The Three Pillars of Nokia Strategy Have All Failed 409
An anonymous reader writes "'When all 3 legs of your 3-legged strategy fail, what do you do? You rush — run run run — to change your total strategy. But what would a madman do?' Ex-Nokia exec Tommi Ahonen's new article has a few suggestions. Is the Nokia board either asleep at the wheel, or incompetent, or in collusion with the incompetent CEO? Ahonen provides an insider's view not just of how Nokia's Windows phone strategy has failed, but how this has spread to other parts of the company's technology. He says the 'Elop Effect' has 'single-handedly destroyed [...] Europe's biggest tech giant.' He raises the question: Why is Nokia's board failing to act? We've discussed Tommi's articles before, where he was correctly predicting Windows Phone's market failure at a point where others were claiming that 'the Lumia line is, in fact, selling quite nicely.'"
What you do is... (Score:4, Funny)
You call Apple, and say "Hey, I hear you have a maps problem. Guess what? We have lots of map data and experience."
Re:What you do is... (Score:4, Interesting)
You call Apple, and say "Hey, I hear you have a maps problem. Guess what? We have lots of map data and experience."
I could see how that would help Apple. I can see how it might get some short term money from Apple, but as they already get money from Apple, and still managed to burn through $10Billion in months how exactly is this going help Nokia. In fact other than promoting Maps on Nokia over Apple like they are already doing. I fail to see any benefit.
Re:What you do is... (Score:4, Insightful)
You call Apple, and say "Hey, I hear you have a maps problem. Guess what? We have lots of map data and experience."
Response from Apple: "Sounds good, but we'll rather wait until you're bankrupt and pick up the patents and your map data for cheap."
Re: (Score:3)
Nokia maps is too integrated with MS products, it would be stupid of it to let it go to Apple. Bing, Yahoo Maps, maps on Windows phones (all windows phones, not just Nokia made one), Windows Navigation devices on major cars, all depend on Nokia maps.
Re:What you do is... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Microsoft wants it that bad, then Apple would be stupid not to bid the price up. They win if they win, and they win if they lose.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Old proverb (Score:5, Insightful)
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." It's the Occam's Razor of the corporate world. Yes, people get greedy or manipulative, it's true... but that's the exception, not the rule. For the most part, people are just really, really, fucking stupid. Senior management in particular tends to develop problems like target fixation, confirmation bias, and even when everything is in the spiral of death and the alarms are going off, engines on fire, they somehow think they'll be able to pull out of the dive and fix the problem... right up until the part where they crater. They teach this in every management course studies... Have an exit strategy. Know what your breakpoints are and when to bail. And company after company, even big ones, really really big ones, still fail at this, not because of greed, but because of stupidity.
Re:Old proverb (Score:5, Insightful)
They teach this in every management course studies... Have an exit strategy.
"Hey, I've got my golden parachute right here, just like you said."
"Oh, I see, you meant an exist strategy that saves the company. Haha, I'm off to apply 'lessons learned' elsewhere, enjoy!"
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"Hey, I've got my golden parachute right here, just like you said."
"Oh, I see, you meant an exist strategy that saves the company. Haha, I'm off to apply 'lessons learned' elsewhere, enjoy!"
And what did we learn? Hey stop wiping your arse with $100 bills and pay attention, there was a lesson in corporate management in there for you somewhe... oh is that a solid gold toilet?
Is Nokia just a simulation? (Score:3)
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Yes, people get greedy or manipulative, it's true... but that's the exception, not the rule.
In the corporate world, especially in publicly traded companies, greed is the rule. Anyone who has been in touch with middle and top management in publicly traded corporations knows full well that greed trumps everything - personal greed, to be quite precise.
Blogspam, on my Slashdot? More likely than you... (Score:5, Funny)
Woah, he predicted Windows Phone would not succeed at the level of iPhone and Android? Better tell James Randi to hang it up, because we got a real god damned psychic right here!
Re:Blogspam, on my Slashdot? More likely than you. (Score:5, Informative)
Woah, he predicted Windows Phone would not succeed at the level of iPhone and Android? Better tell James Randi to hang it up, because we got a real god damned psychic right here!
Bra-vo, very sarcastic and blasé, but unfortunately it makes you look quite ignorant. Ahonen predicted this in February 2011 right after Elop's announcement. For example:
Re: (Score:3)
Ahonen predicted this in February 2011 right after Elop's announcement
He and 90% of the /. crowd, myself included.
Look at the alternatives. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard. Apple won't let them use IOS. Android is generic, so they have no edge over Chinese manufacturers. Blackberry has tanked. Microsoft looked like a good option.
Nokia makes excellent hardware at a good price. Their gear tends to be much more rugged than Apple's fragile mobile devices. Their problems are more on the marketing side.
They had an alternative - MeeGo (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia had an alternative, MeeGo. The trouble was at the time it was already outpaced by iOS and Android, so Nokia thought they probably could not catch up without a lot of rework.
And that's why they chose Windows Phone 7. But, as one of the comments in the article notes, the real problem is that Windows Phone 7 was not really a way to catch up either. It was a temporary solution, to be abandoned by Microsoft to the degree that even fairly powerful Nokia phones running Windows Phone 7 could not be upgraded to WP8.
