The Nokia N97 and education?
Nokia N97 in use
Nokia yesterday unveiled the N97 their latest smartphone which is being dubbed (not by Nokia) as their iPhone Killer.
[UPDATE: Post now available in the much simpler Simon Cowell style of delivery]
The talk of an iPhone killer is premature and Nokia know this - they have a long way to go yet to catch up with Apple - and a lot of it is not about creating the right device. Nokia have no App Store, lack a single platform and have a brand that is more about utility and reliability than it about innovation, cool and media as Apple’s is. The price for an unbundled device will be €550 which means it is aimed at high end users and not even being put to compete with the iPhone.
I have yet to get my hands on a N97 - so my thoughts are based solely on the images I have seen on the Nokia website, engadget and from the always enthusiastic Robert Scoble.
The device could be thought of as a N810
phone, but it’s O/S is S60 not Maemo and this makes a difference in
terms of how this device will be useful. In terms of the physical
device it seems to be slightly smaller than a N810 and similar in width
and height to an iPhone - but almost half as deep again.
As you would expect from Nokia the camera is 5 Megapixels and can do
DVD quality video, which is a great improvement over the iPhone.
There are three very striking things about the device:
- Slide out QWERTY Keyboard
- Touch screen
- Simple button design - as I understand it when the keyboard is not shown - there is really only one button and the touch screen (sound familiar?)
Reports say that the touch screen interface is good - but not as reactive as the iPhone screen. The reason for this is the technology used for the touch screen. Nokia use a ‘resistive’ touch screen to support pen based input (important for inputting Chinese and Japanese characters) which is something the iPhone apparently doesn’t do well. More importantly the S60 user interface has been greatly improved - but I am not sure yet if it still matches the simplicity of the iPhone. A user interface is ‘only’ software and can be improved upon. There is a problem with the ‘only’ software issue though - are software updates as easy for the N97 as they are for iPhone users?
The obvious differentiator between the devices though is the keyboard - and as I have often argued this is key for educational purposes. Nokia seem to have chosen to keep things simple with the keyboard - it looks easier to use than the N810 which is even better. The N97 continues to show that Nokia devices are great at capturing input (pictures, videos and typing). Improvements to S60 may make using Nokia phones simpler and easier, but the iPhone platform is simple and better for consuming media - from music and video through to applications.
At the moment I still think the iPhone / iPod Touch are the better platform for education even though this device is starting to show Nokia is moving in the right direction. Educational applications will probably always make up about 10% of all applications available for a platform. Until Nokia boasts as many applications as the App Store there will never be as much educational content for a Nokia phone. The number of applications in the App Store (10,000 last week) is an indication of how successful Apple have been in lowering the costs of development for 3rd parties, by providing a single (non-fragmented) platform, handling distribution and billing and guaranteeing the 70% revenue share. Nokia need to address these problems if they want to have a large set of applications and as a result of that educational content.
I think that Nokia need to do the following if they want to generate as successful application platform as Apple:
- Provide a single platform for application developers to work with phone and non-phone devices (Maemo would fit the bill well and there are indications Nokia think this also).
- Provide a simple integrated application delivery mechanism - just like they have done on the N810 with Maemo - the Over the Air updates are really simple
- Provide a simple developer payment mechanism like Apple’s 70%
- Find a brand that means something to consumers that shows Nokia is a media company (N97 ! come on what does that mean to a consumer?)
- Make sure this device always ‘Comes with Internet’ and consumers understand this is an internet and application phone
The N97 shows that Nokia have moved in the right direction and have been able to change themselves and rise to the threat from Apple (which is more than can be said of RIM and Microsoft). This also shows what a competitive market does for innovation in mobile technology which can only be good.
For mobile phones in education - it is still clear that if you want to use the phones in people’s pockets you need to have a cross platform solution (such as uHavePassed) and for anything complex you can only aim at a small percentage of phones. The iPhone platform will have 40 million users by the end of the year and is very attractive as a single device. The N97 will not impact on the position of the iPhone - but it shows that a future device from Nokia way well do just that.
