Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Faces Class-Action Suit Over Windows Phone Deal
nk497 writes "Nokia has been hit with a class-action suit, with the claimant accusing the company of making 'false and misleading' statements about the ability of its deal with Microsoft to revive the struggling mobile maker. 'The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, defendants told investors that Nokia's conversion to a Windows platform would halt its deteriorating position in the smartphone market,' read a statement (PDF) from the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman and Dowd. 'It did not.'"
It just proves that in America, you can sue anybody for anything.
Nokia's defense would obviously be that market conditions changed, they could not possibly know the future, and all business decisions are inherently risky.
Also, given that Microsoft invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Nokia, their decision to go with Windows phone OS can hardly be regarded as the riskiest of choices. When one of the world's largest corporations invests in you, you are not going to go out of business the next day, or the next year.
That said, I believe Nokia would be better off turning their engineering expertise to producing some Android phones, to take advantage of the enormous app market. They are capable of making a great phone, but their operating systems have been marginalized by the success of Apple and Android. So why not go with one of the winners?
Plus I can say from personal experience that their support for developers has been shaky, what with all but dropping support for Java, then releasing the N7 and N9, then dropping them in favor of Windows Mobile. What are they going to surprise us with next month? It's safer to stick to an established and relatively stable market such as Android or IOS.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Whose platform is burning now, E-flop?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm going to sue for every stock I have that has lost value.
And when I'm done, I'm going to sue all the companies who didn't go up as much as I would've liked!
I'll be rich!
Historically speaking, entering any kind of business deal with Microsoft usually ends badly.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
...claims another victim.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Filed in New York by a single complainant, the class-action suit....
Surely if there is a single complainant then this should not be a class action suit?
So the problem of the claimant is that Nokia is struggling, and his solution is to sue them, which could cause even more struggles?
Sounds to me like some whiny babies shouldn't be investing in the stock market.
Better known as 318230.
... "I was stupid enough to believe a corporation when they claimed to have the magical ability to predict the future! Now the government must protect me from my own brain!"
What is a "Nokia"?
Seriously, the stakeholders can only blame themselves for not seeing this coming.
Surely if there is a single complainant then this should not be a class action suit?
As I've understood it, in class actions you sue for "me and everybody else like me", you don't actually need more than one direct victim if the suit passes muster. Not that I think this one will..
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Only directly affected people can start a class action suit. Lawyers will try to get more people in on the suit.
Gains of class action suits:
1) "Victims" give the defendants a slap on the wrist (possibly a change in policy, etc) and generally come out with a few dollars
2) Lawyers make ridiculous sums of money
Sue me because I live as human being
The single claimant believes that there are other people that have the identical claim and it would be in Nokia and the courts interest if there was one lawsuit instead of many lawsuits.
The problem for Nokia share holders is that it appears that their CEO is getting more compensation from Microsoft than Nokia, furthering this appearance of impropriety is his decisions that appear to favor Microsoft over Nokia.
Work bio at MMWD
defendants told investors that Nokia's conversion to a Windows platform would halt its deteriorating position in the smartphone market...It did not.'"
And you think hitting them with a lawsuit will?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I'm pretty sure Nokia, just like any public corporation disclaims any and all of these forward-looking statements. This will get thrown out and the guy should be fined heavily for lawyer's fees and for frivulous litigation.
So this is what you do when you can't sue for breach of contract?
- the one they didn't actually have a hand in, in which an amusing Internet meme claims that the older Nokia phones are virtually indestructable ("Even Chuck Norris can't break one! So uses them for nunchucks!") - is probably going to do more for their brand reputation than any involvement with Microsoft ever could.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
when you elop(e) with someone MS.
Your shareholders will want divorce and demand alimony.
--whacky
The rough edges of the N9 were minor. It came with real multitasking and copy/paste from the first version. It's a great phone, and despite its rough edges it would have worked out well. There are a few gaps though, not the least bit applications. Nokia makes up for th at by including support for many things right out of the box.
The biggest flaw with the N9 was that the OS was NOT a major OS. The decision to move to WP7, while lamentable was sensible. However I wonder if at the rate of innovation if the N9 would have been where it needs to be today.
The deal that was not struck that should have, was to get Samsung on board and using MeeGo. That would have brought enough attention to get MeeGo established in the mobile marketplace.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Bad management and investment decisions are just that. Taking over a company by proxy without investing a single cent is something Finnish "SEC" should look at closely, if their govt officials weren't all bought and paid for.
