With Apple and BlackBerry nipping at Nokia’s heels, the Finnish company is planning on making some major changes in 2010. Nokia made some pretty big announcements at its Capital Markets Day yesterday with forecasts for 2010 as well as a demo of a significantly improved Symbian UI. We’ve made a lot of jabs against Symbian looking pretty dated and being in need of a major overhaul, and it looks like Nokia might be finally answering the call. Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says:
In 2010, we will drive user experience improvements, and the progress we make will take the Symbian user interface to a new level. As an operating system, Symbian has reach and flexibility like no other platform, and we have measures in place to push smartphones down to new price points globally, while growing margins. I see great opportunity for Nokia to capture new growth in our industry, by creating what we expect to be the world’s biggest platform for services on the mobile.
A better user experience and pushing down price points will definitely help Nokia retain its global lead, but that experience and those new prices are going to have to be really competitive. Interestingly, while Nokia predicts that mobile device volumes will be up 10% in the next year, it sees its own volume market share to be flat in 2010. Whatever Nokia has planned, it’s in it for the long haul.
