Former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen has slammed Nokia’s new Windows Phone 8-based Lumia 920 and 820 smartphones, predicting a sales regression for the Finnish phone giant.
Ahonen came to prominence by attacking current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop in a 29,000 word open letter, describing Elop as “the worst CEO ever seen”. Ahonen has since openly supported discussions by shareholder activists in Finland to replace Elop as Nokia CEO.
In a blog post on Nokia’s announcement, Ahonen says:
“So we get two new Lumia smartphones by Nokia that run Windows Phone 8 (the four older Lumia models are now totally obsoleted, ‘Osborned’ in fact, as they are not compatible and cannot be upgraded from Windows Phone 7.5 to 8.0).”
“[This] does not mean that Nokia has now expanded from four to six Lumia models – where we might think Nokia grows sales say from 4 million last quarter to 6 million soon. No. Rather, Nokia has regressed from four to two marketable Lumia models. This cannot help Nokia grow, this is likely to produce a Nokia sales regression.”
“The Lumia 920 is only catching up to past Nokia [smartphones] on Symbian or MeeGo. The second camera and NFC are aspects Nokia flagships have had in the past but the lame Lumia 800 for last Christmas did not. So this is only catching up.”
“Major tech aspects that past Nokia flagships have had, that this latest Lumia 920 still can’t match, include: 12 mp camera, real Xenon flash and video-out. Aspects Nokia had two years ago in the flagship (and many rivals have today).”
Meanwhile, Nokia has posted the following videos demonstrating their new handsets:
{qtube vid:= V8_Z7_kJ3_g}
{qtube vid:= 8Q8tlSDpVDI}
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
