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Nokia Announces New Windows Phone With Ridiculous Camera, Not Much Else

Tom Warren reports for The Verge:

The Lumia 1020 is a big upgrade over Nokia's previous Windows Phone efforts for one reason alone: a 41-megapixel camera.

Okay, that’s cool. What else has changed, though?

Camera aside, the Lumia 1020 is largely unchanged from the specifications of Nokia's Lumia 920 and 925.

Huh.

I can’t help but feel Windows Phone is in for a tough time ahead. If the flagship hardware device for WP is seeing no CPU change this generation and there’s not going to be an update to the software until next year, it won’t be easy for Microsoft to claw back any market share.

PC Shipments Shrank 10.9% in Second Quarter 2013

“We are seeing the PC market reduction directly tied to the shrinking installed base of PCs,” Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in the statement. “In emerging markets, inexpensive tablets have become the first computing device for many people, who at best are deferring the purchase of a PC.”

This can’t be good news for Microsoft: they won the desktop PC market, but they’re not winning the smartphone or tablet market.

Why can’t Microsoft get their products right on the first try?

Owen Williams calls it how he sees it:

It’s easy enough to argue that the iPhone 1, for example, shipped without many features we have today as they were added over time, but Apple at the time were creating their own market. The popular phones were the kind that flipped and slid open, or had a stylus. Microsoft is executing the same strategy – release now, fix later – that their competitors use but they’re five steps behind the rest.