Mobile Marketing

Nokia bans the "phone"

I read in  Cellular news that Nokia bans the word phone. Nokia employees should talk about mobile multimedia computers instead of smartphones.

This move is in line with Nokia prediction a few weeks ago, that handsets will replace cameras, music players and video cameras, etc.

What do you think about this new word? Do you like it?

This is a good illustration of the convergence of devices and the new challenges of the mobile industry. There are more and more features in handsets, voice is becoming a commodity and operators are fighting on data services.

At the beginning of my career a few years ago, telcos were mobile telephony operators. This word is completely obsolete now, mobile operators are becoming multimedia content providers.

Vision of a Swiss knife

In a Financial times article already cited on various web sites such as Moco.news or l'atelier [fr], Nokia predicts the end of cameras, music players and video cameras. All these features will be included in the mobile devices. The word mobile phone is of course obsolete.

This Nokia statement may look very strong and quite arrogant. At least, it opens an interesting discussion: will we have one device, the Swiss knife of the XXIst century that will do everything or several specialised devices?

Let's have a look at some of the applications.

Camera
Already Konica-Minolta announced they will stop producing cameras.
However, I believe that still digital cameras will be superior to mobile phones in terms of resolution or quality of lens.

Music players
Despite the tremendous Apple success of I-pod, I am sure that mobile phones will replace music players in the short term. The advantage of music player in terms of storage space or brand will not last long. Just take the success of the Sony Ericsson walkman!
However, it's probably not such a big threat for Apple in the long term. They will leverage on their brand and marketing strengths and make a lot of money with I-tunes.

PDA
PDA feature is now part of the smartphone. No doubt about it.

GPS
Clearly the GPS functionality will be soon included in handsets.
It makes a lot of sense to combine the location and the mobility.
See this impressive service under development by Google, Volkswagen and nVidia (see other screenshots).