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Read Findians Briefings - Forthright Fortnightly From Finland
I have not seen this product. I have been invited to Tampere by
Nokia engineers to have a look at it. My comments do not need me
to test drive it. I have seen the demo on TV, listened to radio
interviews on BBC and other station, visited the
Nokia web site
to read about the product and its specifications and visited the
Geoworks web site to read the details about the Geoworks OS.
The reason why I said that the 9000 Communicator will not be a
success is based on personal experience in this field.
Nokia makes the best GSM phone. I own a Nokia 2000 and a 2110. I
have no doubt that they have produced another winner in that part
of the technology. My comments are based on the Computer/PDA
(Personal Digital Assistant) part of this product.
Let me quote from a recent issue of MacUser, April 1996 in an
article by Jon Zilber:
Will any of these will succeed and in this environment will the Nokia
9000 Communicator, also called the "smartphone" find a
place.
You can find the technical specifications of the Nokia 9000
Communicator at their web site. Also look at a great high resolution
picture at a link. The more I looked at it, the more I was convinced
Nokia had a problem on their hands.
The 9000 Communicator is intended to be viewed from four angles:
The Nokia engineers/managers told me that an intensive market
survey had been carried out by a very competent company. They
had found the distinct hole in the market. They, therefore,
assumed that by clamping a palmtop and a digital diary onto
the GSM they could fill this hole.
I happened to study the market survey of one of those earliest
palmtops, and the same conclusion about a hole in the market
was also then evident. However, all of the palmtops failed
miserably. Why?
The claim by Nokia that this unit is not supposed to be a computer
does not hold water as in their technical specifications they
refer to it specifically as a device for Internet access, as
being suitable for Web Browsing, Telneting, etc. So to claim that
it is not what is claimed would therefore be an attempt to mislead
the public. Let us agree that the marketing hype was not really the
correct approach for Nokia to have adopted for this product.
This is a 24 MHz 386 Intel processor, when the rest of the computing
industry is talking about the PowerPC and 150MHz Pentium processors.
Why? Undoubtedly the best solution would have been the PowerPC from
Motorola, arch rival of Nokia in mobile communication. Therefore,
Nokia had no alternative, like Ericsson, but to strike the deal with
Intel and Geoworks.
This is no criticism of Geoworks and their operating system (their
efforts need to be complimented), but to stay with the pack at the top
there is absolutely no excuse for any mobile phone or PDA manufacturer
not to choose the state of the art processor and operating system.
I would not be interested to pick up a device which uses an obsolete
processor - however good the object oriented software has been
developed to go with it. The Intel 386 is nowhere near state of the
art. Also, just because Nokia made an a strategic investment in Geoworks
at the beginning of 1995 does not mean that it had to stick with that
company and its operating system. Much water has flowed under the bridge
since then. (Remember that Nokia sold its software division - Nokia Data
to Fujitsu a few years ago!)
Nokia feels that they have a product that can be carried in a coat
pocket. Take a look at the dimensions and see whether this can, by
any stretch of the imagination, be termed a device that can be carried conveniently in the pocket of a busy executive. 174 mm (length) x 65
mm (width) x 36 mm (height) and a weight of 397 g. It is quite
unlikely that this will fit into anyones pocket conveniently
Even the Newton MessagePad 120 which is considered "a marvel of miniaturizsation technology" is still too big to stuff into a
shirt pocket. I do not think that this 357 g monster can be considered
a marvel of miniaturisation. It is briefcase companion and then we
have opened a can of worms. Do we have here anything remotely equal
to a good GSM Nokia phone and a superfast ultralight totally user-
friendly Mac PowerBook equipped with a PCMCIA card and wireless
communications between the GSM and the PowerBook? Nothing innovative
from Nokia here. This is sad because in Finland we have the best
brains (mine) on Fine Line Technology. But then, that is another
story.
