It's tough to figure out the sales success of the 9000. The original version sold 100 000 units at near 2 000 US$ per phone, so it's a solid niche hit. Is the phone currently priced too high, since as you pointed out, it costs almost as much as a laptop? Can it break out as a mass market product? The new version might. Nokia has apparently been able to cut the weight from near 400 grams to less than 250 grams. This weight is only a few grams more than the world's best selling mobile phone, 2110, weighs.
Perhaps the old 9000 is too expensive, but I think that in the new version the price is justified... people are paying for a 486 chip, tons of memory, fax, browser and digital cellular phone with IR-connection all in less than 250 grams. No laptop can touch this. Too bad the newe version is initially introduced only in GSM 900 markets, so the US sales of the old model may suffer, because geeks there know a sleeker model is arriving.
Anyway, the big news are the new miniphone and the 5100 series. The 8810 really wipes the floor with Ericsson's and Motorola's competing minimodels. It has *five* lines of text in the display vs. one line in Ericsson 788. But it's still 25% thinner, considerably lighter and has much longer stand-by time. Plus there's infrared connectivity, the games, caller profiles and all that. It's simply gorgeous, check it out at:
beli.vet.auth.gr
The 5100 series is a cheapie version of the 6100 series; less features, easier to use, aimed at first time buyers, students, women, etc. All the major product segment-spanning 5100, 6100 and 8810 introductions should deliver a knock-out punch to Ericsson this year; this company isn't introducing any entirely new models in entire 1998! I say unload Ericy now, before Nokia's market share surge commences. By next fall, Ericsson won't be competitive in executive phones, midmarket phones or economy class. I'm not even starting on Mot this time. It's toast.
Tero
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