Nokia CEO Blames Salesmen For Windows Phone Struggles 435
An anonymous reader writes "Steven Elop of Nokia has placed some of the blame for the struggles of Windows Phone on mobile phone shops — for not pushing it. As The Register points out, sales staff 'want their commission,' and tend to only show phones they think might sell. Exact details of Windows Phone sales numbers are being covered up by both Microsoft and Nokia, who refuse to state specifics; sales figures to operators are stated at one million, but the majority of those seem to be unsold to consumers, and neither Microsoft nor Nokia will give numbers on activations. The best available numbers seem to be maximum Lumia sales estimates from Tomi Ahonen, a former Nokia Executive and the only analyst to correctly predict Nokia's market share fall for the end of 2011. Nokia's Lumia sold around 600,000 phones in 2011 (again, including the large portion in warehouses). One of the worst signs for WP8 is that Nokia's N9 — despite being crippled without marketing, and often selling at full price compared to the almost fully subsidized Lumia phones — is selling better than Nokia's Windows phones, with 1.5M or more phones reaching end users. Interestingly, if the Nokia N9 had been available in all markets, it might have sold almost 5M units and pushed Nokia into profitability."
If only they would push our crap... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fine fanboy (Score:4, Funny)
Simple.
From the sounds of it, people who want the N9 are buying the N9. They walk into the shop and say, "Sell me a Nokia N9. dammit!" (or something similar).
Conversely, somebody walks into the shop and says, "Hi! I'm thinking of buying a smartphone and I hear good things about the Nokia Lumia 900." the salesperson says, "You don't want that! You want the Motorola RAZR! It's lighter, faster, has a bigger screen, and I get a SPIF for each one that I sell--oops! Did I say that out loud?"
Re:"...only show phones they think might sell." (Score:4, Funny)
Not just that; sales have been going up in Q4 of 2011 compared to Q3 of 2011.
Wow. I wonder if anything happens in Q4 that involves people buying stuff. If we could figure that out then it could be a major breakthrough in marketing.
Re:Hahaha!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
I bought an E71 and I can certainly say that it wasn't the smartest decision I ever made.
Re:"...only show phones they think might sell." (Score:3, Funny)
You literally have shit for brains.
Re:"...only show phones they think might sell." (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why is this so hard to get for execs? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember when OS X and thus Apple started to gain in users? Why was that?
It was because OS X was catering to the right people: The opinion leaders. To us.
The very same thing goes for mobile phones. It doesn't suprise me the least that N9 sales are better. It runs Symbian
I can't say what amuses me more: that you consider yourself an opinion leader, or that you don't know what are you talking about.
Re:The N9 is absolutely fantastic (Score:1, Funny)
Re:The N9 is absolutely fantastic (Score:5, Funny)
I have no problem with Nokia making Windows phones. It's nice OS, even if it's lacking apps (in particular, no Skype ...
Good point. Someone should set up a meeting between MS and the company that owns Skype and see if they can't work something out.
Re:"...only show phones they think might sell." (Score:5, Funny)
Err, yes, it's stuff like this that has led us to mock windows for decades now.
"Sure, the keyboard vanishes, but . . . "
"Windows is stable, it's all those third party things you need to make it usable that make it crash."
"Yeah, the windows automobile explodes killing all its occupants every 200 miles, but that's a 47% improvement over the prior version."
It's not that we hate windows. It's like the French military: we mock it because it writes all of our material for us.
hawk