iPhone 5 – Executioner of Nokia & RIM

By Thea Neuman (Google)

The launch of iPhone 5 has been the talk of technology world as the most telegraphed and chic smart phone released till date. iPhone 5 was recently launched in US on 21st of September and it is being made available in 22 countries across the globe in the running week. This seems to be a piece of bad news for the Nokia Corporation as well as Research In Motion Ltd. This might also been seen as a major reason for downfall of the two major mobile giants and a threat to their future existence.

What is mesmerizing is the fact that a company like Apple can keep the launch of a new phone a secret and yet manage to get over a million handsets to customers within nine days. The new Blackberry operating system of RIM has been delayed and would probably miss the holiday season of 2012. Nokia may not be able to launch its Window smart phones in this year at all.

Bloomberg has recently updated an estimate obtained from its analysts that around 49 million iPhones will be sold in the year 2012. The scenario where both Nokia as well as RIM have smart phones launching at the year’s ending and both handsets are not being able to compete with iPhone 5 in this holiday season, spells disaster. Most experts call it as the “cluster”.

Even if Apple manages to sell the above quoted number of handsets by the year end, it is to be noted that most customers tend to buy phones and then get into contracts for almost two years and more. Nokia as well as RIM cannot expect that the customers will abandon their recently purchased new iPhones for either a Lumia or even a new Blackberry within a mere span of few months. This just seems outrageous to most market analysts.

Another interesting fact is that Apple has launched its iPhone 5 through three main carriers i.e. AT&T Inc, Sprint Nextel as well as Verizon Communications. The odds that any salesman will even mention the soon to be launched Lumia or the new Blackberry are very rare. This is another reason that makes people think that Nokia and RIM have missed their chances and probably a huge chunk of market share.

Both Nokia and RIM were hoping that due to hack attacks and technical glitches, the launch of the iPhone 5 would be slotted. This never happened and now the truth remains that both of these companies have lost their competitive edge in present day smart phones market.

With the new smart phone from the famous Google Inc. equipped with an android operating system expected to hit the markets from several carries in the coming week, Google hopes to bag the customer base which will miss the iPhone by year end. On the other hand, Nokia and RIM seem to be gasping for their life as their customer base dwindles and market opens to the charms of the iPhone 5 and other smart phone companies.