Happy (non) Launch Day with AT&T!

[diegosalinas]

All four of the corporate ATT stores around me are really busy with the Lumia 900 launch today.

They're closed.

So far, we've had a 3 song performance by Nicki Minaj in Times Square. Which to the general public just seemed to be sponsored by Nokia and nothing to do with a launch of a new phone.

Cute but vague commercials about beta phones.

Now, on launch day, the stores of the company who is promising more than a rubNtug to Nokiasoft are closed.

Isn't the point of a launch day to come out of the gates running? Is Nokia/Microsoft placing all bets for initial numbers on pre-orders? Only people who pre-ordered that I know of are forum members. LOL Everyone I know has been "What's Lumia?" or thought I had a case on an iPhone/Android this weekend.

I did peek into one of the stores today and do see Lumia signage everywhere. But c'mon now. That to me is not advertising larger than any ever seen before by ATT.

I hate being Debbie Downer but I truly want the Lumia to succeed in the US. Hopefully, I'll eat crow over the next few days.

PS. apparently, it's not just my city. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/nokia-lumia-900-easter-sunday/

 

[7inchesNBPEL]

lol yea i dont get the advertising stuff

no one knows what the lumia is except windows phone people.

 

[tissotti]

To be real, there's no chance for any Windows Phone to be truly popular before Apollo, or whatever version will make WP equal to Android and iPhone in hw and software support.

I think most who buy Windows Phone now will be happy for their purchase, but will always left wanting a bit more.


The people who would be today buying Lumia 900, are going to buy it anyway. It is about introducing Lumia's, Nokia and Windows Phone to people on the marketing for the next weeks or months.

 

[Dave Blake]

If Nokia stopped right there and did nothing else they still have done more than anyone else. They won't stop there and when they are done I hope we are all sick of hearing about it.

 

[anon(5339110)]

Maybe the launch is being done in the spirit of an Easter egg hunt...

Maybe not...

 

[kevinrstruck]

I have to agree. This seems to be a huge gaffe by someone in PR/Marketing. Did they not realize that April 8th was Easter and by the time someone actually realized, it was too late to change marketing material?

To say this was going to be AT&T's biggest launch ever is a joke. Every COR store in the Denver area I know of is closed today. The blog someone posted above mentions that every COR store in the greater NYC area is also closed.

I also want this phone to succeed. It is easily the best phone I have ever had. Solid, fast, great OS and wonderful battery life.

It almost like they planned this big push but then decided to scale it down or something. I don't watch much live TV thanks to my DVR, but I have actually seen the "Beta Phone" commercial a grand total of ONCE and that was today.

I think someone really dropped the ball here.

It is nice to see it is #5 on the Amazon top phone list, this is actually quite impressive for a phone no one I seem to talk to has ever heard of. While out yesterday I did have a couple people ask me what phone I had, and when I tell them, they all said, "Oh, I never heard of it" or "Nokia? They still make phones?"

As soon as I showed them the phone and the OS, their tone immediately changed, all for the better. One girl, a die hard iPhone user, was fascinated by it and said it was the coolest phone she has seen in a while, and that she had never seen a Windows phone but really liked it. Will she go out and buy one tomorrow? Probably not, but you never know.

AT&T needs to do a better job of educating their phone store employees and they also need to step up the whole PR and Marketing campaign. Driving people to a completely new OS from the iPhone or Android will take time, education and money.

This phone and the OS can compete if enough people know about it and were shown just how good it actually is.

 

[poloboy03]

All four of the corporate ATT stores around me are really busy with the Lumia 900 launch today.

They're closed.

So far, we've had a 3 song performance by Nicki Minaj in Times Square. Which to the general public just seemed to be sponsored by Nokia and nothing to do with a launch of a new phone.

Cute but vague commercials about beta phones.

Now, on launch day, the stores of the company who is promising more than a rubNtug to Nokiasoft are closed.

Isn't the point of a launch day to come out of the gates running? Is Nokia/Microsoft placing all bets for initial numbers on pre-orders? Only people who pre-ordered that I know of are forum members. LOL Everyone I know has been "What's Lumia?" or thought I had a case on an iPhone/Android this weekend.

I did peek into one of the stores today and do see Lumia signage everywhere. But c'mon now. That to me is not advertising larger than any ever seen before by ATT.

I hate being Debbie Downer but I truly want the Lumia to succeed in the US. Hopefully, I'll eat crow over the next few days.

PS. apparently, it's not just my city. On Release Date, Crucial Nokia Phone Is Hard to Buy in New York - NYTimes.com

I'm in Atlanta and all the AT&T stores are closed here but my amazon order is now shipping!!!

 

[tekhna]

To be real, there's no chance for any Windows Phone to be truly popular before Apollo, or whatever version will make WP equal to Android and iPhone in hw and software support.

To be real, WP7 doesn't have a chance and it's not about hardware or software. It's about consumer perception and market opportunity. If it had been an Android/Apple/WP7 battle all along the story might have been different, but Microsoft was a year late out of the gate, and path dependency is setting in in the smartphone market.

 

[Oldmajor]

To be real, there's no chance for any Windows Phone to be truly popular before Apollo, or whatever version will make WP equal to Android and iPhone in hw and software support.

I think most who buy Windows Phone now will be happy for their purchase, but will always left wanting a bit more.


The people who would be today buying Lumia 900, are going to buy it anyway. It is about introducing Lumia's, Nokia and Windows Phone to people on the marketing for the next weeks or months.