If that were known (as the comment alleges) then Nokia probably would have been better off putting in an All-Hands effort to make MeeGo compete with other modern smartphone OS's. I'm not sure they would have been in a worse place than where they are now, and then they would be in full control of their own destiny.
But as things stand the fate of Nokia and Microsoft are intertwined (with more risk to Nokia than Microsoft).
Re:They had an alternative - MeeGo (Score:5, Informative)
Besides a few slashdot nerds no one was buying MeeGo phones. These same nerds knew other nerds with these phones and assumed everyone was buying them.
Nokia stopped making them becuase no one was buying them - the only people complaining about this are a few slashdot nerds and Nokia execs who lost their jobs.
This is a quote from the January 26th 2012 by Tomi Ahonen
“Luckily I didn’t have to do the math for this, the nice people at All About Symbian had tracked the numbers (read through the comments) and calculated the limits, finding N9 sales to be between the level of 1.5 million and 2.0 million units in Q4. Wow! Nokia specifically excluded all of its richest and biggest traditional markets where it tried to sell the Lumia, and these countries achieved – lets call it the average, 1.75 million unit sales of the N9 in Q4. So the one N9 outsold both Lumia handsets by almost exactly 3 to 1.” [1]
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Nokia never marketed them. Only nerds even heard of them. It's an amazing phone that sells without advertising. They spend tons of money on advertising those winphones but they aren't exactly flying off the shelves. I'd think with a little effort the N900 could have failed a little less than the winphones they tried to foist on people.
Re:Look at the alternatives. (Score:5, Insightful)
Android is generic, so they have no edge over Chinese manufacturers.
Nokia makes excellent hardware at a good price. Their gear tends to be much more rugged than Apple's fragile mobile devices.
Your second quote puts paid to your first. Nokia was a hardware company. They made good hardware. They should have jumped into Android with both feet. A proven, reliable, popular operating system, that lets vendors customize it, and would have let them concentrate on their strengths - hardware.
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"Android is generic, so they have no edge over Chinese manufacturers."
I don't understand the logic in this. Samsung stands out in the mobile market because of their hardware. People aren't saying "Oh, the customization Samsung has done to Android stands out and makes their devices less generic, so Samsung is selling a lot of phones." Nor do people equate Samsung as the definitive Android device. Whenever I heard "Samsung" in reference to phones, a single thing came to mind: their beautiful OLED displays
Re:Look at the alternatives. (Score:5, Insightful)
Android is generic, so they have no edge over Chinese manufacturers.
I really don't get why this argument applies against Android but misteriously doesn't apply against Windows Phone. Hello, WP is also a generic, third-party licensed operating system, not a in-house solution. After all, HTC is a Chinese manufacturer and also uses Windows Phone...
Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, a link to blog post by Ahonen, with nothing really new.
I agree that execution by Elop has been sub-par. But calling that "SYMBIAN WAS WINNING" is even by wearing Symbian-goggles a very red-rosed opinion of what was going on. Nokia was in huge trouble, it's UI teams competing with each other and handset teams not building on the same platform as noted in in an article [slashdot.org] from yesterday. Symbian as it was was dead. Developers hated it, users disliked it compared to competition and why it did so good up until the end was good quality Nokia hardware.
Ahonen is right on some points, but he seems to totally disagree on that Nokia had to do something, by going on with Symbian without major rework was just not feasible, the whole MeeGo thing was really screwed up with competing package managers, UIs and teamwork with Intel so as a CEO what what would have he done - he doesn't tell. Maybe MeeGo strategy would have proved to be success.
I don't want to resort to ad-hominems but in case of Ahonen I would take his comments with a grain of salt - he clearly has an axe to grind with Nokia and the postings he has made and appearances on interviews smell like bitterness. And they always boil to one point: Profits before elop and profits after Elop.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Symbian might not have been winning, and yet it was and still is - the bread winner for Nokia. Symbian sales did not drop because it was behind the times - but because Elop killed it - just a few months after launching a flagship device - and in that process also frittered away the brand loyalty. And all this was done in favor of WP7 which had no future.!! Had Nokia stayed with Symbian until WP8, they would have been in a much better position than they find themselves in today.
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Oh, a link to blog post by Ahonen, with nothing really new.
I agree that execution by Elop has been sub-par. But calling that "SYMBIAN WAS WINNING" is even by wearing Symbian-goggles a very red-rosed opinion of what was going on. Nokia was in huge trouble, it's UI teams competing with each other and handset teams not building on the same platform as noted in in an article [slashdot.org] from yesterday. Symbian as it was was dead. Developers hated it, users disliked it compared to competition and why it did so good up until the end was good quality Nokia hardware.
Ahonen is right on some points, but he seems to totally disagree on that Nokia had to do something, by going on with Symbian without major rework was just not feasible, the whole MeeGo thing was really screwed up with competing package managers, UIs and teamwork with Intel so as a CEO what what would have he done - he doesn't tell. Maybe MeeGo strategy would have proved to be success.
I don't want to resort to ad-hominems but in case of Ahonen I would take his comments with a grain of salt - he clearly has an axe to grind with Nokia and the postings he has made and appearances on interviews smell like bitterness. And they always boil to one point: Profits before elop and profits after Elop.
From the latest results of IDC Q2
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23638712 [idc.com]
Symbian 4.5% windows phone 3.5%
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Symbian was doing well, and I don't think his argument was that it was ultimately a winning strategy to ride Symbian. What he's making a point of is that Elop's "Burning Platforms" memo quickly killed Symbian, which was bringing in money for Nokia. People knew after that that there was no future in Symbian.
