The death of three brands.

When we are born and begin to grow, we have an instant attachment to the things in our environment, the first brands we as children or teenagers encounter are normally the brands we end up using for the most part of our lives.

For the most part of my life, i have been in love with BMW and Mercedes Benz, at a very tender age my love for these two brands was engrained into me, they were the two car brands both my father and mother liked, and drove , for most of the sixteen years that i have owned my own personal car , i have always owned one of them , any new car upgrade was always between the two.

The first ever mobile phones i came into contact with were Nokia and Motorola, at that time they were the two most iconic mobile brands in the world, Samsung was still an obscure South Korean electronics company, while Apple was only known for Mac.

Between 1999 to 2006 Nokia and Motorola produced the best phones available , but in 2007 a new arms race began when Apple and the late Steve Jobs (God bless him) launched the Iphone , suddenly with one single move the Iphone shattered all the myths and stereotypes that had made both Nokia and Motorola legends, suddenly here was a device that could do new things the two of them could not even dream of , Nokia never knew what hit them, in 2008 Motorola went on the offensive by building it’s first Android device, the Motorola Cliq, and a year later the Motorola Droid, which had high end specifications.

Nokia made the mistake of not seeing the potential of Android , it launched it’s own in-house mobile OS called Symbian, which signalled the death of a Titan, other up and coming Asian phone brands like Samsung, Sony , Htc and a host of others pledged there fealty to Android , and embraced the new world order, which would later shape the smartphone sphere as we know it now.

Suddenly the Iphone with it’s mobile OS called IOS, and Android OS , which now had many brands under it’s command were the undisputed kings of mobile.

Nokia which had millions of diehard fan’s who refused to ditch and pitch their tents with either IOS or Android hoped and prayed Nokia would also launch an industry defining device, this hope was fed by the unquenchable sea of Patents Nokia had in it’s armoury ,nokia stubbornly continued with Symbian ,with a brand of phones called the N and E series, and later created another OS called Meego for the Nokia N9, when the dust cleared it was very evident both Symbian and Meego could not revive the dying iconic brand, this was the moment Nokia should have joined the new world order, which was Android, suddenly sales and overall forecasts became bleak, and Nokia’s very existence was now in question.

During all this time a titanic company known more for it’s software than it’s hardware had been trying to get a foothold in the mobile industry, it had created it’s own OS called Windows phone 7.

Microsoft was able to get Htc ,Alcatel , Samsung , Acer and Lg to launch windows phone 7 devices, Nokia decided to shake things up a bit when they employed Stephen Elop who had deep ties with Microsoft to chart it out of the murky waters it had guided itself into, immediately a rumour began to gather that Microsoft had let Elop go to Nokia so that he would smooth the road ahead for a Microsoft take over.

In February 2011, Stephen Elop and Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer jointly announced a major business partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, which would see Nokia adopt Windows Phone as its primary platform on future smartphones, replacing both symbian and Meego. Microsoft paid Nokia $1Billion for the new arrangement .

The deal also included the integration of Bing as the search engine on Nokia devices, and the integration of Nokia Maps into Microsoft’s own mapping services. Nokia had planned to use the MeeGo platform as part of its future plans prior to the the announcement, although the company announced that it would still release one MeeGo device in 2011.

Nokia unveiled its first Windows Phone 7-based devices, the mid-range Lumia 710 and high-end Lumia 800, on 26 October 2011 at its Nokia World conference, they were both made from polycarbonate,design wise they were okay, but the software was plagued by a deficiency of apps, which were very abundant in IOS and Android , but still we diehard Nokia continued to pray things would someday pick up, and other high end and midrange Lumia devices were produced, then Microsoft launched windows Phone 8, it to had a limited number of apps.

Later in September 2012, Nokia unveiled the Lumia 820 and the Lumia 920, its first two devices to use the second generation of the Windows Phone platform, Windows Phone 8.

Then at MWC 2013, Nokia introduced two more Windows Phone 8 devices, the mid- range Nokia Lumia 720 & the budget Nokia Lumia 520, of which the latter has become the most sold Windows phone device ever.

Other high end to mid range devices were soon launched, the Lumia 925, 1020, 1250 and a host of others were born, and all of them had very good and strong camera’s, the Lumia 1020 had a 41 mega pixel camera, no phone till today has such a powerful snapper.

AS expected sales of the Lumia line had exceeded those of BlackBerry in the same period, Nokia still made an operating loss of €115m (m), with revenues falling 24% to €5.7bn following the second quarter of 2013, over the past nine quarters, Nokia sustained €4.1 billion worth of operating losses.

Then On 3 September 2013 the worst kept industry secret, something most people knew or predicted happened, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Nokia’s mobile phone business (including rights to the Lumia and low-end Asha brands) in an overall deal totaling at over US$7 bn.

Stephen Elop after doing his job of weakening Nokia stepped down as Nokia’s CEO, and re-join Microsoft as its head of devices as part of the deal, which closed in early 2014.

I had a melancholy feeling of the death of one of the brands that helped shape my life, but i was also happy that now Nokia was in visionary new hands, who would guide and back Nokia financially into regaining its lost grace.