I have to disagree with this on a few levels. Honestly most people don't know anything about a Mango, Ice Cream Sandwich, iOS, or an Apollo. All the average consumer who is looking to upgrade to a smartphone is that they want a smart phone! The old iPhone vs Galaxy S (iirc) is a perfect example of the consumer, "I want the one with the BeeBee's and WiFi's.

The reason for Droid success is due to the Zerg rush strategy (putting the OS on any and everything they could including phones lol) by giving it away for free. Followed by the fact that every mfr promotes the heck out of droid with random technobabble (dual core, 4G, blazing speeds, etc etc etc) that all means nothing when your device randomly reboots regularly and may never get updated!

If Nokia can follow up with the same advertiing they did for the 710 (that was on all the time during the NCAA tourney) the 900 will do very well as long as sales rep push the phone. I am convinced that unlike the iPhone the only reason droids sell as much as they do is because the sells people push droids like it crack

 

[anon(5339110)]

To be real, WP7 doesn't have a chance and it's not about hardware or software. It's about consumer perception and market opportunity. If it had been an Android/Apple/WP7 battle all along the story might have been different, but Microsoft was a year late out of the gate, and path dependency is setting in in the smartphone market.

I'm not buying the "too late" argument, at all. People have such short memories. Remember Motorola? They invented mobile phones and then cell phones. They were the entire market for some time. Now?

Then Nokia was super dominant. Now?

Palm defined the PDA market after so many others failed. Now?

What about Blackberry/Crackberry? Remember, nobody could touch them. Now?

My point is, at differing points in time, each of their positions looked unassailable. I guarantee Apple's time on the pedestal will not be forever; probably much sooner than anyone of us can imagine--right now.

 

[tekhna]

I'm not buying the "too late" argument, at all. People have such short memories. Remember Motorola? They invented mobile phones and then cell phones. They were the entire market for some time. Now?

Then Nokia was super dominant. Now?

Palm defined the PDA market after so many others failed. Now?

What about Blackberry/Crackberry? Remember, nobody could touch them. Now?

My point is, at differing points in time, each of their positions looked unassailable. I guarantee Apple's time on the pedestal will not be forever; probably much sooner than anyone of us can imagine--right now.

I agree that Apple and Android will not remain on the pedestal forever, but what will end their dominance will be a wholesale change in how tech works in our lives, not incremental changes in the smartphone market. The changes you are describing are the changes that always happen in a young, dynamic market, so everything you described is totally unsurprising, even if at the time it might have seemed surprising.
The VCR was dominant forever, until something better, the DVD, replaced it. WP7 is not a DVD to Apple or Android's VCR in this instance. But what will replace Android and Apple will be.

The "too late" argument certainly has flaws. WebOS beat WP7 to the punch and they still got demolished. But that was to a large extent crappy hardware, unfinished software and creepy, non-sensical marketing.


Edit: I'd also point out that media consumption locks people into platforms. My brother bought an iphone because he had already bought music and movies from itunes, and they wouldn't migrate with him to another platform. This is why Google is so desperate to get people hooked onto their "Play" store--once a smartphone buyer is locked into a platform, it's going to get increasingly harder to get them out of it. I'm rooting for WP7, but I'm buying one only because I've remained platform agnostic, and mostly just to try.

 

[peestandingup]

I'm not buying the "too late" argument, at all. People have such short memories. Remember Motorola? They invented mobile phones and then cell phones. They were the entire market for some time. Now?

Then Nokia was super dominant. Now?

Palm defined the PDA market after so many others failed. Now?

What about Blackberry/Crackberry? Remember, nobody could touch them. Now?

My point is, at differing points in time, each of their positions looked unassailable. I guarantee Apple's time on the pedestal will not be forever; probably much sooner than anyone of us can imagine--right now.

You do realize that you could very well be saying the same thing about Microsoft sometime in the near future, right? "Hey, remember when Microsoft practically owned the OS market, rested on their laurels for years while Apple & Google ate their lunch in the great post-pc era?"

Not that I actually think that'll happen, mostly because MS has more money than God, but still. They have a ton of catching up to do. And if they can't get developers to care about the platform, and if people simply aren't buying their product, then all the money in the world won't change that. They have to give people solid reasons to buy a WP over an iPhone or Android device besides a new UI. So far they're not doing that.

 

[cj-m]

Regardless. You don't give a big song and dance about how fantastic a certain product is or how much it is necessary to succeed (for two companies to stay in the game) and then forget about Easter Sunday.

I think that AT&T has to shoulder the blame largely in part for this but, i am fairly sure that someone at Nokia or MS could have raised the question about Easter Sunday. If this is how it is going to go, then WP7.5 and Nokia won't be able to compete with the big boys and girls and will always be a 4 - 5% market share if that.

This was just an act of plain incompetence. Unless AT&T have sold millions in pre-orders, having a major launch date of a flagship platform with a struggling OS on a day when all the stores were close is a sign of plain stupidity.

it is not about this OS or that OS or which hardware is better or who has the biggest eco system, it is about a bunch of clowns not planning properly and dropping the ball in a big way.

 

[peestandingup]

They could have had early indications of the phone not really getting any market penetration & decided to leave the launch date as is. We also have to remember that most phones don't really do "launches", they have release dates & just sorta show up in the store around that date. That's prob how they treated the 900 since not many people outside the tech community even knows this phone exists.

And I don't know what the AT&T guy was smoking when we was quoted saying this launch was gonna be bigger than the iPhone. Either he was an idiot or what he said got taken outta context. Because that "launch" was on a day when all the stores were closed. And could you imagine if they did that with the iPhone?