I pretty much knew at that point that Nokia was doomed. They pretty much killed everything that made them money, for a weak platform that they wouldn't even have a phone out for almost a year. Even a moron could see that. While things did have to change at Nokia, Elop pretty much destroyed most of the phone division, with little to show for it.
At least wait until the 920 is released (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither Windows phone 8 or the Lumina 920 have been released and we have people already yelling "rrruuunnn!!!"
There is a fine line between working vigorously to save a sinking ship and trying to work the pumps and hand bailer after it is too late. You need equal quantities of balls and intelligence to make the correct decision.
What TFA is doing is seeing a puddle on the floor and immediately sounding abandon ship and running for the life boats.
There is no low hanging fruit left in business. Sometimes you need to slug it out and take risks because changing strategies every two seconds is not a winning proposition either.
I'm not saying they won't fail or that windows phone is good or bad. I'm only asserting it is too early.
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It's not a puddle, it's a lake.
Well, here's a few suggestions (Score:2)
Other cellphone makers are leaving a lot of 'easy' niches open IMHO:
- You need a shop in high street. Android is too generic, Samsung is too much of everything else (TV's and stuff) - Nokia could have an 'Apple store' and get away with it.
- You need security and robustness. Smartphones are moving from a hipster-thing to a commodity right now, so it's time you start addressing companies to use smartphones for company uses. And then I mean properly - with security inside the phone, bigger batteries and compat
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Other cellphone makers are leaving a lot of 'easy' niches open IMHO:
- You need a shop in high street. Android is too generic, Samsung is too much of everything else (TV's and stuff) - Nokia could have an 'Apple store' and get away with it.
- You need security and robustness. Smartphones are moving from a hipster-thing to a commodity right now, so it's time you start addressing companies to use smartphones for company uses. And then I mean properly - with security inside the phone, bigger batteries and compatibility with office tools. Huge market.
- Stop doing everything that's irritating about Apple: no app-store, no iTunes obligation, no stupid connectors, no wrong way to hold it. No selling your soul to placate His Steveness. Emphasize it. Android does that, but not enough - it has no commercial incentive: make sure that hipsters are on the defensive - it's easy: they're hipsters.
You seem a little confused
Nokia has several!! OS offerings, and a larger more successful store.
Nokias phones were considered so rebust they were a meme!!
Nokia are following Apple, because Microsoft is following Apple they have to change OS's to stop.
No situational awareness (Score:2)
Nokia failed to realise is that their customers were buying because they had a reliable brand with a respectable name, but that in most other respects, most of their customers considered Nokia's phones to have similar features as all the rest. They were trusted and reliable - they were an IBM, not an Apple. When they stopped making phones with similar features as all the rest, they were taking a big step into unknown territory.
If they had simply built a solid android phone, they could have retained much of
"You rush â" run run run" (Score:3)
With no legs?
Suicide by Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they are just another in the long line of suicide-by-Microsoft [groklaw.net] victims
My sister walked in to the Lumina trap ... (Score:3)
... by getting a Windows Mobile 7 device.
She used to be a happy Nokia customer but being a M.D. she didn't pay attention to the gizmo market and unfortunatelly didn't ask me prior to deciding on her new phone.
Basic functionality that she needs for her job i.e. Outlook contact import, how long a call lasts, alarm function when the phone is turned off etc. are not working. The touch screen menu is so sensitive that sometimes she accidentally places calls, on the other hand she sometimes has a hard time accepting calls.
Other than that the phone and its software looks really sleek.
After spending hours on the Nokia hotline and getting answers like "we don't know if this is supposed to work" or "we never thought about that", she now considers returning the phone and has been turned from a loyal low attention Nokia customer to one that wants anything but another Nokia.
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My sister walked in to the Lumina trap by getting a Windows Mobile 7 device.
So she's the one. Up until now I thought the reports that Microsoft had actually sold one were pure propaganda.
knuckleheads (Score:3)
Ahonen gets it wrong. You can see the problem in his chart here: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/.a/6a00e0097e337c8833017ee41902ae970d-pi [blogs.com]
Samsung and Apple were already on their respective trajectories when Nokia stumbled. Like Blackberry, Symbian wasn't. The writing was on the wall and Elop read it. If Nokia stayed the course they would promptly slide from #1 to #3. Perhaps not as painfully but every bit as surely.
Unfortunately, Elop then made two inexplicable mistakes. And in this Ahonen and, well, everyone on Slashdot at the time saw it.
1. Planned obsolescence of the core product. Did he learn nothing from the 60's and 70's disaster with the U.S. automobile industry? Customers don't like that!
2. The new product line to challenge the meteoric rise of Samsung and Apple would be... Microsoft Windows? Really!?
Re:How many more? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Funny)
Paid by Microsoft to take a dive, and open a "Microsoft-sized hole" in the market.
But that's not working put as planned, either...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's clear now that Microsoft, as always, used a stopgap solution to make their followup successful. Winphone 7 was never going anywhere and the plan was always for Win8. Nokia fell into the EEE trap and was used to crack into the market to pave the way for Win8. Their carcass may still prove useful to MS down the road with their patents and such and also as an inroad to European and other world markets. This is yet another brilliant move by MS. I still find it hard to believe that companies partner with them knowing how it usually turns out. I guess the short term benefits are just too tempting. I expect to see Win8 phones from Microsoft. Wonder how that will play with Nokia? I'd say they are helpless.
