After MS-Nokia Pact, Many Nokia Workers Walk Out In Protest 601
Mr. McGibby writes "After the announcement of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft this morning workers voiced their concern with the deal by walking out of Nokia facilities. It is believed that as many as a thousand workers marched out today (or took the day off using flex time) so that the company would know that they don't believe the partnership is in their best interest, even after CEO' Stephen Elop's startlingly frank 'burning platform' memo earlier this week."
Looks like many investors felt the same way.
Looks like many investors felt the same way.
Looking for Job (Score:5, Insightful)
If I worked at Nokia I would be looking for a job, like yesterday.
Re:Missing information (Score:3, Insightful)
How about people that work on Qt? Hopefully Nokia will not end up killing the best toolkit that exists for desktop development.
Doh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's a stupid idea. But what did they expect? They hired a former MS exec to be their CEO. Of course he would make them dependent on MS - that's the only thing the fool can be expected to know.
It's like SGI hiring a former HP exec to be their CEO and then killing off MIPS to move to Itanium - totally and utterly predictable because these guys only know the bubble they've been in for most of their corporate career. They can't "think outside of the box" because they are the box.
Worse than peeing their pants. (Score:5, Insightful)
A Nokia executive once said that switching to Android would be like peeing your pants for warmth. It might help temporarily, but would turn your phones into commodities. Nokia would be forced to sell based on price alone!
I submit that going with WP7 is worse. It has all the disadvantages of Android in that your competitors can use it also, so it turns your phones into commodities. But it has none of the advantages - the extensive Android market, UI customization, and no OS licensing fee.
Using WP7 is like peeing your pants while Redmond gives you a golden shower.
Re:Nokia who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now musing a little, I wonder isn't a partnership with MS one of the last things a company does either before being acquired by MS or filing for bankruptcy?
The path MS has traveled is littered with former partners, all with knives in their backs.
Re:Missing information (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There is no "low end" in the future (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that the cost of an Android phone comes down to say $30, the price of a non smartphone will most prob. go down to $5 or so(only a tiny monochrome screen, cheaper processor,smaller battery-- infact one of the phones launched for approx$50 here has a standby time of 30 days, and the option of using AA cells in an emergercy)
You need to live in a developing nation to know the needs..
Re:Worse than peeing their pants. (Score:3, Insightful)
However you do run into some exceptions... Sony offers terrible platforms, like the PS2, PSP, and PS3. A friend who is developing for the PSP2 told me it's just as bad but Sony has a lot of backup. PS2 was one of the most successful systems in gaming history, in fact, it probably still is. If it were up to me, I would love to see phones developed under WP7 instead of Android, Symbian, and iOS, just because from experience, it's a better system to work with. However, the mass-market is already all over iOS and Android already which makes it really hard for Microsoft to keep up and Palm recently announced that their trying to be the third wheel so to speak. As a developer, there are too many options and you will ultimately pick the platform that will make you the most money. That's why in reality, Microsoft isn't a good platform to take, at least not yet.
Re:Looking for Job (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually I think it would be better to keep a job. Be honest, you wouldn't quit a paying job. Of course you meant that you'd start looking at the employment sites during your off time.
I don't think this will be the end of Nokia. If anything it may be the smartest thing they've done. They obviously been stagnate way too long and there are just too many handset manufacturers jumping on the android bandwagon. This leaves Nokia with the option of being just another lemming going with Android or differentiating themselves by hooking up with Microsoft. Frankly going with Google or Microsoft is better than Nokia's status quo.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
In the US, if you work for a living, you're screwed.
Re:Dual/Triple boot (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Because manufacturers don't bother documenting hardware of providing drivers for more than one OS. (Ex: how Linux did run on iPAQ).
2. Because (1) will remain true for proprietary phone control stack even if it won't for the rest of hardware.
Nokia's implementation of Meego was supposed to have the first completely open cellular interface. Good luck getting that with Microsoft lackey at the helm.
Note this day as... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just one more way we're behind the rest of the world
How is that "behind"? If I have slackers working for me, I don't want red tape standing in the way of my getting rid of them. This is especially true in small business, where margins are tight and you can't afford to pay people who don't produce.
