Nokia has problems. Not financial problems, but smartphone problems. All Nokia’s attempts at smartphones have not been that inspiring when compared to the competition (cough) iPhone and er, er, Nokia N97. But to fully understand what is wrong, we have to understand what has been right, or to put it in another way, what has distracted Nokia., Meet the most popular phone in the world, the Nokia 1100 aka ka-torch. It has been said that more of the world’s population has access to a mobile phone than to a toilet. But of the planet’s estimated five billion mobile phone users, a privileged minority have smart phones and an insignificant few, iPhones.
If you spend hours thumbing through pages of applications, playing with that camera and swiping away on that screen, it is easy to forget that the very concept of a mobile phone is a miracle. It is a device that shrinks your day-to-day world into a single point, making you simultaneously accessible to and by nearly everyone you know, instantly and everywhere.
One summer in 2005, a man in Nigeria wanted in. He found a shop, put his money down on the counter, and left with a mobile phone, a Nokia 1100. Statistically, this was likely his first phone. He had probably used a similar one through family or friends. Personal milestone or not, the tiny miracle of that day represented a milestone for Nokia. It was their billionth phone sold.
For me, the 1100 is not pleasant to use. The keypad is small and thin enough that one-handed use is strenuous in times of typing long messages. There is no speakerphone, Bluetooth, WiFi, downloadable anything, or even a headphone input. But that does not really matter. This phone is simple and it works and indeed stays true to Nokia by having the Snake game. Simple phones like this are all about voice quality, where the 1100 is strong. The battery life is something of a marvel.
The phone was not exactly a technological phenomenon, even by the standards of the time. The screen is small and colourless and the ringer does not boom music like today’s phones. It feels suspiciously light however and its small size makes it extremely portable and easy to carry. That keypad is dustproof and water resistant, so a splash of rain or a drop in mud shall not destroy it. The phone’s plastic shell and light weight make perfect sense the first time you see it bounce off your hard floor but survive unscathed.
This phone was meant to survive and to do small jobs including calling and sms and creating convenience for as long as possible, as cheaply as possible. Take for example a feature like a torch (flashlight) and you might think: Who cares about a torch? Well, for a man who lives in say, Kiboga, having a torch is quite important. Even after several iterations of the 1100, none has come close to the bounty it raked in and probably still does.
Companies like Nokia spend a lot of time and money developing new phones that you and I might consider old-fashioned or odd, and with good reason. Emerging markets are huge, so it is these low end cash cows that have distracted Nokia from the market Apple is burning through with the iPhone
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