Stephen Elop interview at D9
Ahead of his keynote speech at Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference tomorrow evening, Stephen Elop took (is taking) the time out to answer a few questions from Walt Mossberg at their currently ongoing D9 conference. While you can currently follow this liveblog here courtesy of the fine folks at ThisIsMyNext, there were a few choice quotes that I felt Nokia lovers would like to hear, albeit you may not actually believe.
On the comments surrounding Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s hardware arm amongst other things-
“We will remain in possession of the hardware business. The rumors are baseless. It doesn’t make sense when you think about it. You’d have to descale it and de-leverage it to make it profitable”
“Look at the synergies between the companies — if you sell, you destroy value in the process.”
In justifying the decision to adopt Windows Phone 7 as their main smartphone platform in lieu of other options Elop said the following
“I went to Nokia knowing there were challenges. I went there planning on moving towards MeeGo. We looked at Android,We looked at Windows Phone — but decided when I sat down with the head of Symbian, he said we can put a great product into the market in a third of the time it will take with Symbian”
On why Nokia felt they’d be better served using Windows Phone as opposed to Android in a differentiation stakes -
“The pattern that we’re worried about on the Android side — will the OEMs truly have assurance that their takes will be able to shape and form Android.”
It seems Nokia wants to be able to influence the look, feel, functionality and performance of the Windows Phone ecosystem in a big way. Hopefully they have a seat at the table when decisions need to be made, much like they did when Symbian was still an independent company. On the flip-side hopefully that is one of many seats at the table as opposed to the situation with Symbian where Nokia called many of the decisions made outright.
As for making sure there’s no massive platform fragmentation-
“We will not do something on our WP7 phones that won’t work on other WP7 phones — it’s a philosophy for success.”
While this is not exactly a lot of information, I’m inclined to believe that there will be some changes to the user experience on Nokia’s Windows Phone devices but the general usage paradigm should be similar. Hopefully their changes look a little like this or at least as beautiful.
On MeeGo-
“We’ll ship a MeeGo device this year”
On Windows Phone devices -
“We’re making very good progress. We can expect them at the end of the year”
He did dodge a few questions about global/local launches. Would be very nice to see a worldwide launch for that first device covering the North American, Asia and Pacific and Eurasian regions in one fell swoop.
On tablets -
“I’m not going to announce one today, but I want to make a point. Whatever device it is, that connected digital experience will define what consumers are looking for. For a company like ours, it’s obviously very important to make sure we’re playing that space.”
To me it seems like they’re waiting on a worthwhile way to enter that space. For obvious reasons MeeGo won’t be what they’re looking for and Windows 8 in it’s current iteration is not only not RTM but it’s not quite where we the consumers would want it to be. I’ve made my own personal views about the tablet market and what I would like it to be in the near future. It would seem Microsoft also agree with that view and hopefully Nokia aren’t too far behind ‘em.
PS. Elop did pull a device out of his pocket when prompted by Walt, if only we knew what it was 
.
Via ThisIsMyNext
Category: Nokia
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Stephen Elop interview at D9 | WWW.ANDROIDWORLD.BIZ | June 2, 2011
- First Nokia Windows phone possibly shown off briefly at D9 conference : My Nokia Blog | June 2, 2011
- Elop Shows the Nokia N9? : My Nokia Blog | June 2, 2011
- Video: Full 40 minute interview at D9 with Stephen Elop. [With transcript] | MTBox | July 4, 2011
I understand the move to W7, for expediency sake, but the thing that concerns me is ditching Symbian.. I think people want choice in OS and frankly i dont believe current Symbian users will readily adopt Windows in its place. Now Meego, yes, i think the majority would be happy with that as an alternate OS. However, Meego doesnt have the massive development resources as does Windows. I think Nokia should support both platforms as a Failsafe..and i believe they will retain a much larger customer base in the long run by doing so.
You can make a Brick fly, if you throw enough money at it. Lets see Meego Fly.
The handset OS i saw on videos from MeeGo conf, i’m not sure about. It needs a lot of work still, a huge amount, and the way the guy talked about that project is too unstructured for corporate buy in right now. It may be different in the rest of MeeGo, but that’s how it felt to me, watching it.
However, if Nokia’s device (be it MeeGo handset / Maemo6/ Harmattan/MeeGo core with Nokia developed UI) is a hit, i’d love to see them follow it up this time with a second device. Keep Windows Phone as their primary smartphone platform, sure, but release a device occasionally (1 per year maybe) with evolutions of that platform. If Windows phone doesn’t work out for the company then it would be good to have something else knocking around, and you keep the cusomers that want a local file system and drag + drop with their PC’s etc.