Re:There is no "low end" in the future (Score:5, Insightful)
>Not really, in current smartphones, the screen itself costs upwards of $20 I believe.
And what will a similar screen cost in 3 years? Probably $5. Tomorrow's smartphones will be as cheap as or cheaper than today's featurephones. Maybe everybody in the developing world won't be able to afford one, but hundreds of millions of people certainly will.
Motorola just announced an Android phone that can be hooked up to a docking station and connect to a monitor and full sized keyboard for use as a little computer. What happens in the developing world when your $50 smartphone can also double as your office and/or home computer? Suddenly that $50 smartphone looks like a pretty incredible deal.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Remember Microsoft's earlier smartphone partner (Score:2, Insightful)
Big difference there - Nokia is well-established as-is (especially in Europe), and becoming "just another WinPhone vendor" is a major demotion.
Re:Looking for Job (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything it may be the smartest thing they've done.
How often is partnering with Microsoft the smartest thing anyone's done?
Re:Well, obviously (Score:4, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity, what else were they going to do?
About what they did now, and just a bit more... Two alternatives to choose from:
1. Get the partner (Google or MS) accept adding Qt to the platform. That would have gained them a lot of developer love. Now they need to start a developer community completely from scratch, with old Nokia developers really pissed off, after the earlier Qt hype.
2. Get support for current partner platform (had it been Android or WP7) on Symbian and/or Meego. Like, Silverlight support for Symbian. This may not have gained them any Free Software love, but it would have given meaning to current Symbian line, and made a lot of commercial developers happy.
But now, they created a situation where they have no continuity between platforms, and bunch of angry developers who don't know what to do with Nokia now. I mean, isn't it practically like "if you want to develop for future Nokia, buy HTC now"? WTF.
I hope next week they'll take some corrective action. I actually hope it's been planned from the start, giving extra bad news first, then "clarifying" so bad news don't sound so horrible.
But if it is what it looks like now, who in their right mind is going to buy a Symbian phone? Nokia will run out of money before they get their first WP7 phone out of the door. But it's also quite believable that this was the plan, and MS will buy them out when the stock price is low enough.
Parent not insightful (Score:2, Insightful)
Throwing acronyms around doesn't make you informed.
The UAW didn't wreak the US economy or the auto market. Americans wreaked themselves collectively believing a bunch of corporate bullshit being promoted heavily by corporate created think tanks which started hitting full force in the 70s. They even got one of their spokespeople to run the nation into the ground for them (I'll let you guess who.) Bigger trends played bigger roles than a union stuck in a bygone era with forward thinking contracts and benefit packages which actually did more to heighten the decline of the USA than it showed their greed (which is how it was portrayed and continues to be.)
Everybody can't be the boss and form their own business even if we were all equally capable of it. Somebody has to be an employee. Fairly paid workers are not a handout; union workers are not handouts they are just not pushed around like pawns so easily-- like the permanent 20% underemployed people we have today who have zero bargaining power.
Unless you can live like the Chinese, we can't compete with the former communist's ability to out capitalize us.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Somebody save QT Pleeaase! (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that Microsoft is going to assimilate Nokia, I am sure QT is in great danger. I pray that someone would get it and continue making it great as it is.
Re:Worse than peeing their pants. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, the numbers I've heard indicate that OEMs pay more to Google for each Droid (or similar) than they do to Microsoft for each WP7 phone. It's still only a few dollars each way, but Android is only free if you don't include *any* of Google's services on it.
Of course you're ignoring the big elephant there in the corner. Who cares whether Microsoft charges less per handset than Google, given that just about no one the company's trying to sell phones to wants a Windows phone? What actually matters is that Android phones are actually desirable, while customers' opinions regarding Windows phones have been spiraling around the drain for 2-3 years now.
Re:Worse than peeing their pants. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also saying that another platform is bad because it uses Java just shows your inexperience. Even if you don't particularly like Java (I don't), it is certainly an adequate language. It's a n00b mistake. People who love programming will enjoy making cool graphics in Java as much as in C#.
