Nokia: We don't sell phones here
In an otherwise run-of-the-mill profile on cellphone manufacturing giant Nokia, The Seattle Times reveals this funny little tidbit about corporate culture at the Finnish firm: employees are supposedly barred from referring to the company's products as "phones." Instead, according to Vice President of multimedia strategy and business development Harry Santamäki, all of the handsets are known around the company as "multimedia computers," which we're sure elicits more than a few snickers when they're discussing the no-frills, monochrome, um, computers of the 1000 series. And proving that his anti-phone rhetoric isn't just lip service, Santamäki swears that he'll take a swig from the bottle of cod liver oil on his desk if he himself should ever happen to utter the archaic, forbidden word. Unfortunately for Harry, Engadget Mobile will continue to refer to Nokia's products as phones, cellphones, or perhaps even telephones, but luckily a little program called Greasemonkey should enable him to continue reading the site while remaining blissfully phone-free.[Via textually]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
strider_mt2k @ May 15th 2006 12:47PM
A phone by any other name...
Steve Litchfield @ May 15th 2006 1:50PM
I suspect he was misquoted. He was referring to how Nokia refer to their main Nseries smartphone line, i.e. in their division.
All Eseries devices and other S60 devices are 'smartphones' and the rest are 'phones', of course.
Steve Litchfield
AllAboutSymbian
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/
Brian @ May 15th 2006 3:09PM
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Trying to overcome the inertia of popularly accepted vocabulary is rarely successful.
Tommi Vilkamo @ May 16th 2006 2:39AM
Yep, this is partially a misunderstaning.
Nokia consists of 4 business groups:
1. Mobile Phones
2. Multimedia
3. Enterprise Solutions
4. Networks
Only Multimedia business group's products are referred as "multimedia computers". In fact, they are increasingly starting to look like ones.
The 1000 series come from the Mobile Phones BG, and they are naturally called phones.
We might be dumb sometimes in the naming business, but not that dumb :)
I love next generation n-gage @ May 16th 2006 4:07AM
Santamki is of course taking about N and E-serie smartphones. Like in Finland Nokia is building only High-end smartphones like N70, N93 etc.
Smartphones are much more than only a phone so its easier to talk about multimedia computers.
How deep is engadget going? Quality of engadgets reports gets worse every day. This is just sad...
tixx.com @ May 16th 2006 8:58AM
thats too funny that was my first cell phone it cost $2,000 used in 1987 great phone i still have it somewhere
Lebeu @ May 16th 2006 9:03AM
Must be a quiet day at the office ;)
t.j.barbour @ May 16th 2006 8:26PM
Oh man, this article should have been titled:
"Nokia: We don't cell phones here"
I can't pass up such a corny opportunity!
Daniel Rocha @ May 18th 2006 7:33PM
Well, I work for Nokia and as a bunch of other people, I refer to all our products as phones. Except for the 770 of course, which I usually call "that Linux thingy".
Daniel