Well this may be it, folks. The X7, which was supposed to be one of the phones to bring Nokia back from the edge of the grave in countries like the US, will not be coming out here after all, thanks to the fact that carriers didn’t seem at all interested.
Nokia had set up an exclusivity deal with AT&T to bring the phone to the US market, but now the manufacturer says AT&T was putting the phone at the bottom of the list in terms of marketing and platform support. So it decided to pull the plug.
The X7 is a sophisticated smartphone with Nokia’s latest mobile software and it was slated to be a device that could bring Nokia back as a household name in the US.
Ever since the uprise in popularity for Android and the iPhone, Nokia has taken a back seat. In addition to being a phone manufacturer it also programs its own internal software, so there’s no such thing as a Nokia phone powered by Android. That’s turning out to be a mistake.
Nokia is still the most prolific manufacturer of cell phones in the world, but that’s largely because it holds a commanding presence in underdeveloped parts of the world, where it can ship out tens of millions of phones on a regular basis. But these areas of the world don’t use powerful smartphones like the US, and Nokia’s profit margin isn’t anything to write home about.
The only device worth mentioning now is Nokia’s N8, which has technical specs that rival any other smartphone on the market. But it couldn’t even get any carrier support in the US for that. As such, no one is offering any contract subsidies, leaving Nokia forced to sell it at a barrier-inducing $450+, a price most Americans would never dream of spending for a phone.
Nokia’s coffin is being nailed up pretty hastily. [[Nokia]]