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Reader's Comments
Hi Al
Some interesting points, especially about the availability of applications with the N97 compared to iPhone. It’s hard to argue with sales and for its niche the iPhone is clearly a dominate force but it is that - a niche. Nokia’s biggest sellers are the cheaper mass market consumer phones, like the 6300, which are robust, reliable and affordable (about £100). Those sales still out strip the iPhone - which is a very expensive piece kit for what it offers
Like you I am from the ‘device agnostic’ viewpoint and the problem with the focus on the high-end pieces of kit is that there can be a tendency to forget about what is already there in the pocket and its potential.
It is a niche now and will remain so - but the iPhone and N97 will have an effect on the consumer handsets of the future.
Device manufacturers want the app revenue that they generate at the high end to be replicated down at the low end and operators want the internet access revenue also and any share of application revenue.
I can’t see a 5MP camera, GPS and keyboard becoming standard on every phone - but the app store and a reduced set of platforms is more likely.
The real battle here is to become the PC of phones and offer the greatest amount of software etc.
All mobile phone manufacturers are in real danger of losing the application market to Apple.
When people do something convenient using an app on their iPhone and then tell their friends - do you think their friends get the message I could do that on any phone - or do you think they just get a message about applications and the iPhone?
How ‘device agnostic’ do you think the future will be?
Hi Al
I think part of this depends on how ‘wall gardened’ mobiles tend to remain. At the moment its without doubt a closed market on most platforms. The iPhone is probably the best example of this, especially with Apple’s close policing of the app store.
But.. along comes Android. Now its early days and the desktop web is still only really starting to see the impact of open source, so I think it will be way too early to tell if this will radically alter things. However, clearly Google and others think that it can and those are significant voices.
The iPhone has done a very important thing for people like you and me - its made the wider public aware that the piece of kit you text friends with and phone home on in your pocket is capable of so much more.
Its interesting you draw the analogy with the PC. For a long time Windows has and still does dominate the PC market but recently we’ve seen growth in the likes of Linux and the Apple Mac has gained.
The challenge for the device agnostic approach is to make things easy to use but to do that we need hardware that is easier to access. In the new year the UK market will see the launch of the 5800, which I recently tried out. Its touch screen, Symbian OS and aimed very much at the younger market of students. Significantly it is going to be a lot cheaper than the iPhone and for the consumer market (which the iPhone is squarely aimed at) is going to have the added weight of carrying Nokia’s reputation.
I think the iPhone will as you say remain niche but most importantly it is already highly influential and as we can see manufacturers are taking note.
As new phones come along that also emphasise ease of use it won’t matter whether it be iPhone of N97 or HTC but whether or not the user can do what they want at the price they want.
The price for the manufacturers and network providers will be letting go of the walled garden. Android is part of that. If the mobile providers want these devices to play a bigger part in our lives then they need to open up a lot more.
I think the future is device agnostic - the current situation reminds me of the desktop web in late part of last century - everyone wanted to own it and control it but that’s changed (more or less
and I think we’ll see a ‘glasnost’ of the mobile world soon and that will be in part thanks ironically to the iPhone…
Stuart - I agree with a lot of what you are saying.
The PC shows us that software developers can only economically support one platform. One platform is going to dominate for mobile apps - and that will be the one that consumers choose and in turn that is likely to be the one with the most applications. Developers will be attracted to the platform with the most consumers.
Apple are in the lead at the moment.
Android could leap forward - but for every app developed for Android at least 10 are currently developed for the iPhone. If Android is going to catch up with the iPhone platform this is going to have to accelerate considerably.
From the reviews I have read of Android apps - the iPhone apps have higher quality too because of the Apple authorisation process.
(BTW do not view any of these comments as my approval of ‘Walled Gardens’ - this is just how I see things are perceived by consumers).
Also the launch of the G1 showed another problem about Android - it is not being used as a consumer brand. At the moment there are too many brands for consumers - are two Nokia phones guaranteed to run the same software? No - two Orange phones? no. Are two iPhones? yes. It would be nice if people could understand that two Android phones will run the same software - but the brand is nowhere to be seen on the G1! Yet the G1, T-Mobile, HTC and Google brands are - too many brands - there is only one on the iPhone!
