Launching a late-comer product into a maturing market is like pushing a salmon up Niagara Falls. Some folks (with perhaps a bit too much time on their hands) have estimated that about $450 has been spent marketing each Nokia Lumina sold … which currently retails for $49 (with the ubiquitous two-year contract). You don’t need an MBA to see that this is not an entirely profitable go-to-market plan. The Lumina was the first serious attempt to lift Microsoft’s mobile market share, and managed push fewer than two million of them into users hands (though it is uncertain if this includes the number of devices Nokia gave to AT&T employees in an attempt to evangelize in-store sales staff). There are about as many Android activations each day as Luminas now in use. The marketing puzzle that Microsoft failed to solve was getting consumers to believe that WinPhones were better gizmos than … Continue reading →

When was the last time you heard somebody use the word “crackberry”? I recall a Southwest Airlines flight attendant uttering that abstraction when comically ordering passengers to turn off electronic gizmos. It was a period in history with Research In Motion (RIM) was, well, flying high. Their email push technology was new, hot, addictive for road warriors and earned a share price that startled even Silicon Valley investors. RIM stock has fallen 94% since then. RIM was a one-trick technology. It certainly filled a need, but offered something that was cloanable, and eventually obsoleted by mass adoption of wireless data plans. Today a cheap feature phone can make IMAP connections to any email server and deliver the same degree of digital addiction that once made RIM famous. Some analysts claim RIM is now worth nothing except the value of their patent portfolio. Success often breeds failure. Incessant laurel sniffing leads … Continue reading →