Nokia: the end of history

Yesterday Microsoft, the new owner of the Nokia handset business, wielded the axe of their newly acquired unit cutting around 40% of the staff and all their product lines except for the Lumia smartphones [1] [2] [3].

Although most industry observers suspected that something like this would eventually be on the cards, the speed at which this has taken place is surprising.

But let's just think about what has happened. It doesn't just mean that the  Nokia X range of Android phones will be canned (including the X2 announced a few weeks ago), but there are also reports that this extends to the entire product line including the very popular Asha devices, venerable Series 40 feature phones and even the billion-selling Series 30 dumbphones.

That's everything that Nokia was ever built on. Sure, we won't miss the Nokia X platform, but probably almost everyone who has owned a phone will have owned a Series 30 or Series 40 Nokia at some point.. and will probably remember it fondly.

This joins the graveyard of Nokia operating systems - one of Stephen Elop's first actions as CEO of Nokia was to kill off the Symbian and MeeGo operating systems. Back in the distant past there was also the Series 90 touchscreen OS. Nokia even flirted with Linux-based devices before canning those. The list goes on.

So Nokia is just about Lumia now? Well, yes and no.. because it is reported that Microsoft can only use the NOKIA name until the end of 2015, at which point presumably they will be branded LUMIA instead. So is this the end of Nokia?

It seems that Nokia are barred from producing mobile devices until the end of 2015, and after that they are restricted from making smartphones for several more years.. but we don't know exactly how the agreement defines a smartphone (for example, we count the Asha range as feature phones, not smartphones). So it doesn't look great from that point of view.

However, with the handset business gone Nokia can act much more like a startup and think out-of-the-box. I strongly suspect that Nokia will re-enter the mobile device market in some form as soon as it can, after all there is still a large amount of brand loyalty and Nokia can be the masters of design and usability. So perhaps we haven't seen the last of Nokia.. but it seems that we have seen the last of Nokia's awesome legacy in the mobile phone world.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini is not a mini version of the Samsung Galaxy S4

Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini today.. but is this really a mini version of the full-sized S4 after the disappointment of the S III Mini?

The answer is simply.. no. The S4 Mini is not a mini version of the S4, it's a completely different and much less powerful handset. Although the specifications of the "Mini" are not bad, they are in no way close to the fully-blown S4. Yes, its about 25% lighter and has a 20% smaller footprint, so it's definitely not as massive as the S4, but that really is about all it has going for it.

A quick look at the comparison table below shows just how far off the Mini is:

	Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini	Samsung Galaxy S4
Screen size	4.3"	5.0"
Screen resolution	540 x 960	1080 x 1920
CPU	1.7GHz dual-core	1.9GHz quad-core
RAM	1.5GB	2GB
Internal storage	8GB	16GB / 32GB / 64GB
Primary camera	8 megapixels	13 megapixels
Secondary camera	1.9 megapixels	2 megapixels
NFC	Yes	Yes
LTE	Yes	Yes
OS	Android 4.2.2	Android 4.2.2

It looks like a pretty cynical marketing exercise by Samsung to try to pass off this inferior handset as anything like the Galaxy S4. Unfortunately, Samsung will probably convince many media outlets and customers that it is such a thing..

Editorial: Has BlackBerry just shot itself in the foot?

This week BlackBerry announced that they were porting their popular BBM messaging application to Android and iOS, and it also gave a preview of the upcoming BlackBerry Q5 device that should be cheaper than the existing Q10.

We don't know much about the Q5, for some reason BlackBerry aren't very forthcoming about the specifications, but a cheaper handset is definitely needed to replace the popular but obsolete BlackBerry Curve range. Although the Curve is widely used by businesses trying to stretch their budget, it is the handset of choice for most BBM users who tend to be a youthful lot.

So.. on one hand, BlackBerry is saying to BBM users "here's a nice new phone for you".. but then they're saying "but you don't need it". It certainly looks like BlackBerry have severely dented the market for the Q5 before it even gets to the shops.

Obviously, porting BBM to Apple and Androids is a good move for the BBM platform, but BlackBerry are going to give it away for free and it's hard to see how they will generate any revenue from it, and certainly not enough to make up for the lost handset sales.

Of course, locking BBM users into BlackBerry handsets would probably eventually kill the platform off anyway, and it's been clear for a while that BlackBerry needs to do something to reverse its previous dead-end strategy. But the danger is that BlackBerry have just accelerated the decline in hardware sales.

Despite the modest success of the rather good Z10 and Q10 handsets, BlackBerry are still in a desperately poor strategic situation. The BlackBerry 10 OS was two years late to market, and had they launched BB10 smartphones instead of the disastrous PlayBook (which BlackBerry can't even seem to give away) then it might have made a difference. In our view, BlackBerry passed to point of no return some time ago, and the long-term future seems to be pretty bleak.

Yes, there are still a lot of BlackBerry fans about, but it seems to be a steeply declining user base. We suspect that the company will continue to slowly bleed to death during 2013 and will then have to throw in the towel at some point next year, with the remaining parts sold off to interested parties. We hope that we are wrong though..