“Hating Nokia 101” Class – Lesson 1 – Unleashing the iTrolls and Fandroids

The bastion of everything that is Anti-Nokia can be found most strongly in one of two places. Either Gizmodo or Engadget. Gizmodo is a blatant all out hate for Nokia whilst Engadget is that devious asswipe that tries to make sly little digs at you at every possible moment whilst trying to seem impartial and objective. I joked earlier about a “I hate Nokia 101” class, suggesting that a so called “analyst” attended one in order to come up with such a ridiculous article.

I wouldn’t be surprised though if either of those two big blogs aren’t trolling Nokia fans and creating more Anti-Nokia feeling on purpose. Engadget’s latest Nokia related posts insinuates that Nokia is burning money through their massive Research and Development budget. They have not seen (or refuse to see) where exactly Nokia’s investments are going, making a cheap jab for the currently very easy target, Symbian.

“Our initial reaction to the Bernstein Research chart above is to wonder what value Nokia’s massive R&D spending has achieved. Sadly, that’s our second and third reaction, too, having spent some time with the company’s Symbian OS.”

Bigger R&D budget than Apple and HTC? Must be a bad thing! Where’s all your budget going Nokia? It’s like as if

• Nokia isn’t still the global leader as a phone manufacturer
• Nokia isn’t selling the most smartphones by a single manufacturer
• Nokia does not have a huge distribution channel to pump out what, HALF A BILLION phones in 2010 (453M)
• Nokia does not cater for every segment, LOW, Mid, High.
• Nokia produces only phones
• Nokia does not produce the infrastructure, radio technologies, cellular networks (e.g. LTE).

As @everythingblaxx says:

• Nokia Siemens Networks accounts for $2 billion of their R&D spending
• Navteq another $400 million. Remove that $2.4 billion from the equation and now they’re below Samsung’s R&D spending.
• Well, I shouldn’t be surprised that Engadget is engaging in more of their patented “Lowest common denominator” reporting style

So Lesson 1: Unleashing the iTrolls and fandroids

Due to Nokia’s lacklustre presence in the US, that MUST of course reflect the situation in the rest of the world, and so for those based on Engadget’s home soil, it is thus very easy to sympathise with their loathing for Nokia.

1) Find article with remote Anti Nokia Sentiment.

2) Ramp up that Anti-Nokia feeling and cut out anything that could give the other side of that story to let readers make their own decision

3) After leaving enough bait, unleash the iTrolls and google fanboys to comment which in turn should drive in the Nokians.

4) Done. Let flame war sizzle for a while. Let traffic drive in.

If you’re an iTroll or fandroid, you are privileged with the +50 ability of making comments completely unrelated to the article. By default, your commenting ground is already scattered with “They should use Android”, “They should use WP7” although it always helps to repeat it. OS Flame wars are awesome.

There are many valid discussions being exchanged with Pro or Anti Nokia feeling, but too often these threads are filled to the brim with astonishing inaneness you’d expect to be lingering in a YouTube comments. It just leads you to think, “ARE YOU FREAKIN THICK OR WHAT?” or what ever indignant phrase of your choice.

Some notable comments I read (many more but must dash to lectures).

JJO12

The ignorance displayed by Engadget on this post and some of the commenters on here is AMAZING.

However I’m not surprised, since having the editors roll their eyes towards anything Nokia is nothing new. It must be part of their new hipster trend these days I guess.

Research & Development goes WAY beyond Nokia making “just a phone”. This goes for any corporation.

Like someone stated earlier, some of the technologies we have today in both cellular networks and mobile phones are thanks in part due to Nokia.

So the next time you make a call or send a text message on your generic plastic Android device or sip on your latte sitting in Starbucks while playing Angry Birds on your iPhone while huddled over your iPad watching Netflix via 3G, remember how it was all possible.

akkual

You develop small things, you get your revenue quickly.

You develop big things, you get your revenue years later.

This was the case with Nokia in early 1980s. People here in Finland mocked Nokia for consuming excessive amounts of money on stupid big phones, you could use for 10 minutes once a day with batteries of that time. Well, where are we now? I left this one to you to figure out.

Nokia has its problems at the moment. But those problems are not on the R&D. Actual market share problems are more due to the big un-agile company that can slowly react to demands of markets. Few bad choices have been made and Nokia is paying the price of those… but if Nokia now would dump its R&D and concentrate only to bring an iPhone-killer, it would lose its long term focus.. and it would lose its own game.

…

It is not just smartphone UI’s like Symbian or MeeGo, its everything.

I mean, flexible circuit boards, flexible and/or better batteries, printed pcbs, stacked 3d ICs, new materials for casings, housings, new touchscreen materials, more environmental friendly productions, marketing, economy etc. etc.

Software development methods, frameworks, AI, new software concepts, mobile games, UIs, user friendliness…

Energy harvesting, different energy sources, super energy efficient silicon, etc…

Network protocols, nfc, sensor networks, physical peer-to-peer networks, local p2p adhoc networks..

And these are just a small hint I know about Nokia’s R&D.

Nokia has R&D practically on all areas that are studied e.g. in technical universities such as Berkeley or MIT.

I work on Finnish university and see a lot Nokia funded projects. There are easily over ten new companies spinned off from Nokia funded projects per year around my geographical area. Nokia fills its “society” responsibilities and not only just investors requirements.

via Engadget

Update: Engadget at it again – http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/04/nokia-releases-symbian-update-for-n8-c7-and-c6-01-its-not-the/ How is it possible for the likes of Slashgear and PCWorld to pick up even amounts of news on Nokia be it good or bad, but there seems to be some kind of filter on Engadget?  Oh Vlad, you wonderful Troll you. I still miss how you hated on the N8’s “very stiff” shutter button because you were too much of an idiot to realise like point and shoot digicams, it had half button press for autofocus.

Category: Nokia, Rant