Nokia Turns To Android To Regain Share In Emerging Markets 146
puddingebola writes "Nokia is preparing to release its first Android phone, as the lost market share in emerging markets from the death of Symbian has never been recovered. Windows Phone could never be adapted to the entry level devices that have driven growth in these markets, necessitating the move. From the article, 'Nokia was once the king of cellphones in emerging markets. But it has lost ground because it was slow to respond to Android's popularity in many countries. In India, where Nokia's Symbian-powered phones held a big share of cellphone sales just a few years ago, Android was installed on 93% of new smartphones shipped there last year, according to estimates from research firm IDC.'"
Which goes to show... (Score:1)
you cannot compete with free.
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Actually, it IS that easy (Score:1)
Given that Nokia's Hardware isn't too different from what's out there, Android would just work.
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As Google moves more of its functionality from ASOP to Google Play store apps [arstechnica.com], it is becoming less free (as in beer [google.com] and freedom).
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Directly speaking, that's true. Indirectly speaking, a phone vendor effectively must forgo any revenue potential for providers of services that compete with Google, given Google's restrictictions around prominence of their apps, and the defaults they enforce around search and location. Coincidentally, there is another Ars article [arstechnica.com] on the topic.
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Re:Actually, it IS that easy (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand. They have a completely open source operating system. Why should that automagically give everyone unrestricted rights to all of Google's services?
Just because I needed to buy a copy of a program doesn't make Linux any less free and open source. And by extension there are several other Android platforms out there which don't have any of Google's Services including the app store, (see Amazon, B&N etc)
It hasn't moved any functionality out of Android. Just because the Google Play Music app exists doesn't mean the old app has stopped working. Just because Google Cards is now the default search on their phones, doesn't mean the old Google Search stopped, and by extension just because Google is forcing man+dog to the G+ platform won't mean that the SMS app suddenly stops sending SMSes. In fact I'm willing to bet that the apps will happily interact.
Re:Which goes to show how much you know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Android's super-open, it just turns out people are more interested in the idea of having Google services on a phone than in Android itself. And that part is certainly not open. If you want to find your own supplier for maps, email, calendar, and browser, then you can launch your own Android gizmo; Microsoft has all those things.
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If you want to find your own supplier for maps, email, calendar, and browser, then you can launch your own Android gizmo; Microsoft has all those things.
Ho ly crap... If Microsoft "forks" android with MS versions of the droid apps, that would be a serious earth shaker. Keep in mind that there are a lot of cheap tablet players making droid devices with no Google apps due to this licensing. Robing Google of Android market-share would be both amusing, and potentially profitable!
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Robing Google of Android market-share would be both amusing, and potentially profitable!
It would be good to see other companies competing with Google for a bundled app-stack on Android, so if MS or even Apple were to compete, then this would be a good thing.
But just to pick up on your point about it being "amusing", I assume you're saying that because Google created Android, and thus if they got screwed over for making a genuinely open platform, this would some how be funny?
Let's be clear here, Google have been playing nice (mostly) all the way through. That's why other people can take tha
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But just to pick up on your point about it being "amusing", I assume you're saying that because Google created Android, and thus if they got screwed over for making a genuinely open platform, this would some how be funny? Let's be clear here, Google have been playing nice (mostly) all the way through. That's why other people can take that platform and monetise it without paying Google a bean. I'd love to see MS do something like that... because of course, they wouldn't.
I was thinking about how much money was invested in the SEVERAL failed Windows phone operating systems, and to finally have success with the Google free OS would be amusing. It is success, so they should be happy, but with someone else's stuff, so... :)
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Tada [android.com]
You can feel free to load that on any device you want. All that is needed is an electronics platform to put it on and the vendors to provide you with any drivers for the sensors or the specs to write the driver in question. You see that's exactly what you get when you load custom ROMs. Some guy grabs the AOSP and strips the drivers out of the phone's firmware (or reverse engineers it), and bam, the latest Android 4.4 on your shitty old abandoned phone.
This is as free as putting Linux on a computer. Now
And another pointless phone (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, who's going to buy a Nokia Android phone when you know they've been bought by Microsoft and won't care one bit about supporting it? Same as the Maemo/MeeGo based phones that Nokia released after the Nokia/Microsoft deal was announced, it's stillborn. And unlike those who might have some unique features this is yet another Android phone that you can get from other companies, so it makes even less sense. Nokia must be running out of feet to shoot itself in.
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Or Microsoft has shot off all the toes they needed to get what they wanted -- which was an established brand to make Microsoft Phones.
