Nokia on the fashion market – marginal notes

Mobile-review have posted a very interesting article talking about Nokia's fashion line of phones. Here is the final part of the article.

Premium segment – new offering for men
Having created an enormous market for all iterations of the Nokia 8800, the manufacturer ended up a hostage to the situation. It is pressed both by the exorbitant sales and the conservatism of the audience, as the company is afraid to put consumers off with a dramatic change in the design paradigm. The real danger here is that sticking to the idea of successive designs, while altering technological talents for the most part (display, camera etc), will, sooner or later, incline the users to start searching for something new. Not all, but many of them. That’s how the Arte sub-family came along, with its leather finish and a synthetic sapphire. The brown version is aimed largely at women and already debuted on the market in late February - early March. Given its price tag of 1150 Euro (which is even heftier in Russia), this is an interesting way to go, for it is obviously color-keyed to other fashion-savvy accessories and designer clothing out there.

Men should feel content with the Sapphire Arte Black that is slated for release in September (the Sirocco Edition arrived in September, for one) at a price slightly higher than that of the brown edition. While this solution hasn’t been officially announced as yet, you could get a closer look at it in our piece on the Arte family. In case you missed it, see the photos picturing this Arte for men below.



It is obvious to me that the maker is still not ready to roll out a follow up to the Nokia 8900, a top-of-the-line offering among premium phones and aimed at men on top of that - this role is currently assumed by the black Arte. This solution needs some time to generate substantial sales, that’s why the chance that we will see another device any time soon is very slim.

But as far as the lower price bracket for premium solutions is concerned, the Nokia 8600 Luna is somewhat lonely. Releasing an additional phone that would have men as its target audience and go for around 700 Euro seems like a good move. Firstly, that’s what the Luna retailed for upon its release, secondly not all prospective buyers of this solution belong to the “Technology Leaders” category, so they don’t really need such products. While the market capacity for this type of product is not gigantic, it is still there. They could name it “Nokia 8700 Mars”, which would be a fitting index, although this is nothing but our wishful thinking – we will see how the situation around fashion-savvy phones will really unfold with our own eyes very soon. All pieces to the big puzzle will be in place by September 9th 2008, when all announcements will have been made. And I think this year will bring a lot of hot headlines.