Incidentally, my one major complaint about WP7 development is that Microsoft forces you to stay in the C# sandbox. They don't let you out into native code, which is a serious drawback for stuff I want to do. Even Apple lets you write native code on your own phone, calling any API; they just won't let you put it in the app store if it does too much. Microsoft won't let you out of the sandbox at all. Annoying.
Re:Looking for Job (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm yeah, if you're an American. See, Americans generally have 1. No (or little) savings and 2. Almost no safety net.
This means that if you object to something your company does, the only recourse is to passive-aggressively start sneaking around looking for other work - because you must be employed at all times, and not having a job is simply not an option. You can't actually, you know, make a stand or anything - your current life literally depends on the good graces of the company you work for, which means that you simply cannot do anything to piss them off unless you already have another company ready to take you in.
I mean, there's a reason why people call our current society "neo-feudalism".
And You Know Who'll Profit From That? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't recall another time I've posted anonymously.
I worked with Stephen Elop back in the Macromedia days, starting with him being my boss^2, in the late 90's. I've always found him a fascinating exec to watch. In the four years or so I saw him at Macromedia, I watched him: ... Whirlwind, I think?) for about three months which was long enough to fuck it up; so they promoted him ...
1. Come into IT, get the existing CIO kicked out, become the CIO, and fuck IT up[0]; so they promoted him and
2. He came into the Andromedia purchase, ran that business group for about a week which was long enough to fuck it up; so they promoted him and
3. He started a brand new business group (Internal name
The pattern reached its logical conclusion when he became CEO of the company and then ... sold it to Adobe.
Stephen is the most perfect example I've ever seen of the sometimes-mythic "failing upward" tendency. He turns everything he touches to shit, and ... then gets rewarded for it. It's like magic. I look forward to Nokia failing miserably, being sold to Microsoft, Stephen making billions out of the deal, and getting elected President of the United States, which he will drive into the ground, formally make into a Chinese colony like Hong Kong, and finally get promoted to God.
[0] Favorite story from that time: At the beginning of my time at Macromedia, our website was running on four servers, and I remember one time for a stupid reason three were not taking traffic. The first reason we found out about this was because someone mentioned the website was "a little slow." And we were taking tons of traffic. So Stephen came in and forced us to have a dynamic website. Hey, that's a GOOD idea. And then he decided we should use Broadvision for this. Which was a steaming pile of shit which BV recommended we reboot "as often as you can" because it was unstable. Which required horrific investments of money (we were buying Sun E4500s like there was no tomorrow and putting in 14GB of RAM in each -- back when Sun RAM was at around $7000 per GB). Which Stephen brought in KPMG to "help us" implement, which had the predictably hilarious results that anyone here who's worked with a big consulting shop has likely seen for themselves.
Re:coming from someone living in Finland... (Score:3, Insightful)
What the fuck have you people been doing for all these years?
Apparently, they were being mismanaged.
Re:Worse than peeing their pants. (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft has never come out with software that makes your teeth crunch for software development
I really wish that was true (and appreciate that there are people out there who honestly believe it). Alas, you're mistaken.
Here's an exercise for you. Find a nearest developer with some experience extending SharePoint. Ask him what he thinks about the API, the documentation, and overall design. Count the expletives. Zen will be that much closer.
Re:Looking for Job (Score:5, Insightful)
Shareholders? You're kidding, right? It took 5 or 6 years for the Xbox to break even, before that Microsoft was burning thru tens of millions every year just keeping the xbox afloat. But guess what? It paid off
Xbox division stopped making a loss, they did NOT start making profit (and wont for next ~10 years).
No, earning more than you spend during one quarter doesnt count if you pumped $6B in R&D and marketing.
Kinect alone was $600mil in marketing _before_ if even hit the shelves.
Re:Looking for Job (Score:2, Insightful)
M$
I stop reading here.
Re:Looking for Job (Score:5, Insightful)
How often is partnering with Microsoft the smartest thing anyone's done?
Intel has done OK.