Microsoft produced a range of phones called Nokia X, based on a version of Android based on the windows OS, this was done to attract die hard Android users to Windows phone, then in July 2014 Microsoft announced that they would discontinue all Nokia Asha and X Devices in favour of Lumia Devices. All future Nokia Asha and X designs will be used in future Lumia Designs.

Several Lumia devices on the new windows phone 8.1 platform were unveiled by Microsoft Mobile in September 2014 ,that still carried the Nokia name, including the 930, Lumia 830 and Lumia 735, in July 2014, it had been reported that Microsoft was attempting to licence the Nokia brand name in a co-branding scheme, which would have possibly seen future devices branded as "Nokia by Microsoft". Most Nokia diehards including myself will tell you it was a big mistake on Microsoft’s part to annouce in October 2014, that it would phase out the Nokia brand in its promotion and production of Lumia smartphones, and that future Lumia models will be branded solely with the name and logo of Microsoft, this act signalled the death of Nokia as a phone brand in the present,and the death of Microsoft mobile in the Future.

Nokia was never a big brand name in the US, but in Europe, Africa and Asia it was an iconic brand, it had a mythical following in Africa and Asia. Microsoft should have known killing of the Nokia brand name like that would further affect it’s already declining market.

Then it was announced that new phones would soon be launched under the Microsoft Lumia brand name, we die hard fans of Nokia continued to hope and pray for the best,and wait for these game changing devices, the Microsoft Lumia 535 and a host of low end devices not worth mentioning were launched, they were all low end, low spec devices that had bad build quality , i rushed to the nearest Nokia shop to buy the Lumia 535, i was eager to have a feel of it, but i was instantly angry with the screen and overall build of the phone, i already had a Lumia 930 which i was using at that time, which i am still using till today, i got hope and decided to give out the Lumia 535 to my nephew who seemed happy to have an extra new phone, after somedays he complained to me about the lack of apps, and build quality and the Microsoft brand name, he asked me why i did not buy him a Nokia phone, i told him that’s the new brand name of Nokia.

Then Microsoft decided to launch the Lumia 640 and 640 XL, two devices that were mid range, and with bad build quality.

Microsoft took a long time to build a flagship device, there argument was they wanted to it to come with the hugely improved Windows 10 mobile OS, suddenly all Nokia diehards that still remained loyal were happy a new flagship device would wipe away our tears, but during all this time i had embraced Android , and i had gone through multiple HTC and Motorola devices, Motorola had succeeded in regaining some of it’s lost glory with a line up of good performing devices, and truth be told i enjoyed been part of the Android ecosystem, and my Lumia 930 was still performing admirably, but waiting for its successor in the new Lumia flagship, once in a while designs would pop up that gave us hope, and also some designs that we wish and prayed were not our long waited Messiah of a device , then one day some really ugly designs were pictured online that suggested they were the much awaited flagships, the Lumia 950 and 950XL.

The rest is history , those ugly designs turned out to be the flagships we were waiting for, the screen and internals were ok, together with continum and the type C connector, were Microsoft got it wrong was in the design and the quality of the materials it used to build these awful devices.

From the position the Microsoft brand name was placed, to the size of the bezels, even the three navigation buttons that sort of gave the Lumia brand its identity were removed, that contributed to the lack of character the Lumia 950 and XL has,the on screen buttons are too high up,and badly placed, then at the back the position of the cameras are too high, and too pronounced, the fatal sin was the back cover,which is cheap looking and uninspiring ,in short the phone does not have an inspiring feeling, you would instantly feel you were not holding a flagship.

From day one i knew the phone would be a flop, this conclusion was not hard to come by because of the flagship and midrange phones produced by Microsoft’s rivals, would any right thinking person compare it to the iphone, galaxy s6 or s6 edge, or the Htc M8 or M9 ,or even the MotoX pure edition, style ?

I argued with a lot of Microsoft fans about these things, but they said i was wrong, and Microsoft further shot itself up with the price, $600 for that thing ?

All the professional reviews i read and watched highlighted the same problems i mentioned, these reviews are available on Youtube .

Suddenly an opportunity Microsoft had to launch its self in the mobile world was wasted on these two awful phones , they succeeded in killing the iconic Nokia brand name, the Lumia brand name and the Windows phone name, if only they had designed an iconic device ? The two devices are doing very poorly in terms of sales and overall appeal.

The lumia 950 and XL remind you of the Bastard off spring son of a highborn Lord who is denied his fathers name and title not because he is a Bastard, but simply because he is without the elegance, tradition and prestige of his father.

What Microsoft needs to do now is build a Lumia that has the specs of the Lumia 950, but with the grace,elegance and look of 930, people now mostly buy a device because of it’s appearance , just the way men go after women who are beautiful and endowed, we do not care how many packs of silicone they have on the inside, what matters is the outside.

Almost all phone brands even the Asian brands that used to have bad build and material quality now produce devices with good looking bodies .

Why go for a cheap looking $10 hooker when you can have a $1000 Dollar one ?

Microsoft has to be very careful how it designs the Mythical Surface phone, it has to have an iconic look, and have specs not seen on any device, the camera has to be better than any other Lumia camera ever seen.

If Microsoft bungles the Surface phone then it should honourably retreat from the mobile world, we want to come home, but it depends on what Redmond can do to bring us back.