For those who thought Nokia might finally get things right when it comes to smartphones with the long awaited N8, the bad news today is that its release has been delayed yet again.
These 'final amends' Nokia’s talking about better be worth all the bad publicity.
New chief executive Stephen Elop started his first day in the job by delivering the news and seeing company shares suffer a sizeable hit in the process. A Nokia spokesman said the first phones were still scheduled to leave factories by the end of September, but deliveries to consumers who had pre-ordered the phone would be delayed by a few weeks.
“In some markets, we had planned to start delivering the N8s to our pre-order customers by the end of September. To ensure a great user experience, we have decided to hold the shipments for a few weeks to do some final amends,” the company said in a statement, adding that the N8s would reach consumers in October.
There is, of course, a lot riding on the N8’s release. A failure to gain a foothold in the smartphone market now could leave the Finnish mobile giant struggling to keep pace with the rapidly increasing sales power of Apple, HTC and Samsung amongst others.
Reuters reports that those in the financial markets have been left shaking their heads at Nokia’s ‘final amends’.
“A single device does not normally have a significant impact on Nokia’s development. But with the N8 the firm has much more at stake,” analysts at FIM Bank said. “The new delay is once again a blow to Nokia’s already tarnished image and it could also endanger the firm’s Q3 earnings target.”
The N8 smartphone, first to use Nokia’s new Symbian software, was originally scheduled to reach consumers in June. In April, Nokia warned that the software renewal would take longer than it had expected due to quality problems and said that the N8 would reach consumers by the end of September.
When it does arrive the N8 is set to stand out among its rivals for its 12 megapixel camera however, along with the bad publicity coming from this latest delay and a general public distrust for Nokia’s smartphone offerings to date, it also has a slower processor than Samsung’s top model Galaxy S and the latest iPhone.
Let the uphill battle commence.
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