If you think Nokia’s out, you could be wrong!

“It was just awful,” said Kim Sang-uk, 27, who bought the Omnia in late-2009 just before starting his first job. “I just wanted to throw it away, but couldn’t because I was on a 2-year contract. It was the kind of phone where you’d say ‘no’, even if someone gave it to you for free.”

This was the kind of consumer gripe when Samsung launched their first ever smartphone “Omnia” in retort to the rival iPhone way back in 2009. Frequent re-booting, dropped calls, forced closing of browsers were just the perfect elements to arouse this amongst consumers. Nowhere, believe us; nowhere in line did people ever could understand the reason behind launching of such a phone. This could be only the result of an unnerved response.

And it in fact was the toughest time. It has to be. 1 trillion won ($885 million) profit in its telecom sector in the first quarter of 2010 halved in the following quarter is a reflection of what Apple’s iPhone did to company’s revenue pasting.

Yet untouched by this and determined for the next level, Lee Minhyouk and his design team at Samsung Electronics were already working on the Galaxy smartphone with supreme belief in terms of a stronger opponent.

And Samsung has sold 44 million Galaxy units since its launch in June 2010 on its way to displacing Apple last year as the world’s top-selling smartphone maker.

Its success evolved from the Omnia, reportedly said Lee, the company’s youngest senior executive.

“Without Omnia and Samsung’s previous models, there would have been no Galaxys. There’s a design link among these products,” he said in an interview at his office. “They shouldn’t be viewed as fragmental design. They share our deep deliberation on technology, color and design language.”A paradigm shift for Samsung as well as Apple, with a big round of applause for Samsung, at least from NothingWired.

This entire account somewhat pushes me to relate to the current situation of Nokia.

True, a drop in sales, and that too a mighty $4 billion cannot be pleasant news for any company. The perception amongst most consumers has already started developing that Windows phones are big time collapse compared to Android. This however, may not be the case. It takes time for everything to be in place and everything to settle down.

Those who recall the first Android phone, HTC G1 weren’t a hit overnight. Apart from users who understood Android well, the device was considered as just another crappy piece by many. However, the device sold fairly well, making it to 1 million units in the same year. Its user reviews, user experiences, user complaints that made HTC learn from their mistake. And with the recently released one X and one V series, who would believe that HTC could create something like a G1 at one of time?

Nokia is probably waiting for people to get their hands on Windows before they actually know that it’s better than Android. They want people to experience the platform by pricing the Lumia at a comfort level of most casual smartphone buyers. And with Windows 8 on the run, they might as well have something significantly better than Android. Anybody who has tried their hands on with the Lumia 900 will understand the better UI experience, speed and null hardware compatibility of the Nokia-Microsoft combination and that would improve with Windows 8; note that down.

So, ignore Nokia and Stephen Elop if you want to follow only Android to the grave. But even then, it cannot stop the emanation of another paradigm shift.

Via Reuters and TechCrunch