Weekend Read: Nokia Death Spiral
It’s not like we haven’t discussed this enough already, but we’ve got a tip from a couple of readers wanting this shared.
It’s written by Mark Wilcox. I’ve not encountered his work before, nor am I aware of his background but what he puts forward are quite interesting perspectives about the current dire Nokia situation. If you follow or participate in the comment sections here, this won’t be very new to you, but it’s a good read nonetheless.
http://mobilesoftware.tumblr.com/post/27056631536/nokias-downward-spiral
Cheers jiipee and NeNoRmAl for the tip
Category: Nokia
About the Author (Author Profile)
Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
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nokia is buring down to ashes.will it rise up like a phoenix?? Dont think so its too late RIP
We all hope so i think.
I trust it will survive. Im pessimistic that they can be truly innovative for years though. The can be some odd technical advances, but not having a developer ecosystem and platform to build on, means that dveloping sofware and hardware hand on hand is difficult.
There platform can bring solid cash-flow, which is good. That is hardly an area, which would create a lot of excitement.
I’ve noticed these “death to Nokia” articles bring out the crowd, android crowd. Lol. I love my Nokia 900, can’t wait for win8. Love my play 360, 905i and other Nokia stuff. Why would I want a company that makes such great products go under for 2 bad alternatives, apple and malware google? Oh my, apple just got hit with malware in their store too.
I don’t particularly like Android (for a large part because of Google) but I like Windows Phone far less, for the extreme vendor lock-in, poor support of open and long-established protocols and extremely closed devices, in which you, the owner, have lost many of your freedoms.
No.
Apple and Google are going to piss on those ashes, Nokia is done.
OK Manu. If you have followed Nokia for more that ~ 5-10 years, you know that Nokia has done the Phoenix more than a couple of times during it’s almost 150 years of history. The most recent one was in the 90′s.
…And Apple was also very close to bankruptcy very recently. Nokia is not going anywhere. They might change their form, but it is not going anywhere.
“I think he goes too far in blaming Elop for everything, Nokia was in a pretty bad shape before he arrived. However, he has made a bad situation much worse and I think the conclusion is essentially correct, Elop and most of the board need sacking for almost completely destroying the company.”
agree on 1000%
What elop and the board have done is turn its core buyers away from nokia.
No amount “how good wp8 is gonna be” the end of the day windows mobile/phone is an unwanted platform by the public and when i say public i mean the world’s mobile buyers.
Nokia can’t go back to symbian because the carriers won’t support it now. That is mostly elop’s fault.
Nokia can’t take up meego harmatten because its fired its devs .
Nokia can’t take up Meltini because its fired its devs.
Nokia can’t survive with s40 because its been eaten up by el cheapo android handsets.
What has nokia done with smarterphone.
Nokia has now, no real get out clauses, plan b is selling the company and that may happen as quickly as Q3 this year.
If any of the nokia board read this please please contact me as i’d love to explain 101 business concepts for which you have collectively failed upon.
Though the core buyers had left Nokia way before Elop. Samsung had example went past Nokia in Europe, Nokia’s core market.
It was just matter of time before that happened to Symbian in Asia.
Indeed. All Symbian partners (except NTT) left in Q3/2010 for Android. BEFORE Elop started.
Yet all these people are claiming Nokia was on “a mend” on Q4/2010.
Yeah right.
Something new needed to be. We all wished MeeGo would have been it, but they chose Windows Phone.
We shall see how it goes. I’m with the plan because I do like Windows Phone. (Got my first one in Q4/2010 to check it out.)
For those who aren’t happy with the current Nokia, go check out Jolla and Android and BB10 and be happy. Nokia is not serving for you and life is too short to stick around.
Leave the past be. Go find a new device you like.
Bzzzt! Contradiction!
Partners are abandoning WP camp (and parts of W8), but somehow it’s claimed WP is still on the rise and can succeed, only if we give it time.
I gave touch Symbian over three years to fix things since iPhone. Including six months after all the partners left before agreeing it was a goner.
I’ll give Lumia 1.5 years since launch, that means until Q4 results come in Q1. That is half I gave Symbian touch, we shall see. I’ll judge then.
Besides, only one or so WP partner has left. Unlike Symbian that lost 90% of partners in Q3/2010.
Actually, for WP it’s two original partners who are no longer planning to make WP phones, i.e. half of the pack has given up only after year and half of participation. Plus W8 camps is beginning to show cracks too, see HP and W8 RT.
Yeah, I said “one or so” to describe the difference what they currently have compared to what they had in the start. I know the names have changed a little and a few not-really-phone-makers were interested in WP7 at first…
So, let’s see:
Nokia, Samsung, HTC and Huawei are on board for WP8.
WP7 originally had: Dell, Asus, LG, HTC and Samsung. I’m not sure if Asus ever surfaced.
So yes, Dell and LG are clearly out – on the other hand Nokia is bigly in.
WP7 launched with five, WP8 launches with four, but with far bigger phone-maker names than WP7.
No, it is not Symbian partnership at Q3/2010 – nothing of the sort.
Yes, so at best you can argue that the situation with WP is a bit better that with Symbian. But no way to claim the Symbian case was proof of it’s end and then deny that what his happening around WP is blow to it’s future of the same magnitude.
Symbian lost like five partners within a quarter without any new ones coming back. You call Windows Phone loosing a total of one (loosing three, but gaining two new) over a period of two years similar? Yeah right.
I’m not saying Symbian loosing all their partners killed it, I’m saying it was telling of the problems with Symbian to keep it competitive. It also meant the potential Qt market just got THAT much smaller when everyone else pulled out of S^3.
Windows Phone of course is struggling in its own way, but so far I still see more hope for a future than with Symbian back in early 2011.
Personally, I actually think the WP situation is worse. Nokia’s future was in MeeGo, the plan for Symbian was to use it on lower speced phones and gradually shift to MeeGo over several years. It’s no surprise that others get out, after all the new alliance was MeeGo camp. Then came Elop, started his Symbian killing spree and the rest (including Nokia) is history.
On the other hand WP is new OS on the market, and still half of the original partners refused to participate on the next version, just after year of cooperation with MS. It tells you a lot what nonelopian insiders think about the prospects of WP ecosystem and how WP8 will look. And the unfolding reality is proving them right, the saviour wont be coming.
It is certainly possible that the savior won’t come. Failure was and is always a possibility and the odds are stacked against Nokia now.
But then it could have been with MeeGo too. I do agree MeeGo could also have worked, but it was not sparking any industry revolutions at the time either.
As for half of WP7 launch partners leaving, only LG I’d count as leaving. Dell and Asus were PC makers who never really took part anyway. Gaining Nokia and Huawei instead of LG certainly seems like a big win for WP.
But yeah, it may all fail of course. But it can still succeed too, unless Nokia gets bought.
Success would be doing better than Symbian, after all 2010 is portrayed as disaster and reason to immediately switch to something else, practically just anything as long as it’s not Symbian (or MeeGo).
And that’s totally impossible, Nokia will never return to the market share or profits from that time.
“I gave touch Symbian over three years to fix things since iPhone. Including six months after all the partners left before agreeing it was a goner.”
Or they were tired to be crushed by Nokia, despite superior hardware. After all, Nokia was 80+% of Symbian sales.
“I’ll give Lumia 1.5 years since launch, that means until Q4 results come in Q1. That is half I gave Symbian touch, we shall see. I’ll judge then.”
With a little bit of luck, we may be able to discuss it.
“Besides, only one or so WP partner has left. Unlike Symbian that lost 90% of partners in Q3/2010.”
And somehow, Symbian sales still managed to grow YoY up to and including Q1 2011.
With a little bit of luck Nokia doesn’t get bought. I still think we probably will get to discuss Q4 results, though, because no sale will go through the anti-competitive officials that fast. But obviously a successful acquisition of Nokia alone is proof of the current strategy’s failure.
So we have the dates to watch. In January 2013 (the 17th?) we’ll check Nokia’s Q4 numbers and whether or not Nokia got bought in the meanwhile. It’s a date. I promise to give a judgement then, as long as Nokia releases Lumia numbers or they can be deducted sufficiently.
Only other reason that I can think of where I wouldn’t be able to judge is if WP8 got released later than we thought, very late in Q4 for example. Then we can’t really call Q4 numbers indicative. Although obviously that would be a huge failure of another sort.
Let’s fix the date for mid-April instead. I think that Q4 is still too early to make the call success or not. Q4 will tell, if Nokia will survive or not.
Kerris promised amazing devices Spring 2013, hence, Ill make the call next Summer.
i personally believe that MS will grant a loan end this year, if Nokia is in need.
In the meanwhile I try to get over with the disappointment that Nokia lost its identity as open world supporter and is locking people to the 3rd (MS) ecosystem. I jsut wish HTML5 or similar or EU politics and official make sure that cooperation and standards are emphasized. I dont want to get locked in to certain fridge or car or mobile device, if my employer gives we Ilaptop.
Btw. Im ready to take back some of my Elop accusations – not the limited strategic or mobile market knowhow – on his ability to lead. See: https://twitter.com/eeropenttinen/status/224141846354468864
So we have two/three dates:
I will judge doom in January.
In April or summer it is your turn.
Fair points from you, thank you for them.
@Pdexter
And yet, up to and including Q1 2011, Nokia’s smartphone sales increased YoY.
This is starting to look more and more like football fans claiming to know better than the manager of the football team they support.
I mean, seriously, in both cases, do they really know better!? All of sudden everybody who has some time in their hands seems to know better than men who get paid to do it.
I never read anything which talks to me like a kid, I’d rather read something that lets me reach my own conclusions.
Arghhhh, common sense!!!!! It hurts us. Make it stopppp.
Good article.
Here is my comments:
That guy writes mostly stuff I’ve always said, for example: “However, in cases of potential conspiracy, 99 times out of 100, the truth is far more cock-up than conspiracy.”
I always say “Never attribute to malice, what can be explained by incompetence.” He also correctly points out communications failures related to February 11th, the memo and phasing out of Symbian. Yes, we agree on those. The psychology part was compelling stuff too, although to be fair I must add I’ve also heard positive stuff from people at Nokia about the psychological results of the Elop tenure.
Overall, there is a good summary of many relevant thoughts in the posting. Anyone really reading me would know I agree with much of that stuff. I won’t re-explain all the stuff I agree with or have written over the year. It is what it is.
Here are some I disagree with, because I think these need to be pointed out to people reading that post:
- The writers fundamental error, in my view, is considering Symbian somewhat competitive. I don’t think it was and RIM is proof in the pudding for that. He just doesn’t appreciate the danger of cheap Android at all in the writing. Also, he pays lipservice or none to the potentials of the Microsoft deal, like the location-based services and the Windows 8 effect.
- I think he is completely mistaken in assuming Q1/2011 saw some temporary industry-wide drop (and thus his conclusions based on that are false). Everybody knows Q1 is slower than Q4 QoQ for obvious reasons. Look at yearly trends. However, what happened was obvious: the uncompetitive players started dropping over 2011… RIM, Nokia and uncompetitive Android makers to an extent, from the way of the Samsung comet and strong Apple.
- Also, the assumption that Elop panicked in early 2011, as does Microsoft limiting N9 sales, sounds far-fetched anyway. I agree Elop did have data on where Symbian sales were heading (down), I’ve always said that to people who claimed Q4/2010 shows all fine and dandy, but on the rest I don’t agree with the writer. He assumes impulses and conspiracies on these two that I just don’t think were there. It was likely far more thought out than that. Again, see where RIM is despite keeping the brave face and avoiding a PR failure like February 11th. (Their brave PR face is the laughing stock of the industry and a YouTube meme, because they seem so disconnected from reality.)
- And come on, the N9 was out barely a month before Lumia. It was terribly late due to software quality issues, what else. Not surprisingly Meltemi was late too. Hyping up the N9 in the story is romantic sure, but not really accurate.
- I do think developer ecosystem for Windows Phone has succeeded. The writer paints a too gloomy a picture on that one, while of course making the correct technical notes which keep the latest games away from WP7 (but WP8 may fix).
- I don’t think the CEO should be sacked as long as it would endanger a working strategy. I don’t think we can still say the Lumia strategy has failed. It may fail, of course, but endangering the strategy at this crucial hour is not wise (unless they internally see it failing and need to start changing immediately).
Finally, the blogger makes no comment of Smaterphone. I wonder if it because it is not relevant at all anymore – or because he doesn’t know about it. That leaves open the low-end play and his conclusions on it.
But, yes, I do agree the February 11th was a PR catastrophe that could have and should have been avoided. The Windows Phone strategy could have launched in a smoother weather had that been accomplished.
The writer also makes the mistake, in my opinion, of ignoring the Compal factor. To get Lumia out in a little over half a year from February 11th, Nokia bought the reference design and initial manufacturing from Compal, which is very small as far as phone manufacturing goes – only a few million of capacity a year.
This allowed Nokia to get initial Lumias out far faster than getting own design and manufacturing up to speed with foreign-to-them Qualcomm chips etc. The problem is: Compal for phones is tiny. They could not manufacture Lumia in the volume needed for a global launch and it would take well into 2012 to get Nokia’s own factories up to speed. (Remember Nokia saying only 2012 would see Lumias in volumes. This is the reason why.)
And THIS is the reason why N9 was needed in some markets as a stop-gap (in addition to WP not yet being ready for some markets like China and Arabic or NFC pilots). Their preference would have been to release Lumia globally, I’m sure, instead of the N9 because it fits with their strategy, not because of Microsoft. The writer goes into conspiracy territory on that one unfortunately, even though mostly sees the sense of not.
