By Usually when we recap events we start them off with, “as expected” but no such comment will be made this time as Nokia announced the N97 at their Nokia World event in Barcelona, Spain today. The phone will be $550 Euros before carrier subsidization and its being described as the Noka 5800 on Steroids.
But what we’re most interested in here are some jabs that Anssi Vanjaki, Executive Vice President (Markets) for Nokia, took directly at Google. Three quarters of the way into his monologue which he delivered in dramatic fashion, he made some direct barbs at Google which I have tried to republish word for word but for which I can only be credited as paraphrasing:
“There is a company that wants to index the world. We are going to go deeper and coordinate the world. Not just standard like a standard GOOOOGLE Map. A map that is dynamic with vector graphics…. etc…”
Notice all the O’s in Google? Yeah… he said it like that and with a spooky, ominous tone that came off as a “yucky” kind of “nanny-nanny-boo-boo”. First of all perhaps Mr. Vanjaki should be a bit more familiar with Google’s goals. Here is Google’s actual mission statement:
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
I think “indexing the world” and “organizing the world’s information to make it universaly accessible and useful” are quite different. I think Nokia is perhaps just a little ticked off that a little website that just conducted internet searches at a weird sounding URL is now threatening their market share.
Taking Google head-on by name was an interesting approach but not one that I think serves Nokia best. When you go out of your way to insult another company at your own companies self-proclaimed revolutionary announcement, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Nokia is obviously nervous that Google’s Android seems poised to take off while the Symbian Foundation still has a lot of groundwork to lay. Those words made Nokia seem vulnerable and threatened.
I don’t want to take TOO much away from Nokia. To their credit the device looks pretty darn sweet, its packed with multimedia capabilities and seems quite functiona although you need to really play with one for awhile to determine that. But I felt that this whole Nokia-Google comment needed to be addressed because it stuck out like a sore thumb in the presentation… or am I the only one who was slightly shocked by the comparison?
Its kind of stupid they would come out with such a big announement like when the G1 first came out in New York when the do not even have the phone ready and may not be out until mid 2009. I guess they wanted to try and beat all the rumors or second guessing. I think the long running rumors and second guessing helps get people excited. I remember people going nuts waiting for the G1, including me and many of my Deaf friends because of it. As of now everyone is going to forget about this phone until it actually comes out. Who knows, someone else may beat them in the mean time with a better phone before they come out with it. Seems they were not very smart in how they handled this.
@Robert I agree. All they sell you is a prototype.
I am really into gadgets and it drives me crazy to see other stuff better than the one than I have.
Thank God I still have my iPhone. I love the the OS on my G1 but the screen color is not comparable to iPhone or the new Storm.
As for the nokia !!! yes I will be getting one when it comes out.
WTF!!! what kind of retard engineer builds a *LINUX* phone with a hardware keyboard WITH NO PIPE (|) KEY!!!!! What the hell is wrong with these people.
exceelent phone.
I think its a bit design ugly and he OS looks too busy and messy.
but then maybe I’m fussy. I’m gonna hold out and upgrade to a phone that does a good job of merging the looks and screen quality of the touch HD, the responsiveness and OS styling of the iphone and the OS features of the android… maybe one day it will happen.. or maybe not.
If you will find the phone of your dreams, it will probably brake every two seconds, so you’ll have to fix it , and the company will charge yo for the fix.
Check out how many problems the G1 has
http://www.fixya.com/support/p983981-htc_g1
These guys are far from being stupid, look how much money they have all of us spend of phones…. :-)
Amazing phone. I am sure everyone remembers how NOKIA has always remains to be a professional towards their competitors. Indeed always welcoming them to the market. This article does NOT reflect the true image of NOKIA.
It has been written to insult Anssi Vanjaki!!!
Fantastic phone, way to go NOKIA.
Dieser Beitrag ist peinlich! Zumal das “zitierte” Kommentar nichtmal dem original Entspricht. Er denken, dann schreiben!
This is a typical Nokia device (I’ve been there and I’m not going back)
Judging from the hardware, it SHOULD be an amazing phone.
But the following two things basically say it all:
1. It runs Symbian (!!)
2. It has a resistive touch screen (!!!!!)
Why create a high end device and then muck it up with a resistive touch screen and a sub-par OS? Only Nokia would think of doing that. This is not the answer to the Iphone. It is a progression of their old N95 ways.