Former Nokia Exec: Windows Phone Strategy Doomed 447
itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will recall that back in January, Nokia CEO Steven Elop blamed the company's Windows Phone woes on commission-minded salespeople, who pushed phones they thought would actually sell. Now, ex-Nokia exec Tomi Ahonen is calling the Nokia's Windows Phone strategy 'a certain road to death.' He bases this grim assessment on UK market shares from Kantar Worldpanel: 'When Nokia shifted from "the obsolete" Symbian to "the awesome" Windows Phone, Nokia lost a third of its customers! In just one quarter!' Can MeeGo or Tizen save Nokia now?"
Everybody in Slashdot already knew that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everybody in Slashdot already knew that (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody on Slashdot also knew that iPod, iPhone and iPad were failures.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, please. Read the comments for those articles. Read how iPod is a useless mp3 player because it doesn't have wireless, and nobody would buy one (except for the iSheeps) when they could get a nomad. How the iPhone is a useless phone because it doesn't have physical keys, and nobody would buy one (except for the iSheeps) when they could get a Blackberry. How iPad are a useless device because you can't do all the stuff you can do on a laptop, and nobody would buy one (except for the iSheeps) when they co
Re:Everybody in Slashdot already knew that (Score:5, Insightful)
I think everyone who follows closely the industry was already aware of that fact.
Everyone who actually follows the industry, instead of reading fringe blogs like Disgruntled Ex-Nokians Dominate, cross-reinforced with the Slashdot groupthink, knows that the Lumia line is, in fact, selling quite nicely. And just today they released Nokia Transport, which to me is a killer app that any smartphone will need to match to be considered a viable replacement.
OK, that's over, now we all should have a brainwave and flip back to the tale of how N9 was the great future simply because it runs Linux, MeeGo was a competitive platform that had been made ready for a smartphone, and S60, if you squint at it just so, did not look like a barely maintainable pile of crap that has long outlived its heyday. If not that, then becoming the 57th Android(-oid) vendor in line was a gold-paved road to success. Elop can't be trying to whack some sense into Nokia to keep it afloat, no, he's a trojan horse because being an executive in M$ (spelling obligatory) is an everlasting mark of the Dark Side, and everybody's read that story on the internet that he held on to Microsoft stock, or did not sell it too quickly, or, anyway, he's evil, I tell you! MSFT!
Re:Everybody in Slashdot already knew that (Score:5, Interesting)
Breach of fiduciary duty. Elop's move only could benefit Microsoft, and would turn Nokia into a subsidiary of Microsoft, with no ability to compete independently. In other words, the CEO of Nokia abandoned his duty to make decisions that first help Nokia, and instead made decisions to first help Microsoft. Considering that Nokia was a mobile heavyweight until shortly before Elop came on board, I'd say that it's not an entirely unreasonable idea.
Re:Everybody in Slashdot already knew that (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe not, but the Prosecutor General of Finland might. You know, given Nokia is headquartered in Finland and all..
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe not, but the Prosecutor General of Finland might. You know, given Nokia is headquartered in Finland and all..
There's a good chance that the dude is right now enjoying his evening read of Helsingin Sanomat on his Lumia 800, which is selling like hodareita in Finland.
Re: (Score:3)
They wouldn't have a need to make a deal with Android/Google. They could simply take the code and start building it to suit the hardware, and have had very successful phones out over a year ago with a much more successful ecosystem. Nokia had a great name five years ago, and now it is essentially squandered in the US. Maybe WP7 will be great and WP8 doubly so, but they've been so slow to get these out of the gates that it seems meaningless at this point.
Never Fear (Score:5, Funny)
The royalties from their vibrating tattoo patent will keep them afloat...
Re:Never Fear (Score:5, Funny)
A vibrating tattoo that also improves buoyancy? Now that's patentable!
Re:vibrating tattoo that also improves buoyancy? (Score:5, Funny)
The Rule 34 implications of that are immense!
It might even be enough to save Nokia.
Android (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much the only thing I see saving Nokia is Android. Make some awesome quality Android handsets and customers will return. Make them with a nice clean stock Android loadout instead of some dumbass custom crapware laden ugly UI and you'll stand out from the pack even more. (Geeks will embrace you too. Word of Mouth is powerful advertising!)
Re: (Score:2)
And, given their commitment to make Microsoft-based phones, that pretty much makes them doomed.
See above ... they may be too far along in the jumping of the shark.
I don't see a Windows based phone in my future any time soon. Though, I'm sure there's likely some hardcore fanbois who are salivating at the prospect.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. pretty much right there with you. I'm actually still on my webOS Pre- phone, waiting for the G-nex to come out on Sprint. I wish more companies would just make a quality phone with bog standard Android. A Nokia one would be great, they make such good quality stuff. But not if I have to deal with Winblows. Not gonna happen.