Re:How many more? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's clear now that Microsoft, as always, used a stopgap solution to make their followup successful. Winphone 7 was never going anywhere and the plan was always for Win8. Nokia fell into the EEE trap and was used to crack into the market to pave the way for Win8. Their carcass may still prove useful to MS down the road with their patents and such and also as an inroad to European and other world markets. This is yet another brilliant move by MS. I still find it hard to believe that companies partner with them knowing how it usually turns out. I guess the short term benefits are just too tempting. I expect to see Win8 phones from Microsoft. Wonder how that will play with Nokia? I'd say they are helpless.
Wow dude. You almost make it look as if Nokia is already bankrupt and is NOT the one finishing the sexiest Windows Phone 8 device (if not the sexiest smartphone overall) to come out in 2012. And Microsoft is already pushing its own Windows Phone 8 devices to compete with Nokia, so it's not just a rumor. But then I go out of the Slashdot bubble and the vision disappears.
Windows Phone 7 was, indeed, a stopgap solution. For Nokia as much as for Microsoft. And it actually made engineering sense to overhaul the hardware platform requirements for Windows Phone 8, because of the depth of the software changes. Legacy hardware, in principle, could have been supported with some extra effort, but my armchair CEO skills are insufficient to give a verdict on how easy would it have been for both companies. The existing Windows Phone users do not have it much worse than the users of Android phones stuck on Gingerbread. Who was the latest refusenik OEM again, Motorola Mobility? Their new owner company, what was it? Must be evil.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:How many more? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's kind of like talking about "the sexiest transvestite hooker" around.
Being acquired by Google seems like a good thing. Google looked at Nokia and passed on it...
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Keep in mind that Windows Mobile 6.x users also recently screwed over a few years ago by having their application marketplace shut down, even though many of them still had a year left in their two year phone contracts.
Buying a Windows Phone 7 phone right now would be downright foolish, because they aren't going to get a Windows 8 upgrade and the same problems with dwindling application support is likely to happen to them as well. Looking at past support of their legacy phones, it would make me think twice b
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Sticking with their OS is what's hurting Blackberry so much, so I don't think that was much of a choice either. The truth is that the mobile landscape got competitive as hell after Apple released the iPhone and the major tectonic shift that ensued was too much for big traditional companies like Nokia, Motorola and Sony/Ericsson to handle. LG and Samsung were smarter and switched to Android. So as crappy as the decision to play along with MSFT is, it was kind of like the only choice they had. That argument a
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Sticking with their OS is what's hurting Blackberry so much, so I don't think that was much of a choice either.
Actually, being slow to make Blackberry competitive is what's hurting them so much. If the new system is any good, they'll make a huge comeback.
The truth is that the mobile landscape got competitive as hell after Apple released the iPhone and the major tectonic shift that ensued was too much for big traditional companies like Nokia, Motorola and Sony/Ericsson to handle. LG and Samsung were smarter and switched to Android.
This much is true.
So as crappy as the decision to play along with MSFT is, it was kind of like the only choice they had.
That just makes no sense unless Elop has the management skills of a backwards teenager. All he had to do was merge all the Symbian departments, transfer much of the talent back to MeeGo, release the N9 and sell 5 million units, release a version with a keyboard and sell another 2 million units and the rest is obvious.
That argument about the ovi ecosystem being great and whatnot is a complete lie. My brother had a E62 and he liked his Nokia phones, eventually buying the newer models. I remember him showing me the ovi store and I remember when we compared that to the iOS App Store on my iPhone 3G. The difference was so great that it was pointless to discuss the merits of the two.
True enough.
This is the reason why I predict that eventually Microsoft will take over the extremely guarded approach of Apple and the fragmentation and some design issues of Android.
No, Apple is in a
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who modded this garbage "Interesting"?
[citation needed]
[citation needed] - (see: Samsung's recent profit reports)
[citation needed] See the ratio to which the N9 completely outsold the Lose-mobiles. Without marketing, and being excluded from the major markets by Nokia.
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Nokia was not a "successful company" that Elop took over and ran into the ground; Nokia was a "quickly failing company" that Elop has been trying to wrestle out of a nose dive. The alliance with Microsoft has changed the plummet from free fall, to a slightly shallower trajectory.
Economically Nokia wasn't in a nose dive when he took over, yes they were losing a market segment to iPhone/Android but they were still covering their costs through their massive feature phone sales and needed to reinvent itself to take back the high end market and start making profit again. I'll spare the discussion on whether Nokia could have salvaged one of their own systems or gone with Microsoft for another day, but no doubt the single biggest reason for their crash is how. When you're making a switch
Sorry, but you have no clue (Score:3)
It was the worst choice of 4 or 5 (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You know, when I looked at Elop's initial strategy, those were my thoughts as well: it's so goddamn obvious what's going to happen next, that the cratering of Nokia has to be part of the overall strategy. The only actual strategy I could come up with was that the goal was to depress Nokia's stock price so quickly that the engineering and production resources were still largely intact, but that Microsoft could still acquire it at a firesale price.