The N97 and the comments about Maemo show that Nokia are also moving towards a single platform. The issue here is not the N97 - but the direction Nokia are moving. Maemo could get us away from worrying about which version and feature pack of Symbian to target - and move us onto just targeting a single upgradable platform such as Android, iPhone OS or Maemo. I hope that Nokia can do a better job than OHA in branding Maemo as a platform (hopefully with a better name). They have a working app store that updates over the air (no payments yet) - so close.
My interest here is in platforms - for us to deliver mobile educational content - they have to reduce in number - and not in the lowest common denominator way that Java enables. We need there to be only a couple of platforms - we need competition. Students and educators need some defacto standards as springboard for all that we know is possible on mobile devices.
In the meantime we have the uHavePassed platform!
[...] The Nokia N97 and education? [...]
Hi Al
As you say we are broadly in agreement but I want to throw one more thing into the mix. We’ve both been quite hardware focused in this discussion and in your last comment you talk about developers choosing the most economical platform - usually the PC or more accurately I would argue Windows OS. and that moves nicely on onto software and I want to raise the issues of Cloud computing.
Its early days for this as well but with the availability of tools like Google Docs and loads of others we see a bold experiment that breaks away from the desktop OS and offers rich interaction and persistent online identity and storage and we are seeing a lot of applications going this way - some entirely web based and some a combination of downloaded apps and online access. Its a different model to one we have largely discussed and for me offers a more hopeful future glimpse.
Lets add to that mix the youth of this industry. The web isn’t even 20 years old and look how far we have come. Mass consumer mobile digital devices I would argue are a similar age and again - lets see the distance traveled. In terms of industry we’ve only just scratched the surface. There is a lot more to discover and I think its too early to say - ‘this is the way or that is’
Yes it is about hardware - this was started about the N97!
I agree with Cloud computing bringing something new - but the App Store allowed people who previously could only access cloud apps (web based applications) the opportunity to use faster and more personalised local applications.
I think the Google search app for the iPhone is a good example - it has a local interface - but sends off to the cloud to do the heavy lifting - speech recognition and searching.
Mobile devices do not always have a predictable internet connection - which means that cloud computing has to work differently.
I think the mobile apps that succeed will have lightweight local interfaces and local caching but rely on the cloud (when available) for the heavy work.
That is why we have built the uHavePassed platform in the way we have - the local software on phone software is light weight and the server decides on the questions and images that are sent down and cached locally. This could be done in a browser - but the performance would not be nothing like as fast and the user experience nothing like as good - especially when network reception is patchy and unreliable.
Hi guys,
Can I just throw in a few thoughts? As you know, I’m also on the side of ‘content over platform’ in many ways (or device-agnostic, as Stuart calls it), but if we expect one mobile platform to come out on top in the next few years, we’re deluding ourselves. There are just too many factors in the whole ecosystem.
Apple are not in the lead because they attract developers with having the most consumers. They just have the best distribution channel at the moment. It’s easy to sell your content through the AppStore, and it’s reasonably easy to develop content that looks nice, because the iPhone SDK helps you along the way. I’ve seen plenty of awful iPhone apps, which are held together by the nice built-in UI libraries, which make Apple products a beauty to use. That’s what they’ve always been about.
Comparing Apple with any other technology product has always been slightly flawed, because they are so unique in their approach. They keep everything close to their chest (even manufacturing now, with the new Aluminium MacBooks), so they have maximum control over everything. They cater for a small(er) market, and they do it well. But mainstream they will never be, because there will never be another phone running the iPhone/Mac OS. Fact. So to provide mainstream learning on that platform means every learner has to have an iPhone/iPod.
Android, well, it’s been a bit of a damp squib so far. Awful marketing of the G1 meant bad sales from launch. Don’t forget it has also been really bad timing for launching an expensive product, with the bottom falling out of the economy! The people I’ve spoken to who like the device are geeks, basically. And Al, consumers don’t care whether it says ‘Android’ on the box. That doesn’t mean anything to them. It’s early days indeed, but for us to even think of it as a viable platform for mainstream education is more to do with the fact that we are mobile geeks. If it didn’t have Google behind it, we wouldn’t care a bean about that phone, would we?