I so agree with you – mistakes were made, but Symbian was not competitive anymore and conspiracy had nothing to do with all that. Only my personal view, of course.
Also, all this “they killed all the inhouse systems”. They didn’t. Look, how much work Nokia is putting into S40, probably its most proven and competitive inhouse OS. And listen to Nokia’s “location, location, location” hymns – maybe a future market for Nokia. Yes, they’re re-inventing themselves, and that’s often painful. Ok, I would have liked to see how far they could have gotten with Maemo (or MeeGo Harmatten = mostly Maemo, as far as I understand), but I for myself can move on and I like WP (though I’ve been a Mac&Linux user almost all of my life).
As would I have. But I made the choice of moving on from that, like you have. No point in dwelling on it. MeeGo might have worked, but how long are we going dwell on that.
Naturally I will keep Jolla under watchful eye too and support their products as well. That is the beauty of technology and life. It isn’t black and white.
It’s got shades of grey and sometimes even color!
Just that I don’t misunderstand you, are you seriously suggesting that the whole launch and sales fiasco is because Nokia’s is constrained by supply/manufacturing? (I won’t ask for evidence for that, because there is none.)
Of course not.
It consists of at least three elements:
- Constrained supply, manufacturing
- Failures to penetrate Android/iOS market
- Failures to recapture current/former Nokia users
The second point is explained by overall difficulty of breaking the Samsung/Apple stronghold and the app etc. situation, the last due to the immaturity of certain elements of WP7 – and because it is so new and different.
All of these three are improving though. Like I said, I’m giving it to the Q4 numbers to pass judgement.
Well, either the sales are limited by manufacturing capacity, or they are not. You can’t have it both ways. For the future of WP and Nokia there is big difference if the laughable sales are because Nokia can’t make highly desirable Lumias fast enough, or because people simply aren’t buying them.
If you cannot create a global launch, the sales ARE restrained by manufacturing capacity.
You could have the ability to instantly manufacture tens of millions devices, and still fail to make global launch for lot of different reasons. Like because you don’t have the money and people to execute the launch campaign everywhere, or because operators in some countries don’t want your phones, etc.
So what you are saying is clearly false.
nn: Bullshit. Lack of stellar sales is not caused by any single reason but a multitude of them. Limited availability of the full Lumia range and slow ramp-up to many markets is clearly one reason.
There could be multiple reasons, but some are mutually exclusive with others.
The question was specifically about being limited by manufacturing capacity, i.e. situation where people and operators want the phones in quantities, but Nokia is unable to manufacture them fast enough.
You want to have it both ways – partly make the nod to the patently obvious fact that people don’t want WP phones, but you also want to simultaneously pretend the sales are surely coming, all what is need is wait for more factories giving people what they want.
I maintain Lumia logistical availability is one reason affecting current numbers. Many markets still don’t get or don’t get all Lumia models or are just starting to get them. Delays related to this means that the numbers we’ve seen so far don’t tell the full story. If you understand the Nokia-Compal story, it all makes sense too.
I’ve maintained that starting from Q3 we finally have near global good availability and Q4 hopefully this point is entirely a thing of the past as things are up to speed enough.
This is not the only reason though, Lumia has many hurdles to overcomes a logistics (be it factory or distribution) is just one of them. Don’t ignore the big ones I listed above. I did state them too and they are biggies.
But yours is a binary view of an analog world. I have nothing more to add to this useless exchange.
OK, so I take this refusal to explicitly endorse this story about Nokia being limited by manufacturing capacity as implicit confirmation that you don’t agree with it. Good.
I don’t know what “logistical availability” is, but two years ago Nokia was shipping tens of millions phones around the world. If Elop now can’t get out of gates just few millions, then he surely greatly improved the logistical and sales channel.
In the past Nokia had an 18 monty leadtime for phones. Now it is barely 18 months from Feb 11, and hence the factories are finally up to speed soon making Lumias.
The limited capacity is because of Compal, which is a tiny contract maker where phones are concerned. Nokia used them to get a headstart on Windows Phone making, to get Lumias out in 9 months, but the downside was limited rampup speed.
It is a real factor, whether or not you choose to believe it. From Q3 forwards it is luckily going away as a problem.
Stephen Elop has gone on record that sales are disappointing – if you are selling everything you can make then they are not disappointing.
There have been several comments to the effect that getting people to try the product is the tricky bit, those that buy it generally like it. This also doesn’t sound like sales are materially affected by supply side constraints.
Even if that was true, why having more manufacturing capacity should help Nokia when the sales are not limited by manufacturing capacity?
Obviously it doesn’t help them at all, even Elop himself is blaming sales people and not and physical shortages…
(And there is the little fact that Elop is actually firing people and closing existing factories.)
Mark Wilcox:
Way to miss the point.
Sales in certain regions have been disappointing sure and that is not because of capacity issues. BUT there are many regions where there hasn’t been availability at all, or very limited range availability, or coming very late, so they can’t be selling all they could there.
The ramp-up speed of the new models (610, 900) all important to Nokia has been very slow. New countries have been added at a snails pace, meaning people are waiting for new models. Again, availability issue. In Finland we waited until February 2012 to even get the Lumia 800 and 710. Some countries took even longer. Similar delays again in getting Lumia 900 and 610 out there. Nokia brought out 800 and 710 in 9 months, half of their usual time. They were struggling.
I’m not saying that when a Lumia model launches in a certain market, there is limited availability. Due to the staggered way they have split the limited capacity, usually there isn’t. Well there was in Q4/2011 and for Lumia 900 this spring. I’m mostly saying getting to those markets is the limiting factor, because Nokia has had to go with a staggered approach. Many markets left waiting. They were spread very thin on the capacity. This is Compal issue, like it or not.
But from Q3/2012 onwards and hopefully with WP8 Q4/2012 that will be a thing of the past. 18 months have soon passed from February 11th and Nokia’s own factories are finally getting up to speed and finally models like 900 and 610 are getting to be available widely. I also hope they won’t have too much trouble churning out WP8 devices now that they’ve had a full cycle for them. This is also why I’ve been saying the whole time that H1/2012 numbers are still constrained and waiting for H2.
Q4/2011, Q1/2012, Q2/2012 numbers have still been with quite constrained supply for the whole Lumia range given the whole global scope. We know for example that Lumia 900 ramp-up in Europe was delayed by many weeks because of capacity issues. Many places only got it in June 2012. Don’t tell me things like that don’t affect Q2, of course they do. But again, luckily that will be a thing of the past very soon. Lumia is finally starting a near full quarter of near global availability for the near full range (without Arabic, Africa, much of South America though).
This is not the ONLY reason. Like I said, failure to penetrate Android and iPhone strongholds, failure to recapture many former Nokia users due to missing WP7 features etc. There are many other reasons. But the sales have ALSO been limited by capacity issues and slow global ramp-up times resulting from those.
@Janne – OK point accepted, there have been fewer sales than there would have been if the Lumias were available to Nokia’s full global distribution channels. However they targeted the most affluent/promising/important markets first – they should have been supply constrained but instead have failed to sell well in the most promising markets.
It’s possible that some as yet untapped markets will embrace WP7 more than the ones already tried but it’s hard to deny that sales so far are a very bad sign for WP7 adoption.
You can’t just ignore the scale of the marketing push and say it’s a bit disappointing. I’d go as far as to say if the numbers are close to what’s speculated (~3m for Q2) then it would be fair to call it an outright rejection of the product by the market.
Mark Wilcox:
I agree fully with your last reply. Thanks!
Little addendum I forgot to point out yesterday – Compal is actually scaling back the production. See for example here:
http://www.wpcentral.com/nokia-reportedly-scaling-back-windows-phone-7-production
So there is zero evidence for Nokia being limited by manufacturing capacity.
nn:
Do you really think I didn’t know that? Compal is now scaling back exactly because Nokia’s own factories are finally getting up to speed, like I’ve said. Nokia now has enough capacity and like I’ve said the capacity issue is going away. Hence why I’m keeping an eye on H2/2012 more so than H1/2012.
You know it, but you are choosing to ignore it.
There is zero evidence for your theory of Nokia being limited by manufacturing capacity, you are just asserting it. The proof of the claim that Compal is stopping production because Nokia is suddenly replacing it with enough of own capacity is also missing.
In fact there is ample evidence Nokia has and had enough spare capacity – Elop is blaming sales channel, he is closing own factories, here Compal is scaling back production, and so on.
No, I actually think the linked Compal news is exactly proof of what I’ve been saying. Because I have been saying Nokias own factories are now taking over and the volume issue is going away.
And on how many countries have the lumias been lauched already?? The latest data please..
For your reason to hold water,, you must look at the number of countries where it has been launched, the “latest” data on that is needed, and factor in the size of the smartphone market per country..
From only six markets in late 2011, it has now progressed quite well:
http://events.nokia.com/lumiamomentummap/
As I say, Q3/2012 is the first full quarter of near-global availability (still excluding Arabic, Africa and South America but those are not so big an issue).
By limited, do you mean there are only a small amount of carriers and resellers willing to put lumias on their shelves?? Because your economics is all messed up.. The recent price drop in lumias this early, shows low demand for a product that has excessive supply, and also by launching into some of the most advanced and largest smartphone markets, means that it could have sold much better.. Lumias could not have a shortage, as evidenced by its priority within nokia, the amount of money poured into it, and add to that the nature of the markets where it’s been initially launched…
(ps. Do you have the most recent data on how how many countries the lumia has been launched already??),
it’s either the carriers and retailers don’t want them, or the customers are the ones who don’t want them or both..
No, by limited I mean that Q2/2012 was still a quarter where Lumia became available in certain markets for the first time – or a quarter where we had to wait for new Lumia models becoming available, because there were too few of them to cover the whole globe.
Additionally, Lumia sales have of course been limited by the ramp-up of Windows Phone logistics itself – like the marketplace, language support etc. that still mean even in Q3/2012 Lumia won’t be available quite globally, although it finally will be in most places that matter. All this was explained at length at Nokia AGM too.
I can’t believe I have to argue this point. This is plain as day to anyone who has followed the Lumia ramp-up news or the Lumia momentum map. Finally, in Q3/2012 it is a first full quarter of Lumia availability in most places. Indeed it has taken Nokia the better part of a year since Lumia launch to get to that.
And yes, it is because the Lumia supply has been a limiting factor, so they’ve had to go to a staggered launch approach. Remember for example how Europe waited for Lumia 900, because U.S. was eating the supply. This is one example of limited supply. And don’t think waiting for the 900 didn’t affect Lumia sales in Europe for Q2. Of course it did.
Now, this is not the ONLY problem Lumia faced, but it was one. Luckily from Q3/2012 onwards that constrained capacity is starting to be a thing of the past as Nokia’s own factories and logistics are getting up to speed.
In South East Asia, it’s the customers who dont want them. More so after WP8 announcement, since the current Lumias cant be upgraded to WP8. There are ample Lumias on the shelves -710,800,900,610, few takers.
The disappointments with 710 and 800 has made others more cautious. The restrictiveness of WP was a turn off the Symbian users – take note that some dont know the OS, they only know they are buying a Nokia phone.
Plus the fact that WP8 was announced shortly after L900 release – between 1 week to 1 month, depending on country. That made another group pissed
The focus/demand currently is on 808, that is despite the zero advertising.
By focus I mean customers focus. Nokia’s focus is of course Lumia phones
I strongly disagree with the Compal factor. There must be also other ODMs that are able to manufacture WP devices. A choise of minor manufacturer cannot be a valid reason for having crippled launch of your opening release under new strategy.
Or they absolutely should have delayed the communication of all in WP strategy few months to have time for Compal to ramp up production and stock enough devices.
I believe that their Intel or China Mobile contract forced Nokia to release a device. Together with the fact that WP was not ready for eg. China and Middle East, they concluded that N9 needs to be released. What is odd, why did they release it in the Nordics for example.
jiipee: Then disagree, but I disagree with you EVEN MORE strongly.
Compal was the factor. Plan as day, fact as a fact can be a fact. Very fact.
Should Nokia have sourced more capacity somewhere else and been even faster to market? Hell yeah, I would have liked that. You have a point of wanting that from them. But I don’t know how possible that would have been. They were struggling to get up-to-speed in half the time the usually have for a mobile phone launch.
As for waiting with the Windows Phone launch news, of course you have a point with that. But do we need to open THAT can of worms again? I don’t think so.
p.s. Your N9 speculation is valid and I agree with that part. Although I also feel that limited Windows Phone capacity meant the N9 got a bigger role than necessary for those kinds of ends. Remember how hard a Lumia 800 was to get in most of Q4/2011? It was practically impossible to get in any color other than black too. Constrained capacity.
Don’t forget they would have maybe also been shooting for the ‘iPhone’ effect wherein reduced supply ramps up user demand through the roof.
Plus as well, they wouldn’t have known just how successful WP7.5 would have been, no point in dumping 20 million lumia’s in a desert beside some ET cartridges.
N9 were released I would think as it was in plan and WTF not ? After a 5 year research cycle, they would have been hung to cancel the release.
For Nokia to turn around and release something I 9 months is quite something, even when outsourced, considering they are geared up for HUGE volumes with manufacturing pipelines 18mths long at least.
5yr research cycle, riiight…
I have to scour the web for decent criticism of my blog.
