Nokia’s price drop of the Lumia 900 was not a sign of weak sales, the media has it wrong

Although we cheered at Nokia dropping the price of the AT&T Lumia 900 a few days ago, many detractors in the tech media looked for a negative angle to the story, resulting in some damning headlines this past week.

What was the other tale they were spinning? That the Lumia 900 must not be doing well—after all, why would Nokia (and AT&T) cut the price “so soon” after launch? Forgetting the fact that “so soon” is exactly 3 months or we’ve seen price drops after launches before. That didn’t stop various media outlets like this example which boasts

“Finnish phone maker Nokia has been forced to cut the price of its Lumia 900 by half, just weeks after launching it”.

Forced? Just weeks? That story went over the ANI wire to a lot of news outlets. One problem though: they were wrong.

Read more after the break..

Nokia saw this too with Keith Nowak, who handles Nokia's PR, noting last weekend on Twitter:

“Questionable Lumia 900 "analysis" going on. Folks, phones that are being "cleared out" don't get new colors ranged… no carrier will add *more* skus (pink just launched today) if they are trying to "clear out" inventory. They would minimize skus.”

Still, the damage had been done with rags like the Daily Mail piling on.  As it turns out, smartphones normally drop their price after a few months with no one making much noise of the fact.

Strategy Analytics, who we mentioned earlier today, has come to the defense of the Lumia 900—literally, that’s their headline. They looked at some of comparable phone launches and used PriceTRAX to plot the price points of phones like the Nokia Lumia 900, Samsung Focus S, HTC Titan II, HTC Hero S and the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket. Their conclusion?

“The charts show pricing from launch and appears to demonstrate that it is quite normal for smartphone up-front prices to decline in the first 3 months after launch.”

But that’s data, that’s facts and those things have never stood in the way of a good yarn to spin, especially when it involves picking on the new guy. Bravo, tech "journalists", bravo.

​Does this mean the Lumia 900 is a hit? We just don't know but having some context written with these stories instead of treating it like an anomaly would go a long way in fairness in reporting.

Source: Strategy Analytics