Today has been a day of retailers passing on information about the upcoming Nokia Lumia phones.
The latest bit of info we’ve had was from Expansys who have let us know about the SIM free version of the Nokia Lumia 820 in black will be available from 12 th November and that there isn’t an eta on any of the colours. You can pre-order the 820 here.
They also mentioned the 920 being an exclusive to EE and not to expect SIM free stock until January. Which makes wonder quite what is going on.
No colours available at release. Either they are banking on accessory sales or something else is going on.
And the Expansys pre-order says ‘price not announced’. Sad to say, this reminds me of old school Nokia when they used to announce phones many months before actually selling them. Sadly, the world’s moved on, and with Apple, Samsung, Google etc. getting their acts together with short announcement/price/release windows, Nokia seem to struggle to compete.
I visited the phone shops (o2, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, CPW, Phones4U) yesterday in my part of West London. Not one shop had a Nokia or HTC or Samsung WP8 phone on show or to hold or play with. To me, something is wrong given the amount of hype, the real launch of WP8 and still no WP8 phones to be seen.
With Nokia it does seem as though the pre-marketing and feature-rich videos and conferences was the big push and getting product to market – in the shops and to various alternative channels (SIM-free) is a secondary consideration. Given Nokia’s dependence on WP8 and it’s financial requirements I find their business strategy very odd indeed, so much so that the Lumia 920 is taking on a mystical, mythical aura!