Everybody now that any mobile OS besides iOS and Android is doomed to extinction, i even dear to say that Andriod will overcome iOS pretty soon
The problem for Nokia share holders is that it appears that their CEO is getting more compensation from Microsoft than Nokia
Source?
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
In a day and age where great products take hundreds of millions of dollars in development and years to produce, this seems incredibly premature. Nokia just released their first windows phone. Now I don't know if it was a good decision to throw all their chips in on a windows deck, but at least give them 2 to 3 years before claiming complete failure.
This idea of 'everything now' that has risen in the Internet age will be the downfall of strong, long term company development.
Not quite.
Nokia management told the shareholders that going to Windows would turn things around.
It didn't. Look up the numbers. Windows phone has captured less than 2% of the market.
Nokia is STILL losing money on smartphones.
I'd sue, too.
Microsoft had a great reason to fear, and to conquer, Nokia: the Nokia N900. The N900 was arguably the best device ever: a full computer in a mobile form factor. It just needed some polishing of the user interface. Had the polishing been done, Nokia could have been on top of the smartphone market.
With the planned successors to the N900, people would no longer need separate phones and computers. They would just have their Nokia N900-successor, carrying that with them all the time. At home, or in the office, they would attach a keyboard wirelessly and plug in a screen--and there is their computer. This would have led to a revolution in the way both computers and phones are considered.
The N900 ran Linux. So the N900 was a vector for getting rid of Windows. Microsoft saw the threat, presumably, and moved to destroy it.
Who cares?
If Nokia wants to be relevant, they're actually going to have to make products that somebody wants and I don't think windows phones are going to do that.
They would have better luck licensing AROS or NetBSD.
It's a little bit of a longer game right now. Microsoft/Nokia haven't even fired up the main thrusters for this round. Until Windows 8 is ready, there's not going to be much happening. Once that is ready, and they come out with all guns blazing, it's going to be an interesting spectacle.
For a long while it's just been Microsoft wanting to maintain it's dominant position, but this time it's a battle for the basic survival of Microsoft. They are going to fight, and fight hard. They may win, they may lose. While Balmer's running the ship these days, I'm sure he's having lots of conversations with Bill Gates to plan strategy.
With Steve Jobs out of the picture, Apple is out of focus for this battle, but have the upper hand at this point. but executing further is going to be a test of Cook. Not the best strategic time for them to do a two front battle against Microsoft and Google.
Google/Android have serious clout in the #2 position, and I'm not quite sure where this is going to end up for them, especially with the current Oracle attack on the Java internals of the Android OS. Anything can happen there.
So there's a lot of chaos in the market, and Microsoft is good at harnessing chaos to find advantages.
So if I was this investor guy, I'd just shut up for now and enjoy the ride, and learn a little about long term investing. He's still got an excellent potential of making his money back and then some, if he just has patience. But sounds like he might be too impatient and focused on the next quarter. While there's easy money to be made in short term investing, the lion's share of the money goes to the long term investors - Just ask Warren Buffet.
Let's have this debate again when people have been able to run the same app on their phone/tablet/pc for a while. I think long term MS/Nokia are on a winner .
I really like my Lumia 800, I oredict that they will start to grow at some point.
I think everyone knew that this MSFT and Nokia deal made no sense from the beginning. Always seemed like an inside job by the Nokia CEO who had just come over from MSFT.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Generally in class action lawsuits, the "victims" weren't harmed for a lot individually to start with. Thus, without the class action, each of them would have had to sue the defendant individually, meaning they all had to separately pay for lawyers, which may or may not have been cost effective.
I'd like to hear your ideas on a better way to compensate a large group of people who had been harmed, but not to a large extent.
The carriers weren't wild about Nokia/Microsoft *before* Microsoft bought Skype, and they really do not like Skype at all. You don't see a (subsidized!) Vodafone with Skype pre-installed, and you can bet Microsoft wants to bake Skype into the WP7 OS/ecosystem (i.e. pre-installed).
Talk about a train-wreck mobile sales strategy. But it won't last much longer I think.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
For those of a similar state of idiocy it should be noted that where you get screwed with Microsoft if they're trying to compete in and/or disrupt a market, or they want to kill your software product and assimilate it into one of their products. In those two areas it's a company mangling decision to partner with Microsoft.
Ok, now toodle off and play in the traffic.
Class action suits are started by one or more people by filing with a court. The court then decides if if it might be a class action lawsuit (see Point A under Prayer For relief in the complaint). The judge may stipulate how many more plaintiffs that would be needed to approve the suit as class action and sets a time limit for these possible plaintiffs to join the suit. If the required number of plaintiffs do not join the suit in the required time the case is thrown out. The point is that there must be a case for other possible plaintiffs to join to certify it as class action.
