Nokia Shareholders Fight Back

MohammedSameer writes "A group of nine young Nokia shareholders are fighting back. They posted an open letter for Nokia shareholders and investors asking to be elected in order to bring sanity back. They are also planning to challenge the company's strategy and partnership with Microsoft."

Comments

Just trade in the Nokia for an Android

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell NOK

Buy GOOG

Re:Just trade in the Nokia for an Android

[CptPicard]

This idea fails at the fact that Symbian is actually a far superior embedded OS than anything MS has to offer, and that, uh, they've been making phones that do other things than "just make calls" for the past decade or so.

It's just that they failed to read the customer in the shininess department, that's all.

almost tempted to buy some shares

[Nursie]

Just to join int, try to stop the company that made the best, most reliable phones for the longest time from being sold down the river by an MS plant.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to SGI. Or have we forgotten Ricky "I love Gates" Belluzzo?

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[timeOday]

But if they're successful in thwarting the Microsoft takeover, then what? Arrive late at the Android party? Sell dumbphones for $14.99 at Target? Everybody criticises companies like Silicon Graphics for sticking with the old strategy too long, but also for jumping on the bandwagon (such as SGI taking a stab on NT).

Being outmoded is an extremely difficult position to be in.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[jpmorgan]

"MS plant?"

I can guarantee a strategic decision of this magnitude was made with the full knowledge and consent of Nokia's board of directors: http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/corporate-governance/board-of-directors

Certainly none of them come from Microsoft.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[unity100]

majority of the world is still buying those 'dumphones' you speak of, and have no problem with them.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Lumpy]

They still outsell ALL Android phones and Apple phones COMBINED. Nokia is the giant in Cellphones. Outside the usa they are still the first choice as Symbian offers features that Android does not or has not until recently. Honestly even my 3 year old 5800 Nokia smartphone has features that are just showing up for Android, and may some day hit Apple.

They are hurting, but it's because of management that is worthless and nearly incompetent, and the company not having any direction.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Nursie]

Umm, no. They were in the lead for smartphones for quite a while (decade perhaps) and there's no reason not to be on top again.

Outside the US they're still a well respected brand with a good market. RTFA for a good strategy. The last thing nokia need to become is a handset manufacturer for MS.

The 'old' strategy was aimless development of so many different handsets it was nuts. They need to focus in on a real strategy.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Archangel Michael]

The battle is on for the third tier phone OS. iOS and Android are the top two, everything else is an "also ran". This includes Palm's offering, Meego, Symbian, and WP7. You have four legitimate third tier phone OSes, two are offerings of Nokia.

As for the other two, Microsoft would have to pay me to make a phone WP7(radioactive), and Palm's WebOS will only come on HP products (yawn). This leave Nokia with two viable third tier products, one Open source and similar enough to Android, and too far behind it to really matter, and Symbian, the $14.99 walmart phone.

Nokia has lost the Smartphone market. UNLESS they do Android, and make a phone that is unlocked, easily rootable and with a "we support users not telcos" attitude.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Desler]

Windows mobile in the past was absolute garbage

Said by someone who most likely never used a WinMo OS. Unlike other phone OS during the formative years of WinMo it was always open for you to install any apps that you like, you could develop apps in C, C++, C#, etc of your choice and you could use frameworks like Qt, you could leverage existing code written against the Win32 API for use in WinMo apps (with some caveats of course) and was very customizable in comparison to almost any other OS for the times. If anything, the OSes running on other smartphones of the time were far more garbage than WinMo was.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Znork]

Meego is easily capable of running a Dalvik vm, and Alien Dalvik demonstrates the capability quite throughly. As that would leverage and extend the Android ecosystem, I can't quite see how it would be behind in any way. Essentially it would be the andoid+unlocked+rootable that you're looking for.

One can see why Microsoft wants Nokia, but for Nokia, going with WP is utter folly; they're dumping their whole current workable and fairly easily fixable lineup for something that nobody wants.

One can wonder what their plan is if WP gets canned with Ballmer in a not so far away future.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Desler]

And to add further, on any WinMo phone I ever owned you could do all this without ever needing to "root" the device. So basically even in comparison to the new golden boy "Android" WinMo was in many ways still superior. I'm not sure why a platform that requires any sort of "rooting" and has less application language choices is considered great but one that offers far more freedom of use and development is called "garbage".

