Nokia's Lumia taking advantage of the Kindle Fire strategy to fan the flames of adoption in the US
Many have counted Nokia out of the smartphone fight, citing the multiple OS personality disorder as a symptom of strategic thrashing that comes with the slow death of a company. When the Microsoft partnership was announced analogies were made of two drowning victims trying to save each other. Well, it turns out these two ‘victims” have crafted themselves quite the lifeboat with the Lumia 710. Compared to it’s smartphone competition touting dual and quad core chipsets, and other “speedboat” level specs, the Lumia would make most techies turn their nose up at this pluckly little handset. As it turns out, the bulk of the US market is not techies and based on what we’ve been seeing from the user response to the Lumia, Nokia and Microsoft are not only no longer in fear of drowning but are making great progress to shore!

As you can see from the Buzz and Delight Landscape the early Lumia customers are delighted with their new Nokia/Microsoft hybrid handset. Similar to the Kindle Fire approach at targeting the pent up demand for lower priced tablets, the Lumia targets T-Mobile customers that have been on the smartphone fence, looking at the battle between Android and iPhone and waiting for the prices to fall enough so they can play too. And they are delighted with how far their dollars are going. When we examine what are the topics most discussed by Lumia users, it differs substantially from other smartphones.

A couple items to point out. First, is the wall of green, indicating overwhelmingly positive views by these early customers. Even the iPhone 4S has a broader spread of sentiment than the Nokia Lumia, meaning that a higher percentage of iPhone 4S users are more negative about more topics that Lumia customers. Lumia customers are even being delighted differently than most customers when we take a look at the most discussed usage scenarios.

Most smartphone customers discuss using their smartphones as, well, a phone. Lumia customers are initially fascinated with the novelty of web surfing, music and games over voice services. We believe this is because these are consumers new to smartphones and are delighted by the extra features beyond what their tired feature phone provided. Now they can afford to play with the big kids with their touchscreens and data plans.
Bravo Nokia, Bravo Microsoft. We believe this strategy will continue to bear fruit for you both.