Re: (Score:3)
That's seems to lack certain objectivity. What reviews have you read that suggest windows phones is bad to deal with, or in some way worse than android/iOS (Which are basically copies of each other on usability). Given that all the android manufacturers have dual core phones, and Nokia is still shilling a single core as it's top end what evidence do you have that they would perform competitively with other handset makers?
Just because you didn't like windows 95 doesn't mean windows 7 is good or bad, and has
Re:Android (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
And how are they NOT competing against them now?
Nokia is in the Mobile Phone market. They compete against ALL other mobile phone makers. The OS the mobile phone runs is just one part of the overall feature set. All they have done by going with the crappy Windows one is hobble themselves unnecessarily by adding a rotten feature. Take the same exact hardware, put Android on it, and it would sell like hotcakes!
I don't see why removing a bad OS and replacing it with a good one makes them LESS able to compete for market share with Samsung, HTC, ET AL.
Re:Android (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
And how are they NOT competing against them now?
They are competing sure, but by partnering with Microsoft they have an appreciable competitive advantage over the other manufacturers instead of being yet another Anroid manufacturer. Tell me, why exactly do we need another one of them? Is there not enough choice already for Android handsets? No, we don't need another, which is exactly why Nokia doesn't need to be yet another.
Your problem is you start from the premise that Windows Phone is a terrible OS. It's off to a slow start, but so was Android, and Win
Re: (Score:3)
They are competing sure, but by partnering with Microsoft they have an appreciable competitive advantage over the other manufacturers instead of being yet another Anroid manufacturer. Tell me, why exactly do we need another one of them? Is there not enough choice already for Android handsets? No, we don't need another, which is exactly why Nokia doesn't need to be yet another.
Let me rephrase that for you and see if it makes any more sense this way:
They are competing sure, but by partnering with RedHat they have an appreciable competitive advantage over the other manufacturers instead of being yet another Windows manufacturer. Tell me, why exactly do we need another one of them? Is there not enough choice already for Windows PCs? No, we don't need another, which is exactly why HP doesn't need to be yet another.
If someone came to you as the CEO of HP with that argument for why you should ignore the market for Windows PCs and focus on selling PCs with RHEL, what would you tell them?
Re: (Score:3)
Very simple. People don't dislike Nokia, they dislike the OS (Symbian) and don't believe in Windows mobile (as those handset sales show).
Samsung is competing on Android and sells almost as many smartphones as Apple itself. The reason for this is a quality lineup with a friendly UI (that the geeks hate but the laymen love).
If they did a good quality android set it'd sell 10x more than the Lumia line, I'm quite sure of this. Same with RIM. If you can't win, join them. The potential for profit will be lower, b
Re:Android (Score:5, Informative)
Even their MeeGo handset (the N9) sells more than their entire Lumia line, despite Stephen Elop's best efforts to make it unsuccessful by avoiding all the core markets for smartphones when deciding where to sell it.
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we're NOT. I already corrected you on this, apparently you haven't read it yet. But I will reiterate;
There is no separate "Android" market! there is just "The Market" and the mobile phone segment of it. Nokia is ALREADY IN the mobile phone market, competing against Samsung and HTC etc. The difference is that they are competing with a featured OS that people DO NOT WANT, Windows.
As I stated before: It's not that people don't want Nokia phones. It's that they don't want Windows and Symbian and they DO want iOS and Android.
Nokia needs to put out some high-end Android phones and give the people a product they will want to buy. They already have arguably better quality hardware than Samsung or HTC, now they just need the software to go with it.
It's not entering a new market, it's competing in a market they are already part of more efficiently and effectively.
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps 2 years ago, but it is far too late for that. I'm sure that part of their agreement with Microsoft was a clause preventing them from using Android. And even if they somehow could switch, it just means they have to compete with the asian companies, and I have serious doubts about their capabilities there (unless they charged at least iPhone prices).
If they would have stuck to their guns on MeeGo, I would have bought one. If I have to deal with Android as a consolation prize, I'm going to Samsung.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't forget: even if Windows were to become successful as a mobile platform - they would still have to share the success of that platform with HTC and Samsung and everybody else who currently makes or in the future wants to make a Windows phone. Unlike Nokia, MS has not tied itself to just one partner, and neither have the other smartphone vendors. Only Nokia is dependent on a single platform which they don't control
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
In a word: MeeGo.
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
See my reply to missing meter. Nokia is already in compettition with the Android handset makers. There isn't a separate "Windows market" and a "Symbian market" and an "Android market", as though changing OSes would be somehow entering a new market. There is simply "The Market". In this case the "Mobile Phone" portion of that market, which they are already very much in.
While I agree that having OS schizophrenia is a bad thing, if your Symbian OS is dying, and your Windows OS is DOA, why on God's Green Earth would you EVER stick with them? it makes NO sense. Put in a feature that your customers want, Android OS.