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[metamatic]

As for the other two, Microsoft would have to pay me to make a phone WP7(radioactive)

That's exactly why Nokia picked WP7.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Nexus7]

Indeed. I was impressed with the lack of silly metaphors, such as "burning oil platforms."

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[idontgno]

If Meego is superior then where is it? Is it a Marketing Deficiency?

Eerie coincidence:

Amiga: at the time of its market debut, vastly superior in technology to its market competitors. Marketed like crap. Fell behind competitors as their technologies advanced past Commodore's anemic R&D.

Meego: at the time of its market debut, vastly superior in technology to its market competitors. Marketed like crap. Fell behind competitors as their technologies advanced past Nokia's (soon-to-be) anemic R&D.

Also, the names are disturbingly similar. As I said, eerie coincidence. Maybe.

Why, yes, I was an Amiga warrior in the platform flamewars of the mid-80s. Why do you ask?

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Archangel Michael]

They didn't get enough from Microsoft. I can almost guarantee you that. Microsoft is trying to buy the market, I realized before this post. The problem is, Microsoft isn't buying the phones, Nokia is still going to have to sell them (or try to), and will most likely end up with excess inventory sitting around and whatever Microsoft is paying them won't pay for the production of unsold units. Nokia will be force to dump them on the market or grind them up, neither of which is good for Nokia, and only makes Microsoft look like it shipped/sold more WP7 phones than it really has, like the current state of WP7 phones in the marketplace really is.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[black_lbi]

You are comparing apples to oranges.
Apple does not make a sub 200$ phone. Not yet at list. I also don't know of any sub-200$ Android phone.
Maybe you're one of those guys that insists to use his phone only for making calls and that's fine. But you can't ignore the fact that the smartphone market (and its "offspring", the tablet market) is still growing. Nokia is really hurting in that segment. Its offerings are poor, too expensive, or (in the case of tablets) non-existent.
I've used Nokia phones with Symbian before. As a (dumb) phone it's been a great experience, but I fail to identify those great unique features you talk about. They don't have anything that could stand up to something like the Iphone or the Galaxy S in terms of features, ease of use and most importantly: available software.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[metamatic]

They didn't get enough from Microsoft.

Of course not. Nobody ever does. One thing you can say about every business deal Microsoft has ever done, is that Microsoft came out best from every deal. Pretty much every company that gets into bed with Microsoft gets screwed.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Midnight Thunder]

I would vote for taking Android and forking it. That might sound like a crazy move, but at least they can differentiate themselves. Then again if they did that they would probably want to add some sort of compatibility to take advantage of the Android applications.

The other solution would be like to be to do like HTC: provide both Android and WP7 phones and see what the market wants.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[commodore6502]

>>>The 'old' strategy was aimless development of so many different handsets it was nuts.

Apple circa 1995, when they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Commodore circa 1993 and they did go bankrupt. Too many models can confuse customers - better to focus on just a few.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[TheRaven64]

1) He said 'outside the USA'. 2) He said 'phones' not 'smartphones'. Symbian featurephones outsell ALL smartphones, (including Symbian, Android, and iOS). The featurephone / smartphone distinction is pretty arbitrary from a user perspective - both can run third-party apps, but smartphones must expose a larger set of APIs.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[gotpoetry]

Because I had to reboot my WinMo phones at least once a day. Every one of them. I started many years ago with the original XDA and quit WinMo after my Tytn II. Over the years I had 5 different WinMo phones and each one was a slow buggy piece of junk.

Today I go weeks without ever shutting my Android phone off. That is why WinMo was garbage.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[RogerWilco]

The thing is that there are two problems for Nokia with that:
1) The low end is slowly being eroded by cheaper offerings from China and India. Their top end is being squeezed out by iOS and Android. In the long run there will be no space between those for Nokia to exist.
2) Margins. The cheaper less capable phones have very thin margins. Not enough to support any sizeable R&D effort. So that's another reason it's a dead end for Nokia.

