Nokia’s effort to recover from a burning platform surfaced yesterday in the form of the Lumia 800 and 710 Windows Phone devices. Not everyone was impressed by the device, but the Lumia will be remembered as a the first smartphone that makes the list.

There are very few electronics companies that have an explicit talent for coming up with great product names. Two exceptions would be Intel’s Pentium and Sony’s Walkman. However, electronics buyers usually have to contend with cryptic number sequences that follow product names,which are more a pain in the neck for the consumer than a way to identify and characterize a certain product. Nokia’s product line, for example, has such appealing devices as the N8-00, the E7-00, the C6-01, and the C5-03. Admittedly, there’s an intended technical structure behind those numbers, but I would argue that it’s not the best way to market a product to consumers. A simple “iPhone” brand works much better.

Apple somehow changed the way the industry thinks about product names with the iPod. It took a while for its rivals to realize that barcode-like product names don’t really work. As a result, we have devices such as Microsoft’s Zune, which made those products much more identifiable and memorable (even if the Zune is dead now). Nokia must have had the same thought: a spicy, phonetically appealing product name with a slightly artistic touch. Lumia was the winner in Nokia’s smartphone naming contest and was – this is a wild guess – probably chosen as it relates to the Latin word lumen, which can be used for lantern, or lamp, but most often refers to light.

History should have taught Nokia’s branding managers and agencies that there must be a certain diligence when creating artificial product names. Could that new name already be in existence, possibly in other languages, along with their slang versions? A simple Google search could have told Nokia that lumia carries the meaning of prostitute in conversational Spanish. I am looking forward to those special editions of Lumia phones. There could be a rather tasteful Lovers Lane Lumia phone wrapped in lace, a slightly more aggressive version that gives a rubber bumper case new meaning, or a raunchy Flagship model that comes with all the bells and whistles, including pre-loaded databases for every major city, website subscriptions and plenty of over-age-18 apps. Someone must put those 25 GB of free online storage to good use, right?

In all seriousness, could someone have told Nokia to simply Google the Lumia product name? Wasn’t this supposed to be the big rescue effort for Nokia? Wasn’t Microsoft behind this project, and didn’t Microsoft say that Nokia will get special access to Microsoft resources? For sure, the Lumia phones will be remembered as products with one of the worst product names in a list with candidates such as the Ford Pinto (Brazilian slang for male genitals), the Mitsubishi Pajero (could refer to a masturbating male in Spanish), or Sierra Mist. (Mist is used in German as a word with the equivalent meaning of crap.)

If it were not for the product name, the Lumia appears to be a rather forgettable phone that lacks the degree of effort I would have expected from Nokia, assuming that it is serious about saving its burning platform. Microsoft is doing well at squeezing the Android market, thanks to its patents, but it would have needed a stunner from Nokia to give Windows Phone a chance. So far, the equation still does not work. Two losers do not equal one winner. Competitively, the Lumia devices are priced adjacent to its high-end rivals but offer little to no differentiation in its industrial design and GUI – with the exception of a navigation and music service. Will that be differentiation enough? I am not sure. If I consider the resources Nokia has available, the first Lumia devices are disappointing. Remember, this was the company that dominated the cell phones space for more than a decade. Therefore, it should be a company that is capable of driving innovation, not just following it with a distance of a year, in a best case scenario.

Nokia should have answered the question: How will this smartphone be remembered by our customers? It’s obvious today that it will be remembered because of its name, but, besides that, what is really memorable about the Nokia Windows Phone? There is no standout feature that is convincing enough to make me wait in line for the device. From a design, GUI and even an app perspective, this is just a me-too-phone and, in my opinion, an indication that Nokia could drift away into meaninglessness. Among Windows Phone smartphones, it may be one of the more appealing devices. Still, we don’t know when this product will come to the U.S., and being the best Windows Phone wasn’t the goal anyway. The goal was to be the best smartphone, no questions asked. In its current shape, the Lumia won’t save Nokia, nor will it save Windows Phone.

SOURCE via MSNBC