Symbian was & still is (with Belle) somewhat competitive with cheap Android, RIM, bada and high-end feature phones. Cheap Android != high-end Android by a million miles – go buy a cheap Android device with a sub-3″ HVGA or even QVGA screen and tell me otherwise. The Nokia N8 is the most popular smartphone in the highest price bracket in Russia TODAY according to giant retailer MTS – partly that’s because it’s being sold much cheaper than many others in that bracket, but the C7 is in the top 5 in the next bracket down. Are Russian’s completely stupid, or has the retail channel in that country just continued to buy and promote Symbian devices where that’s not the case in other countries. Symbian is outselling Windows Phone still, despite the giant marketing push for Windows Phone and near impossibility of finding Symbian phones in the shops in many advanced markets. If you want an iPhone-like experience, Symbian is not competitive but it turns out many, many millions of people still don’t want/need that. If low end Android is so good, why are the other Android manufacturers in so much trouble?
Q12011 was spectacularly low compared to the growth trend – some of this was known over supply of the retail channel in Q42010 but it was still way outside the normal level of seasonal dip – go check the data if you don’t believe me.
Why did Nokia get such a bad deal out of Microsoft? The timing of the strategy announcement was terrible for Nokia but essential for Microsoft as WP7 was tanking in the market. Similarly with the WP8 announcement recently. Nokia has not been well compensated for this at speculated ~$250m/quarter.
I know for a fact that Nokia was going to sell the N9 in advanced markets… why on earth would you not sell a device that people want to buy, just because it has the same industrial design. No direct competition of N9 and Lumia in any market is supposed to avoid making Lumia sales look bad. The Compal factor for Q42011 was relevant but sales have not improved significantly – I await being proven wrong on that next week.
Absolutely the N9 was needed for markets where WP7 was not localised but that doesn’t explain why not also sell the N9 in the advanced markets where Lumia was sold – even online only. Nokia signed some kind of market exclusivity terms to get the subsidies – I’d be willing to bet on it. I also strongly suspect that publicly announcing Nokia’s support for Windows Phone back in February was part of the deal. The only other reason that makes any sense to me is that internal opposition to Windows Phone was so great that Elop announced it publicly to kill the rebellion – but that would be incredibly weak leadership and he doesn’t seem like that kind of guy from what I hear.
RIM is an interesting comparison since their sales held up for 6 months after Nokia’s went into a nosedive, despite having a significantly weaker product portfolio. They also announced their incompatible next generation platform at the same time their sales started to dive, although I’m sure that wasn’t the only factor.
As I said in the blog, the N9 was always doomed. It’s only interesting for two reasons:
1) Showed Nokia could actually still build a competitive UI/UX in house
2) Sales comparison with Lumia 800 given identical industrial design, less affluent markets and a microscopic fraction of the marketing budget
WP7 developer ecosystem has not succeeded because most of the good stuff there has been bought at significant cost, that is not sustainable. Organic interest in the platform from the “right” developers will only come when it’s a viable commercial proposition – which isn’t happening anywhere near fast enough. WP8 could be the saviour here but to be honest it looks mostly like catching up under the hood with very little significant improvement for consumers, so no reason why they should suddenly start buying it when they haven’t been buying WP7.
It’s less than a week too early to call the Lumia strategy failed or otherwise. This isn’t like the iPhone defining a new product category, it’s a direct competitor at a slightly lower price point in an established market with a phenomenal marketing push behind it. If sales are worse than an “uncompetitive” end-of-line flagship like the N8 then it is a failure. All indicators say the sales numbers are very bad, we wait for the results to see how bad. Completely agree switching the CEO before deciding the strategy has failed is counter-productive.
I do know about Smarterphone and don’t mention it because it is irrelevant. I heard Nokia bought them for the team, not the platform, but in either case S40 is getting squeezed between Shanzhai and cheap Android devices, can’t compete on price with one nor functionality with the other. Nokia needed to move up market slightly here (because it’s not really possible to compete profitably with Shanzhai) and that needed a “smart” offering with decent apps – Meltemi was supposed to be that option and now it is gone. Nokia had to kill it because the don’t have enough resources left to launch it and keep doing Windows Phone – if you have to pick one and you still believe Windows Phone can succeed, then it’s the right way to go.
So – Elop made a huge mistake. I think my speculation that he felt forced into it and made lots of concessions to Microsoft is the most generous to him. All other interpretations I’ve come up with so far make it a rookie blunder of global proportions – half the people I know in the industry immediately said “Why on earth are you announcing this now? That’s going to kill your sales.” One Nokia insider at the time said “OK, the platform may have been on fire, but you just poured petrol all over it.”
So – comments appreciated and noted, but I still stick by my interpretation of events until I get some evidence to the contrary.
We all wait for the books to be published
Thanks Mark, and sorry that I have forwarded your blog entry here
Ditto Mark, I stand by my response to you. Fair effort but wrong on many counts too.
As to Elops ‘mistake’ – I don’t think he would have called it out unless MS made this a condition, MS shareholders prob think its a mistake to bribe Nokia with >$1B (of their money)to sell a product that wasn’t returning anything to the shareholders anyway and maybe might never.
With WP7 who’s to say MS couldn’t have just said screw it its another kin, we will wait will W8 then sell phones that run pc software?
Elop did say at one point they are getting into bed with MS until the next disruption happens and I think that will be the convergence of all these items with only the battery\screen\keyboard being the differentiator.
Give it a few years I reckon, and you may be using your phone as a pc if mobile devices CPU keeps ramping the way it has been it should be all the CPU most of us need.
“Symbian was & still is (with Belle) somewhat competitive with cheap Android, RIM, bada and high-end feature phones.”
Which is a pointless statement given you can get mid range Android phones for less than Belle handsets.
You also miss the point that increasing volumes was due to channel stuffing and price cutting (look at margins over the last three years).
Saying that, I don’t believe strategy will change but Elop’s position, should Nokia sell less than 3 million Lumias, is in doubt.
Nokia does also have a problem with recognising where their products fit right now. For someone that just wants a good phone that they can also use to check Facebook/Twitter and maybe a bit of IM, something like the Nokia 700 would be a better choice than a Samsung Galaxy Ace or HTC Wildfire S. However, Nokia decided to put the device in a pretty expensive case rather than just accept where the market was pushing them. Then they crippled the cheaper 500 by putting a 2D only and much less capable graphics chip in. Neither of those thing is a result of the software platform. There were of course more devices planned before the big strategy switch…
Channel stuffing is not really the correct term for what was happening, although price cutting to maintain some market share was going on. Nokia used to make good margins – much better than the rest of the industry and there is no doubt that the competition would have continued to squeeze those.
I don’t believe the strategy will change either, there really isn’t anyone left to enable an emergency switch to Android and the other platforms have been killed off, so what would the strategy switch to? Firing Elop is just the only kind of public justice remaining for someone who takes such a giant gamble with a major global corporation that supports (or used to) tens of thousands of jobs and a decent chunk of the economy of a nation.
take a rest, you have been very busy defending elop, wp, & ms
Hmmm. I have nothing of value to add. Thus, let me insult his character.
Thanks for the support.
Yeah, it’s called an ad hominem attack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Ad hominem “is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.”
Anyone, argue my points anytime you wish – no views get deleted here and I will do my best give them a fair read and response. As for the personal attacks, I’d actually recommend Jay start using the censorship button a bit more.
its easy throwing accusations around, but when proven wrong do any of them apologize?
so far i seen zilch.
“Anyone, argue my points anytime you wish – no views get deleted here and I will do my best give them a fair read and response. As for the personal attacks, I’d actually recommend Jay start using the censorship button a bit more.”
agreed.
I read like 2 chapter of your text realising how boring it’s to talk and read about this over and over again. “X thing was a mistake. This should have done better. Y sucks, wtf are you doing…” etc.
It’s not about that we couldn’t talk about it, but when same talk goes on for month or two without new information… it’s bullsh*t no matter how good arguments and counter arguments are.
PS. This wasn’t a critic post to you Janne.
I actually agree with you Sefriol, in the thread there this post originally came from I was arguing the need to let the past already be, February 11th was a year and a half ago – I was then busy concentrating on criticizing Elop’s stupid Ask the CEO videos, which at least was topical – and BTW, another example of me being critical with Elop where I feel it is deserved.
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/07/13/video-ask-the-ceo-stephen-elop-at-teched-amsterdam/#comments
Understood, no worries.
I agree, but part of it is due to the fact, I’d say, that some of the reactions to the current matters here are….repetitive. Which then brings on the same old counter reactions. My secret hope for this forum is that July 19th’s numbers aren’t too bad and that we can then all move on to more interesting topics… like how does the new full touch Asha series perform? I’m eager to try one of them out myself
Excellent summary. That is exactly it.
Unfortunately they probably are bad enough. I seriously doubt Lumia sold only 300 000 in the U.S. though Q1-Q2.
I’m a little tempted by the Asha 311, but I keep arguing with myself that I have enough gadgets. I’m failing the war of course, but so far I’m winning that fight.
LOL… same here. I’m most likely getting one, no point debating it with myself. If it had GPS and maybe a 5MP camera, it would be perfect for me. I imagine it to have a more long-lasting battery life than WP…from what I read in the tests, the Lumia 610 doesn’t actually perform much better than e.g. the 710 battery-wise? I get 1.5 days out of it, I’d like 2-3 though…and I’m a light-to-medium user, no automatic twitter updates or so.
Sorry, I’m off topic here. Feel free not to answer!
As for the Q2 numbers: I wonder how the location services will pay off? Or will that only kick in once WP8 is released (assuming that Nokia will get sth. for Nokia Maps on the WP8 devices)?
The new location and ad revenues will only kick in as WP8 ramps up, so probably zilch for Q2 or Q3 (of course there is the existing location revenues from e.g. automotive industry) and maybe only a little for Q4 still. It is a long-term play.
p.s. I haven’t really paid attention to the Lumia 610 battery question, but here is what Nokia Developer site says:
Lumia 710
Battery model
BP-3L 3.7V 1300 mAh
GSM Talk Time up to
6.9 hours
WCDMA Talk Time up to
7.6 hours
GSM Standby Time up to
400.0 hours
WCDMA Standby Time up to
400.0 hours
Music Playback Time up to
38.0 hours
Lumia 610
Battery model
BP-3L 3.7V 1300 mAh
GSM Talk Time up to
10.5 hours
WCDMA Talk Time up to
9.5 hours
GSM Standby Time up to
670.0 hours
WCDMA Standby Time up to
720.0 hours
Video Playback Time up to
7.0 hours
Music Playback Time up to
35.0 hours
Asha 311
Battery model
BL-4U 3.7V 1110 mAh
GSM Talk Time up to
14.0 hours
WCDMA Talk Time up to
6.0 hours
GSM Standby Time up to
696.0 hours
WCDMA Standby Time up to
744.0 hours
Music Playback Time up to
40.0 hours
ah, ok, well, I’ll wait for a real-world test. I vaguely remember something from a Geramn tech magazine in which the 610 did perform better than the 710, but not enourmously better…
as soon as the 311 is out and in my hands, I can give you an update on that
unless reason kicks in and prevents me from buying yet another phone…
It would be nice to chat on positives. Too bad there is nothing else happening than waiting for WP8 specs.
Smarterphone can be interesting. We just know nothing about it. Some say they’ve been put to work on S40, whereas they were part of LiMo Linux foundation. It would be very odd, if Nokia was still working on Linux, when they’ve thrown away thei old experts. Its clear that the dev environment is java.
Im mostly interested on Jolla. Changes of succeeding are very low. Still, their attitude is something I really like. Smartphone in a year and hints that they want to innovate further – sounds like the Nokia I got interested in.
Oh, we can totally talk about negatives (risk, mistakes, failures) of today, too, but no more negatives from the past, please…
And Jolla – I must admit I’m sceptical, it’s gonna be an uphill battle against big players, but who knows
Many OSS linux devs seem to be behind that, and we all know that devs are important 
Exactly. Great post by loci again.
Thanks for the compliment and for the newbie support (throughout all these comment threads)
too many letters…
to make things shorter: Elop or a mole and did brilliant job or just plain stupid…its up to you to choose, however, result is obvious – Nokia burned down
dixi
@Janne
-Symbian (and RIM) competitiveness (or lack thereof).
Even in their death spiral they have so far both easily outsold WP which benefited from a huge marketing push. And why would WP be immune from cheap Android?
- I think he is completely mistaken in assuming Q1/2011 saw some temporary industry-wide drop (and thus his conclusions based on that are false). Everybody knows Q1 is slower than Q4 QoQ for obvious reasons
So which is it? Was there an industry wide drop (that everybody knows for obvious reasons) or not?
- Internal Elop data about Symbian sales going down.
Why did Elop said nothing about that in the Q1 2011 and Q2 2012 guidance statements?
Why did he expect to sell 150 million handsets in two years while voluntarily winding them down to transition to WP?
Why did Elop said greater than anticipated difficulties emerged at the Q2 2011 result conference call?
- About the Lumia strategy failing.
Losses are accumulating, sales are collapsing as well as the distribution channels, financial ratings rated junk, but it
cannot be said that it’s failing.
But OTOH it can be pontificated that Symbian was not competitive while its sales were still growing, bills were paid and extra money was accumulated as profit. What a joke…
yasu:
Obviously, they were existing products and with existing markets and far wider availability than Lumia too.
Holiday season sells more than the one after it, basic math. As for looking beyond that, Samsung and Apple did not hurt in Q1/2011 suggesting two things: Samsung is the one doing well with Android (others are languishing) and everybody else has trouble with Samsung and Apple.