Nokia needs to be in the high end phone market and doing well there to survive in the long run as a mobile device maker.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[LurkerXXX]

um, NO. Android outsells it in SMARTphones. Include dumbphones and Nokia is way, way ahead.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013

I won't call your post bullshit, merely uninformed. You might try that with someone else next time so you don't appear to be such an ass.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[TheRaven64]

Not sure about the 5800, but the one feature I actually care about in my current phone (four-and-a-bit-year-old N90) is that it has a built-in SIP client that integrates with the normal calling stuff, so when I'm near WiFi I can make cheaper calls. And the address book and calendar sync via bluetooth (seriously Apple, a cable for sync? What is this, 1995?). Oh, and tethering as a standard feature (you know, like it has been on every cheap phone I've bought since about 2002).

None of these are really 'smartphone' features, they're just basic functionality that I've expected in every phone that I've bought (except SIP, which was only standard in my most recent purchase, in 2006), but which seem to be badly integrated optional extras on a lot of newer ones.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[afabbro]

I used it. WinMo 5 and 6. They were garbage. Painful garbage.

See, I'm an end-user, not someone who "leverages existing code written against the Win32API". Like 99.9% of phone owners...

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Miamicanes]

> That sort of attitude is kinda what lost them the US smartphone market

No, what lost them the US smartphone market was a decision to quit making high-end CDMA phones, and an apparent inability (possibly patent-related) to make GSM phones capable of EDGE. Circa 2006, that basically meant Nokia's best phones were useless GPRS paperweights in the United States. And despite the availability of chipsets capable of both 850/1900 and 1700/2100 UMTS, Nokia took its sweet time supporting *anything* besides 1900/2100 UMTS on its high-end phones.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[igb]

But at 5% margin on a wholesale price of a few tens of dollars, you'd need everyone in the world to buy a new one every year to fund an $8bn/yr R&D habit.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[GreatBunzinni]

You strangely omitted the fact that Nokia is developing two smartphone platforms that are competing with Android: Meego and Symbian. As they predate Android then I really doubt that anyone can accuse Nokia of" arriving late at the Android party".

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[aliquis]

Hint: there's a reason Nokia had 7th largest R&D budget. No, not of phone or IT companies but ALL of them.

This is why:
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/nokia-experiments-with-bubbles-interface-on-symbian-cell-phones-2011024/

Just what their developers should be doing! Amazing! ..

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[downhole]

You're saying there's no reason they can't be on top again? I can think of plenty of reasons. To have a successful modern smartphone OS, you need an application ecosystem. Apple has one. Android has one. Microsoft has a decent shot at building one. Nokia has had phone OSes for many years and has shown no ability to build an app ecosystem on the level that Apple and Android have. I think it's virtually certain that by the time they get anything new out the door, the overall ecosystem will be crowded enough that they won't have a chance, no matter how good the software is. Thus their future is to either get squeezed to death between better smartphones on top from Apple, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, LG, etc and cheaper Chinese phones on bottom, or to adopt either Android or WinPhone 7. I can easily see WinPhone7 being a better deal right now.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[aliquis]

Windows Phone 7 isn't Windows Mobile 6.5 though.

And the next major revision/version of Windows Phone won't be Windows Phone 7.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[TopherC]

I liked parts of the letter too, but I can't easily judge how much wisdom (or lack thereof) is being expressed. There seemed to be a lot of exaggerations but to some extent that's the norm for corporate management-speak. A couple easy examples:

Return the company to a strategy that seeks high growth and high profit margins through innovation and overwhelmingly superior products with unrivaled user experience.

This strikes me as a particularly desperate statement that struggles against reality.

Dramatically increase efficiency by eliminating outdated and bureaucratic R&D practices like geographically distributed software development and outsourcing.

How dramatic? Isn't outsourcing done (like it or not) to reduce costs? Distributed software development can be made to work fairly well. Multiple R&D sites allow you to attract talent from a wider pool of applicants.

Big corporate shakeups like this are a sign of a struggling company. There are enormous costs involved in doing this. In some cases it works well, but it may also be posturing by some few investors that are hoping to dump the company later on for personal profit. If I were a shareholder I'd need a lot more convincing, more details, real data, and some independent confirmation of the data before I went along with it.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[T.E.D.]

Why, yes, I was an Amiga warrior

Same here, and it is about the most appropriate example that a person could come up with.

