Retail space is the new black, but it must be costing Nokia a small fortune
Today I decided to check out the new Nokia store in London's posh Regent street.
It's directly opposite the very popular Apple store and thematically looks similar: it feels spacious, and futuristic in a Ridley Scott kind of way. But in total size it's much smaller than Apple's. About a third of the width, but it also has a second floor - though only for customer support.
Naturally there are phones everywhere as well as a few accessories, and loads and loads of staff. I counted about twelve staffers and three security guys looking after about 25 customers. Compare that to about 25 staff and 250 punters across the road at Apple's shop. They have even shipped over two staffers from the New York store.
I was there to buy a connect cable and a MicroSD card. My experience wasn't that good. Firstly they didn't have the card in stock, then they sold me the cable at the wrong price - £28 instead of £21. When I spotted this the female staffer had to fiddle around on the checkout machine for about ten minutes as well as make a call to a superior to fix the problem.
I have to say she was really polite, but as the shop has been open for a week already I would have thought that they had sussed out the cash machines by now.
After that I got chatting with a very helpful sales guy. 'No,' he told me they don't know when they are getting any of the kit just announced in Barcelona (notably the N96) and 'no' there are no plans to have a tripod socket or the like in some of the high end phones to make it easier to hold them while filming. However he was able to show me a tripod which uses a small vice to hold onto the phone - it looks ugly as hell and they don't have any in stock - but I suppose it's better than nothing.
Footnote: They had a live link to the Nokia press conference last week, so in future it may be the place to go to watch such events live. Maybe they even crack open a few bottles of bubbly.
Verdict: Friendly staff still grappling with the payment systems. Accessory stock a bit on the low side bearing in mind this is a flagship store.
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