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Trim Trend Eludes Nokia

Scott Moritz

Thin is in.

You name it -- TVs, iPods, cell phones. The consuming passion for superskinny tech goods is becoming a little obvious.

Yet the slimming trend isn't apparent in Nokia's (NOK) new phone lineup. With the exception of its $900 steel Zippo lighter-inspired 8800 model, the world's favorite handset maker looks to be getting another late start on a sweeping phone fashion.

The flattening of the phone world started over a year ago, when No. 2 Motorola (MOT) launched the ultra-thin Razr phone. Proving to be the right phone at the right time, Razr has helped Motorola to wrest away handset design leadership, with 6.5 million units shipped in the third quarter. The company expects to sell 20 million Razrs this year.

Hoping to build on that success, Motorola plans to have a new Razr available in the coming weeks for code division multiple access, or CDMA, telcos like Verizon Wireless and Sprint (S). And as a followup to the Razr, the Schaumburg, Ill., tech titan this year will launch a half-inch-thick phone called the Slvr. Motorola's newest phonetically spelled phone is about half as thick as Nokia's new 6233 flagship third-generation offering.

Industry observers spot a trend in the making. They point to thin imitations at Samsung, with its Blade phone coming to Sprint, and other challengers.

The growing fear is that Helsinki may be headed for a repeat of a troubling fashion misstep. Nokia, as you may recall, was caught out two winters ago peddling candy bar phones to people shopping for clam shell flip phones. That stubbornness cost Nokia market share and forced the company to rethink its design and production operations.

Nokia now offers about a dozen flip phones and has a considerable range of styles and features available in the 50-plus phones it has introduced this year.

Some see little impact. Unlike smaller phone makers whose "one design flop can be damaging, Nokia has so many phones one failed design isn't going to matter much," says Henrik Didner, a money manager with Didner & George of Uppsala, Sweden. He was in New York Thursday for the company's annual Capital Market Days briefing.

Still, when it comes to ultrathin phones, Nokia seems to be showing a reversion to its tone-deaf ways.

Nokia executives said the company is continually working to make better, sleeker phones, but downplayed the notion that phones have to be slim to win.

"Thinness isn't the only criteria," said Nokia operating chief Olli Pekka Kallasvuo in an interview Thursday. "Thin, small, the personal element, it's the totality" of the phone that matters. "You can't take just one element."

But some observers say that comment hits a familiar note -- that Nokia's way is the only way.

"It's typical Nokia," said one industry analyst. "They won't do it because they didn't think of it first."