Why would Windows Phone be immune of cheap Android? It isn’t. But it does offer an arguably competitive, different experience. All Symbian has was an uncompetitive similar experience. Also, we’re yet to see Nokia’s full play on the low-end. Time will tell how they sort it all out.
Elop said so on February 11th at the Capital Markets Day, which happened to stock-holders after the Microsoft press conference.
Because he fucked up the Symbian transition – or because cheap Android was even bigger a threat they foresaw.
Because he fucked up the Symbian transition – or because cheap Android was even bigger a threat they foresaw.
No, we can say Nokia’s company transition has failed. I already said this after the Q1 results. You keep acting like I didn’t say that, like I didn’t say Feburary 11th was a huge gamble, risks were realized, I wouldn’t have done it like that etc. Yes, the fucked up big time. Epic. Huge. Massive. OK?
Now, that still does not mean the Windows Phone from Nokia has failed – not for the short-term and not especially for the long-term. I have posted my view on when we can has the strategy failed, I think Q2 should show 3-4 million Lumias sold, but especially Q4 should show something in the ballpark of 10 million Lumias sold (if WP8 launches and is available in stored by beginning of Q4, if not they that will affect Q4).
If Q2-Q3-Q4 still show just 2+ million Lumias sold, a flat-line even with WP8 readily available in Nokia devices… Elop is out and it is time for a new strategy. Fair enough?
Symbian would have stopped doing all that anyway. That is the argument. RIM is proof of that. As for failures to sustain that as long as possible, we agree Nokia and Elop failed, no need to make it sound like I don’t agree there. You know I do.
@Janne
(About the 150 million Symbian phones in two years)
“Because he fucked up the Symbian transition – or because cheap Android was even bigger a threat they foresaw.”
So much for the internal numbers showing that Symbian sales would be declining.
(…)
“If Q2-Q3-Q4 still show just 2+ million Lumias sold, a flat-line even with WP8 readily available in Nokia devices… Elop is out and it is time for a new strategy. Fair enough?”
With Nokia in ruins and maybe broken beyond repair? You tell me.
“Symbian would have stopped doing all that anyway. That is the argument.”
As I said, it’s OK to pontificate about Symbian ineluctable failure while leaving open the door for WP to change from an abject failure to success.
“RIM is proof of that.”
Come again? The only thing that is proved is that so far, WP isn’t paying the bills, let alone bringing profit.
“As for failures to sustain that as long as possible, we agree Nokia and Elop failed, no need to make it sound like I don’t agree there. You know I do.”
I don’t need to, our posts are there for everyone to read and make their own opinion.
My beef with your previous post is that you stated that Symbian was uncompetitive and its ineluctable failure, despite doing the job when it was EOLed, but on the other hand, despite massive losses and overall failure, you have no problem leaving the door open for a Lumia’s strategy success.
Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
yasu:
No, I’m sure they did show that – and most importantly I’m sure they showed increasing resistance towards Symbian in key players they were talking to. And that was a major decision behind abandoning Symbian. It would have crashed, had they stuck to it. In their incompetence they likely hastened the crash though, but it was coming anyway.
Possible, but then it is possible it would have gone there anyway with the shape Nokia was in the beginning of 2011. MeeGo would have been a gamble too. It might have worked, of course, like I keep saying. I’m the old Maemo fan, remember… The biggest risk, though, I’d say is Nokia getting bought at this time – not really bankrupcy for the foreseeable quarters.
I have no idea what you’re saying there.
No, RIM is proof that the legacy offerings were crashing anyway. Symbian would have crashed anyway.
But it would be polite to formulate your responses in a way that acknowledges the real opinions of the person you are responding to, instead of making it sound like something else. It is the right thing to do.
I do agree with Symbian being uncompetitive. I don’t agree with how Nokia EOLled it. And why do I leave the door open for Lumia’s strategical success? Why wouldn’t I. I mean COME ON, don’t be so daft. Windows Phone clearly has much more of a chance of being viable than Symbian did, considering Windows 8 and all.
Like I always say, MeeGo too could have worked. It too was unproven like Windows Phone. You seem to have no problem with me saying MeeGo could have worked. Maybe you should attack me on that one too.
Just to clarify: I meant WP has more chance of being viable in the future, than Symbian did. Not making any assertions as to how big WP might be in the future, I doubt it would ever reach the peak Symbian did once have. I respect Symbian for where it got in the past, but the past is past. Past doesn’t pay bills. Neither does future now, but it might tomorrow.
@Janne
“Just to clarify: I meant WP has more chance of being viable in the future, than Symbian did. Not making any assertions as to how big WP might be in the future, I doubt it would ever reach the peak Symbian did once have. I respect Symbian for where it got in the past, but the past is past. Past doesn’t pay bills. Neither does future now, but it might tomorrow.”
Ah, didn’t see this before responding below. That I can agree with.
“I do agree with Symbian being uncompetitive.”
Where are your vaunted Shades Of Grey™, BTW, Sounds like an black or white statement to me.
Anyway Symbian still has been, and probably still is (despite being on it’s last leg and facing some strong headwings) to the best of my knowledge, more competitive than WP (which benefited from a huge marketing push and Nokia’s complete support).
“I don’t agree with how Nokia EOLled it. And why do I leave the door open for Lumia’s strategical success? Why wouldn’t I?”
Something like consistency. If one is willing to give a chance to a proven failure, one could give one to something that had done the job.
“I mean COME ON, don’t be so daft. Windows Phone clearly has much more of a chance of being viable than Symbian did, considering Windows 8 and all.”
Considering MS past record on mobile, against Symbian with WM and WP, it’s not that obvious at all, my daftness not withstanding.
Lost in the Symbian wilderness that was 2007 – early 2011. Yeah, I lost faith in Nokia’s ability to fix Symbian because they failed to and I gave it through N97, N8 all that. I gave it OVER THREE years following iPhone to form the opinion.
People are asking me to give up on Windows Phone after less than a year in the market from Nokia as less than two years in the market at all. I’m giving it another six months and then I’ll form my opinion.
I got my N97 in 2009. 1.5 to 2 years later I agreed Nokia failed with Symbian touch. I’m giving Lumia the same chance. 1.5 years after Lumia launch you will hear my definite opinion, when Q4 numbers come out.
There’s consistency for you. Fair enough?
Disagree hugely, but no point in arguing it now.
I think Symbian touch is a proven failure too, but I gave it time. Sure it sold quite a few on Nokia’s rep and no cheap Android yet, but it also destroyed a lot of Nokia’s rep. I am now doing the same for Nokia’s Windows Phone strategy, giving it the time I deem fit, no matter the carnage. Both had carnage.
Actually Windows Mobile fared fairly well overall.
@Janne,
when I talk about competitiveness, I talk about competitiveness on the market place, not about your personal wants and likes on smartphone platforms, unless you buy smartphones by the millions.
“(…)I got my N97 in 2009. 1.5 to 2 years later I agreed Nokia failed with Symbian touch. I’m giving Lumia the same chance. 1.5 years after Lumia launch you will hear my definite opinion, when Q4 numbers come out.”
Somehow, I doubt that those will come anywhere near Symbian figures in 2011.
Of course I didn’t mean my preferences matter at all. That is not what I meant.
“Symbian would have crashed anyway”
Haha, i thought that was the plan even before elop came aboard.. But during that time, we called symbian’s crash “transition”…
Symbian was supposed to “crash”, but it was supposed to be a controlled “crash”, where demand for symbian would be balanced to its supply, declining over time, while the dev focus and customers being efficiently moved to its successor platform, while keeping a certain level of “profitability”, “carrier and retailer relationship”, “device production shift”, “mindshare”, etc. etc…
Yasu’s comment is in fact extremely valid: if the Symbian crash was true, Nokia would should have followed the Finnish Securities Markets act and immediately sent out a stock exchange release. Giving that info during an event would be a breach of law.
In fact the entire Capital Markets Day was posted as a stock exchange release.
You do know what a Nokia Capital Markets Day is?
Yes I do. I happen to nowadays work on that field.
I am fully aware, that the agenda of AGM is reported using stock exchange releases prior to the event. Anything that could have an impact to a company’s stock price has to be revealed prior to a event and in any case as soon as the company gets the information.
Now please go and look for an stock exchange release that has in Finnish the words “tulosvaroitus”. Ok, Nokia rarely uses those words, which already are agains regulations (see http://www.finanssivalvonta.fi/fi/Saantely/Maarayskokoelma/Rahoitussektori/5_Tietojen_julkistaminen/Documents/5.2b.std6.pdf kohta 5.8 Tulosvaroitus)
You say: “Elop said so on February 11th at the Capital Markets Day, which happened to stock-holders after the Microsoft press conference.” I’m unable to find any documentation on the lated AMG’s the latest being 2009. (Nokia has one of the shittiest Investor sites in Finland. Yes, Ive given them feedback). If Elop has given guidance on Symbian sales development he has clearly broken the law (IR director is to blame is such case).
Q1 2011 was exactly as they had given the guidance end 2010 and +6% QonQ. The original guidance before profit warning for Q2 was 6,8-7,3 BEur and 0-7,5% growth QonQ.
If they already knew that they have concrete problems during 1H2011, why did they keep positive outlook? Forecasts for shipped products (turnover) are made based on history and order base. If they had sales channel refusals for Symbian and had been doing channel stuffing (leading to rebates and low re-order levels) they should have warned it as soon as they had the info. No such action before May 31st!
It is possible that they’ve dismissed the regulation since they have been showing the very same arrogance what comes to Finnish stock market regulations as they did towards Iphone.
Id like to know which consultancy they believed this time on the long term prognosis as the basis for strategy formulation. Was it McKinsey, whom they did not believe in when they decided to go into mobile business?
All I know is that Nokia posted the entire CMD 2011 presentation and video via their usual stock exchange/investor channels, live, archive and all that. I’m not a lawyer enough to argue if it was kosher or not. It was a separate event from the Microsoft press conference.
As for guidance, I’m not claiming the CMD presentation offered any new guidance numbers, obviously the guidance numbers for Q1, Q2/2011 and so on are as we know it, I’m saying they offered qualitative information (after a lengthy HARBOR statement).
Well said. Janne is so about protecting Elop.
Janne is Nokia’s PR dept.
Oh really?
Come on. No.
If Nokia will not get successful WP8, I think Elop will get fired just after the next quarter and the board members will be appointing a new CEO with new strategy along with the WP8(just a random thought).
My personal guess is that if Q4 is a bust, Elop will have to go.
My personal view is that he’ll be ouy in any case. He’s been the change agent CEO, who takes the blame. After that they need to have a fresh face.
Possible.
MNB should have a survey, what people believe to be the plan B by Siilasmaa:
a) Acquisition of an Android manufacturer
b) Meltemi
c) exiting and sale of handset business
d) Smartephone
e) Other
I’d vote for… wait for it… wait for it… e.
It’s really interesting how you and other people are completely oblivious to the hypocrisy where you simultaneously claim that continuous nominal increases aren’t reason to not to rip apart profitable company working on transition to new platform, but adding one or two millions to previous quarter is validation of the WP strategy and reason to continue with it no matter the fact that the company is disintegrating fast so it even wont be possible to continue like that for more than few quarters.
It is not a validation of the WP strategy. Validation of the WP strategy would be to reach a significant market position. Tens of millions of WP phones sold a quarter by Nokia.
That would be validation.
Everything else is steps getting there.
We need no more validation to say Nokia and Elop failed to transition and sustain the company in the mean while. How many more times do I have to post this on MNB for people to listen: THEY FAILED. I have been repeating that since Q1 when it became obvious. I’m not letting that one slide at all. (I also said right after February 11th, here on MNB, that it was a huge gamble and wish they hadn’t done it.)
Oh, sorry, I was the Elop apologist – so I must have said none of that.
OK, forget the “validation of strategy”, anyway the contradiction with Symbian argumentation is in the “reason to continue”.
Except that as far as I can see, failed transition is your codeword for the Symbian collapse. And this is fraught with more contradictions.
Firstly, you’re happy to argue that Symbian was going to collapse more or less the same way it collapsed no matter what and you are giving it as reason for the strategy change. If that was the case, you can hardly blame Elop for that.
On the other hand, if you really want to blame Elop for it, then you have to assume he could significantly dampen and prolong the plunge and tailor it to his needs. But this obviously demolished the reason given for immediate EOLing of Symbian/MeeGo/Qt.
I think your confusion stems from a misunderstanding of my message.
Once more: I do think February 11th and Elop caused an increase in Symbian’s collapse. I think it also created a huge amount of bad PR that has damaged Nokia. These are Elop’s and Nokia managements failures, obviously. I’ve explained their reasoning why it was many times here, but even though I understand it, I don’t agree it was the only possible – or the best – way.
How much it hurt Symbian, it is hard to tell. I think RIM is again a good example to have here. They got along better for a quarter or a couple than Nokia did. Perhaps Symbian would have fared similarly. So Elop hastened the downfall with financially unfortunate consequences.
Yet I agree with the decision to take Symbian down. I just disagree with how it was done. They way was a huge gamble and Q1/2012 showed it not paying off. End of that story, abject failure. February 11th could have been handled a lot better.
And again, MeeGo might have also worked as an alternative to Windows Phone.
In other words, you want to have the cake and eat it too.
Symbian was both going to collapse, so we had to abandon everything and use WP, and also Symbian was able to comfortably support Nokia for several years, if correctly managed, so no problem with switching to WP and then waiting for real WP super phone till Spring of 2013.
It has the added benefit that all the major problems stem from Symbian and WP remains to be the sole light of hope and bright future.