Dont forget that we still need app support and development support from nokias side. The push also needs to come from them too. Releasing something that is just not finished is just not on and then expect the buyer community to try and do what they need to so as to get on with it. Sure we would but right is right and wrong is well…is just plain damn wrong!!!
Id rather have them finish off what they started so we can have the finished product of say maemo rather than the half baked one that they shipped before. Maybe then there’d be little need for apps if the OS is complete. Just give us what we want and let the sales talk for itself because it looks like stating what we want to nokia itself is just not working as they are too thick skulled.
Nokia adds over their apps in Qt now, (battery monitor, for example). Then i think it’s just to run them on Meego which will also have Qt.
Same, If the Harmatten device is really good I’m going for that instead of a WP7. Hopefully they won’t ditch support for it.
I agree with the commenter above me. There’s no need to ditch symbian. Release wp7 but keep symbian support past 2016.
If Symbian is making them money and customers like it, they will i’m sure. But that all depends on what symbian looks like 3-5 years from now.
Yay. Corporate America wins.
android. Ios. Windows. Mobile takeover.
Good for their f’cked up economy.
Waiting for the nokia WP for the masses….
which may require a pc to do simple tasks(?) lol
you know Windows has a HArd time doing anything right except pissing you off with bluescreens,MAD lag,and half ass battery life
that’s why i’ve been using linux(ubuntu) for 3 years it doesn’t fuck up ….that’s the problem XD
Hehe
http://nokiaplanj.com/nokia-wp7.jpg
My Windows7 experience is a lot better than Ubuntu experience
Debian on the otherhand is more stable than Ubuntu and actually works 
Though its better for work stuff and ubuntu is better for home multimedia.
What? Pissing you off with bluescreens? Dude are you still using Windows 98? Oh… i forgot it is Deep Space Bar, that is expected from you. Deep Space Bar, what a dude you are, just make some baseless assumptions and think you make a point.
But i think it would be better if you stop talking through ur ass.
I have Windows 7 and I saw a blue screen today
stupid windows 7 couldn’t handle my firewall and closed with an unexpected error.
There it is he said they wont do nothing on their handsets that wont work on the competition ! So i say so u want us to buy a nokia because . . . .
They want you to buy Nokia cause you like waiting 6 month more.
I’m not sure how is Mango going to make WP7 into a seller? People aren’t buying WP7, and why should they? It’s got iOS like negatives and limitations and is not even close to iOS functionally. It offers nothing on iOS, if Nokia really thinks WP7 will somehow save them, they are in for a rude awakening.
iOs isn’t the be all and end all of mobile platforms, neither is android, or windows phone. mango will correct some major issues for users and developers with the system and that will certainly help sales. Whether it will be enough for MS or Nokia we will see but if they get things right it should be, provided they keep listening to customers and improving it. I also think Windows 8 will integrate with Windows phone (based of a preview screenshot on engadet that had windows phone in the menu) and tight integration with the desktop/tablet OS will certainly help.
Agreed there. The pc integration forms a core part of the ecosystem that Elop harps on about. Considering the presence of ms in the world, it makes sense that they push devices to be able to pair with one another as a common platform. Google does this and iOS as well. Microsoft sure the hell will too.
We want PC independence, not PC integration.
true, but if you want to hook it to your pc for som,ething (i.e copying music on or sideloading an app) you want it to work seamlessly, without having to use iTunes or Zune.
And business users who want to put documents on their phone from their work pc while at work would find it better if they could connect to their work pc or network rather than having to use skydrive or something.
i wanna punch him out…..this guy and his BS excuse he easily should have jacked up the development with Meego and intel…now look what happened with Asus and Acer…WP7 is on their second batch of WP7 devices and it’s going NOWHERE
I bet you haven’t used WP7. I think most of the people would change their mind if they tried a WP7 device. Just like Jay said, try it before saying it’s trash.
If Nokia had not announced a future WP7 device, I would have changed to iPhone months ago (because I love its user experience).
Until that device is released, I’ll keep on trying to like Symbian
I agree about the try it first but getting people to try it at this point and prices is going to be difficult. People around the world can easily try a $100-$150 Symbian/Android handset though.
Either they ramp up the ads (not to the gadget geeks in tech forums but to the masses) or make them cheaper.
You won’t get happy with a $100-$150 low end Android device tough. A friend of mine bought the SE X8 and that crappy experiance made him switch after three months.
By the way he switched to a Motorola Milestone being confused why the one and only Android looks so different on Motorola…
@Bosh: Dude, you are funny. Telling “Deep Space Bar” to try it first? “Deep Space Bar” would do no such thing. But I can tell you what he will certainly do.
- He won’t try it first because of his irrational hatred for Microsoft.
