Platform opennes gives nokia a much better image indeed. However, I'm not sure if all end users care about it.

I can do all of the things that the current 3G iPhone can do, except use the camera, and I think that once the hype of the iPhone calms down and people realise the device isn't as open as they like, they will switch to a more flexible device.

So although iPhone will always lead high-end/high-cost device, Nokia's strategy clearly is to make the Internet mobile device affordable to mass market and play in high volumes.

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Have_you_seen_what_budget_phones_can_do_now.php

By contrast the second half of the year will see lots of models. As Q2 turns to Q3 the following devices are becoming available in the shops: E71, E66 (business focus), N78, N96 (multimedia focus) 6210 (GPS focus), 5320 (music), 6220 (all rounder) and some network specific ones (6650, 6124). That's 9 and I imagine there are more to come. Of course many sales are of older products, but the above makes me think Nokia may have a far better H2. It also shows breadth of scale for Nokia.

Apple will do well at the top end, but it doesn't compare to Nokia's overall picture. Ultimately I suspect Nokia will do better because of the overall scale. Apple may be the media darlings, but back in the real world Nokia is dominant and will likely remain so. The real question is how dominant?

In the US there's iPhone mania, but outside the response is more measured.

@7 - Spot on. Apple continues to not get mired in the "market share myth" but instead poaching the most profitable segments of each market it's in. In computers, they may have a 5% market share but they are 2/3's the size of Microsoft (market capitalization). Not bad. As you say, let other vendors fight it out in the low margin/high volume segments - Apple doesn't want to be in those segments - not enough return for the effort.

If other companies would worry more about the quality of their products then their market share, perhaps we would have overall better products and the market share thing would take care of itself (kind of like with the Mac marketshare - it's been on an accelerating climb for the last 3 years).

@9 - Yup, it's all hype :-p Never mind that you contradict yourself by correctly pointing out Apple was first to the party with a good product (more correctly - a well integrated and executed SOLUTION - not just a product - don't discount iTunes/ITMS) and then ding them for "innovating rather than creating a new device". They innovated in the MP3 space, I fail to see the difference in innovating in the phone space.

Indeed, in the MP3 space the players that were there before the iPod were pretty good (I had two others before my first iPod) and Apple still managed to eventually dominate. The majority of cell phones are pretty crappy and don't have anywhere near the ecosystem as the iPhone, so I think Apple will have a far easier time penetrating with phones then they did with MP3 players.

Dont get me wrong, the iphone is beautiful device. But your analogy is completed based on the premise that Nokia is just going to go "oh shit, apple are so good. lets not do anything"

I would completely disagree. The iphone was in 100% sense of the phrase, "the kick in the arse the mobile market needed". Add in Symbiaan open sourced and the Android Framework and touch screens coming out of everything - you would have to think why would developers disregard all the other platforms for the iPhone.

I think if anything, apple will struggle MORE moving forward because all the existing giants are going to bring out new phones with better interfaces, better features, more apps, more open frameworks.

Apples biggest mistake is that it is trying to control the entire framework. Why does the hacking community exist so massively around the iphone and not other frameworks ? Its because Apple try to lock everything down.

So I think the iphone is more of a "bridge" for the other carriers to see how its done - then they will come out with just as good, if not better products.

Jobs had his chance but he was too busy with lock-in and trying to push his own 8.5% irrelivance.

We can argue back and forth on this one, but in the end it will come down to what ships. I don't think it will even take a year for it to be obvious who has the lead...

@15 - Flash is such a resource hog I see you waiting for a long, long time. Enjoy it...

It is not just the iPhone, but also the iPOD TOUCH that is an Internet Mobile Device.

They combined can do a lot against Nokia's own Internet Mobile Devices.

The problem for Nokia is that the IPOD TOUCH is superior to its own devices.

Are you insane? That's like saying a Ferrari isn't that expensive.

You've got to look at this globally, mobile phones are something that everyone uses, even the poorest people in the poorest countries.

The true cost of an iPhone without a contract is 600 euros. The average non-contract cost of a mobile phone is under 100 euros, and the cheapest phones can cost about 50 euros without a contract. In other words, most people on the planet buy a phone that costs 100 euros or less.