Another pet peeve of mine is that ‘open source’ thing. Google. Products. Are. Not. Open Source. They’re free, but you don’t get the source, which would really mean flexibility and ‘democracy’ for developers. One day Google might start charging for all this stuff - because they can.
Symbian is now open source, and the next Flash mobile platform will be free for manufacturers to licence too (at last). Oh, and there’s LiMo too. So many fish in the pond, and some of them are *very* big, like Nokia.
The iPhone has given everybody a big kick, but they’re not sleeping. Nokia are pushing services like Ovi and ‘Comes With Music’, which will give iTunes a good run for their money. Not because it’s better, but because there are so many more Nokia phones out there.
Sorry about the rant, would love to hear your opinions.
And Stuart, re: owning the desktop web, Google do, don’t they…?
Wolf - completely agree - and I think the N97 shows that Nokia are moving in the right direction - and that there is hope.
I do think that you underestimate the ability of Apple in the mobile market place - the current iPhone is still too highly priced for consumers - but Apple always need to move down market. Just look at the iPod story it is not too far fetched that Apple can’t replicate this in consumer smartphones.
I mean the phones that people buy because they want to do something more with their phone - the iPhone brand is now ahead of the Blackberry brand in this area.
I have been surprised by how many of my friends know of or have a iPhone - and the stories of the things they use it for are far more exciting than any I have heard from any ‘normal’ Symbian or Windows phone.
I take your point about Apple’s iPod supremacy. Maybe ‘iPhone’ will one day be synonymous with ‘mobile phone’, just as ‘iPod’ now means ‘MP3 player’. That would be exciting!
I’m also surprised about the kind of people who own an iPhone. But it’s still sooo restricted because of cost and operator tie-in. Are all those friends of yours on O2, or did they shell out £400 for an unlocked one?
Continuing the anecdotal theme one thing that I find interesting about the iPhone is just how much of a passive device it is. Feel free to shoot me down in flames but the kind of people I’ve met using the iPhone are generally very passive in their media use.
Now this isn’t a negative criticism of the iPhone, as far as I can tell given the construction of the device that’s something it lends itself to quite well. E.g no bluetooth, no video camera etc..
No doubt there are apps out there that challenge that but I’ve yet to meet those outside of our Geeksville who is doing that.
And lets think about the iPod tag. I grew up calling our vacuum cleaner a ‘hoover’ - pretty common when I was younger but we never owned a ‘hoover’ but the brand had become synonymous with the product. However it wasn’t the only option and actually this is a problem for dominate brands - look at how Google try to stop people ‘googling’ because it devalues the brand and can ultimately threaten trade marks legitimacy etc..
The iPhone is expensive and restrictive - only one supplier per country but the proof of pudding is in the sales and clearly enough people want one. That should and has made others sit up and we are starting to see the reactions. First there is mimicry - everyone has a touch screen but already we are seeing improvements, such as the inclusion of the haptic feedback on Android and the 5800. Of course consumers don’t care about this directly but it adds to experience and is indicative that the hardware and software suppliers are increasingly aware they need to make the interface easier to use.
At the price of the iPhone I would be concerned to see a big focus on the device in education and for it effectively to be given tax funded advertising. We need competition, especially in the current climate.
However, without a doubt its part of the equation and I am excited about the influence it is exerting and as companies like Nokia respond with the experience to drive price down then I am hoping we are going to see some good things and some exciting innovations - on lots of platforms.
Stuart I think the term passive - matches what I was saying about the iPhone being a device for consuming media not creating.
You talk of the copy-cat devices - I think all the copy-cats have a problem. Relatively the touch screen and UI are easy to copy but how do they copy the App Store?
The App Store is the key here - and there is no reason why Apple won’t make use of it on other iPod’s and on (future) lower-end iPhones.
But do Nokia have an existing direct relationship with consumers that allows them to charge for components? Would people be prepared to start a relationship with Nokia like that? Would the operators let them?
OHA/Google have launched the Android market-place - but it is not as easy for developers as the iPhone App Store - they must negotiate with each operator. Consumers will also find the lack of quality control an issue. I think Android is a beautiful technical platform - but basically the same old business model.
Now if Nokia partnered on the App Store with Amazon and just gave a fixed cut to operators (as Apple do) - then they might be on to something.