Since Microsoft though seems to be intent on launching its pho
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows Phone 7 is dead. Microsoft declared it dead the exact moment Nokia needed it the most, but nevermind. Nobody in his right mind would buy one right now, even if they liked the platform, with Windows Phone 8 on the horizon. If 8 takes off, *and* Nokia can survive until 8 takes off, they could do fine, albeit as a somewhat smaller company. But when you read TFA, and look at the graphs, and look at the general user community reaction to 8 in general, neither of these things (8 takes off, and Nokia can survive until Windows 8 phones become profitable) seem particularly likely.
Why (from TFA) haven't the board fired Elop? Corruption, perhaps? Payoffs?
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Informative)
The board probably had decided on a MS strategy before hiring Elop so they're as complicit in the current strategy as he is. That means they have face invested in the strategy which makes it unlikely that they'll fire Elop and change directions before it's too late. Once the board gets replaced the company may stand a chance, but that'll take some time.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
The optimism for Windows Phone in the press really does surprise me. Windows Phone 7 was really feature incomplete at launch but people made the excuse that it was their first Version. Ahhh No it was not, Microsoft had been making mobile OSs for a long time and Windows Phone 7 was Major version 7 and used the same kernel as Windows Mobile.
Microsoft has chopped Nokia off at the knees when it announced Windows Phone 8. Not only will it not run on the Nokia Lumia 900 it would not run on any existing Windows Mobile device. At that moment Microsoft was telling everyone to not buy a Windows Phone but wait for the next version and new hardware. Sales probably dropped to as close to zero.
Microsoft and Nokia need to understand that Windows Phone can not be almost as good as IOS and Android, it can not be as good as IOS and Android, it can be a little better than IOS and Android. It has to be much better than IOS and Android. Any new mobile OS that launches will have few apps than IOS and Android so you must be a much better platform than IOS and Android. RIM might get by with good enough because they have a large customer base that trusts them. Microsoft could have gotten by four years ago with Windows Phone 7 when IOS was limited to a few carriers and Android was just getting going. MeeGo could have leveraged the Nokia user base. Palm could have made it because it was at the right place and the right time but had a crippled SDK and not great hardware.
Also Nokia gave up the potential profit center of running the app store and selling media to the devices.
Nokia smelled smoke and jump off the platform and into a cold heartless sea and had to hope for Microsoft to save them. They should have put out the fire.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft invoked the Osborbe Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect) on their own fledgling product. Even Mighty APPLE had to admit all the waiting for iPhone 5 (that they didn't even officially announce themselves!) caused an Osborne Effect last quarter.
It's been almost SIX MONTHS since Microsoft started touting WP8 as the next big thing... And your WP7 apps don't get to come along.... So there is ABSOLUTELY no reason to buy a WP7 device, or develop WP7 apps, because it won't gain you anything. Apple gets flack for changing a CONNECTOR after NINE years...
How are companies supposed to survive with no product to sell for SIX MONTHS? Poor Nokia is just doomed...DOOMED!
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Apple gets flack for changing a CONNECTOR after NINE years...
By some, I guess. By many (including me) it gets flack for changing the connector to yet another proprietary connector, when the rest of the world has standardized on micro-USB.
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Because so many people plug in cables with their eyes closed.
There's a solution looking for a problem.
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But due to the current limitation in the phone charger it will only charge it when the playbook is in standby mode. If the playbook is in use the phone charger only supplies enough current that the playbook runs on power from the charger and thus does not use the battery.
There is no possible way for a 500 mA charger to charge a device while the device is using 450-500 mA to stay on.
However the Playbook charger which delivers more than 1A
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Elop did the exact same thing when he effectively announced that Symbian was dead nine months before they had a Windows Phone on the market. So that's nine months without a product to sell during the transition to Windows Phone 7 and another six months with no product during the transition to Windows Phone 8.
At this point I'm expecting a Windows Phone 9 announcement the week after Windows Phone 8 launches.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Interesting)
wp7 apps run on wp8 - wp8 apps won't run on wp7.
that makes the incentive to make wp8 apps very, very small for the time being. which is just as well since the wp8 sdk has been soo fucking late it's not even funny.
MS spent a shitload of money to get apps on wp7 - and to metro store, this shitload of cash includes directly giving cash to hundreds of companies worldwide, cold hard cash as long as you had an app to develop for either platform that supposedly had an unique angle(this means that you didn't make an exact port to another platform of the features of your winpho or metro app right away).
too bad they didn't do the things that would have taken no money and made more kinds of apps possible(because that would have been actual os sw development work and that's hard! wp7 is a shortcut design as far as an os goes, you'd think that it's made for a console, not for a mobile computer).
Elops problem is that he's more interested in what WSJ writes than what happens on the company bottom line. it's likely that the stupid, stupid board made Elop's bonus matrix depend on two things: cutting workforce(expenses) and increasing USA marketshare - while increasing USA marketshare isn't that bad, nearly all companies that have focused on it have been totally fucked - that's how Nokia fucked over Samsung, Motorola, Ericcson and others in the olden days: by not giving a shit about one country where operators choose how to fuck up your phone and which has extremely diverse network situation. Even back then people were bitching that Nokia is dead because it wasn't dumping money to be on a market where every player was getting fucked up the arse so badly they all went down the toilet(Apple and Samsung are current day exceptions to this rule, but if Samsung didn't have a lot of cash from other businesses their phone biz would have been dead before they managed to get a hit with Galaxy line).
they should have made Elops pay depend purely on yearly repeatable profitability(oh and the board was stupid, stupid, stupid or just didn't give a shit long before hiring Elop), in other words sales of profitably produced and sold phones. besides than that, Elop is a pussy ass - relying on bodyguards when laying off people in a nerd firm in a country where executives can shut down an entire regular industry plant and go drink their sorrows away in the same bar with the former employees while both parties kids go to soccer practice.