Don't forget, it was Stephen Elop from Microsoft who has more or less ruined the company and dragged down their value by making terrible decisions.
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My perspective, the terrible decisions and more damaging, lousy execution of plans were already done when Elop took over - the biggest terrible decision of course being to give Elop the job.
They had a rough go with Qt/Maemo, then they changed course, to a dead end street.
I've read elsewhere that Windows is embracing Android, both on the desktop and in their phones, so a pure Android Nokia phone isn't 100% off base, especially if it can do something clever with MS Office and Exchange integration.
Personally,
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They had a rough go with Qt/Maemo, then they changed course, to a dead end street.
Was Maemo ever Qt? I thought they changed the name when they switched it from GTK to Qt. And there you see the real problem with Nokia: a complete lack of direction. They had, in EKA2, a beautifully designed kernel for mobile applications, tied to a userland and userspace APIs that were designed when 1MB of RAM was an insane quantity reserved for the most expensive of phones. So, the first thing they did was try to shoehorn Linux into a phone. Then, having replaced the one good bit of their stack with
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I never kept up with the names - beyond Qt at least. They always seemed like pre-beta not ready for wasting my time on projects.
If I had gotten Elop's job at Nokia (which I wouldn't have, because I don't have ties to Microsoft, but just fantasize), I would have continued the Linux on phone development with Qt as the UI, put serious resources into a desktop phone emulator that works (unlike my current experience with Eclipse and Android simulation), and focused on making developer friendly software that wor
Re:And another pointless phone (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I've heard from ex-Nokia people, it wasn't just senior management that lacked direction. They had internal teams all developing complete stacks in isolation and competing for resources. Elop wasn't completely wrong: making them all focus on a single platform was probably the only thing that could have saved Nokia, and Windows Phone wasn't a completely ludicrous choice, as they did want something to differentiate themselves from the competition and there weren't any other significant Windows Phone vendors to compete with.
Pushing ahead with Linux + Qt might have worked, but only if they'd fired about 90% of middle management and reorganised the teams. Even then, there would likely have been a lot of resentment from the various teams that had their work discarded in favour of another's. Remember that Nokia didn't have a Linux + Qt platform, they had several, all with mutually incompatible frameworks built atop Qt, none of which was compellingly better than the others.
It's a shame that the Qt on EKA2 project was killed. The EKA2 kernel was a much better fit for mobile devices than Linux (it still amazes me after all of Google's investment how few of its features Android has), and Qt would have given them the base of a modern development environment that would have competed well with other platforms.
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>internal teams all developing complete stacks in isolation and competing for resources
One of the prime dangers of being big and well resourced. Somebody at the top should have been regularly breaking up the party and selecting "the best of" what was developed to be the companywide platform, then continue from there. Or, better still, train the teams to play in their own sandboxes and trust their colleagues to give them the support they need. Both approaches have drawbacks, but competing with yourself
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Story of my life...
I was hired at a local firm as a "Senior Developer," then promptly given responsibility for managing an international development team, developing a new product architecture from the ground up, updating the infrastructure and driving adoption of best practices, etc. Not a problem, it's what I do, but lately I'm given that "Senior Developer" title because my professional career lacks any big home run projects. Judged not based on abilities or performance of me or my teams, but on the mar
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Yes, Maemo has Qt (Score:2)
... since ~2009. The community, who seem to be in love with Qt, have ported Qt5: http://talk.maemo.org/showthre... [maemo.org]
Re:And another pointless phone (Score:4, Interesting)
They had a rough go with Qt/Maemo, then they changed course, to a dead end street.
I have a hilarious history from the time I used to work to a Nokia partner. :-)
Nokia had given us a free QT for Mobile workshop for our team. We attended the workshop, and we enjoyed it very much.
However, roughly one year later, someone on Nokia had called us bitterly complaining why in hell our shop didn't released any APP using QT yet.
Our answer? "Because YOU had hired us to develop APPs for you, and YOU had NOT asked for it!"
The funny thing is that in that year, we were called to develop APPs (or prototypes) on J2ME, Symbian, Android, iOS and even BADA (serious! I made a APP for BADA!! Honest!). But nobody on Nokia had asked us for anything using QT.
Go figure it out - I couldn't.
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I'm not following. You said to Nokia, "YOU had hired us to develop APPs for you"... doesn't that by definition mean they requested you to develop apps for them? Why would you then say "YOU had NOT asked for it"?