The Amiga problem really wasn't marketing. The problem was that they had a closed platform, while the PC was an open platform. No matter how much better they started than everyone else (and their lead was huge), they were doomed in the long run because it was just one tiny company trying to out-innovate an entire industry of other companies improving the PC platform. If someone wants to drag out the old videocassete analogies, it is also worth noting that VHS was a much more open format that Betamax too. When competing in the same market space, open platforms win every time.

Nobody is going to beat the Android platform, unless they find a way to be more open than Andriod.

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[1729]

Are you referring to the iPhone 3GS? That looks more like a $500 phone to me: "For those who are not eligible for an early upgrade or who wish to buy iPhone as a gift, the price is $499 (8GB). In CA, MA, and RI, sales tax is collected on the unbundled price of iPhone." (From http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC555)

Re:almost tempted to buy some shares

[Rexdude]

Nokia's Ovi Store was upto 4 million downloads a day and growing, by the end of January. Remember that when Ovi Store was launched, it already had a huge base of Symbian smartphones to run on in several countries around the world.Given time (don't know if they had it), it would have grown into a decent ecosystem on its own.
Nokia has tied up with 103 operators across 32 countries to support direct operator billing - so the apps you buy are charged to your monthly mobile bill instead of the risk of having to enter your credit card number on your phone, or pass it to an app.

A decent ecosystem was in place, and already growing - they killed everything just to gain a foothold in the US market.

Good luck with that

[LucidBeast]

I think the big guys have enough chips to keep this plan going. No matter what the plans merits are.

They might be on to something

[toopok4k3]

I guess that a huge drop in the share value might mean that this plan B might get some actual backing from the majority of shareholders. The share has dropped around 20% since the Microsoft announcement.

wow 9 people!?

[Megor1]

Why is this even being posted, it's 9 people who let me guess own 0.0000000% of the company? Next up 9 apple share holders want Steve Jobs to stop wearing turtlenecks.

Re:wow 9 people!?

[KhabaLox]

And they don't even identify themselves. Why would anyone consider electing them to the BoD without knowing who they are?

Re:wow 9 people!?

[QuincyDurant]

Even one share is enough to make some noise about it at the shareholder's meeting. They may not own much, but they speak for quite a crowd, methinks.

Re:wow 9 people!?

[magarity]

Why is this even being posted, it's 9 people who let me guess own 0.0000000% of the company?

Most big companies set the lower limit around 1,000 shares for anyone who wants to bring up any issue for a vote at the company shareholders' meeting. This can be anything from 'I nominate me to the board of directors' to 'presenters should not wear turtlenecks' to 'the company assets should be liquidated and the proceeds given to the homeless'. It then goes to a vote and since institutional investors who own a million shares at a time are there, anything frivolous or absurd gets immediately voted down.

Re:Somebody had fun

[MikeDirnt69]

Index: http://nokiaplans.com/

Anything else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear /.,

We get it, you hate us. What else is new?

- MSFT

Just another /. post that won't hold weight

[Stregano]

From TFA:

Aggressively recruit young software talent from top universities. Nokia Recruiting to actively visit top universities worldwide to screen and and invite top students for interviews in Nokia R&D locations. Establish a credible and rewarding technical career progression path in Nokia (to avoid the best talent leaving the company or becoming management overhead). Offer internationally competitive salaries to new talent (if necessary, significantly above local market salaries). Establish Nokia as a company where the best and the brightest want to work.

Yeah, keep dreaming kid. I tried to get a job at Google, Microsoft, and other big companies right out of the gate and that did not happen. Do you honestly think it will happen, ever? I wish the world worked that way, but it doesn't. As a big company, do you think they would rather hire some kid right out of the gate that has no experience in cell phone programming/Symbian, or a person that has been doing it for 5 years? Be realistic with some of this.

This sounds like some college kids making a letter to say that they would want to do a takeover of the company (TFA

If you elect us to a majority in the Nokia Board of Directors we will take the following concrete actions:

).

I came to the college kids conclusion from the fact that anybody in the industry would not say that they would pull in college kids right out of the gate without experience. That is a huge risk.

Seriously, what they want to do is take-over, fire everybody, stop all out sourcing, and bring in college kids. That sentence summarizes the article quite nicely. Unless they had some weight as share-holders, this is just something posted on /. that will either get laughed at or never see the light of day at anybody who has weight in Nokia.