An iPhone costs over six times more than the average phone sold, and twelve times more than the cheapest phone models. At that price the iPhone just isn't an option for most people worldwide, they cannot possibly afford a device that is anywhere near that expensive.

It's the developing world that buys most of the world's phones, so it's the cheap models you should be looking at if you want to know what phones people will be buying.

To stand any kind of chance of dominating the phone market, Apple would have to have most of its sales come from basic models that cost less than 100 euros unlocked and without a contract. They've shown absolutely no interest in that end of the market though, probably because the profit margins on cheap phones are extremely low.

Because of this, I think it's a real mistake to compare Nokia and Apple directly. It's like comparing Rolls Royce with Nissan, they might both make cars but they're clearly not direct rivals.

1) The iPhone is indeed a competitor but it's not the top choice for everyone or, indeed, most people. Nokia make a range of smartphones for various pockets and aesthetic needs which puts them in a pretty strong position compared to Apple's one trick pony even if that pony is of a particularly wonderful breed.

2) Symbian is open source now. That will effectively kill off Android and other OS variants or, at least, severely handicap them given it's competitive advantage and market share.

3) Nokia has - and has had for a number of years - the S60 development environment. The latest iteration (S60v5) is aimed at touch screen. There are thousands of applications - both free and commercial - available from a number of established vendors and sites. Much has been made of Apple's application store but, to be honest, it's not producing anything that doesn't exist already for Symbian, RIMM and WinMo phones. Furthermore Nokia has N-gage for its flagship gaming platform and MOSH for open source app distribution.

4) Nokia's presence in the US is very small for reasons around pricing and carrier availability. Apple's presence is at least 50% in the US and the increase in the number of convergence devices largely derives from the launch of the iPhone and competitors in the US market. In other words the volume of the market has increased and, unfortunately for Nokia, if you're not playing in that market you're not going to get a share of it. That said, they still sold 10 million more devices in the markets they do operate in which they continue to dominate (the iPhone fell well behind the N95's sales figures in the UK, for example).

5) As has been mentioned, Nokia have only launched a couple of convergence devices in the last quarter - the N82 and the N78 - and only the former of them will have been out long enough to figure in sales. There are a lot more to come this quarter and Q4.

The iPhone is a nice phone and given the amount of hype that surrounds it -and that it actually is a pretty good phone - it's not surprising it's doing well. That said, Nokia still outsell it and will continue to outsell it in terms of total convergence devices sold because they don't put all their eggs in one basket.

I suggest those who believe the iPhone will win some mythical battle - and it won't although it will carve out a nice niche for itself - look at the development environments, track record and innovation shown by the likes of Nokia over the last decade. What you find out may shake your viewpoint quite considerably.

Freddy@14: both apple and nokia will innovate, and both have experience and resources. but the fact is that nokia was in the smartphone business for 10 years and failed to develop the smartphone as a true easy-to-use mobile Internet device and also as a software platform. to its credit, nokia did create other handheld internet devices, and allowed developers to develop phone software but it did not make them integral and key to its smartphone development. given that recent history, and the movement of phones toward computers, why would i think nokia will out-think or out-flank apple in regard to future models or future capabilities? i can think of two things in your favor: buying NAVTEQ and launching OVI shows that they have some grasp of where things are headed, altho I'm not sure one needs to own NAVTEQ, and it can be argued whether OVI is a successful launch.

all that said, nokia is definitely apple's strongest and seemingly smartest competitor in the smartphone business. in the US, nokia will be toast to apple, but in Europe and Asia, nokia will put up a serious fight and may still hold onto the lead in the smartphone market for a long time.

Nokia has just gone thru a re-org I think Q3 there are some serious surprises coming our way.

Anybody that thinks that nokia is just going to lie around and let Apple gobble up marketshare is seriously mistaken

The thing that I like the MOST about Nokia is that it is an ethical and honest company. Which is more than can be said of Apple.... The 'white lies' that Jobs makes when he presents (not 399 not 299 but 199) are just too much for me.... Do we live in such a cynical world where we condone, and actually admire such behavior as we allow Jobs and co to get away with....