No, I don’t want to have the cake and eat it too (unless you actually have cake, I want that and to eat it too).
Symbian was going to collapse, so something new had to be chosen – BUT by handling the move away from Symbian more gracefully more time and especially more PR could have been eked out from it. But Symbian wasn’t going to carry the house for several more years in any case. But it might have carrier it for a quarter or a couple more had things been handled more competently.
“Symbian was going to collapse”
Again with the certitudes. Of course WP may succeed, even though it has already 6 quarters of solid failure (pre Q2 2012) behind it.
“so something new had to be chosen”
Enter an OS that struggles to sell 3 million copy a quarter even though backed by a huge marketing bonanza. Gotcha!
Well said, you will be taken around in circles. Janne as “convenient reasoning” most of the times.
There are very few certitudes in life. But often there comes a time when further attempts need to be deemed over. I believe certainly that time came to Symbian at Nokia. They had their shot and were deemed wanting.
I don’t believe the time has come yet to Windows Phone at Nokia. Maybe I will believe that after Q4. Maybe not. Don’t make this thinking of mine about WP, when it was about Symbian.
Killing Symbian needed to happen (not as badly done as they did though), but that does not mean choosing Windows Phone was such a certitude. No way.
MeeGo might have worked too for example. That is a separate discussion.
BlackBerry are about to replace BB7 with a platform that has 0 users. I don’t see you criticizing that.
“There are very few certitudes in life. But often there comes a time when further attempts need to be deemed over. I believe certainly that time came to Symbian at Nokia. They had their shot and were deemed wanting.”
Sometime in life, one realizes the value of what he had when it’s lost.
http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/investors/financials/reports/results—reports/
And probably more of the same next Thursday.
“I don’t believe the time has come yet to Windows Phone at Nokia. Maybe I will believe that after Q4. Maybe not. Don’t make this thinking of mine about WP, when it was about Symbian.”
I just point out that you post as a fact that Symbian would collapse in an unspecified future.
What is factual, is that so far WP, the replacement is failing, now, not in a hypothetical future.
“(…)BlackBerry are about to replace BB7 with a platform that has 0 users. I don’t see you criticizing that.”
It’s theirs. I wish them all the best.
One quarter makes no difference to the size of the hole Nokia is in.
Again, either Symbian was going to collapse as it did (give or take quarter and dozen of million phones) no matter what would Elop do. Or it could gradually fade over several years and support not only WP ramp up, but also MeeGo. Thus the original plan was good one and there was no need for change in strategy.
“Not surprisingly Meltemi was late too”
Janne, please, we don’t really know that for sure.
I’ve seen you latch onto a few things that (in your mind) supposedly “prove” it was.
But they were clutching at straws at best…
Fair enough. We don’t know for sure and that is good to point.
I’ve heard enough to believe it, though.
Just saying I’ve heard more since.
Um no, NONE OF US have had clear enough info. to suggest that, including you.
And in fact some info. supposedly coming from devs involved has suggested totally the opposite.
The truth has not yet been properly substantiated….
I’m telling you what I believe in.
I agree that there are no publicly proven facts, so adding your disclaimer to it is fair and as it should be. You believe what you want to.
Have you asked your source the reasons for possible delay? That is much more interesting.
["the N9 was out barely a month before Lumia. It was terribly late due to software quality issues, what else"]
What else?
Um the fact that the team/resources HAD already started shrinking significantly well before it was released.
Also what’s with all this re-casting of smarterphone as “the new hope” for the low-end?
We all knew for the longest time that it was being used as part of Meltemi.
It’s FOSS-based tech, are we making the leap that it could somehow now be shoehorned into S40 now?
MeeGo at Nokia had serious issues in late 2010 too before Elop did anything. Come on, this is widely known.
They really weren’t ready to release a product then.
Either they bit a too big a piece of the pie after N900 or something else happened, they wasted TWO years after the N900 to get out the N9.
I’m not disputing that, I’m merely saying there’s no Qn that diminishing resources had an impact on how soon they released in 2012.
I don’t think by much, maybe only 2-months TOPS….
And diminishing resources continued to have an impact on QC for many months after release*, & still does.
*the last 9.5mth “especially” has had the most precipitous drop in resources.
Obviously. I’m just saying that was not the core problem with MeeGo, though. Core problem was that Nokia was having a hard time executing on it for whatever reason.
Still, it might have worked. Nokia is having a hard time executing on Windows Phone too.
And they had a hard time executing on Symbian touch.
Maybe the common factor here is Nokia itself as an entity having a hard time executing with everything since mid-noughties…
That execution problem was surmounted when they finally got it out (which would’ve been a bit earlier as explained), but ONLY IF they continued to have strong resources.
There would’ve been 1-2 more Harmattan devices out by now, & we’d be hearing much more about MeeGo proper devices, & what Nokia/Intel & Partners* have planned.
Maemo 6x phones would’ve been superior WRT built-in sw functionality**, & it’s likely the 2nd & 3rd one (if needed) would’ve also pipped the WP7x phones hw-wise.
It’s even conceivable if there was a 3rd one that it employed some form of Pureview, but probably that would’ve come with the 1st/2nd wave of MeeGo devices.
We know it probably would’ve been quicker for PV to be implemented by Nokia in Maemo/MeeGo, than it will be for WP8x.
Finally the ecosystem would’ve been looking FAR healthier than it is NOW, not as strong as WP’s which has been around way longer, & backed by the worlds biggest sw co, but certainly WAY better.
From where I’m standing it all could’ve been looking “slightly” better by now, in a parallel universe.
And IMO it never had to be at the expense of totally ditching MeeGo.
Phase-out S^3 slightly quicker, don’t proceed with the 808, & maybe not even the 2nd Gen. S^3 phones.
But never make any formal announcement (internal or otherwise) condemning S^3, just make a gradual evolution from S^3 devices to MeeGo/Meltemi/WP ones.
WP could’ve been for the top to mid, MeeGo could’ve been for the top, Meltemi for the upper-low to the mid, & S40/S30 for the low-end.
MeeGo phones could’ve been slightly more high-end hw-wise than the top-end WP’s, & as a result be slightly pricier.
Or they could’ve kept them very similar hw-wise…
S40/S30 could’ve been phased-out eventually in favour of Meltemi.
*Yes there was at least two from memory, & others expressing interest before February 11`.
And Google’s Motorola acquisition last yr would’ve spurred much more interest, assuming they proceeded, they may not have with MeeGo still being actively worked on.
**We’ve already established that built-in utility of Maemo6x is w/o Qn far greater than WP7x. Stability/perf. remains the only bug-bear, thanks to constantly diminishing resources, & not adjusting to that enough by ditching more features.
And Meltemi needed to be opened-up in a fashion similar to how MeeGo was being approached.
Multi-vendor, mostly open-source, & collaborative/transparent etc.
Perhaps eventually it would’ve supplanted MeeGo or vice-versa, leaving us with only MeeGo(Meltemi)and WP.
["Perhaps eventually it would’ve supplanted MeeGo or vice-versa"]
Of course there may well have been a need to maintain two quite different OS cores.
But much (most) of the upper layers could’ve been the same or very similar.
What the hell happened to my follow-up post to this, gah!
Stuff this shit, I’m out, better things to do with my time.
And ditch the terrible name/branding that is MeeGo, ugh, I always hated that name.
Anyway, it’s all would’ve, could’ve, should’ve now, sigh…..
["Phase-out S^3 slightly quicker, don’t proceed with the 808, & maybe not even the 2nd Gen. S^3 phones."]
Perhaps better would’ve been to keep the 808PV, but def. ditch all 4x gen. 2 S^3 phones.
And use the extra time/resources to get 808PV & improvements to Belle out quicker, & more regularly.
But def. no more S^3 devices after 808, leaving all resource to continue to focus on MeeGo/Meltemi/WP.
Specifically: 500, 603, 700, & 701.
MAYBE add the features they have that the 808 doesn’t to the 808.
Well, perhaps we can hope you are finally beginning to see that the problem wasn’t with MeeGo, Symbian, Qt or the whole strategy, but with the execution and by doing mad switch to WP at the last moment Elop solved nothing and made everything permanently worse.
+1
That is clearly documented in public by Konttori, so there is no question of that.
It would be interesting to know what was the reason behind recreating the UI once again for Maemo (Swipe). If that was tactical/strategic choise and there could have been the the option to bring it to the original N9 (what we heard rumours of), why not release the original earlier. Recreating the UI in 6 months also partially invalidates the ‘fact’ that Nokia had no software competence. Compare it with the original WP.
What James says of Smarterphone sounfs plaucible. Their main competence may well be Linux since they were part of LiMo.
I dont think it was totally recreated, significant elements were started from scratch, not a total re-write as such.
I never saw any “proof” for that, just suggestions that large chunks were started over again.
But yes it still was impressive, especially given how much utility Harmattan has compared to WP7.5, & the circumstances under which they were trying to finish it.
“Swipe UI, that we are now admiring, required every single application and framework to be rebuilt almost from scratch. ”
http://konttoristhoughts.blogspot.fi/2011_06_01_archive.html
I know, I read that a long time ago, key word being “almost”.
He’d need to go into much more detail to get a better idea of what exactly happened.
the writter assumes that symbian was competitive, because he worked in symbian and was deeply involved in os internals like kernel development. Check his linked in profile.
If you work in a company who develops a product, you have respect to competitive solutions. WinCe, linux was around several years, they knew where it stands side by side to symbian. His standpoint is not baselss. Your product can be better here or there, but it’s the full package that sells.
I fully agree with him, nokia screwed up UI and APIs. That’s more logical than putting whole codebase of symbian into one sack labelled MESS as you like to do.
Nokia’s up coming death is old news…it will happen surely…Mynokiablog should write article about poor and restricted choice of end user features on up coming windows phone 8 which not only make it fast for nokia to be dead but also impact heavily on small fellows like HTC
Nokia sold only 330,000 LUMIAs in U.S! RIP nokia
Is that based on calculating the Nielsen data or a fact?
Because if it comes from the Nielsen estimate the margin of error alone would question that.
I don’t think that’s possible. Read the comment thread on OSNews:
http://www.osnews.com/comments/26179
Lumia sold 290k of Lumia 710 alone till the end of Q1, so by now they should have moved far beyond 330k.
I think this quote from the comment thread tells all:
Tomi is running his on congregation of people wishing Nokia to die. How productive.
Luckily there is: http://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/
Sorry, I wasn’t making myself totally clear…if you go further down the thread, there’s a guy actually pretty much disproving (in my view) the 330k numbers. I just didn’t get how to link to one specific comment (you can do that, but it seems that the rest of the comments then gets blanked out which doesn’t help the reading).
Sorry, I wasn’t being clear. I was simply making a side-point.
I agree with you that the 300 000 numbers sounds too low to be true for total of Q1-Q2.
hahaha…ok, sorry, misread you there. Yes, I get it, I think we’re on the same page regarding those matters
@Janne
“Tomi is running his on congregation of people wishing Nokia to die. How productive.”
Since when wishing Elop to be fired is equivalent to wishing Nokia to die?
It has gone beyond that.
It is not enough to object to something, you need to offer the alternative. Tomi’s suggestions on how to save Nokia have been nothing short of ridiculous, remember this: He actually suggested stopping selling Lumias, apologizing for them and then selling N9/N950 instead. This was his suggestion only some weeks ago.
In addition, his mission to twist the Nokia situation (e.g. in major Finnish media) is simply damaging Nokia’s chances further. So in effect he is hurting the people at Nokia, not helping them. He has been constantly twisting numbers lately and making major mistakes on numbers without fixing them, enough that a blog has sprung up to point those out. The AGM debacle was a huge mistake from him, I was there at the AGM I would know. Yeah, he is effectively on a mission to hurt Nokia (whether or not that was his intent originally which I don’t think it was), as are many of the people flocking there. It is now a hurting game where bad news are good news.
Luckily we have:
http://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/
Yeah, now when the “no plan B” strategy is finally and irrevocably implemented, it’s time to demand alternatives!
That’s of course false, one man can’t do such thing. Actually I think nobody could do that, Nokia certainly has the resources to fight back and tell us The Truth. If Tomi were producing such obvious falsities that would be easy to point out, he would be quickly laughed out and ignored. After all at first he was pretty much considered fringe. But after year and half the tables turned around, and now the crazy side are the people who still persist that the strategy is good (or might be good) despite the reality.
Tomi being interviewed constantly by YLE and the like in Finland certainly can damage Nokia to a certain extent. One man with a big voice can effect a lot of damage, word history shows.
Hey, you are claiming the same of Elop.
No, he isn’t causing any damage, he is just pointing out the damage done by Elop. You can deny the failures in the strategy and the damage done to Nokia, and even cheer for Elop and pretend everything could be right if we all wish it really hard. But nothing of this will change the reality, living in dreams will only make it all worse.
Yes, my point is that Tomi is living in dreams for many of his numbers, and because he is listened to by many he can create damage because he repeats wrong numbers without fixing them even when confronted. How much damage? Who knows, but I do think some damage is there.
Maybe if he were right most of the time this would be less of a problem, but he isn’t – not anymore about Nokia anyway. Here is one quote from loci’s link by a “Nelson” which with I agree fully:
http://www.osnews.com/comments/26179
@Janne
By claiming that Tomi is doing damage to Nokia while nobody from the company bothers to correct his wrong numbers, you are saying Tomi is essentially right.
Because if there is damage being done, it’s Elop’s duty to step out and in no uncertain terms say that whole N9 sales are 100,000, return rates for Lumias are far below industry average (95 % satisfaction, right?), there is absolutely no boycott from operators and everybody loves Skype.
