Virtual Pants

John Gruber on today’s Lumia 920 announcement:

And: no ship date. Windows Phone 8 isn’t out yet, so who knows when you’ll actually be able to buy one of these things? What’s the advantage to announcing these phones ahead of the iPhone 5 if they aren’t also going to sell them ahead of the iPhone 5?

Of course Nokia would have preferred to announce their latest flagship phone along with a confirmed ship date that was very near in the future. But they had no choice. With the iPhone 5 announcement next week, the announcement had to come this week. Why? So somebody cared.

If Nokia waited until after the iPhone 5 announcement they risked being lost in the ensuing frenzy. The blogosphere and media will be utterly consumed with the iPhone 5 from September 12th until it launches. Add another few days for long lines on the news, unboxings and reviews and September is almost over.

Consider the people that may actually pass on the iPhone 5 in favor of the Lumia 920 now that they know it is coming (not many, but probably some). These people may have signed new two-year contracts with iPhone 5’s had Nokia not made the announcement today.

We need to give world class companies like Nokia a little credit. They might be behind in the smartphone race, but they aren’t stupid. While not ideal, they did the best that they could given the circumstances. And at the end of the day, that’s all they can do.