Hey, pal, they've already stated they DON'T INTEND TO!
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/08/29/quote-of-the-day-nokias-innate-ineptness/

And those ginornous Nokia sales figures -- the grand majority are low-end bottom-feeding cheapie phones for the developing world. They can keep that razor-thin margin of a market.

A special message from a special individual.

Lots of people have pointed out already it's not about the touchscreens, it's about solutions. But Nokia is going in this direction already. While Apple is creating the hype about its new super device, Nokia is quietly buying out useful internet services and integrates them into millions of its handsets. They're going to win and the greedy Apple will just be an outsider again.

This includes many of the newer models, including a 30% reduction in the E61 model. Happy shopping!

It is cheaper - that is an absolute fact. If its the carrier who is eating the subsidy costs and not the consumer, it is CHEAPER to me, the customer.

"Fact is" >>> the working definition for reality is ::: who pays your bills & when? the terms & conditions do apply, of course ... What are you paying for and to whom when you use & are billed for use on an iPhone? A Nokia N95 (insert any comparable device)?

Reality >>> I honestly hope the individuals & entities who actually innovate get PAID (not just make silly banners, see above for ample examples, & embed them into a puff piece on mobile "competition" between two entities who have retarded innovation by making ne'er do well - types "geniuses" and acting against the very intellectual property laws that contributed greatly to their "success")

>>> my 3 year old Japanese mobile kicks the crap outta the iPhone & any Nokia device ... Reads bar code ... Runs at landline broadband (well US standard) speeds ... Etc @ 35 bucks (15 or so quid) per month ...

Can't resist - what is meant by "open"? & "closed", for that matter? better patent pool? copyrights? Lobbying? marketshare? editorial & PR placement? narrative? cooler logo?

"Fact is" >>> the working definition for reality is ::: who pays your bills & when? the terms & conditions do apply, of course ... What are you paying for and to whom when you use & are billed for use on an iPhone? A Nokia N95 (insert any comparable device)?

Reality >>> I honestly hope the individuals & entities who actually innovate get PAID (not just make silly banners, see above for ample examples, & embed them into a puff piece on mobile "competition" between two entities who have retarded innovation by making ne'er do well - types "geniuses" and acting against the very intellectual property laws that contributed greatly to their "success")

>>> my 3 year old Japanese mobile kicks the crap outta the iPhone & any Nokia device ... Reads bar code ... Runs at landline broadband (well US standard) speeds ... Etc @ 35 bucks (15 or so quid) per month ...

Sure, Apple alleges to have flipped over a million iPhone 3Gs at this point, but what does that mean? The devil's in the details, as always; yes, true, the first one took 74 days to reach that same milestone, but it was available in less than one-twentieth the number of countries and an even smaller fraction of carriers. Hell, the very definition of "sale" is under scrutiny here, with some suggesting that Apple's making reference to the number of phones it's sold to its carrier partners, not end users -- a metric that would make sense from Cupertino's perspective since Apple's payday technically ends there.

Here's where it gets interesting -- Engadget has obtained a handful of stats regarding number ports in and out of T-Mobile USA handled by a national wholesaler. Specifically, we have data surrounding the launch of the first-gen iPhone and the iPhone 3G, and get this: of more than 1,000 ports in total, ports to AT&T represented under 40 percent of the firm's total outflow in the days surrounding the 3G's launch, versus nearly 70 percent the last time around. Furthermore, they took roughly the same number of inbound ports from AT&T during the same period, meaning that T-Mobile effectively lost no net ground due to the 3G's launch. Granted, the porting stats from a single wholesaler represent just a microcosm of the big picture, but even accounting for some loss of precision when you extrapolate that data, you're looking at a pretty significant downturn in interest from T-Mobile subscribers. We still think Apple's probably laughing all the way to the bank either way -- and iPhone 3Gs are sold out virtually everywhere right now -- but you've got to wonder if AT&T's not freaking out a little bit at the number of new subscribers it managed to entice, and whether its competitors are all breathing cautious sighs of relief at some surprisingly reasonably churn rates