Samsung seem to be attempting to get into the Guinness Book Of Records for “the largest number of screen sizes in their portfolio” record with a different phone for each and every increment from 3″ up to 11″. Nokia increasingly seem to be heading off down that worrying path. Take a look at this infographic I found about Samsung, it shows a selection of current ish models.
Obviously Nokia are nowhere near as bad as Samsung, their current range has the following devices:
– Lumia 520 4″ budget
– Lumia 620 3.8″ budget
– Lumia 625 (rumoured) 4.7″ budget? Mid range?
– Lumia 720 4.3″ mid range ish
– Lumia 820 4.3″ mid range
– Lumia 920 4.5″ high end
– Lumia 925 4.5″ high end
– Lumia 1020 4.5″ high end
The range is becoming a confusing blur of bright colours, low specs and screen sizes at the low end and a nearly identical selection at the top end. If Nokia continue to make incremental updates of each device like they seem to be doing with the Lumia 925 and 625, then we could easily see another 3 handsets in the range by the end of the year. I’m all for choice but the tiny minor differences between models is already confusing for the consumer, imagine what it will be like soon.
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m firmly on team Windows Phone here, but it wasn’t that long ago that a certain enormous market leading smartphone manufacturer made far too many phones and came crashing down in the attempt to support and update them all (I’m talking about HTC here). I just don’t want Nokia to fall into the same trap. Without Nokia, Microsoft and Windows Phone would be in a totally different place, a place I really don’t want to see.
So to finish it all off, I guess I should have titled this article the following instead.
“Are Nokia in danger of “doing an HTC”?”
Lastly I guess I should hand it over to you guys, does the sheer number of Nokia Lumia devices confuse you? Are they heading down a dodgy path in HTC’s footprints? Are you just a bit indifferent to Windows Phone? Let us know below.
I think that Nokia are trying to fill a void created by the lack of range available from other manufacturers. Once MS update WP8 to allow 1080p Nokia should be able to differentiate their top end phones easier from the rest of the range.
Nokia will never get as bad as Samsung and its nice to see both low end and high end models get incremental updates. Tech is growing rapidly these days so Nokia have to try to keep up. Samsung however are on a world domination thing right now but they need to slow down. Low end is swamped with devices i deem lower than the average low end spec device from others. Samsung took on apple and won well winning right now so they are trying to keep that momentum going. However with recent devices causing discontent among the dev world they need to be careful
I think Nokia are being “Nokia”. At one point when they were on the top of their game with their Symbian OS, they had a wide range of phones out there, so what they’re doing now is no different to what they’ve always done. I just hope they do better than Samsung (and HTC) by keeping the majority (if not all) of their handsets regularly updated and current when OS updates are released.
Personally I think either sammy have found a way to reuse tech easily and cheaply or they are seeing what sells best tn they will cut it down….