People aren't buying Nokia because Nokia is suddenly a bad handset maker. They aren't buying Nokia because they aren't Apple (iOS) and they don't have Android. It's really that simple. Give the people what they want and gain customers.
Re: (Score:3)
They already kinda did (Score:5, Informative)
They already made the N9, which runs Meego. They did everything in their power to kill it, including only selling it in a few markets, not listing it on their website, publicly announcing that they were abandoning the platform no matter how well it sold.
According to the figures in the article it is still outselling the their Lumia WP7 line 3:1.
They don't seem to be dropping Microsoft like a hot rock.
Re:Android (Score:5, Insightful)
The flaw in your argument is, you can build a clean working interface for Android and differentiate yourself that way, while having hundreds of thousands apps available to captivate users.
No one denies the Lumia 800 is a good phone, but windows mobile clearly fails to captivate a user base. The only reason it isn't dead yet is that Microsoft can afford to keep throwing money at it. On any other company it'd be dead already.
Re: (Score:3)
Android, meet Hemorrhoid. Hemorrhoid, meet Android. [/troll]
Needs more cowbell.
Tizen? No (Score:2)
And Meego is dead anyway. Nokia can, should, and probably will in some way develop Meego/Maemo Harmatton further, as they still seem to develop Qt further. But going with Tizen and dumping Qt -- and for what? -- would be dumb, and is unlikely to happen.
Re: (Score:3)
You may wish that to be true, but that doesn't make it so. It also happens to be incorrect.
Adapt or Die (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia seems to be taking the Blackberry approach to dealing with disruptive change.
Business partnerships with MS never go well. (Score:5, Interesting)
Nokia's Windows phones continue to tank, meanwhile sales of the 'dead' and most excellent N9 (which was killed to make way for Nokia's WP handsets) are doing well. People are clamouring for Nokia to reconsider its position on the N9. Will Nokia listen and respond in time? Probably not.
Re:Business partnerships with MS never go well. (Score:5, Informative)
It can't respond because the team responsible for N9 is long fired. There is simply no one left to continue development, all these people left for other companies.
Re: (Score:3)
Say this is not true... please. Do you have proof? This is the worst news I heard about Nokia in a long time. Up until now, I thought they still had it in them to do the Apple grassroots comeback (iMac in 1995ish?). But now? :(
Re:Business partnerships with MS never go well. (Score:5, Informative)
I used to live ~1km from campus where MeeGo team was located. People who worked on it, and who I personally knew were given fairly generous severance packages so they would stay and finish N9 after the news of nokia killing MeeGo were announced to the workers.
Key members of the team, ones that got offers from competitors the moment Nokia announced that MeeGo is being killed left pretty much immediately after announcement. They still have the skeleton crew managing mandatory software updates, but essentially entire team that designed software part of N9 is now employed elsewhere. IIRC some were re-trained to develop for WP but most left since Nokia basically killed all of its linux OS level know how and with android coming up as well as Intel wanting some of the MeeGo people, they had other good job offers.
I could be wrong on exact numbers, my contact in the company left after they released N9 as per her severance package and is now employed elsewhere.
Re: (Score:3)
There is a small skeleton crew doing the mandatory updates for the phone. The actual development team that made the phone is long gone.
No, it's Mer (Score:3)
Mer [merproject.org] is the Qt-based successor to Meego. Tizen is all HTML5 happy, without Qt.
Can MeeGo or Tizen, save Nokia now? (Score:3)
No.
Nor can any other niche platform. Stop coming out with stupid new platforms that exist only to serve incumbent technology players. Phones and software are for people to use, not so Microsoft or Intel don't get left out.
Design something to help your customers rather than yourself. This means you Nokia, Microsoft, and Intel.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Can MeeGo or Tizen, save Nokia now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can MeeGo or Tizen, save Nokia now? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is what confused me about Windows Phone 7. Usually Microsoft tries to take an already popular platform or technology, and extends it until they take it over. When Android took off I was sure there would be a Microsoft-created platform that would run on top of Android, and tie in with their Live services, have Office,Outlook, etc... Maybe port .NET compact to Linux to run along-side Dalvik, probably with a significant speed advantage. Basically something cell companies can drop into Android that replaces the Google ecosystem with a Microsoft one. Start out by giving it away for free, then once the take rate picks up, start charging for it.
Instead of hopping on the Android bandwagon, they did their own thing. Their own completely un-leveragable thing, with no incentive for anyone to adopt it, short of them dumping tons of money into Nokia.