The deal with Microsoft includes some sort of transfer of ownership of MeeGo to Microsoft, so Nokia can't recover from a WP faux pas by going back to MeeGoo. I've no clue if that has happened, but it seems likely with the otherwise dodgy nature of the Microsoft deal.
n9 > lumia anything
I just hope they bring back meego/harmattan
All the investors who put their money in at gunpoint, raise your hands!
Right, all the others, when we're done with Nokia, let's bring a suit in Vegas for all the money we've lost in the casinos, too!
It was a bad business decision. If the investors thought so at the time, they wouldn't have invested. If they decided to practically give someone their money, then there was an inherent risk in that. Just because they lost doesn't mean they have the right to sue Nokia for this. They probably have firmer grounds to sue Microsoft because their operating system wasn't up to snuff (not that I really think they could do that, successfully).
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Panasonic has used the LUMIX trademark for several years and has products (OK one product) running Android with that mark.
Nokia comes along and tries to steal the mark by using LUMIA. That is 80% identical, the first 4 letters, and the final letter uses the 2 strokes of Panasonic's slightly displaced for a large similarity factor.
If that isn't actionable, I don't know what is.
There were plenty of oth er sources showing the N9 outseling the Lumias.
Isn't it a pity that you can't cite any of them here to save a good truthy-sounding story?
This isn't Wikipedia and I am not your market research organisation. This has been widely reported in the press Europe wide and a little bit of basic Googling will find it easily. However, since I know you won't give it up, here is a good example and here is the quote you really want:
Given that the Lumia 900 has been given away for free in the US to AT&T customers
Being obliged to pay into a two-year contract or pay an early termination fee does not really qualify as "free".
Actually it does; for two reasons. Firstly, if the customers were really counting the total price, it would make no sense to do phone subsidies. The fact they work and are done by operators is a pretty clear sign that customers care about the headline price. Secondly the customers normally want a contract anyway. They discount that from the deal and so the actual price of the phone is what they compare.
Still, it's pretty clear that, unless Nokia steps up to refute it, Nokia is hiding sales figures it should have been publishing and those sales figures would have shown the N9 ahead of the Lumia phones.
Really? I don't think Nokia has an obligation to publish sales figures for any particular device. They tend to especially dodge it if the sales have been unremarkable.
No matter what the values are; the numbers which determine which strategy Nokia should persue seem pretty worthy of remark to me. If they were positive for the Windows strategy they would be published immediately just as the Lumia 900 initial week sales were. Notice how the more recent sales have not been mentioned at all.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Not only they have failed, now they need to pay for it too? Windows Phone 7 can only succeed if Microsoft stops hiding it... what are they hiding over there, and why? http://www.mobilespoon.net/2012/04/is-nokia-back-in-game-not-so-fast.html What horrible times for Nokia, and how about poor Microsoft? Then again, horrible times for RIM as well... isn't it? And what about Palm? people forgot it completely! Can it be that mobile industry is not such a positive place to be at?
This isn't Wikipedia and I am not your market research organisation. This has been widely reported in the press Europe wide and a little bit of basic Googling will find it easily. However, since I know you won't give it up, here is a good example and here is the quote you really want:
You do realise that "opines" means "opinion" right? So that statement actually reads:
Sounds like they have no evidence to back it up either.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I'll ignore your "shoot the messenger" parts with nothing more than a comment that the vitriol against people gets stronger on Slashdot the more they point out home truths about Microsoft's favorites.
Wait, you first appeal to Ahonen's authority and then complain after I shoot holes in it?
Being obliged to pay into a two-year contract or pay an early termination fee does not really qualify as "free".
Actually it does; for two reasons. Firstly, if the customers were really counting the total price, it would make no sense to do phone subsidies. The fact they work and are done by operators is a pretty clear sign that customers care about the headline price. Secondly the customers normally want a contract anyway. They discount that from the deal and so the actual price of the phone is what they compare.
To cut the crap, the no-commitment price of a Lumia 900 is $450. That's hardly cheap, considering that it's a less specced-out model than the 64 GB N9.
No matter what the values are; the numbers which determine which strategy Nokia should persue seem pretty worthy of remark to me. If they were positive for the Windows strategy they would be published immediately just as the Lumia 900 initial week sales were. Notice how the more recent sales have not been mentioned at all.
You are really making too much of an issue out of N9 sales. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle: the sales were good for the circumstances (this probably validated the design for the subsequent Lumias), but not spectacular.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.