Ideas & Opinions
“It’s a very nice design”
By James on 20 October 2008
PALO ALTO, USA – That was Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo’s response when asked what he thought of the iPhone’s design. Low-key, and succinct, much like the man himself. Whilst OPK was visiting the Palo Alto office, Elise Acherman from Silicon Valley’s The Mercury News caught up with him to ask him a bunch of questions.
Unlike his answer to the iPhone question, his answers to the rest are more in depth and the whole interview is well worth a few minutes of your time. Meanwhile, here are some of the highlights.
Nokia gets a lot of flack for its sales in the USA, generally without
the flack-throwers really understanding why it is the way it is. OPK
outlined what happened pretty simply, and briefly what he’s planning to
do about it
and on making
progress
“The overall target is to make progress in the United States step by step.”
Kallasvuo goes on to talk about some of Nokia’s competition (or not)
and what’s interesting about the USA, and specifically Silicon Valley.
I don’t think it’s any surprise that he said “mobility was not led by
the U.S” or even that “Silicon Valley has been the leader in the
Internet”. However as he talks about the Internet, he reveals that
Nokia doesn’t believe it’s something it can manage from afar, and it
needs that presence in Silicon Valley to be involved.
The thing I found most interesting about Kallasvuo’s interview though
was the thing he said the least about, calling the evolution of the
mobile phone industry the “Convergent Digital Industry”. Not one I’ve
heard before, all the same, I wonder if it’ll catch on?
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Tags | apple, Competition, Design, interview, iphone
October 28th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I have to say I disagree with Kallasvuo when in comes to market segments. Of course the market is huge and varied and in the whole, some products are merely a niche. But that’s not to say there a real human need for offering 40 devices at any given time. For most, the internet experience is the same. There’s no need for 40 different internets, people just choose differently. I think in some way the “digital convergence” is hampered, when by default only the higher end segment devices are most convergent. I’d be more interested to hear where Nokia wants to take the market. Is it just about putting products in different segments and niches when they seem to appear?
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