Re:Just another /. post that won't hold weight

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well at least they're trying to do something, rather than just shaking their head in disbelief and complaining on the internet. ;)

Honestly, I agree with your assessment. They are idealistic, full of piss and vinegar, and their arguments/positions hold about as much weight as a Down feather. But I have to hand it to them, at least they are trying to rock the boat, rather than just accepting a sinking ship as lost.

Multi-year headstart

[SmallFurryCreature]

Exactly how old do you think the iPad is? Or for that matter iOS and for that matter Linux is including Linux on mobile devices?

Simple proof? Which has the most mature and capable media player for FREE? Meego (VLC Mplayer), iOS or Android?

Thanks for playing: "The world existed before I was born", you loose.

By your logic, Apple is silly to go with iOS against market leader symbian with multi-year head start. Or android for that matter. Hell ANYONE whoever dared to enter a market. Bit silly of you don't you think?

Re:The nine are wrong.

[Zelgadiss]

amazing how much hate MS gets just for being Microsoft

It's a reputation they have earned over the decades.

You reap what you sow.

Someone please tell me...

[hellfire]

... how posting a Facebook page is "fighting back?"

Eh what?

[SmallFurryCreature]

"All of Nokia's competitors in the smartphone space come from North America"

Indeed, so that makes HTC, LG and Samsung you mention yourself North American companies?

I think their owners will be very suprised. So that is how Taiwan (HTC) is going for independence from China, they are going to be the 51st state, oh wait that is canada. So that is how WW3 is going to start. Good to know.

The rest of your post isn't much better.

The iPhone cost way more then 200-300 AND didn't come with CDMA at the start. Nokia also got plenty of cheap phones and that is in fact an area they do very well in being the top seller in poorer areas.

The N900 shipped with Maemo which is half the origin of Meego. So yes they shipped a phone and it sold very well indeed spending a lot of time being sold out.

The real problem Nokia faces is the "we need to drop everything for the next quarter". So they missed the boat on the current generation. So what? Does that mean you drop all your long term plans for an escape plan of dubious value? No, you though it out and focus on being the leader of the next generation. Mobile phones still have a long way to go and can be greatly improved.

One obvious example where Meego might be far superior then iPhone and Android? No market/App store. My god those things are hideous. Just trying to find a tool is bad enough, then most cost money as well. Now imagine something like Linux Mint installed on your mobile phone. EVERYTHING just works from the start with everything included. No need to hunt down media player for 3 bucks a piece that will play your content, VLC and Mplayer included and ready to go with years of experience.

Same with all the other tools. Freely available, long out of beta, tried and tested.

Nokia Meego, the phone for people who don't want to mess about with shady app sellers. Try the N900. Anyone who has KNOWS why it was such a good idea. It blows everything else out of the water.

Re:Eh what?

[slinches]

Nokia Meego, the phone for people who don't want to mess about with shady app sellers. Try the N900. Anyone who has KNOWS why it was such a good idea. It blows everything else out of the water.

I have a N900 and I can definitely see the potential of MeeGo. Maemo is great, but it lacks that last bit of polish that takes something from being good to being the best. If Meego can improve the interface and allow even easier development across a wider set of devices, then I could see it becoming a dominant platform very quickly. iOS is limited by only being supplied by one vendor and Android can't take advantage of the existing Linux code base as easily or scale to a full desktop like MeeGo can.

Actually, if Intel et. al. can get MeeGo to be a serious competitor on netbooks and tablets, smart phone handsets will follow whether Nokia produces them or not. If Nokia did stay on board, there's a good chance that MeeGo could become not just a leading competitor, but the dominant platform on mobile computing devices. What they would need to do is collaborate with Intel and another hardware manufacturer on a simultaneous release of netbook, tablet and handset hardware accompanied by a marketing program that highlights MeeGo as a unified platform with seamless integration to the desktop and between these mobile devices.

It may not push Android out of the market immediately, but why buy an Android phone or tablet when MeeGo can run all Android apps and integrates better with your other devices? The only stumbling block I can see is that, in the US at least, the mobile service providers may not accept such an open platform since they seem to like having control over their customer's devices.

