Nokia exclusives

[Skeet1981]

I see Nokia has a fair catalogue of exclusive apps. As a struggling company wouldn't they be better off putting those apps on the marketplace for other WP8 devices at a higher cost? They could also then be used on tablets and the like. Especially as the 920 against the 8x are very different styles for essentially the same phone.

I just think also with the Nokia's being like gold dust at the moment at least they can pull a few extra pennies from the shortfall.

 

[Keith Wallace]

No, they really wouldn't. Who is their WP competition? Right now, it's only the 8X. The 8S is debatable, but limited in its availability (is it even on the market in Europe yet?), and Samsung's taking forever with its stuff.

Rather than make small royalties on their stuff on other platforms, it would be better for them to keep what they have and use it to leverage sales. I know, for example, my sister bought the Lumia 822 over the 8X because of the exclusive apps. How many 8X devices would have to sell to equal the money from a single 822 sale? What about a single Lumia 920 sale? They're just better off being able to claim something exclusive.

How, for the customers and the platform? That might be different. Most of what Nokia offers on the Lumia exclusively on WP8, you can get on Android or iOS, if not both, I'd imagine. If someone sees that the 8X lacks something Android/iOS has and Nokia has first, they might assume it's missing from WP8 as a whole.

Look at Android, though. Keeping Swype (built-in) and S-Beam and whatever else exclusive to its devices seems to have helped Samsung, and you don't see Android OEMs keeping the same skin (or stock Android) on their devices. There needs to be differentiation, and since WP doesn't allow skinning, app exclusives does that. One other thing is that by offering exclusive apps and getting special deals with developers like EA (at least on WP), it shows customers than Nokia is working really hard to give people great devices and a great experience, so you have happier customers spreading the word and giving them positive PR and drawing in others.

 

[tissotti]

I see Nokia has a fair catalogue of exclusive apps. As a struggling company wouldn't they be better off putting those apps on the marketplace for other WP8 devices at a higher cost? They could also then be used on tablets and the like. Especially as the 920 against the 8x are very different styles for essentially the same phone.

I just think also with the Nokia's being like gold dust at the moment at least they can pull a few extra pennies from the shortfall.

Nokia is struggling but they have 4 billion euros (debt free) in the bank and stuff like Nokia Maps/Navteq was bought for 7.9 billion euros and got hundreds of people working for them. They are not just going to throw all that out there.

You need to remember where Nokia is coming from. They were some years ago largest company in value from Europe and worlds most profitable tech company. From where they are coming from is totally different to HTC, as is what they are trying to do here. They also still have 120 000 people working for them (30 000 more than Microsoft). Sharing apps for couple of pennies isn't unfortunately what they are looking for.

When Elop said that they had declined the signature device branding from Lumia 920 kind of tells it all. Nokia is trying to grow Lumia brand, same as they did with S60 on Symbian back in the day. It's of course up to anybody what they think about it, but that's what Nokia is trying to do. Imo at least for Lumia owners it's great because you have a company like this that needs to simply make it work.

 

[mmacleodbrown]

Speaking as someone who has a 920, the exclusivity and update history was why I went with Nokia rather than the 8X so Im guessing that their strategy works?

 

[inteller]

they need to get the apps updated at the same time as the pay versions though. Draw with Friends is an example.