Is Nokia about to fall on hard times?

[The Mullet of G]

Perhaps with MeeGo they will hit back, and it's understandable that new software would take time to get right. But if they can't turn the tables by the end of this year and show us some signs of hope then I think the talk of Nokia falling upon harder times will start to gain some kudos.

There is no doubting that things aren't exactly all rosy at Nokia right now, but I think you Apple guys like to add a bit of spin to the mix. I figure its a lot like the doom mongering that came with Windows Vista, people said Microsoft was pretty much dead with no hope of long term survival and it would be the year of Linux or OS X, where are they now? Windows 7 eclipsed the market share of both in its first weekend of sales alone. Likewise Nokia are still shifting a ridiculous amount of phones, and while they might not suit you folks there are a lot of happy Nokia customers out there, sure there are unhappy ones, but in fairness I don't see the press making a major fuss about disgruntled Nokia customers, I do however hear rumblings of disgruntled iPhone 4 owners though ironically.

What you need to remember is Nokia's market share is made up with all the cheap handsets they produce for abroad, if you look at the expensive phones (from say �300+) there are not many happy people and have moved to either Android or iPhone.

If Nokia think this is not a big thing they REALLY need to think again as the once diehard supporters of the company like myself and Ricky/Rita who are now leaving is for a simple reason and that is Nokia has lost its way and are just producing crap after crap.

We all know the N8 spec but the underlying problem will be the fact it still uses a Symbian OS which is just not good enough even in the latest version, why else have Nokia stated after the N8 all NSeries phones will be MeeGo instead.

I can't remember the last time I recommended a Nokia product to someone because the OS is buggy as hell and just not worth the hassle.

You didn't buy an N97 too did you?

Symbian has been reaching the end of its lifespan for quite some time, pretty much everyone knew it was going to be replaced by Maemo/MeeGo on high end handsets, I'm pretty sure Nokia themselves even said this long before the N8 or MeeGo ever existed, if not they at least alluded to it in a blatant fashion, so the N Series announcement is hardly a surprise. It still doesn't change the fact that in the first quarter of this year 44.3% of smartphones sold were Symbian OS, while the combined market share of RIM, iPhone OS and Android only make up 44.4%, its clear that Symbian isn't going to be dying anytime soon, and people are still more than happy to use it. Love it or loathe it you have to remember that what you want from a phone isn't necessarily what the majority of people want, the fact we're posting on what the majority would probably consider a geeky phone website, we clearly aren't the average user nor the majority.