Still looking for the perfect phone (Score:5, Interesting)
It would have:
1. Nokia's excellent call quality
2. Great camera like Nokia's latest 41 megapixel phone with a huge sensor [cultofmac.com]
3. Replaceable battery.
4. Nice, open Linux setup with easy API (like WebOS HTML/Javascript).
5. WebOS-style UI (especially cards)
6. Not needing to be tied into an account like Google/Android or iPhone/Apple in order to simply use it.
Go back to basic phones (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Go back to basic phones (Score:5, Informative)
I don't agree with the parent. Nokia made the best smart phones for years, long before iOS and Android devices were available. I had several of them myself. Look up the release dates and feature sets of their Communicator series of devices to see how long it took the rest of the mobile phone manufacturing world to catch up.
Nokia's problem has never been an inability to produce awesome smart devices: it's always been about their management's unwillingness to fully commit to a long-term course of action, despite having some fantastic showpiece R&D. Elop did bring that willingness to commit, but unfortunately, the way he did it wasn't with Nokia's benefit in mind, but Microsoft's...
Re: (Score:3)
But good luck to them here. If you've been to China / Taiwan and have seen what they can do in the low cost area on Android (or even without for even cheaper feature phones), there will be some fierce competition there. And the most dynamic low cost chipmakers (Mediatek, MStar and the like) are there too, with very cheap integ
People Just Don't Want Them (Score:4, Interesting)
They had a next generation phone with what Meego was actually starting to turn into. Now they're going to need a stop-gap measure, and the only option is Android.
Re:People Just Don't Want Them (Score:5, Insightful)
They could transition back to Harmattan, and continue the N9's success. That'd get people's attention, but I suspect that Microsoft won't allow that to happen.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you have any explanation why they don't want them?
Re: (Score:3)
So basically Elop may be right about sales person not being able/willing to explain the benefits of WP. I really don't see why regular people will not like WP especially compared to Android (iPhone is much harder target)
They had to do something (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem Nokia faced is that Symbian was a fading, older platform. It still has fans and users, but that's a market in decline and a sure road to ruin (eventually). Meego was having trouble getting off the ground and wasn't gaining much traction.
Microsoft shows up with a wad of cash and offers to make them the premier Windows Phone people. If it works, they're set. If it doesn't work, they're on a faster road to ruin.
But really, if you're already on a road to ruin (which they were), can you afford not to take a risk to try and get off it? I don't think Nokia really had better options aside from becoming yet another Android handset maker. That gamble hasn't worked out for them, which happens sometimes. Shame too, I loved Nokia phones back in the day for how tough they were.
At this point, their best chance is the unlikely scenario that Windows 8 tablets take off. If they do, people will become more intersted in phones that can run the same things and work with the same UI, so Windows Phone 8 devices will see growth. I'm not willing to bet on it though, and it's a bad place for Nokia to be because their success now depends on things outside their control.
When you see a dead horse... why get on? (Score:3)
Quite seriously. Windows mobile was a godawful platform right until the current version (which is actually fairly decent... or would be if it was stable, would boot up in finite time and most of all I didn't have to create a windows live account just to update the frickin' firmware, are you kidding me, MS? What is my company supposed to do should I decide to leave, never update the phone again? Or am I supposed to hand over my account and let someone else be online with my personal data? And before you ask, not my fault, my company made me use it...). But back on topic.
Windows mobile was maybe the worst platform there was in the mobile field. Don't ignore that a sizable portion of your customer base is the customer that gets his phone with a new contract, especially in the younger echelon, the 14-25 crowd, which is also the people who always want the latest and greatest. And WinMobile was much, but it was not cool. Nokia used to be cool. Now it's Android. Android is cool for the 14-25 crowd. There's tons of software for it and you can easily download it from the net. An iPhone is cool, for exactly the same reason. WinMobile is ... umm....... not. For exactly that reason.
I remember the time when I was young, and I can only assume that today cells are what computers used to be in my time. There were those that were cool, and those that were not. Those everyone else had and those ... well, that I had. Commodore, first C64 then Amiga, was cool, Atari, neither 800 nor ST, was not. Why? Because your peers have them. It's as simple as that. You can go around and compare, give tips, belong together. WinMobile doesn't belong.
Tomi is legit. (Score:5, Informative)
As explained in the link above, it's not Nokia's decision to use Windows Phone on their smartphones that is the chief problem. They are, essentially, hedging their entire existence on the platform, which is a very bad bet for a company whose popularity has always been stronger in Europe, Asia and developing nations. It's almost like a Kodak in reverse in that they are, more or less, giving less importance to their bread and butter and more importance to a huge, HUGE risk. (Notice that HTC and Samsung, the top dogs in the non-iPhone smartphone world, use more of their resources for building Android and their own OS's than Windows Phone.)
The sole fact that, to this day and despite a very recent system update, Windows Phones still have the crippling text-message-of-death bug clearly demonstrates where Microsoft thinks they're at with the OS. I haven't seen any of the major players on Android/iOS commit serious time to Windows Phone yet; until this happens, it's a sinking ship.