This is probably where we disagree more Al. I am just not convinced the Apple App store is where its all at. I’ve been to various presentations and read quite a bit about it and a lot of it is controversial - especially the policing of it.
But more importantly than that I don’t see the consumers getting excited about it. Oh sure the geeks are but the people I’ve met with iPhones outside of that circle use them pretty much as is and don’t really have an interest outside of that.
That’s where its a disadvantage to be a passive device. If it was a production tool then users would want to push boundaries but it isn’t its a sit and watch or listen device and most people I’ve seen with it are happy at that.
Now I may well be wrong but I’ve yet to see evidence to contrary. Apps will be a niche market for a niche device. Given that it carries a high price already then it may well be that developers can make a nice living from it, since customers will have high income anyway and that’s all good.
One area I can see contradicting me will be games. Its got good potential as a gaming device and that may lead to extra interest in greater interaction but it hasn’t generally with gaming so far.
I think as Cloud computing gets cleverer and connectivity improves it will provide a challenge to the Apple App model. Browser based applications or specialised downloads al la Yahoo Go or BBC News etc already allow far cheaper phones a richer experience.
Stuart - I would love it if you vision was true or would come true - but your statement that cloud apps can deliver a richer experience on cheaper phones - just doesn’t balance.
Cheap phones - don’t have the processing power of higher end phones by definition - and Javascript based applications need more processing power than compiled native applications.
Cloud applications are only now working on the desktop because of the amount of processing power that desktop machines can muster.
Users of cheaper phones are also more price sensitive to any network costs - so need data and UI cached as much locally as possible. Network communication should also not be bloated HTML but only the data - this saves on bandwidth and processing of responses.
The curve for mobile devices will never reach communications that are comparable with the desktop. Communications will get faster - but there will always be blackspots and congestion with mobile data. A mobile web based experience will always have variable response times - because there are too many factors that cause the problems.
I would like it to be otherwise but I can’t see any evidence that mobile communications can become as reliable and predictable as desktop communications - unless there is a way to get around some of the laws of Physics. Buildings interfere, vehicles interfere - other mobile devices interfere.
If you want to deliver solutions for as many people as possible (including the guy on the Tube and the nomad in the Gobi) - then solutions can not assume a good connection is always available and must cache data and UI locally.
If you want to work with slower and lower powered devices - then you can’t expect them to keep working with interpreted languages such as HTML and Javascript - they need compiled code specific to the application they want.
Al I am a firm believer that most of these problems can solved and whislt I am not challenging the laws of Physics I am thinking of how far we have come in a little as five years.
I disagree quite strongly with your last paragraph in particular it depends entirely on the interaction. Something we haven’t touched on at all is why do you want to use a mobile device in the first place? My own interest is really in looking at why we go mobile and in that respect this is where the opportunities lie.
When we are mobile we work differently our expectations and requirements are different. Quite often we don’t need the depth of interaction or want it that a desktop experience offers us. So in that respect why code solutions that are not needed?
There is huge potential for cheaper low powered devices offering rich interactions. I would challenge your view by giving the example of the learning service I developed which recently won an international award and is designed to work on lower powered devices up.
The key thing for me is finding the right tool for the problem. Sometimes that will be a app, sometimes the cloud and sometimes it won’t be mobile at all.
stuart my entire last comment was in response to your poinr that you can make richer experiences on cheaper phones with web/cloud based technology than with local apps.
I am in agreement with you that you can make great user experiences with mobile web apps - i just disagree with richer.
OK I think we are coming up against the definition of ‘richer’, which is my fault for not being clearer in how I use the word, For me richer corresponds to appropriate to context of use. So for example if all I want is a telephone number in a rush then a 118 number with put through service is rich,a system which tells me all sorts of things in addition is just cumbersome - in that context.
So its the context for me. For example if I have broadband and write a few letters and some other documents then a cloud Document application will be all I need but if I am writing War and Peace 2 then I am going to need something more specialised.
For the me the strength of the cloud is rapid and wide deployment across platforms, including mobile. It has great potential for interactivity on the go. But for something more specialised something else is needed.
This debate btw has been really useful, I’ve been looking at how servies are catorgorised and its really helped sharpened my views.
Cheers
Stu
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