- He will just keep posting pointless, meaningless comment
- He would not even think about his arguments before bluffing them out.
- He doesn’t/wouldn’t really care less if he sounds like a retard.
it’s sad that symbian is getting ditched but there has to be a line, Elop wants only the best for the company and atm it seems this is the way, we just can’t deny that symbian is behind. Windows phone is a great OS and with the mango features it will be even better, I tried it at the local store here (the original windows phone) and it’s just incredible fast when you compare it to symbian. it lacks some great features that symbian has but it isn’t a all bad OS, its clean its fast and it works great. and remember Microsoft wanted Nokia so if it doesnt work nokia will continue with symbian i guess
some of the commenters here are violent and scary. @.@
nah. Companies forcing you to buy a computer to operate your phone are scarier.
i hate the way that if you are going to install an app you need to connect it on pc or adding medias will need to be connected to a pc…. What an ecosystem??????
There isn’t a mobile OS out there that requires that. Not iOS, not Android, not Symbian, not WP7. You can download all through mobile accessable app stores.
One thing WP in particular and iOS still need a PC for is device updates, or OS updates if you want to call it that.
I don’t know if WP needs a PC at first start up like iOS devices need to. But would that really be a problem? For some I guess it would, but probably not for the majority of people.
Commenters here are more likely to be Symbian users and not Symbian developers. I’m not a Symbian developer, either, but I worked in an engineering group for a little over a year that *did* do Symbian development and also went to a Qt/QML-focused workshop where I got to talk to Symbian developers outside the company. When I say that nobody I talked to liked to develop for Symbian, that’s not an exaggeration. Compared to Qt, Android, or iOS, Symbian development is a nightmare.
Symbian simply wasn’t the way forward. I really expected Nokia to push Symbian down into the “feature phone” line and have MeeGo take over the high end, but clearly Elop didn’t feel that MeeGo was far enough along to be able to do that. Windows Phone is clearly a gamble and I’m not sure it’s a bet I would have made, were I in his shoes–I wrote a widely quoted blog post at the end of last year describing the rumored Nokia move to WP7 as “loony”–but on the flip side, I actually *used* one of those pre-production MeeGo phones at that time, and they were a long way off from being shippable. I didn’t expect Nokia to embrace any operating system that they didn’t have very strong control over–but I also didn’t expect Nokia to actually be relevant in most of the important markets in three years, either.
A whole lot of Nokia fans are making anti-Elop judgements for pretty emotional reasons. As unfashionable as it is to point out, the North American smartphone market has started driving nearly all the other markets, with iOS and Android winning even in previously unassailable places like Japan. Apple is the most profitable mobile phone–not just smart phone–manufacturer in the world. What people on this blog are mostly saying is that Elop is stupid for not holding the course–but the bottom line is that the course they were on was taking them down. The move to Windows Phone might yet prove to be just as bad as the doomsayers think, but it seems to me that the options most of the anti-Elop folks would have preferred would, in the long run, not be any better.
I’m not convinced by Windwows Phone yet, but I am increasingly getting the feeling Symbian had issues that a new UI won’t entirly brush over.
However, it is a shame that just as the need to develop native Symbian disappeared and the Qt framework and QML came along this decision was made. I think this would have had a bigger impact for developers, but still, if the base OS had issues that made things hard, they still wouldn’t have gone away.
As for having control over it, i think that is the reason why nokia didn’t relase a few WP7 and adroid devices, and they could i’m sure have got terms similar to HTC or Samsung to license both OS’s easily. However, it seems Nokia have tried to structure a deal that gives them some sway in development of the OS and will see things developed by Nokia perhaps become part of the platform, plus will give Nokia freedom to customize a bit.
Hard to know how things will go, but I hope Nokia finishes the year not being owned by anyone else, and presents punters with an interesting choice: Meego/Meamo6, Symbian bella dual core devices and Windows Phone devices. If they do that (and i would be serious if i thought my money and my wife would allow it) I might have to get all 3.
Symbian development was hard but the best for it’s times. Agreed.
QT was ready to make things so easy and so powerful that most mobile developers would lust. Agreed.
That was the shame … so all hail the slogan together..
F**k the Elop.
> “When I say that nobody I talked to liked to develop for Symbian, that’s not an exaggeration. Compared to Qt, Android, or iOS, Symbian development is a nightmare.”
What ARE you talking about? Nobody really develops for native Symbian anymore, there’s no need! That’s why there is Qt and why the expected transition to MeeGo was great as all the apps would just continue working, and why the move to Windows Phone without Qt is so insane (like ditching Symbian is insane!).