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And your WP7 apps don't get to come along
BZZZT! WRONG!
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Actually your Windows Phone Apps 7 apps do get to come along. The problem is that the Windows 8 apps you wrote for Desktop, Tablets and Windows Phone 8 back to Windows Phone 7. Microsoft wasn't stupid enough to actually shaft their developers, just their customers.
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> I meant "Windows phone" as in Windows on a phone in general, not specifically WP7. I own an Android phone, but I have to admit that I like WP7.
Then, trade in today. Nokia desperately needs the money.
> When I'm ready to upgrade my phone, I will definitely be looking at Windows 8 phones as well as all of the new Android phones. My biggest complaint about Android is it still feels clunky, like stuff is kind of cut and pasted together to create a Frankensteinesque amalgam of an operating system. WP7 fe
Re: (Score:3)
I think when they said "nobody" they meant "very few people". It's a turn of phrase. Some people, like you, are happy to run old platforms. Most people want the shiny new one.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Informative)
C'mon, you know the answer to this. You don't declare a previous platform dead until you're ready to ship the replacement. And if you're wise, you provide some manner of backwards or forwards compatibility. New versions of iOS will often install on older devices, as will newer versions of Android. iOS and Android apps tend (not always, but often) to work on a wide range of OS versions.
WP8 will not install on WP7 machines, making them orphans by definition. WP8 apps won't work on WP7 phones, giving developers little incentive to create WP8 apps until it's clear whether the platform will be a success, leading to a chicken-and-egg problem.
Every platform becomes obsolete eventually, but Microsoft should know better than to declare a platform dead months before the replacement becomes available. That's a newbie mistake. It's almost like they're trying to sink Nokia. Maybe they're thinking of buying the wreckage and fleshing out their hardware portfolio?
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One example: I worked for a young company that announced a major new OS release, a real departure, that was not compatible in any way with what had gone before. Apps written on the old would not run on the new, even with compatibility mode. Apps written for the new would not run on the old. The biggest change was the network stack, which was a huge departure, and the company decided that forcing customers and software vendors to cut over was more important than providing backwards compatibility. So this was
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A friend of mine just bought one last week and I am sure he is in his right mind. He got a Lumia 710 and I dare say you can't buy a better smartphone in our country for the price he paid for it. Prices for WP7 devices are going down to the point where it makes perfect sense to buy one if you are looking for a cheap phone.
And this is the whole fucking point.
Nokia is still slowly dying, because they're certainly not making money on such sales.
People that are buying Lumias are not buying them because of the features and whatnot, but because they're cheap as fuck.
And that doesn't help Nokia.
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It's far too early to be predicting the death of Nokia or Windows phone. It hasn't gained popularity, but that could easily change.
TFA's thesis, though, is that Nokia was actually doing well before it went Windows and is now bleeding out. If true, that makes Elop a fuckup whether Nokia pulls out of it dive or not; the only possible vindication would be survival and some sort of mid/long term strategic gain that validates the present losses.
Re: (Score:3)
It's far too early to be predicting the death of Nokia or Windows phone. It hasn't gained popularity, but that could easily change.
TFA's thesis, though, is that Nokia was actually doing well before it went Windows and is now bleeding out. If true, that makes Elop a fuckup whether Nokia pulls out of it dive or not; the only possible vindication would be survival and some sort of mid/long term strategic gain that validates the present losses.
at exactly that point it wasn't doing well.. sort of OK when you consider the mobile biz though - the phones business was profitable and they had good marketshare and not that bad momentum either. they had lines of phones which sold well, they had lines of shit hw(cpu/tech wise) they had selling at profit, which is sort of the optimum place. They needed a properly done cut of workforce to cut bullshit from development processes, but that's what they needed. they sure as fuck didn't need a new ceo yelling on
Re:How many more? (Score:4, Informative)
Selling more phones worldwide than all others put together in every segment is not doing well? The only thing that sucked was their US smartphone sales, but globally they were selling more smartphones than all other suppliers put together. The iPhone wouldn't even work on a Chinese network at that time but Nokia were in there selling millions.
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Nokia was doing better than any other phone manufacturer but were not growing, which is very different to "freefall". That describes what happened after Elop did an Osbourne. I really can't believe you idiots are taking the reaction to his incompetance, which happend some time after he was hired and not before as you fantisise, as the reason he was hired in the first place.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
No sir, we are really sorry for Nokia.
If any hate is spewing, is targeted against the ex M$ bigwig Elop which brew this destructive strategy.
Far-well Nokia, once pride of Finland.
You are dead and we are really sorry.
Re:Hate targeted at Elop (Score:4, Insightful)
If any hate is spewing, is targeted against the ex M$ bigwig Elop which brew this destructive strategy.
As pointed out above [slashdot.org], it was the board that was already decided at ditching the previous CEO and hiring Elop/MS instead.
