On Monday, Nokia announced that the new N93 videophone has started shipping. I wrote a drooling post about this new phone when it was announced in April.
It’s three months on from that announcement and the opportunities for anyone to capture video and upload it to more sharing sites on the net has exploded.
If you make an easy-to-use tool available, at a reasonable price, that can satisfy actual and perceived demand, you stimulate a real market opportunity. Not just for the phone itself – think of the services that go along with it, not the least of which will be increased usage of networks as you use the phone.
For blogging, I think Nokia has a lead with its tie-up with TypePad through its Lifeblog product. I use that a lot on my Nokia N70 for posting photos to my moblog. It’s such a simple and fast process.
With more mobile phone manufacturers rolling out new video-capable models, video blogging and content sharing online will be a big and growing market.
A highly competitive one overall, too. I think brand loyalty will play a key role when there is so much choice among competing phone brands. Explaining each phone’s benefits and features in a way that ordinary people – especially younger people – can understand will also be key.
It would also be very interesting to see if Nokia can emulate the success of the N90 blogger campaign in the US last year. Assuming they intend on repeating that.
A great opportunity.
Related post:
- FIR interview 21/12/05 with Andy Abramson, CEO of Comunicano, the PR agency behind the N90 blogger campaign.
5 responses to “Nokia N93 starts shipping”
Wow that looks great. I currently use the N70 for my video blog http://www.sixtysecondview.com and found the biggest issue was sound rather than picture quality (the N70 was the best of a not great crowd in this respect). This looks good but I can’t tell from the spec sheet what they have in terms of recording or microphone attachments. The extra memory is also very welcome. If anyone out there from Nokia is looking for someone to bench test this, you know where to find me!
That’s impressive, David – I’ve viewed a few of the videos on your blog and didn’t realize you’d done them with your N70. Very cool. That’s given me an idea or two…
Re the N93, I don’t think it comes with any attachments like mikes, etc. Be interesting to know what accessories are available. No doubt we will see some.
I’d love to test one, too! Hello, Nokia? Connecting people? :)
Any idea what network it will be on, Neville? I’m on Orange. Also, is it 3G? As much as the camera functions sound incredible I still want a good Internet enabled phone for email and feeds.
There’s a similar phone coming out by Sony Ericsson (can’t remember model) which has the same megapixels, flash *and* 3G. It also takes multiple frames per photograph so you can choose the best shot.
I bet all the major network operators will offer this phone, Stephen. In Europe: Orange, Vodafone, etc. Definitely 3G.
Even if you just buy it yourself and pop your SIM card in, it would work on their networks according to the data sheet.
[…] It got me thinking a bit, too. It’s not just audio podcasts that you can do with PodPress but also video. That thinking took me along the road of video cameraphones like the Nokia N93 I wrote about last week. […]