September 03, 2009, 11:23 AM — Give Nokia props for designing a good looking netbook, the new Booklet 3G. It's sleek, it runs on batteries a long time, and it has slightly higher video resolution than other netbooks. Too bad Nokia executives went brain dead when setting the price. Let's count the ways the idiot vice presidents at Nokia mangled their new netbook's chances in the market.
Strike one: they used a slower processor than all their competitors. Admittedly, the Intel Atom processor never wins performance awards. But there are several versions available, and Nokia executives chose an older one that's slower than other netbooks use.
Strike two: they used a smaller hard disk than other modern netbooks. One can argue a netbook, used “properly” and with wireless mobile broadband support built in, doesn't need much local disk capacity. The name includes “3G” which tells us how Nokia wants us to use this. But when checking features between potential netbook purchases, a netbook with 40GBs less storage (120GB vs. 160GBs) just looks older by comparison.
Strike three: they've been infected with the Steve Jobs virus, and they're convinced people will pay twice as much for their product because it's twice as cool looking as their competitors. Sorry, Nokia, that only works for Steve Jobs, and it doesn't always work for him. You have to build up design karma points with things like the iPod and iPhone before you slap a 2x coolness tax on a product that runs slower and stores less than the competition.
The umpire calls: Strike three, you're out. Nokia netbook, the Booklet 3G, fails. Another good product idea ruined by idiot vice presidents. What a shame.