What you’re saying is like me saying “When I talked to people about driving those old steam driven cars with the iron tyres, everyone hated it, they much prefer the new cars with the internal combustion engine and the inflatable rubber tyres”
People love nokia people love symbian , nokia should develop symbian instead of throwin it . This is not the way . A company of nokias altitude should never hav taken such a bad decision . If they want they could hav released both android n wp7 devices along with symbian line up . Symbian is loved by half of the world why r u throwin symbian nokia
if symbian is not profitable why keep it ???
if people start to buy more Symbian nokia will keep it but for now it’s a great move . I my self an symbian lover but for this is just business
“On the flip-side hopefully that is one of many seats at the table as opposed to the situation with Symbian where Nokia called many of the decisions made outright.”
That is not a bad thing. Some of the bad things in Symbian / S60 was because Nokia made outright decisions.
+1
“We’re making very good progress. We can expect them at the end of the year”
Q2 results are Elop’s progres hahahah
if you want progres go with symbian and not with fucking windows phone
Symbian has shown some great progress over the past 3/4 years. Both software and hardware wise.
WP is a downgrade in certain areas, but if Elop is to be believed than he has a working Nokia WP phone at hand right know. And that in 3 months time.
I call that impressive at best, and something Nokia needs right now. Quick turn around times and be able to adress the market with what it wants.
MeeGo is nice, but it’s a money hungry thing and needs time to ripen. Time Nokia doesn’t have right now. They need volume sales with high revenue devices. They need to get their mindshare and love from the general public back again. WP can do this, but I’ll admit it remains an uncertain factor untill a device launches.
Symbian hasn’t shown great progress over the past 3/4 years….
Typo.
interesting 7 page article about Elop at businessweek.com… Good read…
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm
“We will remain in possession of the hardware business. The rumors are baseless. It doesn’t make sense when you think about it. You’d have to descale it and de-leverage it to make it profitable”
MS already has someone in the place that is determined to bail their struggling OS even if it kills Nokia trying to. That someone has already stabbed in the back their ecosystem, when things were picking up, is reducing the productive workforce, but keeps the stellar management. Then again, that same someone disparages their own product, and talk about transitions to a competing OS with nothing in hand before Q4 2011, or maybe Q1 2012. He must feel right among peers with Nokia managers.
“Look at the synergies between the companies — if you sell, you destroy value in the process.”
$15 billion (almost 40%) are looking straight at you Mr Elop.
“I went to Nokia knowing there were challenges. I went there planning on moving towards MeeGo. We looked at Android,We looked at Windows Phone — but decided when I sat down with the head of Symbian, he said we can put a great product into the market in a third of the time it will take with Symbian”
That’s probably the same person who was in charge when someone had the brilliant idea to remove the split screen portrait qwerty keyboard. Who is in charge when Nokia is dragging in feet to bring it back along with a better browser. Who is in charge when the Astound finally has those improvements but will postpone their rollout on the C7 (essentially an Astound), let alone other Symbian^3 devices. The person who is still fooling around with Web instead of building a browser around QtWebkit.
So far, the OS that will power the “best smartphones in the world” is mightily struggling on the marketplace (I see no evidence of changes in Q2 2011, but around early August, we will know for sure)
“The pattern that we’re worried about on the Android side — will the OEMs truly have assurance that their takes will be able to shape and form Android.”
There you havec it. Nokia goes from platform owner to a mere OEM. Whoohooo! Go Nokia! At least in the Android side, OEM can have access to the source and it runs on a wider range of hardware. Seriously, you cannot be more differentiated and in control of your destiny and the shape of an OS when it’s your own. But improving our own OS or going Android, would have made MS very, very sad.
“We’re making very good progress. We can expect them at the end of the year”
Yeah. Nokia throws away the largest install base, their own platform that provides them niche protection to jump in a small pool which will have to share with others. That’s the way to go Nokia.
If WP7 somehow manages to grab 20% of the market, what share of those 20% Nokia expects to command?
I just can’t believe anything this guys says. I have no problems in admitting my bias against him. I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he was hired and people instantly called him a trojan horse. However, after the infamous “Burning platform memo”, for which he should have been dismissed IMO, my opinion of him changed, and the 11/2/11 cemented it.
All profitable OSs in the history of technology do evolve and improve, and so should Symbian but….
Well put. He made some grave mistakes that I cant help but think there is a ulterior motive to all this. He cant be that stupid.
I don’t believe in WP7 and frankly think it looks lite someone from grade school designed the UI. No mater how good it might be, it looks lite shit to me.
IF the MeeGo device is good I will get it, otherwise i´m of to Android camp after my N8 starts to feel old. The one thing I´m certain off is that I will never get a WP device…
Good read on Elop and Nokia:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm