Could/Should Nokia abandon Windows Phone and get back to MeeGo?
Ville Aho wrote a blog post with an intruiging title I’ve seen more as a demand than a question in our comments,
Could Nokia abandon Windows Phone and go back to MeeGo?
http://www.villeaho.com/2011/07/29/could-nokia-abandon-windows-phone-and-go-back-to-meego/
Essentially – Should Nokia Do it? Why should they do it? Can they do it even if they wanted to?
Some questions the post asks:
- Why did Nokia abandon MeeGo?
- Is overall experience provided by N9 (Software, services, as well as hardware?)
- How important is an ecosystem. (Randall Arnold, Ex Nokian who writes on the MeeGo blog has his views on importance of ecosystems - http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/a-tech-ecosystem-for-the-rest-of-us/)
“Remember that the new strategy has three pillars: smartphones, next billion and future disruptions. Therefore instead of viewing the N9 as the last MeeGo product in the smartphone’s category you should rather think of it as the first product in the future distruption’s category. “
Though not mentioned, could Symbian still be a part of the contingency plan?
Of course, as a Nokia fan, I’m ever hopeful the three pillar strategy with Windows Phone will work. I agree with Ville’s comments that to Nokia, the sales of current WP is irrelevant – it doesn’t exist to them and they’ll be the ones restarting it – with their best effort on WP and not an afterthought (as such we have seen much more effort from manufacturers to produce new updated hardware – e.g. SGSII hardware from Sammy- would they have stepped in without Nokia?)
Looking at the bright side, there’s good progress with Windows Phone Mango. Whilst symbian powerfans used to multitude of features and customizability might have to wait until Tango or Apollo (and thus WP is not for them) it IS a good OS for new smartphone users looking for a great experience out of the box. It is a good addition to Nokia’s portfolio of offerings.
The concern of some readers are – whilst WP might be good, what can Nokia offer over other manufacturers? Great design? Great Build? Core mapping features? (though maps goes to all WP, Nokia handsets must definitely be having some extra) Great Cameras? Great Reception? Great screens? Concentrated effort? (Note – the current belief right now amongst the WP whispers is that Nokia’s leading WP might not appear until next year – the one with the Nokia stamp as that’s the one they’d have time to develop – the real fruits of the MS-Nokia partnership. The ones coming in October would be more mid-high. Not ideal, but it might be the best that could be pulled given the time of WP adoption.
Oh BTW, here’s another great read from Randall. How it’s not all completely over for Nokia, despite many already drafting their funeral speeches for the giant at Espoo.
http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/the-nokia-phoenix/
Category: MeeGo, Nokia, Windows Phone
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I believe the main issue with Nokia dropping Symbian/Meego (and the main issue we get emotional about it) is that it leaves less choice for us customers.
You /can/ already buy WP phones, the benefit of a Nokia branded one is actually quite small for us. However the loss of the only “open” and “liberal” alternatives like Symbian/Meego is huge for us customers as a whole. (On the other hand the loss of WP would not be so dramatic since it is basically a copy of iOS in its spirit and since it does not have many users).
In the end, who benefited from this WP move? Customers: clearly no, Nokia staff: clearly no (layoffs, etc.), shareholders: clearly no (even long term shareholders can’t hope for exceptional share price since Nokia is now basically an OEM), operators: probably (it may be better from them to deal with 3 big platforms), Microsoft: of course.
Makes you wonder again what was the thinking (and no we can’t really trust Elop’s many explanations as he proved many times to either be misinformed or plain lying)…
Unfortunately businesses are not there to provide choice just for altruistic, feel good reasons. They are there to make money at any means possible. Whether Nokia will with WP remains to be seen.
Btw, imagine Nokia too had gone with Android.. ewww….
True, but success means differentiating yourself from competition. It looks like cell phone players are all racing to sameness…
This is exactly what I’ve been trying to say for a while.