Now, as Dilbert [dilbert.com] has pointed out, this was a strategic move of sheer genius, with which MS has realised three very strategic goals:
1. Windows phone introduced in the market,
2. Nokia, the biggest competitor for their own phone hardware sales ambitions has been crushed,
3. Linux as OS for the mobile phone has been disabled.
Luckily, there is still the Jolla [jolla.com] (currently connection time out) initiative with Tizen.
The grand question: How did the Nokia board get played up so much by Microsoft?
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe, like Elop, the board members also hold a lot of Microsoft shares they hoped would increase, or at least hedge against Nokia somewhat?
No matter what, it seems a matter of politics and greed vs. soundly running a business with engineers and manufacturing.
Don't forget: the carriers have always hated Nokia's support for VOIP, even before Microsoft bought Skype and who owns Skype. The carrier's that subsidize phones were not favorable to Nokia *before* Microsoft/Skype came along.
If Steve Job was in the sa
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hatred towards Nokia on Slashdot... Why not failing HTC, patent troll Motorola Mobility (nobody in Europe buys that Chinese crap btw)...
I think mentioning HTC is very relevant, ignoring the shear scale on which Nokia has been destroyed by Elop in Months, for the third ecosystem [in reality sixth], to produce Windows Phones. Ironically one of HTC's strategy is to produce Windows phones too next year, and they cheaper than Nokia's offerings for equivalent models.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Motoralla's radio products are awesome
Its not the same company as Motorolla mobility. Like Rolls Royce cars and turbine engines have nothing to do with each other.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see as hatred, but rather as pity for a once great company crumbling down right before our eyes because of wrong decisions. If there is any hatred, it's for Elop.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Q: How does a stock go down by 90%?
A: Well first it goes down 80% and then it gets cut in half.
Re:How many more? (Score:5, Informative)
What phones aren't made in China?
Ironically Nokias before Elop sacked Nokias workforce
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They could have gone the route of a droid phone maker. The problem there was that all of their suppliers were already android makers, and competing with your suppliers isn't a great strategy.
Being just another android handset maker could have been equally catastrophic (after all, nothing they've released lately is on par with the droids from Samsung), so given the huge pile of cash microsoft was offering their options were limited. They would have been better to keep toes in both though, and been a Droid
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Nokia had no true smartphone os so it was windows or android. And android is Samsung.
The geeks might have liked the n900 or whatever it was but the iPhone and droid had all the hype
The iPhone and droid may have had hype...but Nokia had growing market share; an App store; incredible phones...and most importantly choices. It decided to burn them in a memo and yes Meego was one of them, but regardless of dismissing other peoples opinions just because they are more technical than yourself. The cold truth is the current Strategy failed, and is continuing to fail!!
Re:Not like Nokia's other phones were selling (Score:4, Interesting)
Nokia had their own OS in development, which came out before Windows (and now we learn it was one year early since apparently WP7 was just warming up and only WP8 is the real deal). Different from Windows, Meego already had an SDK out and a migration path from Symbian, so that developers could have their apps ported on day one.
We cannot say it would have been a hit for sure, but it had more than a small edge on Windows anyway. Why not give it a shot, along with Windows and then decide what was the best for the company? Nokia was full of cash at the time and could think long term.
Why not do that? Because Elop did what was best for Microsoft, not Nokia and wilfully sacrificed all the assets of his own company to benefit his previous one. Why he is not being investigated for breach of fiduciary duty is beyond me.
Re:Not like Nokia's other phones were selling (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Elop did what was best for Microsoft, not Nokia and wilfully sacrificed all the assets of his own company to benefit his previous one. Why he is not being investigated for breach of fiduciary duty is beyond me.
I don't buy this argument, because I don't think Elop was a Microsoft mole. I think he is a Windows True Believer.
People talk about Steve Jobs and his Reality Distortion Field; but I've known Microsofties that believe just as strongly in All Things Windows. They truly believe Windows is the solution to everything, and everything else is an also-ran. They truly think that the world is just waiting for a Microsoft solution to any problem, and as soon as it's released by golly the world is going to flock to it in droves.
I remember sitting through a talk just before Internet Explorer 7 was released. This was at the point (pre-Chrome even, IIRC) where Firefox was starting to seriously eat into IE's market share. The speaker waxed eloquently on just how great Internet Explorer 7 was going to be, and how Mozilla should consider just folding up shop once the final version was released because no one was going to use Firefox after that point. It wasn't hyperbole - he really believe that.
Re:Not like Nokia's other phones were selling (Score:4, Informative)
OK, you didn't read it yet, here you go: The story of MeeGo [taskumuro.com].
Re:Not like Nokia's other phones were selling (Score:4, Informative)
the iphone stole 14% of mobile PROFITS a year after it was first released. and that was only 1 million units sold.
almost all of those cheapo phones sold around the world make no money. all the profits are made on a few devices.
apple is now at something like 60% of PROFITS of all cell phones sold around the world. Samsung is 30% or more. everyone else is fighting for scraps
Re:Not like Nokia's other phones were selling (Score:5, Insightful)
the iphone stole 14% of mobile PROFITS a year after it was first released. and that was only 1 million units sold.
almost all of those cheapo phones sold around the world make no money. all the profits are made on a few devices.
apple is now at something like 60% of PROFITS of all cell phones sold around the world. Samsung is 30% or more. everyone else is fighting for scraps
iPhone never stole anything! Apple make massive mark-ups to their products and have people prepared to pay for it. Most people aren't which is why Androids market share is 4 times that of Apples...and Apples is dropping. Apple does well with early adopters, but now the market is maturing not so much!