Next consider the terminal display for the PDA which is an LCD
graphical display of resolution 640 x 200 pixels, 8 grey levels and
an active display size 115 mm (width) x 35 mm (height). I am not
going to comment on the quality of the display as that is a matter
for much argument. I, however, recall my palmtop with which I
connected ably with the internet through the miniature modem and
emulating the VT100 interface. The screen was just too small for
any serious work, good for playing around as connecting to my
applications on my desktop or getting to see files containing
important data was nigh impossible. The small screen size was
annoying and was one of the primary reasons that I did not use
the palmtop for anything serious.
The computer screen was too small to accommodate the absolute
minium of 60 columns (80 columns is definetly preferable). The
maximum possible was 40 columns. Even the most basic access to
documents meant a lot of scrolling in both directons as the
maximum number of lines displayed was also only 10 and there
was considerable difficulty in visualising a document. There are
several ways around this problem but Nokia has stayed with the
technology which is totally unsatisfactory for serious internet
access on this small screen.
Another problem was the size of the keyboard. The fingers of a
human being have a definite size. Reduction of the key size on
a keyboard is definetly not conducive to productivity. Nokia
has used the 55 qwerty keyboard and therefore a problem exists.
It will certainly be one of the reasons which will contribute
to the product failure. There are several technologies around
this, but going the traditional way showed a lack of foresight.
I see other problems such as the choice of the screen technology,
housing design, scrolling device, etc.. All these could have been
avoided if they had had an experienced multidisciplinary development
group which was not constrained by the financial committments made
by Nokia. A simple question I put to Nokia was how many satisfied and dissatisfied users of palmtops did Nokia interview before it decided
on this design - the answer is obvious.
Certainly as a fad the Nokia 9000 Communicator will sell. It will not
be sustained as a product in the competitive cellular phone market.
More harm will be done to the Nokia name and image as dissatisfied
customers will turn away from Nokia cellular phone products in
favour of the company which comes with a really thought-out product
of this type! And there is a very substantial market for the correct
product. I hope I am proved wrong for the benefit of Nokia!
I end with a quote from the MacUser article:
There is a large hole in the market. Several companies have launched
PDAs. The most well known are the Newton from Apple, the OmniGe from
Hewlett Packard, the Pilot from Palm Computing, several models from
Casio (NX-6000, BOSS and Z-7000), Magic Link from Sony, Zaurus from
Sharp. Several have fallen by the wayside. There are three operating
systems to choose from; Newton, Geos and Magic Cap.
There were several annoying problems with the palmtops. I
highlight just a few of them. I will only refer to a few points
in the Nokia technical specifications which are relevant to
justify my criticism. I have been a follower of palmtop computing
and PDAs for the last 8 years. My criticism is of that area
from the specifications released by Nokia.
I have a Nokia 2000 and a 2110 - both great products. In this area
Nokia cannot be faulted except for the poor plastics design.
It is here that Nokia moves into dicey territory and moves into the
area of the PDAs. So long as this is part of the GSM telephony, I
am sure it would not be faultable. When they move over to the PDA
part - then the story is different.
Several years ago many companies came out with palmtops (DIP,
Atari, Amstrad, etc) some of which had the ability for internet
access through mini-modems. These could also be used for text
processing, spreadsheet work, had comprehensive address book
functions, and a lot of features which should have made them
attractive propositions as PDAs with internet access. I purchased
one of these from England. in the late eighties I successfully
linked to my internet account and did all the computing I wanted
with this computer 8 years ago, but......
These functions had been built into the early palmtops and
despite this, the palmtops were failures.
This is a letter from Renu Mehta of the World Alumni Team who is in charge of the Indian Alumni Register.
I would like to announce the addition of Indian Educational Institutions to the India Alumni Page located at
http://www.infophil.com/India/Alumni/
The alumni page is a voluntary effort by several U.C. Berkeley students and will always remain a free service. Thank you for your submission.
We are in the process of reorganizing our database and the top level page can now be visited by the easy to remember URL http://www.alumni.net. The success of the alumni registry depends on its popularity and we would like to solicit your help. The page can made more popular by:
- adding a link from your home page to the alumni registry
- sending e-mail to your fellow alumni
- posting articles in bulletin boards
- asking sites such as http://www.yahoo.com & http://www.city.net
to link to the alumni registry.