I agree with you except for the second paragraph.
What do you mean by “a copy of iOS in spirit”? Is a hammer from company A a “copy in spirit” of a hammer from company B just because it also lets you safely pound nails into wood?
I’ve written about this on my blog a while back and I’ve investigated it, Nokia can’t turn back even if they want to, they have signed a contract and accepted a huge sum of money from Microsoft if they turn back it will bankrupt them, they’ll have to pay legal fees, huge fines and refund Microsoft’s investment. WP is the only way to go for the next 5 years…
I wonder if they signed something like “WP7 will be our one and only OS”?
Indeed. There is no way back now – even more so with Elop in place, he is the Microsoft lovechild after all.
Why do people always go on about the need for an ‘ecosystem’ when Nokia already has a huge one in place –
If a website can generate 7 million downloads per day and is not classed as an ‘ecosystem’ then I dont know what is.
i don’t think that nokia signed such a contract. remember that the new strategy wasn’t accepted by the stock market.
i’m quite sure that there are ways to get out of it.
With the amount of money involved of course they have signed a contract, makes sense not to
They have signed a contract, but I am 1000% sure it does not commit them to using WP _only_. How could it, even? Symbian is there for a good long while, Meego might show up again, S40 is evolving to a smartphonish platform too.
Companies NEVER intentionally paint themselves completely to a corner with no exit door in sight. Their lawyers are paid big bucks to make sure that does not happen.
Of course they have clause’s in the contract, well at least least I hope they have
“Companies NEVER intentionally paint themselves completely to a corner with no exit door in sight”
Companies also generally don’t EOL, let alone pooh pooh, their current product unless they have a ramped up replacement. Nokia’s new management OTOH…
Well it’s still up to your CEO to decide which platform you will focus on, with Elop being there, even though there is no “Nokia will only use WP OS on their phones forever” contract, Elop could just easily decide to put all their attention on WP and stop development on other OS. Remember, he just outsourced Symbian, fired a lot of people, downplayed Symbian and Meego and allocated millions into marketing WP, . . . So contract or no contract, it still does not make a difference..
Really where is this “huge sum of money” that you’re talking about, I can’t seem to find it anywhere on the balance sheet?
If WP is really the only way for the next 5 years, then Nokia is f**cked for the next 5 years and Elop should be fired for choosing such a reckless strategy, with no ‘plan b’.
How do you know he does not have a plan B (and C and D)? Because he has not revealed in a public event? Duh..
Elop said in february: “there is no plan B for Nokia”. But You don’t have to trust Him
Even if there is a plan B they would’t tell us shows lack of confidence in Nokia’s part talking about plan B without a single Wp7 device out yet.
Microsoft paid Nokia 2 Billion Euro earlier this year, I doubt it’s only for WP, but for other things as well, Nokia has a Plan B, C, D etc. BUT they still have to release at least 5 WP devices per year between 2012 and 2016 otherwise it is a breach of contract which they could get sued for. I believe WP will be successful, but only because of Nokia contributing to it. Sure, they shouldn’t have deserted MeeGo, but it’s too late to desert Windows Phone…
Nokia DOES have a plan B – to make sure that plan A (WP) is a huge success. And the Nokia/Microsoft partnership will be a success!
and what if plan A and B fails??
well then they have to use plan N!
Chapter 9!
exactly, because it can!
well i don’t think they should abandon WP alltogether (though idon’t like it) cause as said before there will probably be a big financial penalty BUT they shouldn’t put all their eggs in ms’s basket , and (this might sound strange) they shouldn’t use meego as elop said instead they should use harmattan only (as in maemo 6) cause nokia made alot of investments in it and when they almost had their payback they switched to meego which delayed their harmattan efforts .. and as said before they should release one top of the line superpdone a year (i mean somthing better or as good as the best in compettitors….(SGSII)) ,keep belle ,wp & harmattan (or meego anyone is good enough) and keep tow or three as you see them in the market for a couple of years
… i think elop might of ment the maemo thing when he said no more meego cause maemo6/(Harmattan) is perfect IMHO..
Yeah, well Meego could still continue to evolve with the help of the Meego community, Intel, Linux and others, but the Harmattan UI should continue to evolve inside Nokia.. They could easily port it to a full Meego when the right time comes… If Other big players such as Samsung, LG, or HTC adopts Meego, then a full Meego OS could be delivered faster,since there would be more contributions to moving the OS forward..
“when they almost had their payback they switched to meego which delayed their harmattan efforts”
^ This is actually very wrong…
It had a small impact….
But there was 2-3 other more significant reasons why harmattan fell so far behind.
I think meego is good choice for high end but fails in upper-mid range due to high hardware requirement but WP7 had fixed hardware requirement so can be hit in high-midrange but lacks the punch in as market predator.I still i wish nokia can maintain their their view to meego.They are under estimating power of meego and hoping on WP7.Wake up nokia go for Meego as well as WP7 and Try some luck with android also
where did you learn that ? webOS runs on very modest h/w ( and the initial versions ran on h/w not even sold on smartphones). meego is very similar to webos and both use QT as the underlying UI components.
In webOS QT is not exposed to developers.
meego can run on far more modest h/w than windows 7 will and it will multi-task and perform better on this h/w.
Since Meego could run smoothly on 2010 hardware and still kick butt, that assumption is false..
When I say Meego, I meant the Meego/Harmattan N9..
they should just use multiple OS
wp7 for business phones,
meego for community phones
and S40 for mid/low range phones
I think all this discussion about Nokia abandoning windows phone 7 should come to an end. Nokia’s other options didn’t work out. Nokia was losing marketshare at an alarming rate.
If you really, i mean REALLY, do care about Nokia, and i’m sure you do, you should support the Windows Phone ecosystem.
Change is always a difficult thing, no doubt. But this particular change is a very good one. Microsoft+Nokia, a bond that’s here to stay for YEARS to come. And it’s good for all, ESPECIALLY FOR NOKIA
well said
“I think all this discussion about Nokia abandoning windows phone 7 should come to an end. Nokia’s other options didn’t work out. Nokia was losing marketshare at an alarming rate.”
While increasing sales volume and making profit.
Now they are shrinking in volume and posting losses, to with $500m in Q2 2011 despite a $600m payment from Apple.
“If you really, i mean REALLY, do care about Nokia, and i’m sure you do, you should support the Windows Phone ecosystem.”
Why?
“Change is always a difficult thing, no doubt. But this particular change is a very good one.”
In your opinion. So far, this change is bringing an endless string bad news. Investors who have real money riding on this bolted at the announcement. Are they biased haters too?
“Microsoft+Nokia, a bond that’s here to stay for YEARS to come. And it’s good for all, ESPECIALLY FOR NOKIA”
How so? So far I see a company in an out of control posting losses, with a demoralized staff, a fractured user base and developers.
Yikes you have a negative look on life haven’t you ?
You have to start somewhere to get back up. There are not many companies than are in the middle of a transition and post blockbuster profits.
Basing your opinions on the one quater Nokia made some money and grew albeit FAR slower than the overall market does not justify continuing a strategy Nokia where not comfortable with.
“Yikes you have a negative look on life haven’t you ?”
I have a negative look on Elop, I have no issues whatsoever saying it flat out.
“You have to start somewhere to get back up. There are not many companies than are in the middle of a transition and post blockbuster profits.”
Maybe it was a bad idea to begin with. And even if he had to do it, it did it on one the worst possible way. Blockbuster profits not withstanding.
“Basing your opinions on the one quater Nokia made some money and grew albeit FAR slower than the overall market does not justify continuing a strategy Nokia where not comfortable with.”
I base it on more than a decade of profit quarter in, quarter out.