Elop (or anybody from Nokia) can end it in one minute interview, but this of course assumes Tomi is wildly off the mark. On the other hand if he isn’t, sitting silently in corner and hoping for better future is the best thing Nokia can do.
Nokia corrected Tomi’s wild N9 claims at the AGM when asked.
Nokia also tried to correct Tomi on his claims about the AGM (where I was and know Nokia was right and Tomi wrong).
Look where it got them. Oh yeah, right, nowhere. Tomi is still spreading the same information.
The famous video from AGM is actually perfect proof that Elop can’t say simple things like “there is no boycott from operators”, instead he talks for five minutes and says nothing of substance.
Only thing you can argue about is if it’s because he doesn’t register the reality around him and didn’t understand the question, or because it would be a lie and he could be prosecuted for it.
You saw only a video of one question though. In the context of watching Elop answer politely questions for nearly four hours (!!!) non-stop, I think many of his answers were very frank. In my opinion, even this one felt in the context a very good answer when one was there.
That is why I think the Ask the CEO videos suck so bad. Elop is quite good at taking questions and answering them, even very hostile questions very politely. At the last two AGMs he really made a good effort to answer all questions – and sometimes people asked like five, four questions at once in Finnish (!), he listened to the translation, made notes and then answered them all.
That scripted PR talk in those Ask the CEO videos is bullshit. Elop could do a lot better by adlibbing it, the AGMs have been proof of that. Every time a Nokia Finnish board/executive team member came on stage to answer, they seemed abrasive, hostile, and impatient compared to Elop that actually respected the questions instead of yelling some brief holier than thou responses. (Except Risto Siilasmaa, whose nature is not abrasive at all. I like Risto.)
I’m sure that when you see him in person, you will believe him every word, you will have the deep feeling he is saying what you already knew, and that it’s truth. That’s essential part of this art.
But it doesn’t change the fact that when you start reading his words closely, it’s obvious he didn’t deny the boycott story, and that he actually completely evaded the question.
@Janne
I don’t care about Tomi, I asked you since when wishing Elop to be fired is equivalent to wanting Nokia dead.
It is when you add to that want Tomi’s other points like stopping selling Lumia, apologizing and selling N9/N950 instead after Elop is fired. Really? While continuing to spread false stats without proper disclaimers, deleting comments that would help correct misconceptions creating all sorts of havoc….
I never said asking Elop fired is asking Nokia to die. If that was the only thing Tomi was saying, I’d hardly have a problem with that. A CEO is responsible and calls for his resignation may come from many valid reasons – and that is fine.
But that is not all he does.
Janne would just twist an argument, make 50 comments, keep replying weirdly to every post. Then finally start protecting Elop.
It’s so nice.
no it isnt all lumias but only 900
Now overall in Mobile operating system inovation linux engineering works more energetic and create good ecosystem………After all it works……
Jay, please stop publishing these articles. They frustrate me because they are mostly telling a partly true story. More important is that this WP strategy is basically just starting with the introduction of WP8. WP7 gave Nokia 4 phones and it didn’t work. But they also couldn’t differentiate in other than software.
With WP8 we shall see innovations from Nokia that remind us why we love this company. I would expect to see some more love towards Nokia from you Jay. It’s seems like you’ve given up on the company. Stick to it, keep faith that they’ll introduce some stellar hardware later this year. It was our European pride and is our only European phone player in the world.
And all that rambling about Elop? I mean, yeah, in the end, he is the end responsible so when all things fail, he should go. Other than that, I’d say he’s devoted to save this company and is trying hard to cure an already sick company. It’s not working out atm but who knows. I have faith in Nokia surprising us later this year..
+1
ahem, actually that suggestion should go out to myself, too. I was one of those who pushed Jay into publishing another article of a similar kind though with a totally different view.
I think enough has been said on both sides, I myself will try to ignore uber-negative comments in future and to stick to other, more interesting topics and facts…
+1.
OMG I HAVE BEEN SO STARVED OF POSITIVE COMMENTS I FORGOT HOW IT FEELS LIKE.
=P
hahaha…hey, there has been the occasional one every now and then!! though maybe not always from people with such winsome Gravatar smiles
+100
There is no point of talking about the past… It will not help Nokia nor us … If we really are Nokia fans we should give support to Nokia how they could improve products and wait for a WP 8 / Nokia success?
+1
Jay, may I suggest MNB takes a new course:
The future.
No more posts of the past. Let these guys have the last word with this article. No more of the past, we have discussed it to death.
Maybe it is time to update the title too:
“Random, informal Nokia blog for Nokia, Symbian, Maemo, MeeGo and Windows Phone news, reviews, rants, suggestions and applications.”
To just:
“Random, informal Nokia blog for Nokia and Windows Phone news, reviews, rants, suggestions and applications.”
Or maybe:
“Random, informal Nokia blog for Nokia,Windows Phone and Jolla news, reviews, rants, suggestions and applications.”
And moving more towards the future of Nokia. As much as I liked and love the Maemo path for example, it is increasingly the past.
The tangents are just hurting the atmosphere.
Jolla could be covered of course to serve that part of the community, because that has a future and is relevant to the Nokia community in some level.
Just something to think about going forward. Symbian and Maemo are things of the past more and more, as is February 11th.
It got too hard (practically impossible) to defend Elop, so better to hide it.
No, it got tiresome to be thought of defending him when in fact I’m not.
Just read me. Try.
“Just read me. Try.”
you are funny. LOL. Too many comments some very stupid but some nice. It certainly is hard to try reading you.
Stop attacking me.
Jay feel free to censor personal attacks.
If you want to argue my points or point out your opposing view, please do, but stop with attacks on my person or style. That is unwarranted.
He is not attacking you, it’s just his observation when he’s reading this blog.
Now you’re asking Jay to censor replies you don’t like, you’re even given Jay a roadmap how to change his blog.
Why don’t you start your own blog?
Filled with only positive PR blabla about WP and Elop, Nokia’s saviour.
February 2011, Elop, the memo, the WP all the way strategy; it’s still very actual, next week numbers are the follow up from it.
You just can’t say: forget the past, we’ll never talk about it anymore, don’t make any related posts on this matter.
It’s there, Janne, if you like it or not: there’s no future without past.
spacemodel: You clearly have no understanding of past events here.
I had previously asked Jay NOT to censor any replies to me, because I believe in outing every voices. I think the personal attacks have now crossed the line that I take that opinion back. Jay and other admins are free to do as they see fit.
As for “roadmaps” on MNB, I am also only offering my opinion to Jay, he obviously does whatever he wants. I think there is some merit to my ideas. Many enthusiast forums on the Internet have banned some controversial topics from further discussion after a while, because they tend to overwhelm everything else. I think there is some merit to that idea.
Did you know Jay offered me administrative privileges here? If I were about getting my voice over any of yours, I’d be doing it. But that is not me, nor is it my style. I abhor silencing anyone or trying to get my voice or agenda over anyone elses. So I politely declined Jay’s very generous offer. That is not what I’m about. I’m just one voice here.
Again, you show lack of knowledge about past events and make the wrong conclusions about me. In any case personal attacks, they are not warranted by any means. If you have criticism towards me, at least do the courtesy of explaining it, so it can be argued. gordonH just showered this thread with many short snipes at me, without any other contribution.
Do you really feel that was warranted?
So I’m voicing my opinion that I believe personal attacks may be something a little censorship would do well with. Admins can do whatever they feel appropriate then.
“stop attacking me”
In fact you have been attacking everyone by twisting the argument. Every “opposing view” is commented and replied by you, and it’s the same points taken in circles all over again. And finally you end up protecting Elop and the WP7 route.
Argue my points then. I have no problem with people like yasu who argue my points at length. I respect them.
You just showered this thread with a number of short snipes at me, without any other contribution to the content.
I don’t think that is cool. That’s just my opinion.
Gordon just told you the truth.
You are defending Elop that is exactly what you are doing.
There are many people suffering because of Elop’s childish personality and pure idiocy. Luckily Finland is some kind of civilized country in some other countries he would be treated other way.
He told no such thing.
I am not defending Elop, don’t be ridiculous. I have been very critical of Elop after his failures to sustain Nokia’s business (evident by Q1) and stupid moves like the Ask the CEO PR crap just this week. I also said right after February 11th that it was a huge gamble and I wish they hadn’t done it. I said so right here.
The only reason I’m NOT asking for he’s removal (yet), is because I believe it would endanger the WP8 launch for Nokia by creating uncertainty in the market. But even I’m thinking he probably needs to go soon after that – there is just so much bad blood Nokia’s (and his) PR failures have generated.
Just because I won’t yet write off the Lumia strategy doesn’t mean I’m defending Elop. You just read little snippets of what I write and think you know what I say, but clearly not. I am an old Nokia fan, a Maemo fan, who has some info and some views on where Nokia is going and I see some merit in the strategy. That’s all.
As for Elop, one reason I may be seen as defending him is because there are a lot of misconceptions about Elop online in my opinion. I have voiced my disagreement on those obviously, but just because I don’t think he is a Microsoft trojan (but has been incompetent) doesn’t mean I’m defending him.
The fact is, I do know quite a bit about Nokia, its history, its current state, I have been to all the major Nokia events (investor and otherwise) of past years personally so I have views that are wider than some online posters. I get it that irks people, because that affords me a different perspective. But I do think there is merit in my perspective too so I voice it.
And no, I don’t work for Nokia PR (or Nokia). I’m just a developer by trade, stock-owner by night and a hobbyist here.
Yes I have to admit that I do not read all your mails and some of them I just read part of it. This one was rather good though.
Not that I am writing very clearly always and sometimes I am just angry. The present state of the company just makes me sad.
Anyway, I think many times you write just too much and you could make your point with lower number of letters.
Fair response. Thank you for it!
But most importantly, there comes a time when outstaying your welcome is no longer polite.
February 11th happened 1,5 years ago. Still it dominates many of the threads on MNB with the same arguments back and forth.
It is counter-productive. Nokia is doing their thing no matter what we think of it.
Besides, this is such a loaded topic that trying to have a factual discussion on it is near impossible.
For example, I have been very critical of many things Nokia and Elop have done. Yet we get bullshit responses like yours.
Haha, you talk of forgetting the past, especially feb 11 stuff..
But every now and then, you just love bringing up symbian’s past failures, even those waaayyy before feb 11 just to justify elop’s decisions, and current failures by the wp strategy.. Nice..
Yes, I would obviously have to restrain myself on that as well. I never ask any more of others than I’d be willing to go along with myself.
Like I said elsewhere on this thread, even though I do blame OPK’s era most for Nokia’s troubles, I don’t thing rehashing that over and over again is constructive either anymore.
So, yes, I’d personally consider limiting articles on MNB to the new and to the future due to the way the historical archives always blow up.
That is just my opinion, based on many Internet forums that have similar policies in place for controversial topics. I am NOT asking anyone to forget about February 11th whatever. I am simply suggesting ways to improve this site.
They are just my suggestions.
I somehow disagree with that Maemo, meego, and Symbian are all part of the Nokia legacy and somehow made us all fans of Nokia in the first place. Meego (N9) will be supported till next year right? Correct me here if I’m wrong. Also Nokia stated that belle/symbian will be supported until at least 2016.
Until Nokia totally drops support for these platforms, I see no point in discussing only s40, windows and Jolla. I’m sure there will be some news that will spark some comments and interest with belle platform and the n9 in the future. Not posting that and discussing such things would restrict us fans.
And Janne, you could just let the haters be if you’re already tired of defending and reacting to their comments. You’re not obligated to react to all of the posts but if you wanna do it, that’s alright.
As I see it, it’s beneficial to see positive and negative comments here in the blog to balance things out. It shows both sides of the current strategy. Can’t please everyone right?
So Jay, keep on doing what you’re doing, just as long as you’re posting articles related to Nokia. We’ll keep on reading you’re blog.
I offered my views on where I think MNB should in my opinion move towards. The future in what form it manifests itself at Nokia. I wasn’t suggesting cutting out current topics, only the past topics that have been hashed out to the point of no useful return (like February 11th). As for the title, I was simply offering some ideas how it might develop. They were not fully thought out for sure.
Obviously. But at the same time the haters are dominating in an increasingly fruitless and just-hating way too many discussions. I think steering clear of such discussions for a while might actually make sense for the whole community.
I’d like to rephrase what Janne suggested as follows (and I assume he was hinting more in that direction):
Nokia-related articles (including Symbian, MeeGo as long as there is movement in that field): yes
articles on Feb’11, cospiracy theories, the past and what-if, or such articles that foster comments of that kind: please no more, we’ve had our share of that.
I’d go along with that wish…
Exactly.
Maybe I should rephrase by saying: Include the current and the future of Nokia.
And let the past be. That was my idea.
Being repetitive here, just to wrap it up for Jay:
@Jay : My criticism wasn’t directed at you, it was good to post such articles for a while, as reflecting on the past isn’t bad per se. But I feel that we’re now at a point where this should indeed stop. Has been said by various others here, just wanted to clarify how it was meant (and I believe others meant it similarly).
Thanks for your good work!
+1
Past is important as is learning from it. We have done as much of that as I think we ever will here. Thousands upon thousands of comments and discussion has been done over the past 1.5 years on February 11th. I suggest this is the last one.
Dwelling on the past is not healthy either.
I try my best.
Still I disagree to an extent. I will come back to this topic, and I believe everyone else does the same, when the first book is published about the Nokia’s transition.
