Its comparison to the living world can be drawn with the cockroach which has withstood millennial of evolution and remained alive. This device could be dropped from a plane or could even be run over or even crush it under a hydraulic press to try and destroy it. Yet it had retained its place among mobile lovers until it was decommissioned in 2005.
And now, for one last time, that phone is coming back from the dead, and tries out its luck once again after it had become a meme about surviving the apocalypse.
The Nokia 3310 has lived long in our collective memory – which is something the company would now like to exploit even as it was discontinued by its makers in 2005.
At the end of this month, a revised 3310 will be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona if the regularly accurate leaker, Evan Blass, is to be believed. This new version is a steal compared with the orignal (£119 in 2000) and is styled as a “homage”, and is potentially coming in at €59 (£50).
The 3310 exhibits a journey for Nokia which has been as strange as circuitous a journey that began in the 1870s in rural Finland as a small paper mill.
Microsoft bought out the ailing Finnish company in 2013 following two years of heavy losses in Nokia and the handsets division was later rebranded by Microsoft which focused more on smartphones and came out with the Microsoft Lumia as its first product. However, the brand name “Nokia” had been sold back to a Finnish conglomerate by the mid-2016 after Microsoft faced its own mounting losses. The situation became such that Microsoft had been forced to discontinuing the Lumia range altogether by late 2016.
It is a fact that most mobile phone consumers are a million miles from Gizmodo hype-cycles, living in developing nations where regular access to electricity and $159 for tiny cordless earphones is hard to come by while the west is obsessed with its Apple AirPods and the company’s rebirth illustrates this often-ignored fact.
A basic colour-screen smartphone with a 29-day battery life that costs an astounding $29, developed by Nokia recently and named 215, has been a successful venture for the erstwhile largest mobile phone manufacturer of the world which recognized this trend in the mobile phone industry.
Lately, with a downmarket smartphone, the Nokia 6, the company has been making inroads into the Chinese market.
The “buyer” is increasingly growing its niche even in the developed world. Some are finding that the best way to reduce the data footprint isn’t to invest in a pricey VPN (virtual private network) in a world where Uber now passively-aggressively allows you to choose only between “always” and “never”. Among other utilities, the mud and muck of festivals, where data network overcrowding often means older tech generations work better or for a useful backup – for trips to hostile parts of the world, others find them a useful backup.
The trend could be jump-started by a major splash entry into that market. Or may be companies like Nokia could find out that nostalgia is a dish best served in the past. However, analysts are of the view that retro will be something to get behind so long as Nokia’s classic game Snake II is brought back as an ultra-violent 3D massive-multiplayer online world.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
And now, for one last time, that phone is coming back from the dead, and tries out its luck once again after it had become a meme about surviving the apocalypse.
The Nokia 3310 has lived long in our collective memory – which is something the company would now like to exploit even as it was discontinued by its makers in 2005.
At the end of this month, a revised 3310 will be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona if the regularly accurate leaker, Evan Blass, is to be believed. This new version is a steal compared with the orignal (£119 in 2000) and is styled as a “homage”, and is potentially coming in at €59 (£50).
The 3310 exhibits a journey for Nokia which has been as strange as circuitous a journey that began in the 1870s in rural Finland as a small paper mill.
Microsoft bought out the ailing Finnish company in 2013 following two years of heavy losses in Nokia and the handsets division was later rebranded by Microsoft which focused more on smartphones and came out with the Microsoft Lumia as its first product. However, the brand name “Nokia” had been sold back to a Finnish conglomerate by the mid-2016 after Microsoft faced its own mounting losses. The situation became such that Microsoft had been forced to discontinuing the Lumia range altogether by late 2016.
It is a fact that most mobile phone consumers are a million miles from Gizmodo hype-cycles, living in developing nations where regular access to electricity and $159 for tiny cordless earphones is hard to come by while the west is obsessed with its Apple AirPods and the company’s rebirth illustrates this often-ignored fact.
A basic colour-screen smartphone with a 29-day battery life that costs an astounding $29, developed by Nokia recently and named 215, has been a successful venture for the erstwhile largest mobile phone manufacturer of the world which recognized this trend in the mobile phone industry.
Lately, with a downmarket smartphone, the Nokia 6, the company has been making inroads into the Chinese market.
The “buyer” is increasingly growing its niche even in the developed world. Some are finding that the best way to reduce the data footprint isn’t to invest in a pricey VPN (virtual private network) in a world where Uber now passively-aggressively allows you to choose only between “always” and “never”. Among other utilities, the mud and muck of festivals, where data network overcrowding often means older tech generations work better or for a useful backup – for trips to hostile parts of the world, others find them a useful backup.
The trend could be jump-started by a major splash entry into that market. Or may be companies like Nokia could find out that nostalgia is a dish best served in the past. However, analysts are of the view that retro will be something to get behind so long as Nokia’s classic game Snake II is brought back as an ultra-violent 3D massive-multiplayer online world.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
Homepage
Send to a friend
Printable version
Share
