Nokia’s Symbian Phone Sales trends are falling faster than anybody had ever imagined. On the Windows Phone, we knew sales would decline sequentially due to Windows Phone 8 not being backward compatible with existing Lumia devices. Windows Phone 8 Sales to start during November limited to few geographies and operators.
Selling consumers on the benefits of Windows Phone takes time, time that retailers may not have if consumers immediately discount the 920 on account of its material weight disadvantage.
Nokia is at a disadvantage relative to HTC’s and Samsung’s Windows Phone devices in Size and Form Factors. What can drive demand for Windows Phone is likely to follow adoption of Windows 8 (for PCs, laptops and tablets). Once a consumer has a Windows 8 device, the integration benefits of Windows Phone. Unfortunately, our checks suggest that Windows 8 adoption will take until well into 2013 to build real momentum, likely delaying the start of any consumer pull demand for Windows Phone.
3G Data Efficiency a Selling Point
Nokia’s management claims that not just browsing is more data-efficient but all data usage, i.e. including downloaded apps for social networking. However, we suspect that with similarly efficient 3rd-party browsers available for Android the data efficiency of downloaded apps is a difficult marketing challenge.