["Meego (N9) will be supported till next year right? Correct me here if I’m wrong. Also Nokia stated that belle/symbian will be supported until at least 2016."]
They promised “officially” several times that the N9 will be supported till 2015, not 2013.*
But it sure as hell hasn’t been looking like that, especially in the last 9-month.
They deliberately always kept their responses very vague…
So God knows what they’ll still be doing for N9/950 owners in Q4 2012, let alone 2013/14.
*most at the time took that to mean the very beginning of 2015, not the entire year.
It is the current understanding that Jolla and/or Cloudberry (spin-offs by ex-Nokians) are probably providing Nokia with consultancy for N9 bugfixes and the sort should the need arise. PR1.3, we hear, was always planned to be the last major update. I’m hopeful Nokia’s apps for N9 might see longer support too.
Symbian, I’d say, will see maybe one more major update (FP2 for Belle FP1s and Belle Refresh for S^3 Belles). Of course Symbian will also receive updates to Nokia’s Symbian apps for some time afterwards. Symbian probably would have gotten more, but it crashed so fast that now the plans are probably different.
After these, I expect us to see mostly bugfixes until whatever end-dates Nokia has promised.
There were some rumors of PR1.4 for N9 too, who knows.
["PR1.3, we hear, was always planned to be the last major update. I’m hopeful Nokia’s apps for N9 might see longer support too."]
And you’re all-knowing of this how? I’ve heard nothing of the sort & I follow the Maemo community heavily.
It’s OFTEN wavered from no 1.3, to 1.3 only, to 1.3 + 1.4, to 1.3 + >1 PR’s, rinse & repeat.
I’ve never seen any truly solid info to make the sort of conclusive statements you are.
["It is the current understanding that Jolla and/or Cloudberry (spin-offs by ex-Nokians) are probably providing Nokia with consultancy for N9 bugfixes and the sort should the need arise"]
There’s been talk that contractors may be taking over after 1.3 for any future (probably minor) releases.
But I certainly haven’t seen any hard proof than Jolla or Cloudberry have anything to do with that.
["After these, I expect us to see mostly bugfixes until whatever end-dates Nokia has promised."]
Agreed, after whatever major PR’s are left will be solely bug-fix releases.
I am definitely not all knowing on things N9, just passing on what I’ve understood. You may have more recent or better info as I follow that space far too little.
Joris, your comment is touching, I must admit. We share a common passion for Nokia.
Good to hear I’m not alone
+1
-1
Faith alone wouldn’t save you.
Amen.
You might love what a company is doing,
but blindly loving a multinational company is stupid.
As for me, let’s say I’m just interested in Nokia as a case study these days.
So, go away then. This is a Nokia fan community. Not a case study. You’ll be happier and CDB or some such place.
p.s. I doubt many of us love Nokia or what they are doing, but we ARE trying to enjoy a hobby. Not visit a cesspool of misery.
Why don’t YOU fuck off and go away. It’s not your fucking blog. Your sucking up to Elop is nauseating. You’d be much happier elsewhere I’m sure.
It sure isn’t my blog. I’ve always respected that as Jay’s turf and still do. Jay can comment on this as he sees fit.
So you are saying you love Nokia blindly no matter what?
And further more that’s your hobby?
Weird. You are a weirdo Janne.
yesir: You just said that your interest in Nokia is now no more than a case study… And you call me weird for hanging out at a Nokia user forum? I actually use and support Nokia devices still, unlike you apparently.
Who is the weirdo…
p.s. I don’t love Nokia. But I do think MNB is worth saving from all the vitriol.
There’re so many things to do to succeed in this industry, it seems to me that the only thing that doesn’t matter is building quality phones.
I have been known to post theme songs for our discussion.
Past includes things like Volbeat’s Still Counting and Take That’s The Flood.
So, for all of you who understand Swedish and still hate Nokia’s Windows Phone strategy – here is a message for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNl5AnGBiA4
Really. Move on, you will be happier elsewhere. You are just dragging us down here for past things nobody can change.
No one forces people to read all blog posts. I do select the ones Im interested in.
You can be happy, if there is nothing else to write about of Nokia than Where platform and Windows phone upcoming features and which 3rd party apps Nokia gets exclusivity. Or if they carve Spiderman on cyan handset. Ill be then off to otjer blogs, which give 360 degree view on the MS ecosystem.
That is not my point and you know it. My point us to let go of a poisonous and increasingly irrelevant past – and start building anew in the community. I can’t believe we are still debating February 11th. It is ancient history.
I have no desire for a happy laa laa place of denying problems, that is not what I’m after, but the miserable cesspool we have now isn’t the only alternative. There is a better way and it starts by letting go a few things, including some of that hate, bitterness and dwelling on decisions long past.
Forgive. Nobody is asking you to forget.
If you can’t handle posting whatever they like, why don’t YOU leave?
Maybe I should. YOU can take over.
Clearly you have stuff to contribute. Say hi to Samsung PR for me. You have as much to do with them as I do with Noka PR.
He can’t leave. It’s his job.
No it isn’t. And besides, you clearly aren’t Finnish.
No Finnish person every works in July. Not even if they are at work (and I’m not).
We shutter the country and go troll at MNB.
What’s poisonous is Nokia’s current strategy..
I can agree February 11th’s PR handling was poisonous, that much is evident from the outfall. They could and should have done a lot better there.
nokia should go with jolla and qp together!!!
i mean go
as you’re mentioning jolla and people have been speculating about possible “common goals”, “plan b”s etc.: what about the Qt “ecosystem”? Has Nokia really dropped it? Or is it ever coming to S40? I’m a little clueless there. From what I’ve read (a while back), there hasn’t been a clear statement on that?
We don’t know definitely what Nokia will do in the low-end with Smarterphone of Qt. Maybe something, maybe nothing. All we know if Meltemi got the axe 99,99% sure.
Typo: of => or
That is something, which talks against your proposal to limit the review of past.
If Qt is still alive in Nokia, the status of Symbian, Maemo and even Meltemi ate still valid pointa and the history has an effect on future. I dont think there is a single Qt dev there, who would believe anything related to Qts future as long as the top mgmt is changed.
Meltemi news is not 1,5 years old.
Nokia hasnt given anything else than vague hints of investing in mobile phones. As long as this is the case, there is not much to discuss.
I personally wont read WP app reviews since there are better forums for those, when looking for inspiration. If Nokia has given money and or resources for some company to create an app, that is good.
If you want to start the talk on the future, I would be as non dev interested to hear what is behind the new java SDK. Also Id be intetested to hear about Josh Marinacci, who moved from HP to Nokia. He sounds like a capable guy and works on Java.
I never suggested not posting Meltemi news (or negative news). No way. It was current, very recently, obviously. I am simply one of those people tiring of the way seemingly every other Nokia business thread – or WP thread – blows up as a rehash of February 11th.
A lot of people voiced the same concern in this thread. Hence I made the suggestion, to put a concrete idea how those voices might be served. Many Internet forums have such policies in place for flammable topics that have been gone through and are just repetitive.
I am not suggesting we not speculate on Qt or Smarterphone or Series 40 or whatever. Clearly those are still topical. But the minute the conversation steers to another rehash of the old, maybe there could be a better way to handle it than now.
Perhaps you haven’t been around here long….
It’s been put best by incognito countless times…
Posts from 99% other posters here I wouldn’t take too srsly.
Wait till someone with some technical proficiency weighs-in.
To very simply summarise what he’s explained in much more depth.
It’s almost completely dead because it hasn’t been fostered to the degree it was supposed to be for almost 18mth now.
The recent axing of Meltemi inserted the final nail in the coffin.
S40 is java, it makes no use of Qt, many Nokia devs publicly stated that Qt is dead with Meltemi*, you cant “bolt” Qt onto it.
Well you could, but it makes zero sense given all the code clearing they’ve been doing in recent years, it’d be counter-intuitive to what they’ve been trying to achieve.
*not Qt as-a-whole just inside Nokia, + Qt mobile’s LT prospects were heavily impacted by it (they were already languishing for some time anyway).
Correction:
“not Qt as-a-whole just inside Nokia” ==> “not Qt as-a-whole, only Qt inside Nokia”
Right, I haven’t been around very long, only 2 months or so, and this topic alone (Feb’11 and everything before and after it) needed quite a lot of digging into… but I’m getting there
Thanks for the info!
Nice points to bring up.
Thanks Jay for posting it.
Each one has his opinion on what is happening at Nokia. Mine is very close to the one in this article.
It is really hard to think that the board and the CEO for company as large as Nokia was could be this stupid. I think that is the main reason for some sort of conspiracy in how Nokia has been handled.
It could also be because we don’t see all there is to the strategy. They see merit where we see unknowns or uncertainty.
It doesn’t mean it will succeed. Even competent people fail often and Nokia has not been all that competent over the transition.
But there is still merit to the plan as well. We shall see if they can make it work.
No, this is about stupidity and/or microsoft trojan. I think it is a mix, the board is stupid and elop is a trojan.
The errors is to big to have any unknown reasons.
“They see merit where we see unknowns or uncertainty.”
And that’s the problem right there.
Possibly, if they are seeing the wrong things. But it may also be that we are not seeing the right things yet. I’m keeping an open mind until Q4/2012 results roll in.
Enough will likely be known at that point to judge. So, around the 17th of January 2013 (or at any date Nokia gets acquired prior to that), is judgement day from me.
Yay or nay. Will be then.
The question is if they could’ve prevented the collapse of Symbian in any meaningful way only with better communication. They just seemed so very incapable to spit out any decent devices on schedule
That is a good question. My opinion is that Nokia did hasten Symbian’s downfall with February 11th. They didn’t create it, but they hastened it somewhat. See: RIM.
Quick question. Just wondering if bad public opinion of msft is killing limos?
Quite a few ppl I’ve spoken to don’t actually like wp because of Msft bad rep
Edit Limos to lumia..
I think that may have some effect, yes.
Although I think the public perception of Microsoft has been changing over the past years and with good reason too, so I think it is less and less of an issue.
Of course Nokia creating a PR shitstorm of their own by their handling of February 11th added another PR problem for Nokia and Nokia Lumia – much of it could have been avoided.
“It’s written by Mark Wilcox. I’ve not encountered his work before, nor am I aware of his background”
Check http://uk.linkedin.com/in/markwilcox this is our guy
LOL, Janne’s created almost all the posts in this thread!
Nice effort man, not enough time on my hands personally ;-P
Thanks, but hardly.
A quick search on “Janne says” shows 44 replies before this one, out of 149 comments. 29.5% is a lot, but hardly almost all. I sometimes wonder if having many people with single-name J-starting aliases confuses. There are for example many posts from James.
A write quickly. I’ve been accused of creating volume before, but it takes me very little time. I’m literal that way. Call it a talent. ;D
That’s cause Janne is a couple of guys at Nokia’s PR dept. Just doing what they are paid to do. Working overtime these days…
Now I’m a COUPLE of guys. Sheesh. I must be superhuman.
No, again, I’m a hobbyist here. Single person.
Sure got a lot of free time on your hands.
I don’t watch TV.
I’ve seen this all before with Apple Computers in early 2000.
In 2004 bought an iPod mini,after that I invested heavily in aapl.
Sold it all in 2010 making a HUGE profit, but i sold to early
Now I see the exact same potential with Nokia, maybe even more,
I am 100% invested in nok.
Fingers crossed. Patience.
Wait for the Phoenix to rise.
you invested money in nokia? as it is now only way to get you money back is to hope for an hostile take hover… and even soo depending wen you bought stocks, you will still lose money… on the bright side we all agree is current market cap is way under its real value… Just the IP is worth more than that…
I read an article that said apple’s royalty payment to Nokia will soon be us$ 1 billion annually.
So yes. There is huge value in Nokia’s IP
If ever Nokia was to become prey to a hostile takeover, it would be a bidding war bloodbath.
MS will not lose its greatest partner in mobile phones.
Google and apple would buy it just for its IP and the billions income generated from it.
8 years of royalty payment just from apple would be equal to Nokia’s currant market value, apple alone would save tens of billions each decad AND earn tens of billions in royalties,
Google and Microsoft would never let that happen. Bidding war !!
MS. already cross licensed Nokia IP… as far as Microsoft is concerned NOKIA can die, think they area already letting that append. Microsoft tablet as example of that.
ms desperately needs Nokia not just for its IP
It won’t let anyone else buy it.
Any I’m sorry for all the money you loss, I would sue Elop for all the money it made you lose with such incompetent management…
Personally I’m more sorry for all the people that lost their jobs
I’m also sorry for when people lose jobs. I have lost my fair share umber of jobs/business. Its a very hard situation to be in and it’s understandable how many people are angry about it.
But Nokia had no choice but to think of itself in order to survive.
Don’t be sorry for my lose. I know the stock markets are just casinos. So I’m always ready for lose, that being said I’m very happy with the dividends payments, while I wait for the magic to happen
magic, miracle,…. potatoes, tomatoes
Heard of value trap?
Yes
Sorry but Elop + Ballmer does NOT equal Jobs
wp apologists got tired and ask for nokia fans who dislike nokia’s path to go away & buy another phones, haha.
well, you can’t silence disappointed people, some people love nokia but hate ms
Actually, Tomi at CDB shows us perfectly well how to silence disappointed people. Of course they start another blogs but still.
But I know that is an extreme example whom I wish for NOBODY.