Re:If it fails, then they can fall back on plan c

[tagno25]

http://nokiaplans.com/

Nokia Plans
Nokia Plan A
  Nokia Plan B
  Nokia Plan C
  Nokia Plan D
  Nokia Plan E
  Nokia Plan F (SFW)
  Nokia Plan F (NSFW)
  Nokia Plan G
  Nokia Plan H
  Nokia Plan K
  Nokia Plan M
  Nokia Plan O
  Nokia Plan P
  Nokia Plan Q
  Nokia Plan S
  Nokia Plan T
  Nokia Plan X
  Nokia Plan Y
  Nokia Plan Z
  Nokia Plan 0
  Nokia Plan 5
  Nokia Plan 9

Re:They for got one step: port Dalvik

[CreamyG31337]

these guys have done it already:
http://www.myriadgroup.com/Media-Centre/News/Myriad-Announces-Alien%20Dalvik-Enables-Android-Apps-to-Run-on-Non-Android-Phones.aspx
the picture shows an n900, the press release used to say something about maemo or meego but they changed it now that Nokia is trying to run away from their own platform.
Only problem is this company will want a lot of money for their product, people that tried emailing them to purchase it were told it's up to the operators and manufacturers to come to an arrangement, they won't sell directly to end users :(

Re:Arrogant Finns

[duranaki]

I don't agree at all. I worked for Nokia for 10 years and worked with many Finns. I think the groups point is not "Finland is so great" but rather Nokia's distributed R&D efforts are horribly inefficient. Having experienced it from the inside, I can see their point. And they do have a very large talented asset base in Finland, so it makes sense to keep that as a focal point. That said, they have absolutely no hope of getting "top talent" to go work in Finland.

Re:Arrogant Finns

[tsm_sf]

Two of their points address this:

- End of distributed R&D
- End of R&D outsourcing

I wouldn't call that "idiotic", I'd call that looking out for the long-term interests of the company. It's easy to point to the short-term monetary gains to be had from outsourcing or eliminating internal R&D, but for some reason the crashing failures of this approach (Carly Fiorina at HP, Boeing and the 787, etc etc) never seem to register with people.

Their CEO is right

[eyrieowl]

that they have a bad hand, and that they're playing a desperate game for the life of the company. Yes, they could do a bunch of other things...and none of them would be great for them. At this point, they do not have a winning hand. There is no winning move for them. The choice he made is a pragmatic one, to stay in the game. It doesn't mean it has to be their 50 year strategy, but it keeps them in the game for the next 3-5 years at least and that's crucial. They screwed up, and it's not the recent decision that was the big mistake. They missed the boat...arguing about why doesn't really change the basic fact that they missed the boat...and they are left in a precarious position. No, the MS way isn't going to get them to #1, or #2. But they can be #3. They can't run iOS...so they're cut off from apps on that platform. They can't be RIM...so they're cut off from that. They could do Android, and probably do it well...but he's right, that they would be subject to severe price pressure and that it would be brutally competitive, low margin. It would gut the company. Any of the other options, save MS, would consign them to the Nokia ghetto, with few apps, no significant community. Going with MS at this point is the only option which helps them to keep profit margins more than razor thin and also gets them access to a larger community, as well as a built in market, that they otherwise wouldn't have. IN THE MEANTIME...if they don't bust their butts on R&D and get out ahead of the next game changer, they will eventually fade away, but at least this buys them time to do that.

Sometimes, the best move is just staying in the game, and they've done that. Yeah, I know, there's lots of risk, and lots of people would want anything but to be wedded to Microsoft, but...sorry guys, too little too late.

Further Nokia plans

[jks]

See also: http://www.nokiaplanc.com/ , http://www.nokiapland.com/ , etc (listed at http://www.nokiaplans.com/ ).

Re:Arrogant Finns

[21mhz]

Why can't Nokia have say 500 people working on MeeGo in say MeeGo unit?

It can, and it does.

Why can't Nokia have a MeeGo line of phones? One release every year, support 2-3 generations at a time. See where the platform goes. It has been in the making since Nokia 770. FFS give it a chance in main stream. Keep the open source community that you've collected happy!

That's pretty much the plan as far as I can tell (which is, the end of this year :-)).