Apple for you MS haters! (Score:4, Interesting)
Watch Steve Job's come back key note : MS supported Apple because they saw them as an important eco-system player. This is what they are doing with Nokia now. Without a successful Nokia MS is looking at Apple and Google/Motorola carving up the market. They are not prepared to allow that.
Written by the captain of the losing team (Score:4)
Yet the very first comment on his blog post [wordpress.com] is proof that Nokia is far from dead. No, market share for Windows Phone 7 isn't that great, but it's obviously growing at a rapid rate, and even if it never passes Android or iOS - there's plenty of room in the market for a third player. Blackberry was it for years until they shit the bed.
What the world most certainly doesn't need is yet another Android phone manufacturer. We already have more than enough. Microsoft had the cash that Nokia needed and an OS that, while not perfect, is certainly a differentiator. Couple this with Nokia's design sense and you get a phone which stands out in the sea of blandness (and the fact that the Lumia 800 alone now accounts for something like 85% of all WinPhone7 sales in the EU is evidence of this).
I don't want to go too much into subjective opinion here, but my own experiences with the Lumia 800 is that it is a damn good phone and a pleasure to develop for. It performs much better than its meager specs would suggest. It is certainly proving popular in my circle of friends, almost all of which owned high-end Android phones before. Thanks to the apparent ease of porting stuff from Xbox, there is a ton of great games for it. And it's being marketed VERY competently - certainly better than any Android phone I've seen except possibly Samsung's. I have a very hard time believing it will flop.
However - and this is important - even if I'm wrong, Microsoft can easily afford not to have Windows Phone 7 be an instant success. They are swimming in money. And so can Nokia, because they are feeding off Microsoft. It's happened before with the Xbox, the same Xbox that got laughed at and is now making enough money that Microsoft can afford to keep going at the smartphone business until they succeed.
Re:First (Score:4, Insightful)
Honest question, why didn't they just go with Android?
Re:First (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause Microsoft paid them more than Google.
Damned Salepeople! (Score:4, Funny)
Actualy posessed of such gall!
Selling what people want to buy! I can tell you, this does not bode well.
Re:Damned Salepeople! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actualy posessed of such gall!
Selling what people want to buy! I can tell you, this does not bode well.
But perhaps it explains why they sell so many unpromoted and rarely discounted N9 phones compared to heavily promoted and always cheaper Lumias (at least in markets where the N9 is available). I still have not seen anyone actually using or even visibly carrying a Lumia, while I've noticed a fair number of N9s in use. Of course the N9s have only a small fraction of the prevalence of other smartphones. From my unscientific observations made in frequent transits through airports in Europe and North America in the last several months, Android > Symbian[*] > iPhone[*] > Blackberry > N9 > WP7=0.
[*] I go through through airports in the EU far more than in the US/Canada, which colors my observations. In North American airports, iPhone >> Symbian.
Re:First (Score:5, Interesting)
I know you're probably saying that as if it's bad, but in reality Google offers effectively no support to manufacturers who make devices for Android. Microsoft offers legal support to all manufacturers, and for Nokia they are offering technical engineering support and cash, which is a pretty good deal compared to what Android is offering.
So it seems to me Nokia had three choices:
There are pros and cons for each option, so it's easy to argue all day about which is best. In my opinion they chose the one with the best risk/reward ratio. Option 1 is the riskiest, but with the most reward. Option 2 is the safest, with the smallest reward. Option 3 is risky, but not as risky as going at it alone. Although many here on /. believe Option 3 is doomed to fail, those who use the WP platform see it as a rising star, and obviously Nokia sees the same thing.
Re:First (Score:5, Insightful)
There, FIFY. It is like C-people can't bother googling a company name before closing multi-billion dollar deals with them.
Re:First (Score:5, Insightful)
You're obviously going to get modded troll when you phrase it that way, but you're actually dead on.
Think about the possible outcomes of this for Nokia: The worst case is probably what is actually happening, which is that nobody is buying Windows phones. But even if they actually succeeded, what do you think Microsoft would do then?
Nokia currently has the option of Microsoft paying them to make phones nobody is buying, but as soon as anybody starts buying them, Microsoft is going to want Nokia to start paying them. Nokia ends up in the totally perverse situation that the more Windows phones they sell, the stronger Microsoft's leverage over them becomes, because demonstrating a market demand for Windows phones would get other phone makers into bed with Microsoft and thus into direct competition with Nokia.
Right now Microsoft needs Nokia more than Nokia needs Microsoft, but Nokia has put itself in the position that in the event Nokia succeeds, that situation reverses and then Nokia fails. In the long term it's totally lose-lose for Nokia.
It really feels like the focus on quarterly profits has doomed them. The Microsoft deal, if the market hadn't decided that it doesn't want Windows phones, would have been the most profitable for them in the short-term, but it completely ignores that inserting Microsoft into your supply chain does nothing but drain your margins in the long-term. And it completely ignores the very strong possibility, which has now been realized, that Windows phone would fail to sell.
