Nokia Killing Symbian and S40 In North America 148
In an interview with AllthingsD, the head of Nokia's US operations declared that Nokia will be focusing exclusively on Windows Phone devices in North America. Reasons cited include the low profit margins of the ubiquitous low-end Series 40 devices and lackluster sales of Symbian based devices. This also means that the N9 won't be making it to North America either.
Open Source to clenched-fist model. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Nokia, I love your engineers. But please ditch your marketing department, just soon as you fire your CEO Stephen Elop, the $hill from Micro$oft. I miss you lots.
Decent kit is going away :( (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nokia is still in business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently so. But their new CEO appears to be doing everything he can to change this.
Quite what the major shareholders think about it, I'd love to know.
In other words (Score:2, Insightful)
'Microsoft to sell only Windows Phone devices under the acquired Nokia brand'. News at 11.
Re:Nokia is still in business? (Score:4, Insightful)
Asymptotically circling the drain... (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about the walking dead... wow.
Nokia dumping Symbian in an age when lo-end CN knockoffs come with Android 2.x, and HP is putting WebOS on printers... actually makes a little sense.
Nokia dumping Harmattan/Maemo6, an in-house controlled solid full-scale OS with a UI that's 4 years too late.. seems lazy or poor judgement.
Nokia jumping on WinPhone7, with zero control of a third-party franchised OS that has a great UI but functionality 4 years behind the curve... seems genuinely self-destructive.
Bye, Nokia. Nice knowing you.
Lose the developers and you lose the market (Score:3, Insightful)
Nokia has made some fundamental errors in their business strategy the last couple of years. Around 01/02 (correct me if I'm wrong) they were the largest manufacturer of mobile phones, they had the largest market share on the mobile phone market, AND they had the largest global market share on the GSM technology market. The GSM department is still thriving, but their focus on the mobile devices market is somewhat shaky.
They had a good run with Symbian, but they got "too comfortable" in the leading position. The iPhone came in 2007 along with Android in 2008 and the market showed that the following years. Their crisis they face now is economically comparable to the one the whole industry was facing in 1995/6 when there was a shortage of semiconductors.
The failing of their strategy is seen in a few places:
1) The high entry barrier for developing for Symbian: license fees, tools, lack of freely available frameworks
2) The rather rough UI compared to iPhone/Android: the menus are not intuitive, the applications are inconsistent in UI, the whole thing runs rather slow
3) Failure to adopt higher-end technology: They had only resistive screens until 2010 afaik even though their phones cost the same as competitors with capacitive.
4) Failure to address the lacking application support: They should have reacted WAAY faster and more aggressive. They should have brought more innovation to the platform, made the tools freely available including the certificates (or for a nominal fee), implemented an appstore AND made the developing environment attractive.
They lost the developers, therefore they lost the applications. With the applications the content soon followed, and without the ability to consume content your smartphone is not a smartphone; it's a paper-weight that happens to have the ability to call people.