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Sounds like an unused retainer agreement to me - I had one of those once...
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Doesn't make what he said any less confusing. He could have clarified wtf he was talking about when he quoted what he was saying to the Nokia rep.
This sentence: "Because YOU had hired us to develop APPs for you, and YOU had NOT asked for it!" was confusing as hell in the context it was given.
I literally read that quote several times thinking I was reading it wrong.
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Fucking myopic nerd, why do you think they sent you to the seminar???/quote
To make QT Apps, of course.
However, since THEY are the contractors, we build the APPs THEY ask for. And they didn't ask for any QT APPs.
This is clear enough for you, fscking functionally illiterate slashdotter? :-)
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That was not a joke. You're illiterate.
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Re:And another pointless phone (Score:4, Interesting)
As an S60 fan from their glory days, this is a traditional Nokia mistake. You'd be amazed at the incredible products Nokia has managed to render obsolete or irrelevant by competition between different business units.
Re:And another pointless phone (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, who's going to buy a Nokia Android phone when you know they've been bought by Microsoft and won't care one bit about supporting it?
Possible customers include anyone who doesn't follow mobile phone news very closely. Which is most people. Tech business news is not exactly gobbled up by the public. Most slashdotters won't buy, but mobile nerds aren't common. AND I might buy one if the hardware's nice enough and I can root it. What do I care about support for it if I can just install cyanogenmod?
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The hardware's for emerging markets, one of Nokia's strong points.
It's not going to be "nice" hardware, it's going to be "cheap" hardware. The on
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Well, they don't include *ultra*-low-end phones. WP7 would run on 1GHz single-core w/ 256MB of RAM, but it's dying. WP8 requires 1GHz dual-core w/ 512MB RAM, which is still damn cheap these days. The Lumia 520 has done well, and can be had for about $50 if you know where to look (though its MSRP is rather higher).
With that said, yeah, you won't find a $35-at-typical-retail-price WP8 device right now.
Sadly, no (Score:2)
If someone would make a proper Android keyboard phone I would buy it.
Being a different presentation medium killed that chance right off the bat, sadly. Touchscreen input, specifically, makes it so you can change software keyboards at will. Apple, never offered hard keyboard support on their "hip" tablets and phones. The clickwheels on the moderately ancient iPod design should have been a hint that input tech trends would never be the same.
This is a losing battle for us everywhere. HPs and other low-end desktops opted for full size keyboards w/laptop-like blunders --for no sa
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It's classic Nokia, really: dispirate teams running over time on projects so that by the time they launch, the market no longer exists. Meego, Maemo, Symbian^3, you name it, Nokia can make it run so far over time that all the company can do is pitch it out ate at whatever region that device is least irrelevant in.
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i disagree. They made a lot of products before the market even existed. N770 for one. The problem is management never pushed the projects or marketed them well enough. Having no vision did not help either. Nor did selling out to Microsoft when they were the leading cellphone manufacturer. It was just dumb.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nokia have done very good phones in the past, and even some Lumias (taking the WinPhone 8 away) are nicely designed. I know they can do a good, if not great Android phone. Probably not in the first try, but neither LG, Samsung, HTC made awesome phones in their 1st try.
My doubt is about the company itself.... Do they sold to Microsoft? Microsoft has the exclusive rights to the Lumia de
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The same people who buy crap from Micromax.
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People bought N9 which was doomed to the same fate.
So we'll see.
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Long live Winkia.
There are way more uninformed, uncaring, give me something shiny, consumers out that will buy Nokia phones than there are tech savvy ones, if and only if they make something that gets advertising, and reviews, and sparks the consumer's interest.
But between LG, Samsung, and iPhone phones how are they going to do that?
However, the reviews are written by people who do actually pay attention and thus, the only great reviews Nokia is likely to see will be the ones they pay fo
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Seriously, who's going to buy a Nokia Android phone when you know they've been bought by Microsoft and won't care one bit about supporting it?
Since when has Android products been supported by anybody? Seems like if you want an upgrade from the OS you bought with your phone, it normally has to be done by the owner because the manufacterer isn't going to put out an upgrade. Then again, most people don't seem to keep phones long enough to make a difference anyhow.
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Hmmm. (Score:2)
I guess selling your soul to the devil(Microsoft) did not work as well as planned did it Nokia?
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High end? (Score:1)
Nokia's smartphone ASP is almost half of the global smartphone market.
And since Nokia owns WP market share, the vast majority is low end.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, it's not going to work well to capture emerging markets. Most windows phones are pretty high end, and not in the price range of consumers in emerging markets.