Moving on from that, a point: Look, many hobbyist forums in the world have had to build up rules against just this type of behavior as this thread. When some controversial topic has had its course, it gets banned from further discussion and new threads on it are closed. This is for a good reason, because they have tendency of overwhelming everything else and they never get anywhere. And oldtimers get tired of having the same conversation over and over again. Many very respectable hobbyist sits of many type do this and I’m thinking it is for good reason.
So, personally I’m changing my opinion as of now. I do think Jay should start putting an end of February 11th posts and the like discussions. Enough is enough. There is plenty to critique in Nokia without going over and over again the same ancient shit and how evil a trojan Elop is. We’ve listened to personal insults towards anyone disagreeing, towards the maintainers of this blog and so on, for too long. It is not productive anymore, it is just shitting on everybody and everything. You’ve had your say, we’ve listened to nothing but for a year and half. Now shut up and move on. Forgive, forget or just let it be and go away. Whatever it takes to let this place be once again a place of hobbyists enjoying Nokia devices and news, instead of eternal “case study” or cesspool of miserable historical debate.
That is my opinion. Anyone agree?
Not really.
If MNB does not handle the topic about Feb11 announcement what else is here? Jolla, Meego, Pureview are somewhat interesting topics and they still get comments and readers.
Financial results and market share news are going back to Elop, MS, Feb11 and consipiracy theories.
How about WP7 and things related to that like Lumiappday or Batman Lumia. Whatever nobody cares.
If there is no conflict there is no interest. Maybe after a while there won’t be anything alive that reminds from nokia so you MS fans can agree on everything by yourselves and nobody will disagree so you can live here in harmony just like Jehova’s witnesses in their afterlife.
If there is no conflict, there is no interest?
MS fans?
What is this – a tabloid?
That kind of comments are exactly the problem. This topic has been eaten alive and all that remains is a fight gathering interested bystanders who want to see blood.
I have used Nokia mobile devices since the 1980s and I’d call myself a fan at least from Nokia’s GSM surgence onwards, in the 1990s.
Give me a break. I ain’t no MS fan.
Well, ok fine maybe MS fan was exaggeration.
“That kind of comments are exactly the problem. This topic has been eaten alive and all that remains is a fight gathering interested bystanders who want to see blood.”
One can only wonder what kind of atmosphere nokia has inside company if it is already like this among the fans. Like Ollila (not word to word) said that Nokia is fighting for its survival and there is a lot of common determination and fighting spirit inside the company. F*** it, my guess is that there is a lot conflict inside the company.
Well that’s what Nokia/MS/Elop PR would want, to silence those who oppose…
Whether you like it or not, permanent damage has been done.
And really? Just Feb 11 related stuff?? What about other blunders from the past pre-elop, can we not talk about it as well?? Or are you just selectively silencing those that may further damage Elop’s image??
My idea came from other Internet forums, that have closed certain topics (the threads are still there for everyone to read, but they ban new threads on the same thing) because they are so controversial and have become so repetitive that they are hurting the entire atmosphere of the forum. Potentially turning users against each other, that given any other topic would civilly discuss it and benefit from each others company.
So there is precedent on this online and a good reason why it has been successfully done in the past (unrelated to Nokia). I have previously been very reluctant to suggest any such thing, because I really don’t believe in silencing anything, but I also see MNB clearly suffering from the rehashing of old topics in almost every possible thread. A lot of people +1′d this concern (originally posted by Sefriol if I recall) and so I suggested the idea.
Yeah, it would also limit rehashing OPK and any old things if implemented in the way I suggested it. Mostly I think it could be done through blog post selection, instead of any comment moderation. Not posting any further “past articles” might be one way achieve enough of this, without actually limiting any comments people make. That might be the kind of editorial control that wouldn’t limit any discussion still. Because no, I don’t want to see differing views start disappearing on MNB like they do on CDB. No way.
Hey, this is just an idea. I’m not saying it is complete or necessarily wise, but it is something many Internet forums have in place for similar reasons.
Nokia made three mistakes. 1) Taking WP as an only smart devise OS. They should make also Androids. 2) Killing Symbian and Meego/Harmattan too early. 3) Going with WP7.5. They should have wait until WP8 is ready.
Big mistake done by Nokia executives.
Janne congrats less than 50% of the comments are yours..
I commend you on your “fireman” skills, pun intended 
This is the real world where bussiness plans need to be made from a financial point of view, not an emotional or symbolical view.
Old Nokia simply failed with all of its os attempts and as such joined up with a company who has the worlds most used os and that os is about to get upgraded and go mobile in October.
Nokia made the right choice to save and reinvent itself.
Reality begs to differ.
Reality is happening.
Yeap we can all see that..
Nokia made *a* choice to save and reinvent itself. Time will tell if it was a right one.
There were likely many right choices for them, MeeGo could have been another.
Or maybe none of their choices were leading to success anyway after the onslaught of Apple and Google/Samsung.
Well there is certainly something behind the scene or after closed doors. Companies like M$ (especially $) or Nokia does not through away money without a reason. There must something we don’t know about or we are not aware of. It can be a plan, an agenda or goals we are not aware of. And somebody or something is financing all this mass to rolling on somehow.
But who knows what, why, how, and for what purposes?
Big fishes like Nokia are slowly dieing, very slowly, indeed. Even if StevE is like “a drunked children in a fogg” meaning out of this world of reality, then the rest of staff is interested in keeping their jobs, incomes, status, money, prestige, connections… – whatever their benefits from the Nokia are. So, they most probably were and are hardly thinking what will be after StevE will burn out to the naked rock/groung not only a platform but just everything. So this is the hope for Nokia. Not StevE-All-We-Know-Who but thinking people among the Nokia staff and holders.
Nokia has left “on ice” all programmers, firms, carriers etc.etc. involved in Symbian ecosystem, in MeeGo/Maemo/Meltemi ecosystem. So they moved to Android, as what else they could do? Die in fire of “burninh platform”? What for? I am almost sure that when Nokia will get back again to mobile markets (it doesn’t meter if will carry for Windows or not, let it stay) they developers also will come back.
Note one thing: M$ has not put all the eggs to the Nokia bucket, Nokia has not obtained any exclusive rights to produce mobiles with windows, HTC produce, Samsung produce and many others. But Nokia has put all it’s eggs to one M$ signed bucked. So, it use a strategy which is not used by M$. If they don’t – why Nokia does so??
This makes unquality between sides of contract.
And besides of aspect of money there is one more factor – customers patience. I personally got enough of this mess. Simply enough. I can count, I can see reality, I can see what is working what is not working – and so called “propaganda of success” is annoying. And when a company does not care for my needs, no meter how I am trying to express them – then why such a company is surprised that my disappointment is a feedback? I think this is normal situation when I, as a customer, am hesitated. And multiply with number of millions of customers with similar expectations like mine and you have reason of claims and negative voices. The company is to serve customers, the customers are not for serving company – and I will stay with this thesis. At last until we are living in free world still.
Clearly Nokia is no longer serving you. May I recommend Android, BB10, Jolla or the like. Trying to have that same discussion over and over again seems quite fruitless. Nokia had many reasons and answers for the questions you ask, with which people agree or disagree based on how they’ve become to view things.
herpa derp
Just wondering. If Elop gets fired in 9 months, who would be the new CEO? Who would risk his career to take the lead in Nokia?
diamen dining?
Under the current plan ‘A’ Nokia’s future relies upon the success of Windows 8 / Windows Phone 8.
But here is the thing.
Windows 7 sold due to the age of XP and the failure of Vista.
The corporate world felt it finally had upgrade.
I cannot see any reason for companies to go to Windows 8.
In the personal world it seems that OS X and iOS (tablets) are eating heavily into Windows market share.
If Windows 8 fails to take off quickly where would that leave Windows Phone 8?
And then where would that leave Nokia?
Nokia’s fate seems to lie in the hope that the content consuming generation, who have flocked to iOS (and OS X), will suddenly take up Windows 8 (e.g. Microsoft Surface) tablets and other low cost devices.
And this needs to happen quickly for Nokia to survive.
Can anyone really see this happen????
Yes, I can see Windows 8 together with the growing Xbox ecosystem as succeeding. I think Microsoft is positioned well-enough to do well there.
Now, will Nokia and Windows Phone 8 succeed? I’m a little less sure about that, really, seeing how slow things progress. They must do excellent for the rest of the year.
Nokia’s plan as merit, but with them failing in midterm to sustain their business, the odds are now much harder. Windows 8 should help, but will it ramp-up fast enough to be a big help. I don’t know.
It will be nail-biter for sure. I’ll judge come January.
The large problem I think for Nokia at this time is that they are seeming to not win in any category’s atm bar the dumbphone.
Even with those arguing that Belle\N9\S40 were good enough or close to the competition, it doesn’t matter as the consumer will just purchase the better one, even if its just ahead. And that’s where they have failed, nothing they really have (PV camera, N9 casings excepted) are better than their competition.
Nokia hasn’t handled having competition well at all. It seems fine when its leading the market or inventing outright, but when someone else invents something, they seemed to fail at absorbing the message.
N9 follow-up devices which would’ve been out now would’ve easily have been competing.
The only area they would be lacking somewhat is apps….
But even that would’ve been far stronger than it is NOW…
Thanks to the direction everything has taken over the past 18mth.
We know that two of the prototypes were well advanced with UT8500 and OMAP4, the former especially.
I can see that happen, when you have the same software working across tablets\laptops\desktops – the economy’s of scale will dictate that a huge amount of creation will happen. Plus .Net is a much faster to develop on environment that either objective-c or java, or Win32 C++ .. = cheaper.
My hope is that they will announce something that will enable the WinRT api working fully in WP8 or some sort of cross compatibility layer. I thought they would announce this already but alas not, and also the ability to run WP7 apps on the desktop etc.
The only chance MS really has to push mobile windows is by leveraging the software and user base from its captive market of pc’s.
Apple has played its tablet cards perfectly and has media distribution to match. But it lacks corporate buy-in so there is still a chance for MS to grab something.
Kindle\Nexus are positioned as content consumers only, so their ability to run new unique software is pretty gone I think.
I think we have to assume the old Nokia that we know is dying or gone, whether a new one can arise from the ashes is the question. I think they have chosen the best strategy available for them in 2011, also that N9 +808 +WP7 launches were really just seeding the market till WP8 launches and Nokia can release there own designed and built hardware. They have released the best they have – which is still not beating Apple or Samsung but it lets the world know they can maybe reach the level of their competitors.
They need to exceed what Apple and Samsung are delivering though to survive.
The only thing I don’t understand is why MS aren’t just releasing the WinRT straight to phone form factors, I mean its just a small tablet, they will be probably using the same chipsets and many tablets are now with 3G Sim slots etc, so whats the difference ??
As with several members of the thread I don’t think anything is to be gained by constantly going over whether it is the right or wrong strategy, we are looking at the results of a strategy that was in place in 2002/2003 when they set branches of the org chart in Nokia in competition with one another. Perfect example of leaving the door wide open for disruption, which duly happened.
If you want to argue, argue about 2002-2007, that’s when it really went down, the seeds of destruction were sown so it were.
The other thing is that Finns (was married to one) are hugely nationalistic, it really does have anything not invented in this country is sh** attitude, which creates huge pride in what they can accomplish but they look down almost everything non-finnish. So it doesn’t surprise me that they dismissed the iPhone out of hand. Nor am I surprised by hearing other Finns like Tomi ranting about an outsider destroying ‘their’ company.
My 2c.
+1 nicely said
Yes, I like the humble people from United States the down to earth attitude is just shining from them unlike Finnish people.
WinRT is basically WP8, and software from one works with the other ( sometimes with small tweaks ). Didn’t they announce this at the developer preview?
Personally I’m with you and Janne on “this Elop & Burning Platform -thing has been talked to death, move on”. The seeds of failure were indeed planted long ago with internal strife and arrogance in Nokia. Whether WP was the right choice or not remains to be seen, although it is not looking good right now.
As for us Finns, well Nokia is bit of a special story, being (for a long time) the biggest and most global finnish company, that did wonders in pulling Finland out of recession in the 90′s.
I don’t know about Finland in general, but Nokia did indeed have quite an arrogant view on things, mostly because it could ( it was the largest, and pretty much had no comptetition before the smartphone-era ). Nokia quality, hw-wise, always was, and is, quite high, and it is something they should be proud of ( no badly designed antennas or microphones, and phones are durable ), unlike many of it’s competitors even today.
Yeah, I was expecting the software to work across the form factors without tweaks but to have several profiles in the code, which is what they really need. Anything that discourages something running on a different form factor should be discouraged.
Great post there John2.0. Really good.
Although even though I’d place more blame to OPK’s and Ollila’s corner than Elop in failing to respond to the changing market, I still don’t think discussing the Nokia past is fruitful anymore.
Put the filter at July 2012 and let’s move forward…
@Janne
“Although even though I’d place more blame to OPK’s and Ollila’s corner than Elop in failing to respond to the changing market”
Of course you do. We can see the results of Elop’s response to the changing market. So far, not pretty.
“I still don’t think discussing the Nokia past is fruitful anymore.
Put the filter at July 2012 and let’s move forward…”
Let’s see if you hold up to that resolution.
I will if others will.
cheers, as for filters we can try
.Net is only faster for unskilled/amateurish developers. Skilled developers are faster in C++
Is this your experience ? My own (one of) is that writing highly multithreaded code (>1000 threads) in C# took around 20% of the development\testing as would have taken in C++.
Then you should continue to use C#. C++ is like Formula 1. You need to handle the car, otherwise it is hard to stay on the road.
Yeah screw that I prefer fly by wire