Dean Bubley: Under-the-wire.... Nokia direct-to-consumer U.K. online shop

Dean Bubley writes at the Disruptive Wireless blog about Nokia's new "direct to consumer Online Shop in the UK, selling SIM-free "vanilla" handsets for "those who may wish to upgrade to a new or more featured device model or have an additional mobile device". It's planning on launching similar sites elsewhere in Europe later in 2006."

Bubley believes "growth in handset volumes in saturated markets will increasingly be driven by "second phones" - currently a market poorly catered-for by operators." He also thinks "Nokia must also be irked by the trend towards 18 month contracts and slower upgrade cycles. It presumably also wants to wean certain countries' customers off of handset subsidies - especially when the carrier decides to subsidise a competing product & bundle it with theirs."

Bubley wonders if "this move to sell direct would annoy the mobile operators, and represent a return to the "them vs. us" arms race between handset vendors and carriers, around customer and UI ownership," but then points out that in the U.K. "SIM-free phones have been available from Carphone Warehouse, Expansys and other places, maybe this isn't such a big deal after all."

In the end, Bubley states:

I actually think this is pretty important, especially as I continue to hear that operators are "conspiring" to reduce the accessibility of WiFi-enabled handsets. Looking at the site, it seems to be an avenue to push both exclusive variants of handsets (eg Black 8800), existing models that operators aren't pushing / customers aren't buying (eg N90). Even more interesting would be if Nokia did a direct-to-enterprise online shop for its upcoming E-Series devices.

Something like this probably wouldn't fly in the U.S. where the network operators call the shots regarding handset sales. I wish it wasn't the case because there are plenty of cool handsets that never see the light of day over here because the carriers don't pick them up...