Man! When will these guys from Nokia learn not to put their foot in their mouth. Once again, yet another executive from Nokia is out dissing iPhone and Android. Niels Munksgaard, director of Portfolio, Product Marketing & Sales at Nokia Entertainment Global, in an interviewsays the young people are baffled by Android and are fed-up with the iPhone.
“What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone,” he said. “Also, many are not happy with the complexity of Android and the lack of security. So we do increasing see that the youth that wants to be on the cutting edge and try something new are turning to the Windows phone platform.”
I cracked up when I read that headline and that post. When I used to travel globally, the Nokia ringtone and the SMS beep were ubiquitous. Today not so much. I have seen more people with iPhones in more places. The “young people” are the ones with the iPhones. This Nokia executive’s statement is nothing short of bizarre.
I co-incidentally happen to be in Helsinki, a few miles away from Nokia’s global headquarters in Espoo, Finland. Walking around the downtown (where I am staying), I have seen many more iPhones than Nokia phones. And most of the startup people I met have some variation of the iPhone. One of them who is still in college told me that Nokia gave him one of their new phones, and he decided to use it as a way to support his nation’s largest employer. A month later, he switched back to the iPhone. Ouch! When you can’t give away your phones to your own “youth,” it is time to stop hating on other platforms and look for ways to get people to use your product.
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