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Nokia smartphones 'outmoded' claim analysts

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Posted 12th March 2010 at 4:09pm by Ewan Taylor-Gibson

N97 Mini

Nokia's current range of smartphones is failing to capture a larger portion of the market because the Finnish firm is using outdated components, a research company has claimed.

Researchers at Ovum have said that Nokia is not offering adequate compatibility with current-generation software because it is using previous-generation technology long after it has lost its relevance.

Ovum's Tim Renowden said: "Nokia's current smartphones, including the flagship N97 and N97 Mini run on ARM11 below 500MHz with an anaemic 128MB of RAM, a point that most other platforms have abandoned."

Advanced features such as 3D acceleration and high definition video playback are only possible when smartphones use newer chips such as the Snapdragon processor that the Google Nexus One employs.

Mr Renowden said that only the Nokia N900 has the necessary next-gen tech on board, which he believes is problematic given Nokia's sliding smartphone market share.

More news on: Nokia, Business, Smart mobile phones

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4 Comments

  • Jambo, 12th March 2010.

    True dat. Nokia seems totally last-gen. Need to get with the program, man.

    Reply

  • Jake, 12th March 2010.

    Nokia is on its way to $40. See the call volumes!

    Reply

  • Intosh, 12th March 2010.

    How many Nokia N97's have been sold? How many Nexus One sold? Sliding smartphone market share? Did this guy look at last quarter's figures? Stupid.

    Reply

  • Skyler, 15th March 2010.

    Obviously you think processor clock speed is what defines "fast" or "better". This is not the case. RISC architecture (what Snapdragon, ARM and OMAP processors employ) is supposed to be used for purpose-built designs. Sanpdragon is the least efficient design of all the ARM processors, but keeps up because it has a higher clock speed.

    A high clock speed also means it requires more power (decreased battery life). Also, compared to many of the newest windows mobile phones (and some still in production) 128mb of ram is actually not bad. When the typical smartphone app takes up < 256kb of memory, 128Mb is more than enough to handle multitasking.

    The "Snapdragon" processor (from Qualcomm) is a type of ARM processor, it actually employs the same instruction set as the ARM11 family. The N900 uses an ARM processor core too, which is made by Texas Instruments, and they call it "OMAP" (the N900's processor is actually an ARM Cortex A9 with enhancements by TI).

    Read more about it at Wikipedia, I have better things to do.

    Reply

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