Thank you.
The World Alumni Team
I have read your briefings with great interest, curiosity and excitement. I now start my suggestions:
Your articles about news item was very informative and even my blood boiled when I read that Swedish player refused to play in India. Regarding your reply in the Letters to the Editor section about the Nokia 9000 Communicator I could not understand anything. (Ed: The Nokia 9000 Communicator is a new Mobile Telephone/Digital Diary/Palmtop Computer which is scheduled to be launched in August of this year. It was on show at Ceebit 1996.)
As an Indian I strongly detest about your joke on Best Country because India will have one of the strongest Economy in future rivalling any other country. (Ed: I agree, Raghu, but a joke is a joke. This one is a very old one which existed from the time of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru - when I was in University - and it is one which shows that we Indians are ready to laugh at ourselves!)
I was disappointed that due to lack of space one article was
postponed.
The information was not arranged in a visually pleasing way.
(Ed: Thank you Raghu - I hope I have corrected it now.) It would
have been much better if the name of the site was given instead
of the http address. For example instead of
http://www.funet.fi/resources/maps/ you could just brief information
about the link like Finland Resources. (Ed: This has been done.)
There are too many self-referential links within the page. (Ed: We will gradually drop them as our readers become more stable. We have today a rapidly expanding readership and this has meant exposing them to almost 20 pages that we offer - but your point is well taken and already the number has been reduced significantly.)
There are no visual effects in your page. (Ed: We have tried not to bring in visual effects as many readers, especially in India still read our page using lynx, and they have to pay for time as well as the quantam of information downloaded - and we do not want them to feel we are cheating them. Our intention is to have a text based page as far as possible, concentrating on Content, rather ran Visual and Audio Effects.)
The data is cluttered and hard to comprehend. Colors and graphics could be used for better screen layout. (Ed: I will try to unclutter as best as possible. The attractive and informative ads which will be in later issues will bring the colour.)
Thanks for the excellent coverage by Findians and hope that it continues to improve.
Cheers!
Raghuram
Return to the Top
(Ed: There has to be somebody crying for them. They have been discarded by the jet-setting President, the socialist Prime Minister and his left and right Ministry who borrows a billion marks a week to finance his fleet-footed President and his ship-shopping party members who have just completed a feast abroad the luxury liner Cinderella, the Parliamentarians who have to hide their faces from the public, the Finnish bureaucrats who have only the safety of ther jobs on their agenda, the Finnish media and their gutless journalists who cannot report the facts, the trade union bosses who exist only for themselves, and of course the employers whose only goal appears to be to increase profits and reduce employment. No one wants to know these poor.
I suggest we close down the Labour Offices. They have no work to offer to the unemployed, anyway. Also close down the Financial Subsidy Offices as they function only to find ways on how not to help these poor!
One (un)social worker told an unemployed lady (I know this individually personally and this incident occurred in the presence of the new Euro designated Social Work Ombudsman) who was crying with pain with an acute toothache and did not have money to visit a dentist, to come back after she had been a customer of their Subsidy Department for a year.
In the last issue I said the government was raping the poor - they have set up a bureaucracy which is so in-humane that in the interests of human rights this bureaucracy should cease to exist immediately. If they can behave like this to their own country-men and -women in distress, Arja, we have to cry for these poor people and hope that someone out there is listening to us. Can you understand how they would behave to a foreigner like me!
How many saw what was given to these poor people who went to collect the food aid parcels directed to them as per the European directive - stale one week frozen bread, outdated meat shreddings, salami packets on which the validity date had been torn off. We met these people leaving the premises happy with what little they got from the Salvation Army workers who were distributing these parcels - that is the destiny of the starving poor in Finland. We cry for them Arja! I hope you and some bureaucrats in Brussels will, too.)
I am trying to establish a site to expose Financial Scams. I have contacted the Financial Times in London for the cooperation of Tony Hetherington, the master of scam exposure, in this venture.