Microsoft hasn't exactly cornered the high end market either...
Too Late (Score:1)
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That is all.
Is never too late, and with the vast amount of crappy Android phones in mid/low markets, the have a couple of segments where they can be a hit.
And even in the high end, I'm sure many of the Samsung Galaxy, and HTC users are already bored of the lines and want something fresh.
Microsoft caused it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And just how much of this can be laid at the feet of Microsoft?
Because once Stephen Elop got in there, he took what was a profitable company and turned it into a dog by changing their focus.
Microsoft doesn't care about Nokia, they care about having a division which makes Microsoft phones.
That Nokia is now realizing they might need to embrace Android to turn things around means it's going to be interesting to see when Microsoft finishes buying them. Because there's no way Redmond is going to allow them to make phones running anything but Microsoft stuff.
Microsoft has been nothing but bad for the viability of Nokia, and I don't see that changing in the future.
Because, really, these [wikipedia.org] are appalling numbers:
Elop was either grossly incompetent, or was there to lower the price of the company for the take over. Because he sure as hell failed to actually grow the company or do anything good for it.
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Almost all cellphone makers are losers:
Re:Microsoft caused it ... (Score:4, Informative)
Nokia's revenues were already falling dramatically; they peaked in 2007:
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock... [wikinvest.com]
Re: Microsoft caused it ... (Score:2)
If you look at Nokia's revenues over time, Elop had zero effect at all. If anything, it's amazing that the end of Symbian development doesn't show up as a massive cliff on that chart, implying he actually had a positive effect.
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Q1 2011 profits relate to device sold up to (not after) that point: the Windows Phone decision, by simple causality, had nothing to do with it. By that point Nokia were already well into a sustained profits slump, having had their last big smartphone success with the 5800 years before:
http://www.theguardian.com/bus... [theguardian.com]
This fantasy that Nokia was doing just fine until Elop came in has to end. We in the Symbian community could see the writing on the wall by the time the N97 flopped in 2009.
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Nokia's smartphone profits were dropping about 20% YoY every quarter for a year before Elop appeared.
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The smartphone unit had sustained almost a year of falling profits before that happened.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (Score:2)
Sounds like the standard Microsoft "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
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Oh, bankrupt is easy ... bankrupt and bought by Microsoft takes a little more work and planning.
The massive case of "Not Invented in Redmond" and the ensuing choices were either planned, or he was so lacking in objectivity as to be incompetent.
I think the shareholders of Nokia more or less got robbed, and Elop more or less drove the company int
...and the high end? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I can get a high-end Lumia and have Android, that would be amazing.
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True, but how many consumers would like a phone that can run their choice of OS? I certainly would.
If necessary, I'd even pay for MS as long as I don't have to use it. (as with almost all laptops)
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Realistically, almost none. The geek market would love it, but that's not a large market. Most people will buy some sort of computer (using the word rather generally) and use what came on it until it dies or they discard it.
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But a dual-boot phone, especially if it shipped with both would be widely liked, I think.
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Why? It would have serious geek value, but it would almost certainly wind up being left with one OS on most of the time.
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Of course . but the consumer could then have their favourite OS and phone. For example, I might like a Nokia running Android, while somone else might prefer an S5 with Windows. (What I really want is an iPad with Lubuntu).
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If I can get a high-end Lumia and have Android, that would be amazing.
That 41MP camera is amazing. I like the Nokia quality. I would be interested, and many people with me I think. Is this the first sign of common sense since Ballmer is gone?
Probably a false alarm (Score:2)
It's very likely that Nokia tested Android on its phones when it wanted Microsoft to close the deal, this is probably a false alarm born from those prototypes.
It makes no sense at all for MS to release an Android phone, and I doubt Nokia can release it and sell it in numbers before April (aquisition date), so I don't expect it to happen.
If it actually does come out, I see only two explanations. 1) Nokia is trying to scare MS from sealing the deal. 2) it's a thinly veiled attempt at saying "we tried Android
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Or, now that Elop is gone someone is genuinely trying to make Nokia a profitable and viable company again.
I strongly suspect there's still someone there who gives a damn and can see the situation they're in. And if that someone isn't beholden to Microsoft, they might actually
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3) It's a product that someone in Nokia thought could save the company a few years ago, and which they're going to launch because it is finally actually finished. It would not be the first time.
