Nokia’s new Lumia smartphone is about as difficult to buy in the
United States as Apple’s iPhone 5. In many online and brick-and-mortar
stores, the Lumia 920 is sold out. But does that mean it’s popular?
On
Amazon.com, the Lumia 920 is labeled “backordered” with a shipping time
of one to two weeks. In Manhattan, the phone is not available for an
in-store pickup at any Best Buy location. This month, Nokia
representatives even said the company was struggling to get the phones
out to technology journalists who were interested in reviewing the
device because there weren’t enough to go around.
Nokia’s last
flagship phone, the Lumia 900, didn’t sell very well here. Zacks Equity
Research says the sold-out Lumia 920 is an early sign that Nokia has a “fighting chance” against Apple and the army of Android phones on the market.
But
it’s difficult to believe that the Lumia 920, an exclusive to AT&T
in the United States, is drawing such a crowd. Tero Kuittinen, an
independent mobile analyst, says he thinks Nokia limited the supply of
the Lumia here because it was aiming its first wave at Europe, where its
smartphones have sold better in the past.
He noted that on
Amazon, for instance, the Lumia 920 sold out just three days after it
went on sale on Nov. 7, and the “backordered” status has stuck ever
since — a sign that Nokia may simply be lowballing supply because it
doesn’t expect to sell many phones here.
Doug Dawson, a Nokia
spokesman, declined to comment on whether the difficulty of buying the
phone was related to unusually low supply. He said Nokia didn’t have
numbers to share about early sales.
“You can be very sure that we are working hard to meet the demand,” Mr. Dawson said.
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