And just so we are clear, for me, Elop and Nokia are two separate entities with differing interests.
If you base your opinions on decades of quarters than you af all people should know that Nokia’s profits and market share where shrinking.
“If you base your opinions on decades of quarters than you af all people should know that Nokia’s profits and market share where shrinking.”
The decreasing profit stabilized in 2009.
The market share was shrinking because the market is now so big with many entrants. The biggest performer for a few quarters now is “Others”, a catch category of all the small handset vendors. The volume of sales were still growing.
Now thanks to the new administration, the volume crashed and profits made way to losses.
As I said, they already ate up $500m of the money that MS is supposed to give them, and that with the $600m royalty payment from Apple.
Without that payment, they would have posted a $1.1b loss.
Not to say that it was all roses and sunshine before Elop’s antics. I posit that he took an difficult position and made it much worse.
Lets face it though any decision wouldn’t have made a difference to the Q1 figures.
In Q1, since one Friday of February the shareholders for some reason decided to divest from their Nokia shares.
It’s in Q2 that that the Elop FX manifested in Nokia’s financial results : collapse of sales (-30% QoQ and YoY), posting of loss and assorted good news.
> And it’s good for all, ESPECIALLY FOR NOKIA
It proved not good for Nokia shareholders (share price), not good for Nokia staff (layoffs), not good for Nokia customers (less choice).
If you mean NOKIA = Elop, then in this case yes it’s good for NOKIA
wasn’t their change not having symbian an prime smartphoneOS and making a better for high end which is Meego ?lol
Of course they should go back to their Symbian/Meego/Maemo strategy. They’ve grown the largest mobile OS userbase over many years, no they shouldn’t throw that in the garbage. With Meego/Harmattan they can differentiate, they can control the OS, they can actually build their brand into their OS instead of relying on a 3rd party. They could also use their own IP like their mapping technology to offer a real advantage.
Disagree about Symbian.
It was the main reason harmattan fell so woefully behind.
Because of internal bickering, long boring/detailed story.
Symbian was deprecated by Nokia themselves many yrs ago.
But they just couldn’t wean themselves off it.
It is well & truly time to let it go.
WP mid-to-lower-mid.
MeeGo top-end
S40 feature-phones
Keep the current plan (or similar) for Symbian
alo like samsung Nokia must be open to 2 OS Meego harmattan and by contract WP and SYMBIAN by millions of clients who needs that and the future will said what is the best way, bit n9 almost shown us who is the best CEO make a big mistake and nokia will pay for that like now we have seen fall evriting :sales trust, actions andtoo much maney for short espace of time like never have seen before in nokia
I think what happen in Feb 11 is Elop over confident on Nokia with WP. Elop had been working with MS for quite long time and he is very proud with it, and use to it. He is very new in mobile phone industry and thinking of many people will happy with Nokia collateral with MS. He immediately announced it as soon the initial deal with MS is agreed, and hope to create huge positive impact on the announcement. That is what happen on Feb 11.
Very unfortunate, this cowboy action which was fully endorsed by Nokia Board of Directors (may be in hurry), created mostly negative response, not what’s in Elop or BOD’s expectation.
In my opinion, the move of Nokia to WP is ok, but the method and announcement strategy is completely disaster. The deep damage already done on Feb 11, mostly due to poor directive execution of Elop as CEO for new corporate planning & strategy. Nokia Q2 result proof this. Worse is coming on Q3.
At the moment, Nokia is no turning back, as announced early, should Nokia + WP failed, not much choice left for Nokia. Stop development of WP will further damage Nokia’s future, and demoralize both Camp of WP and Symbian/Meego/S40(which already demoralized !)team.
As i mentioned early, Nokia fate had been sealed on Feb 11. With present management team lead by Elop, no one can change Nokia’s Fate. We can see this with Elop purposely leak prototype of Nokia WP. He is no turning back too, and must ensure that Nokia will only go toward one direction: Nokia Windows Phone. failure means not only Elop have to resign, but most likely Nokia will sinking down to may be half of present size. Nokia is running on thin ice now.
