Nokia X7 canceled: death-march journey continues

So farewell then, Nokia X7 -- we hardly knew you. How sad that AT&T doesn't think it's worth much. But isn't Nokia behaving like a petulant child?

By Richi Jennings. January 20, 2011.

Richi's Rant: Surprise-surprise, the Nokia death-march continues. The Nokia X7 (aka X7-00 aka Journey) has been canceled in the U.S. market. Nokia's blaming AT&T, but this looks like another famous Finnish fail. Let's see what's up, in The Long View...
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Grim news for Nokia fans in this morning's Wall Street Journal. Christopher Lawton and Shayndi Raice sourced this unhappy tale from "people familiar with the situation":

The X7 would have been the first Nokia smartphone launched exclusively with a U.S. carrier since ... Stephen Elop took over as Nokia's CEO last September. The unexpected cancellation leaves Nokia further behind in its effort to correct a major strategic weakness—its poor showing in the lucrative U.S. market.
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Nokia decided to pull the phone because it believed the X7 wasn't going to receive enough marketing and subsidies support from AT&T. ... While Nokia continues to stumble in the U.S., other handset makers are aggressively moving ahead with new smartphones. ... Nokia's Symbian operating system, which powers the X7, is seen as cumbersome and outdated.

Translation: Nokia still doesn't understand how to succeed in the U.S. market.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Nokia is in deep trouble.

Here's a hint, in case anyone's listening in Espoo: you need to invest money. This market requires capital investment, which pays back over a few years.

You can't keep wanting to switch on your cash flow like an instant faucet; business doesn't work like that. See if you can find a copy of Capitalism for Dummies in your local lending library.

Sending PR people to blame your carrier partner in off-the-record briefings with journalists is a transparent ploy. "Not going to receive enough marketing and subsidies support from AT&T" is Nokia spin for "AT&T believes it needs to price the X7 to sell." And who would blame AT&T, with the intense competition in the smartphone market?

If you're experiencing déjà vu, it might be from when I last took Nokia to task for being the sultans of spin. Back in September, we saw the saga of the shipping phone that, err, wasn't shipping.

And what's this? Zokem, a mobile analytics company founded by some ex-Nokia executives, came out with a damning report on Nokia's U.S. smartphone user loyalty, Tuesday. Out of the eight smartphone platforms surveyed, Symbian had the poorest churn (defined as "the likelihood to shift to a competing platform during the next 12 months.")

At an astoundingly high 94%, it even exceeded webOS, which HP hasn't managed to prove isn't a dead platform). Yes, only 6% of users would buy another Symbian device. Unsurprisingly, surveyed Symbian users indicated that they mostly planned to move to iPhone (33%), Android (25%) or Windows Phone (25%).

Nokia needs to swallow its pride and understand that its past glories are just that: past.

Its brand in the U.S. is precisely nowhere, as far as smartphones are concerned. There's a vanishingly small number of consumers who'd be prepared to pay a premium for anything running Symbian. As for Maemo/Meego, I'll believe it when I see it.

Blaming AT&T for short-changing them shows a lack of understanding of their true place in the world.

 
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: TLV@richij.com.

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