The release of Nokia’s newest smartphone, the N8, marks not only a return to form for the Finnish hardware giant, but a new chapter in the cellphone industry’s story. In recent years, Nokia has seen it’s once mighty grip on the cellphone market hemorrhage to laughable lows. The major reason for such a disastrous fallout in the late 2000’s for the manufacturer was it’s failure to advance it’s software: Symbian OS. While Apple’s iOS, RIM’s Blackberry OS 6 and Google’s Android OS have steadily taken over the smartphone market – mostly due to their expansive selection of mobile applications – Nokia refused to enter the same game (Symbian has one-fiftieth the amount of apps as Apple’s iOS), relying on a strong hardware reputation to drive sales.
At the turn of the decade, many of the world’s leading phone makers have made the jump to the universal Google platform (Sony Ericsson, Taiwan’s HTC, Motorola, LG and Samsung each offering a variety of handsets) due to low adoption costs and the platforms venerable popularity. While many analysts have criticized Nokia’s abstinence from the open-source platform, Nokia has been steadfast in defense of their decision to invest in themselves rather than a second-party platform such as Android. Despite the large costs Nokia could save from R&D from adopting Android, they have made a good choice in differentiating themselves from the competition. The issue with all these phone makers joining Google is that consumers will have issues distinguishing between brands and this will result in universal low profitability across the industry. Nokia’s self-investment gives them comparative advantage to the competition by differentiating themselves from the droning Androids. With Nokia’s reintroduction as a major player in the smartphone market, competitors and consumers alike can be sure that the smartphone software war will go on along several fronts well into the new decade.
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