Re: (Score:3)
The worst case is probably what is actually happening, which is that nobody is buying Windows phones.
Probably, really? Lumia is already outselling Symbian [cnet.com] in the UK. Lumia 800 is listed among best-selling phones at many operators' websites. The U.S. have only seen the cheaper Lumia 710 on T-Mobile, and it is gaining quite a following [cnet.com]. Check the approval rate and the reviews at T-Mobile's website.
Living in the Slashdot groupthink bubble is cosy, but the disadvantage is, reality sometimes differs.
Re:First (Score:4)
You're just reaching now. That is only the European market, and barely outselling a thing which is deprecated and abandoned is hardly progress. According to your own link WP7 has only 2.5% of even that market. That's practically a rounding error.
Re:First (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft offers legal support to all manufacturers, and for Nokia they are offering technical engineering support and cash, which is a pretty good deal compared to what Android is offering.
That's lovely and all, but it's not working because they're not selling. That's death for any company.
1. Continue on their own with Symbian/Meego/Maemo or whatever they develop in house and try to carve out a niche for a 4th (or 5th depending on how you count) OS in an already highly competitive market.
2. Develop for Android and compete with all the other Android manufacturers with no support or partnerships to help in the transition.
3. Develop for Windows Phone and gain a partner in the OS transition who not only will help in support of your hardware but will work independently to improve the ecosystem
So the theory goes for some people, but even as a third-rate Android reseller they would probably be selling a hell of a lot more than the Lumia phones they have done. Microsoft is also not anywhere near proven as any sort of risk-free partner in the mobile sector. They've been trying for years and gained little, if anything other than Android 'licensing' fees.
In terms of applications and the 'ecosystem' Android is by far the better choice. It took Android some time to catch up with the iOS on the application front. I'm not so sure how well a second mobile OS behind that is going to fair.
Option 3 is risky, but not as risky as going at it alone.
They were already on their own with Symbian, and more successful.
Although many here on /. believe Option 3 is doomed to fail, those who use the WP platform see it as a rising star, and obviously Nokia sees the same thing.
Well, it's lovely that you have such faith but consumers simply are not buying it and if and when WP rises high enough Nokia will be bust. It's not turning out to be the least risky option.
Re:First (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't actually say it was the least risky. He said best risk/potential benefit ratio.
... for the CEO.
For the rest of the company, not so much.
Re:First (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Continue on their own with Symbian/Meego/Maemo or whatever they develop in house and try to carve out a niche for a 4th (or 5th depending on how you count) OS in an already highly competitive market.
Given that they are really the only manufacturer making a serious play with Windows Phone, they were still in this position of trying to carve a market for a niche OS. It made no sense for them to abandon the traction they had already gained with their preceding developers models and return to shaky ground with a new, untested platform.
Moreover, Elop did his best to sink their flagship MeeGo device, the N9, by deliberately only selling it in low-income, low smartphone areas rather than the core markets you'd expect to place any device you actually want to succeed - and despite being made into a pariah, it outsells their entire Lumia (Windows) line 3 to 1. This is a device that that Nokia don't even list on their website as a product [nokia.com], but it still outsells all their Windows phones combined? I don't think Elop succeeded in his mission to make Linux phones look bad.
The bottom line is that despite taking his paycheck from Nokia, Stephen Elop appears to still work for Microsoft.
Re:First (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing that really interests me for potential tightness of integration is the idea of the phone as a portable desktop [ubuntu.com] - I think that for many people, a phone that you slap on a docking station on your desk to use like a desktop or even a tablet [gottabemobile.com] could well be all the computer they need.
Inevitably, some people will complain about the desktop experience there, but for browsing and email it should be just fine. Microsoft have made their fortune on "good enough" - well, this is easily good enough to serve the needs of the majority of people.
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Option 3 is risky, but not as risky as going at it alone.
From my point of view, #3 is by far the most risky choice. Here is how I see it:
1. It's going with a platform with 0% marketshare. Damn more risky than staying with Symbian or going with Android.
2. It's going with a partner that let its last platform go from a decent marketshare to almost zero in 4 years. Much worse than Nokia did themselves with their own platform.
Damn! I wouldn't have bet 1 cent on WP at that time. I saw it - as did many others - as the death of Nokia. And so far, sales reports are valida
Re:First (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm wondering whether my old nokia dumb phone will last longer than Nokia the company ;).
I'd bet on that for sure.
Re:First (Score:5, Insightful)
They really didn't have to gamble everything on a single platform. Other smartphone vendors manage to support multiple platforms - if HTC and Samsung can make Windows Phones alongside their Android offerings, why couldn't Nokia do that?
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I'm guessing the cash injection from Microsoft came with the stipulation they don't support android. I haven't heard about anyone else receiving money from MS, so this is probably a situation specific to Nokia.
