Will 5800 substitute Nokia N96?

Nokia N96 was the device that Nokia promoted in the last Christmas, all over the world we saw huge campaigns with this smartphone. Many were expecting to buy Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in 2008 but Nokia has announced that will start selling the device in Europe, first in UK, from 23rd January this year.

Does this means that Nokia N96 will lose market having the 5800 available? It’s cheaper, it’s touchscreen, it’s xpress music, has a great camera and GPS built-in. Well, probably Nokia will simply raise the sales.

In my point of view, N96 is focused for high-end users, like those who would buy HTC Touch HD, it’s  expensive and a great mobile phone and at the level of Nokia n96. While Nokia 5800 will be sold for medium-end users, the price is over 300 euros, but might probably drop as time goes by to …200, 199 (hehe) or even 149 euros, so then, we would be able to really consider 5800 a medium-end mobile phone.

Having two great handsets in the market, N96 (..and futurely the N97) competing against HTC Touch Diamond, Touch HD and Blackberry Storm/Bold and the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music, Nokia might get a big percentage of those 2 markets, high-end  and medium-end users.

And as you already know, nowadays what can makes a successful device isn’t the device itself but all the advertisement investment that is made. We are in a big crisis which analysts predict it will increase in 2009 and we must have in mind that companys will invest less money in marketing and advertising, blackberry and HTC must cut those costs and the same will happen to Nokia, but as Nokia is a giant they are able to always mantain the promotion of some of their best handsets.