Re:I'm not much of a Nokia Fan (Score:5, Informative)
Apple sold 5 million [apple.com] iPhone 5s on opening weekend. As of 1 month ago, Nokia has sold 7 million [techcrunch.com] Lumias. Total.
The Lumia was introduced in November 2011, so that's 10 months of sales. Apple sold over 100 million iPhones last year.
Re:I'm not much of a Nokia Fan (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple sold 5 million [apple.com] iPhone 5s on opening weekend. As of 1 month ago, Nokia has sold 7 million [techcrunch.com] Lumias. Total.
The Lumia was introduced in November 2011, so that's 10 months of sales. Apple sold over 100 million iPhones last year.
That is not the half of it Android activates 1.3 Million phones every day, and has a market share 4 times that of Apple, and Nokia could have had an Android product...and still had a Windows one if it really wanted.
Re:I'm not much of a Nokia Fan (Score:5, Funny)
Suck on that you FOSS faggots
iOS is mostly free software.
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You must have Apple stock. :) Congratulations. :)
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A top of the line Android is every bit as pricey, depending on setup and/or contract.
Is that so?
I just logged onto my Verizon account, since I'm eligible for a discounted upgrade with a two-year contract extension. I clicked "upgrade", then selected "category: smartphone", then "sort by price, high to low". Here's what I got:
And in virtually every way, the Galaxy SIII is a better device than the iPhone 5. Granted that it only has 32 GB of
Re:I'm not much of a Nokia Fan (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is either lying when they 1.3 million phones are activated per day, or Android is such a piece of shit operating system that you have to activate it continuos over and over again to get it to work.
In 2011 there were a total of 491.4 million smart phones sold [email-mark...eports.com]. 491.4/365 is ~1.3 million. As we all know not every one of those phones is an android phone.
Fun chart plotting Androids activation a day.
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-android-activations-per-day-2012-9 [businessinsider.com]
Re: (Score:2)
But I'm very skeptical of this article's honesty.
Seriously, nokia's been delivering very high quality products lately, and I still see a LOT of people using their phones (I'd say 10:1 to apple's stuff) where I live.
So I'd say this is just paid FUD. By whom. No idea, but I'd point at whoever could benefit from nokia's stock falling.
Lets not talk about FUD but little thing called facts. This is the latest from IDC
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23638712 [idc.com]
As you can see for each Windows Phone user there are TWENTY Android users and Five Apple users.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how much Nokia stock is held by Microsoft people?
Disorder (Score:3)
They had Symbian, the next generation,
As in Belle. Meh.
they got Meego with the very innovative user interface of the N9, and when they got both ready to take over the world,
No, they couldn't take over the world with a somewhat polished, but deeply troubled product, officially obsoleted one and a half years before it was ready (the N9) and a platform that is not yet usable on any kind of target hardware (MeeGo as in the shared effort between Nokia and Intel).
Announced Meltemi
Huh? Could you point me to a public statement from Nokia regarding anything so named?
Even those efforts, with mostly open software, could had leveraged their hardware offer, if they published enough specification on their hardware to have drivers to enabling them for alternate operating systems (nitdroid, cyanogen mod port, webos, meego, etc), or even push forward the groups trying to giving new uses to their phones giving them the specs, help and support to do so.
Your idealism is infectious. Surely you can provide examples of mobile phone companies leveraging this kind of benefits f
Re:What Are the Three Pillars??? (Score:5, Informative)
I got way down the page and found that I was in reality not even a quarter through and still hadn't seen any explanation of the title of the article (three pillars). Just a bunch of rambling. I tried reading some more then hit the tl;dr; wall.
Can someone list succinctly (like the article should have) what the three pillars are?
From the Article "three pillars, one on the dumbphones unit (as before); one on Symbian but one that would be run down (changing from before) and one new leg, that built on Windows Phone, which would fully replace the Symbian leg over time - and more - would even take some of the business from the dumbphones unit."
Basically
The First part is saying how Nokia was doing great before Elop...In fact great up until the Burning Platform Memo. Where basically Elop said what Nokia was producing was garbage, and they should go for the three pillar stratergy.
The Second part is about the three pillars, Dumbphones(Keep em), Symbian Smartphones gracefully being replaced by Windows Phones, and about Nokias graph of the plan in graphical form with detailed explanation.
The Third part is showing how well this plan went sown (Spoiler now well) Explaining each portion of the graph from plan to execution.
The Fourth part is basically justifying getting rid of the Stratergy and Elop. The Twist at the end is that even though The strategy is not only failing Nokia's current stratergy is to keep following it!?
The short version is you should really read the article before posting here, the longer version is its an invaluable blog if you have the vaguest interest in Mobile Phones.
Re: (Score:3)
They are seriously good now, too. It's only Android fanbois who refuse to see it, because Nokia devices do not run the One True Platform.
They are a shadow of their former self in every way, their hardware is less impressive than it was years ago!! As for Nokia choosing Android, they are saying so because Android holds a market share of 70% of the market and has 1.3million activations a day...and they could go android tomorrow!!! The reality is Nokia went Microsoft exclusive and it has predictably turned out truly awful!!! But And5roid could be Meego, WebOS, Something else just as easy.