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After MS-Nokia Pact, Many Nokia Workers Walk Out In Protest
Mr. McGibby writes "After the announcement of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft this morning workers voiced their concern with the deal by walking out of Nokia facilities. It is believed that as many as a thousand workers marched out today (or took the day off using flex time) so that the company would know that they don't believe the partnership is in their best interest, even after CEO' Stephen Elop's startlingly frank 'burning platform' memo earlier this week."
Looks like many investors felt the same way.
Looks like many investors felt the same way.
Of course it's a stupid idea. But what did they expect? They hired a former MS exec to be their CEO. Of course he would make them dependent on MS - that's the only thing the fool can be expected to know.
It's like SGI hiring a former HP exec to be their CEO and then killing off MIPS to move to Itanium - totally and utterly predictable because these guys only know the bubble they've been in for most of their corporate career. They can't "think outside of the box" because they are the box.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
A Nokia executive once said that switching to Android would be like peeing your pants for warmth. It might help temporarily, but would turn your phones into commodities. Nokia would be forced to sell based on price alone!
I submit that going with WP7 is worse. It has all the disadvantages of Android in that your competitors can use it also, so it turns your phones into commodities. But it has none of the advantages - the extensive Android market, UI customization, and no OS licensing fee.
Using WP7 is like peeing your pants while Redmond gives you a golden shower.
Now musing a little, I wonder isn't a partnership with MS one of the last things a company does either before being acquired by MS or filing for bankruptcy?
The path MS has traveled is littered with former partners, all with knives in their backs.
Not really, in current smartphones, the screen itself costs upwards of $20 I believe. Whereas non smartphones are available for less than $20.
Assuming that the cost of an Android phone comes down to say $30, the price of a non smartphone will most prob. go down to $5 or so(only a tiny monochrome screen, cheaper processor,smaller battery-- infact one of the phones launched for approx$50 here has a standby time of 30 days, and the option of using AA cells in an emergercy)
You need to live in a developing nation to know the needs..
>Not really, in current smartphones, the screen itself costs upwards of $20 I believe.
And what will a similar screen cost in 3 years? Probably $5. Tomorrow's smartphones will be as cheap as or cheaper than today's featurephones. Maybe everybody in the developing world won't be able to afford one, but hundreds of millions of people certainly will.
Motorola just announced an Android phone that can be hooked up to a docking station and connect to a monitor and full sized keyboard for use as a little computer. What happens in the developing world when your $50 smartphone can also double as your office and/or home computer? Suddenly that $50 smartphone looks like a pretty incredible deal.
I can't recall another time I've posted anonymously.
I worked with Stephen Elop back in the Macromedia days, starting with him being my boss^2, in the late 90's. I've always found him a fascinating exec to watch. In the four years or so I saw him at Macromedia, I watched him: ... Whirlwind, I think?) for about three months which was long enough to fuck it up; so they promoted him ...
1. Come into IT, get the existing CIO kicked out, become the CIO, and fuck IT up[0]; so they promoted him and
2. He came into the Andromedia purchase, ran that business group for about a week which was long enough to fuck it up; so they promoted him and
3. He started a brand new business group (Internal name
The pattern reached its logical conclusion when he became CEO of the company and then ... sold it to Adobe.
Stephen is the most perfect example I've ever seen of the sometimes-mythic "failing upward" tendency. He turns everything he touches to shit, and ... then gets rewarded for it. It's like magic. I look forward to Nokia failing miserably, being sold to Microsoft, Stephen making billions out of the deal, and getting elected President of the United States, which he will drive into the ground, formally make into a Chinese colony like Hong Kong, and finally get promoted to God.
[0] Favorite story from that time: At the beginning of my time at Macromedia, our website was running on four servers, and I remember one time for a stupid reason three were not taking traffic. The first reason we found out about this was because someone mentioned the website was "a little slow." And we were taking tons of traffic. So Stephen came in and forced us to have a dynamic website. Hey, that's a GOOD idea. And then he decided we should use Broadvision for this. Which was a steaming pile of shit which BV recommended we reboot "as often as you can" because it was unstable. Which required horrific investments of money (we were buying Sun E4500s like there was no tomorrow and putting in 14GB of RAM in each -- back when Sun RAM was at around $7000 per GB). Which Stephen brought in KPMG to "help us" implement, which had the predictably hilarious results that anyone here who's worked with a big consulting shop has likely seen for themselves.
Shareholders? You're kidding, right? It took 5 or 6 years for the Xbox to break even, before that Microsoft was burning thru tens of millions every year just keeping the xbox afloat. But guess what? It paid off
Xbox division stopped making a loss, they did NOT start making profit (and wont for next ~10 years).
No, earning more than you spend during one quarter doesnt count if you pumped $6B in R&D and marketing.
Kinect alone was $600mil in marketing _before_ if even hit the shelves.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.