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Mono is pretty good option for backend logic for all three platforms.
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This is incorrect, you can write android apps wholly with NDK now.
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yes but windows phone is in the toilet and about to be abandoned aka zune.
financial and technical backing doesnt mean squat. micro$hit is a vampire who eats companies which partner with it unlike google.
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Ok, as much as I'd love to see MS keel over and die, I have to call "Citation Needed" on this one. MS appears to be pumping a lot of money and effort into WP7, the same way they did with Xbox, with their strategy basically being brute-force, or "let's keep pumping money into this thing until we achieve dominance, no matter how much it costs and even if it's never profitable". Hopefully this one will fail though.
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Except that their entire Windows 8 strategy is predicated on tablets and phones. If they were to abandon it now, what they'd wind up with is a crummy tablet UI that's only available on desktops.
Stuff like the Zune and Kin were peripheral.
Re:First (Score:5, Interesting)
Further, if they go with Android they're probably looking at legal issues with Microsoft and Apple, without any help from Google, just like every other Android manufacturer.
Do you realize the massive patent portfolio Nokia has? Apple went after them, and if my short term memory is correct it ended up with Apple having to pay Nokia (can't be bothered searching for a reference). If there's one company who do not need any patent protection, it's Nokia. Patents were not a factor in the choice.
The big factor is that they believed they would have an easier time being a leader in the WP ecosystem, and that it would be a positive differentiation vs. Android. Any money from MS is a nice sweetener, but if it drove their decision then they were nuts: it's only a small part compared to expected sales.
But in the end, they still have to compete with the Android ecosystem on price and features, and WP is not a positive differentiation at this stage for most. For now, it's a flop and it would take a lot of faith to believe it can get much better quickly. Nokia said they want to refocus on low cost WP phones now, but with all the Chinese and Taiwanese vendors targeting low cost with Android and extremely dynamic with 2G/3G/AP integrated silicon (not all markets care about LTE yet) and a large experience of extremely cost optimized designs, good luck to them. I'd put my money on the East for low cost.
I'm quite pessimistic on Nokia strategy, and believe they would have had a better time differentiating on an Android base with superior hardware, camera and possibly a hybrid Meego / Dalvik system --- add on top of Android, but still ride a very dynamic ecosystem. But we'll see. Things won't be able to last for too long as it is with some big change happening anyway. As sideliners we can enjoy the drama, but let's have some thoughts for the Nokia employees (not the managers who killed the company with silly internal bickering between Symbian and Meego and poor execution, but the ones who delivered so many great products and innovations in the mobile space).
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Except that they normally make excellent hardware. My N8 has been stood on, dropped, operated at extreme temperatures and generally abused for well over a year now. I would buy a nokia for the hardware alone. And Symbian ^3 Belle is actually very nice. I reckon it could have been competitive...
Pity... Anyone know what the next best manufacturer for good solid rugged phones is?
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I've seen a lot of business plans in my day, and my biggest gripe is when people come at me and say "The market size is X, which is huge! So if we only get Y% of X we'll make a ton of money!" It's such an amateur mistake, and the companies that make it have no appreciable competitive advantage over any other company. Nokia, for all its reputation, does not offer any real competitive advantage in the Android marketplace. Whatever brand recognition it does have, will simply be diluted among the other players.
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This is such an amateur strategy mistake. I see it all the time from investors who think that they know how to run a business.
Something different (e.g. Windows Mobile OS) does not equal a competitive advantage automatically. You need to ask if there are actually any advantages to that something different. And the reality in this case is... no it doesn't. And then you need to factor in that the apps ecosystem is an area dominated by the network effect. The bigger the network of phones using the OS, the bigger the apps ecosystem. And apps are the biggest driver of smartphone purchases at the moment.
So, in effect, you've sacrificed the benefits of a big apps ecosystem to go with something different that provides no competitive advantage. In other words, you're dead on arrival.
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I'll never understand this attitude of Nokia can't enter the Android market because they'll get slaughtered by HTC and Samsung. Other posters make a lot more sense when they say Android is much more popular than Windows Phone and Nokia is essentially already in competition with other phone companies anyway.
Ideally, Nokia never would have entered into an agreement with Microsoft that was exclusive. My position is that they should have offered an OS neutral phone and sold it with stock Android, WP, or Meego
Smart phones for dumb people (Score:3)
Perhaps their motto should be "Smart phones for dumb people"? I'm only half joking. Traditional dumb phones are pretty much gone now, but there's still a huge market of people who want a phone that is "just a phone" but don't want to fiddle around with installing apps (maybe a few basic preinstalled apps like browser, email & scheduler). Unfortunately, it's also a market that's very price sensitive so I don't know how much money Nokia can make with that strategy (and in many parts of the world they'd
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Which is I think where MS is trying to go with this shared kernel windows app store strategy. It's very compelling to make apps for desktop, mobile, and tablet all at once without having to run very divergent code paths. That doesn't really work with WP7. But Windows 8 and WP8 that seems to be the plan (which may fail spectacularly).
