The following blog will be a response to an external marketing blog post “3 Ways Dumb Phones Might Save Nokia” by Rohit Bhargava:

http://www.rohitbhargava.com/retail-ecommerce

In the blog posted in September, the author talks about the “opportunity of the decade” Nokia had missed as it merged with Microsoft. While some critics has directed the discussion onto the question of “who will be dominate the smart phone market”, the author suggests a different view point, that the Nokia phones could have gained considerable market potentials if it had been targeting the right users and focusing more on the marketing of their new “dumb phone” with simple functions rather than competing with the big smartphone companies.

In contrast to the effort Nokia spent in marketing its new phone (The Nokia Lumia 1020), there was only one bland youtube video and a bland product page for their new “dumbphone” with a bland name (Nokia 515) which came out roughly the same time. Of course the Lumia 1020 seemed to be a great choice to put the marketing money on, however there are also tons of people out there who would be interested in buying a simple phone with less functions but a way longer battery life. Not to mention that leaving the smartphone battle field and focus on “dumbphones” could free up the engineers to research on the promising new technologies such as the Morph Device Concept. Nokia has lost its golden opportunity by omitting the needs of the “dumbphone” populations here.