From present situation, Nokia WP, if manage to success, will NOT going to be huge success or impact, and Nokia may not be able to recover fast enough from current and coming financial trouble. Victory needs long progress but collapse just need click of eye in second !
SAD. GOD blessed Nokia with this HUGE GAMBLE !
No they should not…
Too much damage has already been done…
Adopting Windows phone is not really why I hated this strategy, especially Elop..
What I didn’t like was the premature announcement of symbian’s death, causing a crash in stocks, the deliberate delay of Meego, and the announcement of Meego abandonment,… Elop, that’s already like two strikes, you’ve already announced the death of your primary and your possible future OS,,, You can sell Nokia WPs all you want, I won’t be against it much, but to sabotage your other OS is just pure evil…
I guess what I’m trying to say is that be fair..
But, what can I do, it’s the MS way, either buy your competition, liquidate them out of the game by selling better products (same as to what Apple and Google are doing right now to nokia) or destroy the company from the inside… Take a pick,,..
can anyone here tell me if nokia are really gonna make one MeeGo phone per year and the N9 isnt coming to my country (South Africa). Will the next so called MeeGo come to my country if the N9 didnt come? Ive heard the reason is because there are already WP7 nokia phones coming to South Africa so thats why we wont get the N9
but anyway please im up for an upgrade middel of next year and I want to get maybe an N9 of a MeeGo phone
There was confirmation the other day it’s (N9) coming to SA.
Think it was a story on this site…
Really, MeeGo is just another clone of iOS and Android, and will get lost in the sea of boring OS phones.
The reason why iOS and Android are selling well, because of apps. Windows Phone 7 has a good number of apps, and growing (not as fast as iOS and Android). But the bottom line, why should people buy MeeGo, when they have iOS or Android. People will buy Windows Phone 7 because it is modern, live tiles, xbox, facebook, twitter and Zune music interface(which is much better than itunes).
no one cares about microsoft that’s the thing…they don’t care
so many inaccuracies i don’t know where to begin.
But RE “apps”…
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D5DuHP3tyrs22StXBkUqBLmWv1Fk5UtA-KvrPueiZJY/edit?hl=en_US
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pVICyHBBQ7i6QMIx_BhHZ3A-s64eec0Oz5LGO574Nws/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1
marc nokias n9 will be available in south africa maybe not throw our carries but throw other sites like expansys SA
marc i am also waiting for nokias n9 to came to SA i am not on a contract as soon as it is available i what to get it sim free contract free i am saving up now for it
Elop and MS is really cunning by the way…
That Feb. 11 fiasco was not just to announce what platform Nokia would be adopting in the future, or as others would say, to sabotage sales of symbian and halt Nokia development of Meego, it has other motives aside from that. That’s why they even held a public event and invited a lot of press; that Feb. 11 announcement is also for other mobile phone makers,.. Elop was telling them that Nokia will sell Millions of WP7 devices so they (other manufacturers) should make WP7 phones as well to ride the bandwagon (just like what happened to Android where suddenly almost all manufacturers are selling them).. Elop kept saying “it’s not a battle of devices but a war of ecosystems”, which is a desperate call for other manufacturers to join the WP ecosystem that Nokia is making with the help of MS… Elop was hoping that they could make that same “Android effect”..