In the meantime Ron Davies of Exeter who has a site which exposes Financial Scandals has established a link to our article Greed - Missile of Black Gold.
Mathias (see below) has been trying to get this onto the NBC Dateline program in the US to save others from falling to this scam. We wish him the very best.
I am happy that Findians Briefings is playing such a vital role on the web - not only between Finland and India but in diverse locations as Nigeria, Canada and the US.
Do not forget that fraudsters do not exist only in countries as Nigeria - they are in your own backyard - go to our page David vs Goliath and find out about a US Fortune 500 company and its scam it has played on me. It may save you some heartbreak.
The names of the authors of these letters below have been changed to protect the identity of the individuals involved.
Dear Editor,
We want to thank you for your true short story of "Greed - Missile of Black Gold". Last week my husband experienced something similar. He received a letter from Dr. Raymond Adams, Surulere-Lagos (Assistant Chief Accountant with the Nigerian National Perroleum Corporation (NNPC); to find out if my husband's company would be interested in making 25% of US $24.5 million by allowing the transfer of funds to our company.
We did not know what to make out of this at first. Going through a very crucial time with the company (due to many cuts and regulations in the fishery industry in Canada) we could not let this deal go by without looking into it.
We were intrigued and afraid that something was not right, and if it was a shady deal we did not want to get involved. We also wondered how this person had obtained the mailing address in Canada of our company?
For me, I could not let it go by without looking into it. All our problems would be solved (sound familiar)!
Mind you, my husband was not quite convinced that he was going to follow it up. Therefore, I answered that person "by fax only" letting him know that we were interested but that we needed more information.
Next day a reply from "Dr. Adams" was on our fax asking for the bank and account that we are dealing with, and also asking us know to send a letterhead with an invoice and contract to a specific company, and with istructions to bill them for the US $24.5 million. Travel to Nigeria by my husbund was also indicated.
After discusing this with my husband and son, I sugested that we should check if this company existed in Nigeria. Therefore, I asked my son to check it out on the internet under Nigeria. Lord and behold! He did not find the company but he came across your article. Were we glad about it!
My son and I could not believe that people spend time in trying to ruin people that they do not even know!.
Nevertheless, it was a big disapointment for my 16 years old. He suggested we should follow it up. I was glad that this deal was over. My husband had a kind of smile as if to tell me "if is to good to be true, it is not right".
Anyway, the fax with the account and bank number was not sent. This morning our business phone rang. It was Dr. Adams requesting the information. My husband sugested that if he was to do that, he wanted an amount of money put in or account "in good faith".
The telephone was silent for a minute. Then Adams came back and told him that he could not talk to him because it was to dangereous and ask him to contact him back by fax. My husband laughed. We expect this will be the last we hear from him.
I want to thank you again for this information. You saved us a lot of our time. We would not have sent any money or transferred any amount to Nigeria, but in the mean time we would problably have been thinking what kind of deal or what kind of people we would be getting involved with, and if I did not pursue it, how much truth was in it.
Thanks again,
Anna
Hello Editor,
My name is Tom Mathias. I live in Marquette. We have been contacted twice within a three week period with almost the same story you wrote about. The first was so convincing we stayed with it for 2 1/2 weeks. Actually we have not let them know that we know about them yet. They have been asking for money to finalize the deal before depositing $30 million into our acount but we keep telling them it's all tied up right now...
Do you have any more info we could use?
Thank you,
Mathias
P.S. Thank you for taking the time to write your short story.
From: Thomas Abraham tomjay@nyc.pipeline.com
Subject: GOPIO Description
Dear Jacob:
Thank you for sending me the e-mail (about each issue of Findians Briefings). Please look into my web page which describes the organization I am heading, i.e. Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO). At some stage we want to reach out to Indians living in Finland and other Scandinavian countries.
With kindest regards, Sincerely,
Tom Abraham
Professor, Columbia University
My web page is:
Professor Thomas Abraham
to the Findians web complex
Hope you had a pleasant stay.