Welcome (Score:2)
Hey Nokia.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do it right. your flagship phones, rip that garbage Windows OS off of them and install Android. I would LOVE your 900megapixel phone with a nice clean Android 4.4 on it.
you could get it to market in 30 days, no hardware to change. Want it faster?? contact the Android hackers and tell them how to unlock the bootloader and give them full details on the hardware. You will have android ported to it within the week.
You will INSTANTLY gain market share.
Re:Hey Nokia.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Want it faster?? contact the Android hackers and tell them how to unlock the bootloader and give them full details on the hardware
Easier said than done? Seriously, with the amount of 3rd-party IP you're likely talking about, six to twelve months sounds more like it...
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I agree, that garbage Windows needs to stay the hell away from phones.
Ballmer gone - common sense is here (Score:2)
Now Ballmer is gone, will MS make the right decisions? This one could be the first sign of common sense at MS since a long time.
Ahh "Entry level" (Score:2)
Another term whose meaning has become useless. "Entry level" used to describe the level at which a person started, and then subsequently grew out of. It's not an entry level device if the consumer buys it and never grows up. I mean it is an entry level device, but calling it one is meaningless since any first is an entry.
Entry level devices, loss-leaders, starters, basics; these all used to be items that a consumer new to the technology would trial. If it worked for them, they'd throw it out and buy the
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When your word "maybe" becomes "didn't", your current phone is no longer an entry device, was my point. Entry level has nothing to do with high or low end. I'm actually on a very high end dumbphone. wrap your tiny head around that one.
and when you're done, if you ever are, you might want to put your name to your arguments, it might actually give them some weight.
No entry level Windows phone? (Score:3)
TMobile has sold the Windows-based Nokia Lumia 521 for $100 (non contract) for half a year or a year now. It's supposed to be a pretty decent phone for the low-end. $100 is already pretty low, and surely with the continual progress of hardware they could install the phone OS on $50 hardware.
Android has become the de facto standard, and people would have to have some compelling reason to choose Windows phone over the system everybody else has.
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So you're telling me that I can walk into a T-Mobile store and walk out with a completely paid-for Nokia Lumia 521, for $100, cash and carry?
Because if I can't do that, then it's not a $100 device.
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Yes. You'd probably also want monthly service, although you don't need to and I suppose you could just use Skype.
It's available now for $90 off Amazon.
I hope I don't sound like a Nokia 521 salesman.
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You can buy a Lumia 521 for 115$ without any contract
http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Lu... [amazon.com]
In India Lumia 520 is sold for around 130$ - fully paid for
http://www.flipkart.com/nokia-... [flipkart.com]
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But your link isn't to a 521. Here is a Lumia 521 for $90 off Amazon [amazon.com]
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There's smartphones cheaper than $50 in other countries?
It's so easy to import to the US, that I have to believe the only cheaper smartphones out there are the ones that are such utter crap they wouldn't pass UL testing. A lot of cheap smartphones are slightly cheaper in the US than in China. Of course there's less interest in the ultra-cheap market in 1st world nations, but it's still really easy to buy a $50 smartphone in the US.
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In the US, most smart phones are sold with a contract. I didn't pay full price for my latest phone; my carrier subsidized it and I'm paying for it with a more expensive monthly plan than I would have if things worked differently. This means that there's something of a floor for smart phone quality in the US: if it's cheaper than a phone that comes for free with the cheapest available plan, it isn't going to sell well. Something lower-end than that will sell a few units, but it likely isn't worth import
Didn't they sell out to Microsoft? (Score:2)
I thought Nokia sold its devices division to Microsoft. Also they already have their low end Asha platform
Maybe their software for android will be better (Score:2)
There is an awful lot of vendor-supplied software on my phone I want to keep at arms length.
Should have done this years ago (Score:3)
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They sure did. Palm also accepted the Microsoft Mobile Kiss of Death, so Nokia didn't even learn from history.
So let's see how "pissing in your pants to keep warm" works out :D
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Elop's intention all along was to drive the corp into the ground and clean up from its sale
This. People don't call him the Manchurian CEO for nothing.
Potential MS Tactics (& Strategic drawbacks) (Score:2)
Short Term:
- Start by making near stock (all Google app.) phone.
- Raise patent licensing fees for all Android phone makers other than MS/Nokia.
- Use cost advantage + internal Exchange/Office interoperability to grow userbase of consumers and businesspeople respectively; make MSNokia _THE_ brand to get for users that concurrently like Android & MS Windows.
- Start user conversions by first running MS apps alongside Google ones and giving incentives {free MS docs, Exchange, web storage, MS Live single sign