In addition to this is that “Sea Ray controlled leak” (which surprisingly the video does not seem to come from a video camera from the audience, it looks really professional, instead that leak seems to come from Nokia’s very own video, look at that part where the phone is demoed on that table with the mounted camera on top, it does not look like it was filmed by someone from the audience, or are you telling me that someone hacked into Nokia’s archives and copied that sea ray demo).. I dare you to watch that vid again and tell me that it was filmed by one of the audiences.. That leak is a challenge to other manufacturers that they should start re-making their WP devices…
And what do we have here, looks like samsung is now releasing a SGS II specced phone running WP7, and other manufacturers seem to re-release WP7 as well, I think a part of it is that they are intimidated by Nokia’s WP7 commitment, but behind all this, MS could have had a lengthy talk with other manufacturers for a while now, convincing them to adopt WP7, .. Things like their 25 thousand app milestone, increased international availability of WP Marketpalce, that multi million dollar marketing strategy, alleged high satisfaction rate from customers from supposed independent surveys, developer suport, and many more, MS had been continuously outspoken and loud about their “supposed achievements”, but very shy in releasing phone sales number…
Let’s face it, MS will do anything to make their product a success, be it buying other companies (Skype), buying intellectual properties from bankrupt companies (Nortel patents), suing other companies (should I even enumerate), and even slipping one of their men into other companies, and making them CEO (Nokia).. Microsoft has loads of money in their pockets, would you think that they would really put all their hopes into Nokia (like Nokia putting all their hopes on WP)?? Nokia is just a stepping stone to their market domination, and with a huge but sadly dying and seemingly desperate company such as Nokia, MS is trying to start their own “Android banwagon”, But this time it will be “WP bandwagon”… Sadly the only option for Nokia now is to survive by selling WP, if it goes the other way and some company outshines them (remember, SGS II dual core WP7 would sound cool to the ears of the consumers especially gullible Americans), and they report another multi million dollar profit loss, then that’s the end… All you WP supporters out there who are also Nokia fans, when the time comes that other manufacturers release their high specced WP devices as answer to the Sea Ray, and by miracle these devices sell millions and make WP one of the top 3 platforms, MS would not really care if Nokia sells WP7 anymore, as the bandwagon has already started, ..
Luckily if Nokia will be the lead in the “WP bandwagon” (just like samsung with android) then Nokia would survive, but if not, then MS would just buy you including your patents and using that as ammunition to sue other companies, bye bye Nokia…
Good points you made. It is another way at looking at this merger. Nokia being used as a tool to gather momentum with the platform. The ploy seems to be working too!!
I’ve been saying the same thing.. Nokia is a pawn. I just hope they can survive this one, because this isn’t the 90s, and whatever Microsoft does, its too late to stop Linux from being much stronger (in relation to the PC market) in the mobile market. And if you think about globally.. we have the Asian cartel using US made software, Europe where are you ? The EU should have vetoed the MS/Nokia deal imo
You got a point… Doesnt matter what happen in the near future, the only winner Microsoft… Now them are gaining some Nokia stuff like Nokia Maps tech, Nokia support for multiple languages, and the billing support from multiples carriers…
An Nokia is getting… Mmm… Well an OS that noboy care (at this point)…
For the record a SGS2 witg WP7 inside doesnt mean that it will have a dualcore processor, because Windows Phone doesnt support it (t samsung can hack the OS is another thing an that doesnt mean that the OS will really use them)
People dont waste your time here. Its full of MS haters. The people love Symbian and Meego like blind sheeps. Everything that is not developed by Nokia, is inferior.
Yeah thats why everybody shits ont these OS’es. The funny thing is dat everyone i know with WP7 has nothing to complain and everyone i know with a symbian device has nothing good to say about it.
@ appieflappie, funny thing with these “anecdotal evidences” is that I got the opposite of what you have to say. Lmao.
and if you are not a “blind lover” of m$, you must be a paid $hill of m$.
Take some time to learn about MeeGo.
I mean some real time…
I think you’ll be very impressed
Never close your mind to alternatives.
I use iOS/Android/Maemo…
Played briefly with WP, & will buy a WP soon after I get the N9.
Point is, there’s no such thing as one OS being hugely superior.
Just hugely more market share.
what will happen to my N8? I am afraid that it will stuck in belle and no more new applications to come