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Comment by EnderMB | Hacker News Reader

Nokia were the kings of mobile back when phones were simple, so why the hell haven't they ditched Windows Phone and made phones simple once again?!

I bet there's a huge market out there for older users that want a simple and usable phone with stripped functionality, and it's a tactic that worked very well for Nintendo when they realised that they couldn't compete with Sony and Microsoft in the console market. A lot of older users just want a mobile phone so they can get in touch with family, send a few texts to people and occasionally browse the web.

If linked with a company like Yahoo (providing mail and other basic cloud stuff) I'd be shocked if a phone that focused on being a phone and not a smartphone didn't sell millions amongst the tech-illiterate and older audience.

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Painful metamorphosis is probably the right term to be used here.

They could acquire the smaller and profit-making players in dumb-phone markets and let them function independently - kill their own overheads in "small-margins" game.

Nokia should reinvent their focus to something else - not continue on mobile platform now. Just like they did in past by moving away from cables to rubber tyres and so on... They're late for the tablet game too, but an enterprise centric tactile surface (which is portable too) sounds like a good idea [Sheesh! Given away the idea, but the world would be a better place with it ;) ].

There is a gap in there which they could surely fill. I don't know about Elop's strengths or weaknesses, but for me Nokia is still a severely defocused bloat. Strip down to basics is the only advise here.

Just a few thoughts.

> They're late for the tablet game too, but an enterprise centric tactile surface (which is portable too) sounds like a good idea [Sheesh! Given away the idea, but the world would be a better place with it ;) ].

This is what killed RIM - they bet on an enterprise tablet over their phone market, and failed. The whole "enterprise tablet" market is either ripe for the picking or no-man's land - and I don't think Nokia could have done better than RIM.

When failing, you need to cut back on unprofitable side-ventures, double-down on your core profitable offerings, execute, then re-invest that into new markets.

Nokia do still make some great versions of non-smartphones, I've seen a nice dual-SIM one being aimed at South America via a friend working on the project. However, I think smartphones are where the profit is. Once companies have seen the huge profits Apple have made, they want a piece of that pie. And frankly, who can blame them?

My wife just got a new phone. She wanted a basic phone as she likes texting on a standard phone keypad, and wanted an OK camera on it. She couldn't get a basic phone that did that, so ended up with a low end HTC Android (of the same spec as my mid-high end HTC from last year.) It could be the phone networks just don't want to stock basic phones as they don't make enough money off the contracts for them, they want to sell all the extras. On the flip side, last time I looked at basic phones they all seemed very poorly made and with awful interfaces, which is why I went to a smartphone a few years ago.

There are simple, large print phones targeted for older folk, they mainly seem to be advertised in the little pull-out magazines that come inside TV listing mags and similar in the UK, and during advert breaks on daytime TV.

The problem with your Nintendo analogy is that Nintendo introduced a new market into playing video games (families, non-gamers).

A more accurate analogy to Nokia making dumb phones would be if Nintendo had created a console that appealed to legacy-gamers, people who want to play SNES and NES games. A much smaller (and dwindling) market.

Guess what, there is already a phone that works wonderfully for people who only wants to call people, send a few texts and occasionally browse the web. It's called an iPhone and my parents have one. They perfectly fit the use case you're describing.

They haven't downloaded any apps, they browse the web once in a while, but mostly they use the phones for calling and SMS (and my father checks his email). With their previous Nokia dumbphones, they never even learnt how to use the T9 dictionary.

Of course, it's still an expensive phone, but many of those older people get their iPhones for free when their children upgrade to a newer model.

If that's all they are doing, then any smartphone will do the trick.

If your basically throwing away your old iPhone anyway then sure give it to your parents. For anyone who isn't getting a free iPhone, spending $800 on one would be absolute overkill when you can buy a cheap $100-$200 phone that makes calls just as well.

It is kind of expensive, and relatively easy to break. You could get an indestructable Lumia 900 for $0 on contract for a while and I think it never went over $100. Right now you can get one for $20 on the Amazon Wireless page.

There are multiple problems with your statement ...

- It shows you're an American, otherwise you wouldn't hand-wave the price of an iPhone, even when speaking about phones being given by kids to parents.

- the iPhone seems simple to you because you've gotten used to it. Compared with classic rotary phones, the iPhone is anything but simple - of course, for the provided functionality, the iPhone has a lot of features packed in a tight package that has a pretty simple interface by today's standards. But regarding parents, on the contrary, I've watched my mom struggle with an iPhone, before she got back to an older Nokia model, with a simple key pad and no extra functionality other than SMS.

- because of the specs, the iPhone consumes a lot of battery, even by using it only for your basic needs - it's sure nice to have a phone with a battery that lasts for 7 days of normal usage.

- mobile phones are designed to be usable for 2 years, after which the battery and the hardware start falling apart.

Also, the T9 dictionary was really awkward. I don't think anybody was suggesting that Nokia should return to their older models. I do think that some company in the future will come up with a sexy design and a set of features for simple phones that customers will absolutely love.

- I'm not American. I don't upgrade my phone every year, but when I do the old one usually gets handed over to a family member. I think this is quite common, although some may sell it for a price depending on the age of the phone.

- Turning off WiFi, GPS and bluetooth, you get quite a bit of battery life out of an iPhone.

- I can only answer for the people I've met who are non-technical. They had no problem using an old Nokia phone to make calls, but for everything else (including contact lists and SMS) the iPhone is easier.

The only usability problems I've discovered has to do with the buttons, as they don't discover what the sleep/wake button and silent/ringer button does, and because they think the Home button is an "end whatever you're doing" button, which makes them push that button to end a call (this of course doesn't work since it just returns to the home screen with the call backgrounded).

Since I'm curious, what was your mother struggling with?

- The iPhone hardware has a tendency to last a long time unless the display breaks. My mothers phone is from 2009, for instance. Although I agree that replacing the battery is a problem since you have to know someone with a screwdriver or pay to have it replaced.

I don't really know why my mom struggled with it, but I guess it's because of the tree-like interface, and because normal users are used to rote learn their way around such interfaces, the classic problem of graphical interfaces ... she's used to all the options being available at first glance.

For instance if I wanted to make a call right now on my Android, I would press the green button with a phone icon on it. The logs view would pop-up because that's the last view I've used. To dial a number manually, I would have to select the "Keypad" tab. To search of a contact I have to press the "Contacts" tab, which on Android at least is a different app with a different top bar of tabs. Clicking on a name would show me that person's profile. I would have to do another click on his phone number to actually initiate the call.

This is in contrast with her Nokia phone - to dial a number out of memory, you just need to start dialing the number on the always available physical key pad, then you press the green button, which is also always available on display. To search for a contact, you press the down arrow and then upon selecting the desired entry you press the green button. To look in the logs, maybe to dial the last number dialed, you press the up arrow, dialing involving a press on the green button again.

So basically I think it's because every basic use-case involves a number of 2 or 3 steps that can be easily remembered because all the buttons are on display and there's also some consistency (dialing involves either typing or selecting a phone number + a press on the green button). Of course, she probably could have learned to use an iPhone if she really wanted to. But she doesn't have the patience anymore.

iOS and Android aren't the simple beasts people make them out to be. They're still extremely complicated for the most basic of users.

Also, who on Earth would you buy an iPhone if you didn't want to use it for its intended purposes?

There is a market for a beautiful and cheap phone, and the iPhone isn't a part of it. You could use it as a dumb phone in the same way you could use a chainsaw to cut your steak. It'll leave it in chunks, but it's overkill for what you need.

Profits are smaller on simpler phones

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