“Analysts” around the world, spreading and perpetuating FUD, one article at a time.

It took a lot of motivation and a significant bit of my patience to sit down and pick through, one by one, the utter dross that MANY “tech sites” like to cite and quote as fact when making their arguments but I cannot idly stand by and not vent my frustration and tear down these myths that idiot analysts worldwide are pushing as truth. It’s one thing to stir up controversy to facilitate and give a platform to intelligent discussion and dissemination of ideas, it’s an entirely different matter altogether to write crap and give it a platform for just getting “hits”.

First on my hit-list of articles are  Kat Hannaford’s of Gizmodo and John Paczkowski of AllThingsD who SOMEHOW managed to publish articles which took strongly  from an “open letter” written by one Adnaan Ahmad who is supposedly an “analyst” at Berenberg Bank. To be honest after reading this letter I wasn’t sure whether this was a real article or someone trolling REALLY hard in order to get a rise out of people.

The gist of his comments is summed up by the following quotes:

“Announce an EXCLUSIVE deal with your ex-colleague, Steve: you get access to their WP7 
intellectual property (IPR) scot-free and access to the US market where your share has dived to the 
low single-digit level, and in so doing cut your bloated handset business R&D budget by at least €1bn, or 30%”

“Get rid of your own proprietary high-end solution (MEEGO) – it’s the biggest joke in the tech industry right now and will put you even further behind Apple and Google.”

I’m no financial analyst but if this and what we’ve been hearing in recent weeks is any indication of GOOD analysis, where do I sign up because obviously these people are clueless beyond any shadow of a doubt and yet still are getting paid so well!   Before I move on though I wish to highlight and pick apart this…. travesty of an analysis.

An exclusive deal with Windows Phone 7 is proposed as his first idea which is supposed to cut the handset division’s R&D bill by 1 billion Euros.

Are you off your rocker? Will Samsung, HTC, LG et al be thrilled that they had to pay to join your ecosystem, pay a license fee per device, pay for R&D and support for those devices, hire developers to build applications and engineers to create these devices only for you to decide to screw them over barely a year into the device’s life cycle? I’m almost certain these companies signed agreements from the get-go on how long for and how many devices they would produce. It’s ridiculous to assume that you can simply ignore this precedent.

This is before you consider the fact that sourcing the necessary hardware parts and developers to adapt your hardware in addition to hiring and firing the necessary support staff will add AT LEAST another 18 months to an already delayed product cycle. Which in essence spells DEATH for Nokia as a profitable company.

Get rid of your own proprietary high-end solution (MEEGO) – it’s the biggest joke in the tech industry right now and will put you even further behind Apple and Google.

I consider myself a well-versed individual so when I read his usage of the word proprietary I came to the conclusion that either I was unintelligent or he had no clue what MeeGo was.

Last I checked, Nokia was FAR from the sole owner of the MeeGo distribution and most of the software thus included was made of open source components with a licensing model far from the colloquial meaning and accompanying fees associated with a proprietary operating system.

Secondly MeeGo being the largest joke in the industry.

How? If you were referring to the marketing industry then I’d be inclined to give him a pass because admittedly MeeGo is a silly name but I doubt he’d be that clever. Two of the largest players in technology, who between them have not only pioneered but directed the computing and mobile computing industries cannot be considered a joke. Ditto for the fact that the OS is THE only mobile operating system  given the distinction of being hosted by the Linux Foundation.

Editor’s note: In retrospect I realized that I’m even further perpetuation his nonsense, in spite of my attempts to completely shoot it down.

Second on my list of nonsense articles is this disingenuous piece of FUD written by Manikandan Raman of  International Business Times.

In a very well worded paragraph meant to give the impression that Nokia is floundering well behind the sales of their competitors, quoted below, he lovingly compared the sales of Symbian^3 handsets to those manufactured by Apple, all Android related handsets and all of RIM’s handsets.

Nokia’s Symbian 3 line-up including the N8, C6, C7 and E7 has shipped about 5 million units, a distant cry in the smartphone race against Android, iPhone and Blackberry. Gleacher estimates fourth-quarter shipments of 25 milllion units, 16 million units and 14 million plus units, respectively, for Android, iPhone and Blackberry.

Only, Microsoft‘s Windows 7 models are lagging behind Nokia with shipments of around 2 million units.

His first fatal mistake was including the E7 in any of those sales figures as was his error including the C6 which has yet to receive world-wide availability in the mentioned figures. An even worse aberration was to lump all Android carriers together in order to give an exaggerated view of the situation.  The only FAIR comparison in this sense would be to compare the sales of the Blackberry OS6 running Torch sales to those of the iPhone 4 and to those of Google devices running Android 2.3. Even in such a situation it’s clear to even the most daft idiot that Nokia would likely rank no less than second in any such comparison.

It is becoming patently obvious to even the slowest among us that there is an underlying agenda to a lot of the media we’re encountering regarding Nokia. It’s almost as if the media has joined in on some huge circle jerk where if they’re not Google or Apple and thusly providing revenue, hits or other services that they get slated almost unequivocally with no chance or benefit of the doubt being given in ANY situation. It’s sickening really.

It’s one thing to have strong opinions about something, it’s another thing to dislike something and much rather avoid it, but if you are one of the many people that can influence MILLIONS of people on a daily basis at least take the time out to check facts, write unambiguously and try as much as possible to be impartial and give everyone a fair shake.

Editor’s note: I know this is quite a ways off my usual article but this NEEDED to get off my chest.

Tags: Convergence, FUD, Linux, Media, MeeGo, Nokia, trolls

Category: Nokia