Your article points out clearly how Apple leads as well as how Nokia follows.
It says absolutely nothing about being ready. Not the industry or the consumer is mentioned as being ready or not. Nothing about why the industry isn’t ready. Nothing about how the industry might get ready. Nothing about what being ready will look or be like.
The fact that none of that was mentioned would not have mattered much, (the information given was informative though has been mentioned numerous times other places) had you not made the ending statement.
“Once the Tube arrives there’ll be a massive rise in demand for mobile content. And I’m currently not convinced the industry is ready for it yet.”

That staement just highlights the fact that you didn’t cover a large portion of the question asked in your title.
This may be nickpicking, but is it too much to expect that an articles’ title will have something to do with its content? Especially if that title includes a question.

Comment made on April 26th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

Tony Dennis Said:

That was very definitely a flame

Comment made on April 29th, 2008 at 2:11 am

Rob Knight Said:

more of a blitz than a flame