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Great for Microsoft with no risk; big risk for Nokia for questionable gain.
I don't think it's quite that bad... the way I see it, Microsoft actually does havegreat risk - they desperately need Windows Phone to succeed. Their mobile phone strategy revolves around this, and they've already thrown away Windows CE and Kin.
Nokia does takes some risk, but their fallback plan is... Android and/or reviving Symbian/MeeGo/whatever (options 1 and 2 from Missing Matter's post). They'll lose some money, but if Windows Phone is doomed they should recognize the signs and prepare an exit strategy
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I, for one, would prefer there was an alternative to Android & iOS. Both those systems have a lot of problems, and a little competition could help everyone (the customers, mostly). Nokia's excelent reputation, justified or not, could certainly accomplish that.
What that alternative should be-- not sure. Apparently not WP, but Mer/Tizen, perhaps? Or are those doomed to remain vaporware?
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Could it be because Steven Elop came from MicroSoft? Albeit MicroSoft Canada, which is little more than a renovated fur trading post.
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Have you ever used maemo or meego?
Maemo is perfect for developers/geeks.
Meego is perfect for everyone else.
All the backends/insides are the same, BTW.
They didn't even need to change platform, just keep doing what they were doing already.
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The N950 (developer only) and N9 (publicly available) have meego actually, not maemo.
The interface is a bit different. Check out some videos on youtube... meego's interface is more appelaing to average user than maemo's, just that.
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Because if they decide the windows strategy is going to fail they can always change to android later. Microsoft offered them cash up front, and entering the android space against competitors like Samsung was probably not a great plan.
As an overall experience android is pretty weak compared to how Nokia and MS want things to be, or even compared to iPhone. I think they figured they'd have more success with MS than with android in the long run, and they might. Just look at the clusterfuck that has been ICS. ICS itself is sort of fine, but source has been out for months, some handsets have it officially, some don't yet, sometimes features that worked in 2.x don't work in 4 etc.. The great selling point of android is that 1: it's not locked down to apple and 2: if you are technically capable you can do all sorts of great stuff with it that is a pain on iphone. The problem with this plan is that most customers aren't technically capable, so there's a market there for easy to upgrade, plays nice with windows and isn't apple. But MS hasn't really got it together. The iPhone works in part because Apple did a giant FU to the carriers and does its own thing without them, MS should do the same, but google by nature of not actually being the ones releasing the OS for the phones really can't. A
Unfortunately microsoft hasn't really delivered with WP7. Everyone I've used and everyone I know that has one thinks it's good. But they don't seem to have congealed the ecosystem or built any killer apps, it's good, but why would I buy it when android has 50 bazillion apps. Which might be why we've only seen a trickle from MS and Nokia product wise. Whether they're really aiming for Windows 8 and this is just learning and transition time, or they're just never going to pull it together I don't know. My uninformed guess is that Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will be the big push, write once, works on desktop and mobile, plays nice with all your business apps, plays nice with xbox games or something along those lines.
If they had gone with android they'd probably be in far worse shape than they are now. Being just another handset maker, in a market where Samsung is going to announce a quad core phone in a month, and you're still selling single core cpus as a flagship isn't a good plan.
MS could have the best product on the market. They don't, but they certainly could, the freedom of living outside the reality distortion bubble, with the compatibility of windows talking to windows rather than one of many different desktop controllers for android. One version (like iPhone) that can just be pushed out to everyone, fuck the carriers. I doubt it will materialize, because ballmer doesn't get it, but one could always hope.
Re:First (Score:4, Interesting)
Theres a good article at Businessweek [businessweek.com] about Elop and the direction change.
The article states they negotiated for Android, but got no quarter from Google on special access to Android or direction on features. They didn't want Nokia to be Just Another Android Vendor. Whether that's false pride that will cause them to disappear, or a stroke of genius that allows them to be different, though much smaller, only time will tell. MS did throw some cash at them, this seems to be a partnership of weakness, where both sides have a weak hand and need each other to succeed. I kind of want Windows Phone to survive - it's an interesting new OS, one I'm sure I'll never own a device that runs it. But it will never succeed in any stretch.
Of course you could argue that any moves toward Android were just cover for a long term strategy with MS Windows Phone.
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Pretty sure Nokia is a Finnish company...
-uso.
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Re:Former employee doesn't like old job? Fascinati (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, ex-Nokia exec Tomi Ahonen, is calling the Nokia's Windows Phone strategy 'a certain road to death.'
There are two layers of bias. The first is the tone of the submitter. Then there is a the second layer with the ex executive. All we need is a Netcraft meme thrown in for good measure...sigh...