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The Three Pillars of Nokia Strategy Have All Failed
An anonymous reader writes "'When all 3 legs of your 3-legged strategy fail, what do you do? You rush — run run run — to change your total strategy. But what would a madman do?' Ex-Nokia exec Tommi Ahonen's new article has a few suggestions. Is the Nokia board either asleep at the wheel, or incompetent, or in collusion with the incompetent CEO? Ahonen provides an insider's view not just of how Nokia's Windows phone strategy has failed, but how this has spread to other parts of the company's technology. He says the 'Elop Effect' has 'single-handedly destroyed [...] Europe's biggest tech giant.' He raises the question: Why is Nokia's board failing to act? We've discussed Tommi's articles before, where he was correctly predicting Windows Phone's market failure at a point where others were claiming that 'the Lumia line is, in fact, selling quite nicely.'"
You call Apple, and say "Hey, I hear you have a maps problem. Guess what? We have lots of map data and experience."
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." It's the Occam's Razor of the corporate world. Yes, people get greedy or manipulative, it's true... but that's the exception, not the rule. For the most part, people are just really, really, fucking stupid. Senior management in particular tends to develop problems like target fixation, confirmation bias, and even when everything is in the spiral of death and the alarms are going off, engines on fire, they somehow think they'll be able to pull out of the dive and fix the problem... right up until the part where they crater. They teach this in every management course studies... Have an exit strategy. Know what your breakpoints are and when to bail. And company after company, even big ones, really really big ones, still fail at this, not because of greed, but because of stupidity.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It's far too early to be predicting the death of Nokia or Windows phone. It hasn't gained popularity, but that could easily change.
Paid by Microsoft to take a dive, and open a "Microsoft-sized hole" in the market.
But that's not working put as planned, either...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Woah, he predicted Windows Phone would not succeed at the level of iPhone and Android? Better tell James Randi to hang it up, because we got a real god damned psychic right here!
No sir, we are really sorry for Nokia.
If any hate is spewing, is targeted against the ex M$ bigwig Elop which brew this destructive strategy.
Far-well Nokia, once pride of Finland.
You are dead and we are really sorry.
Might have been, but compared to all the symbian devices sold, Iphone was a drop in the sea.
N9 + Meego would have been the solution (although as seen by few days old post, the route was hard and constantly counterfeithed by symbian lobbies inside Nokia).
Nokia has one (probably their last) shot : transform "featurephones" into "smartphones".
Windows Phone 7 is dead. Microsoft declared it dead the exact moment Nokia needed it the most, but nevermind. Nobody in his right mind would buy one right now, even if they liked the platform, with Windows Phone 8 on the horizon. If 8 takes off, *and* Nokia can survive until 8 takes off, they could do fine, albeit as a somewhat smaller company. But when you read TFA, and look at the graphs, and look at the general user community reaction to 8 in general, neither of these things (8 takes off, and Nokia can survive until Windows 8 phones become profitable) seem particularly likely.
Why (from TFA) haven't the board fired Elop? Corruption, perhaps? Payoffs?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
the iphone stole 14% of mobile PROFITS a year after it was first released. and that was only 1 million units sold.
almost all of those cheapo phones sold around the world make no money. all the profits are made on a few devices.
apple is now at something like 60% of PROFITS of all cell phones sold around the world. Samsung is 30% or more. everyone else is fighting for scraps
It's hard. Apple won't let them use IOS. Android is generic, so they have no edge over Chinese manufacturers. Blackberry has tanked. Microsoft looked like a good option.
Nokia makes excellent hardware at a good price. Their gear tends to be much more rugged than Apple's fragile mobile devices. Their problems are more on the marketing side.
Q: How does a stock go down by 90%?
A: Well first it goes down 80% and then it gets cut in half.
Before Elop got involved, Nokia was working on a Linux-based OS called Meego. Then they killed it. Who benefits? Microsoft of course - the less Linux to compete against the better.
If you were on Nokia's board of directors, and you had stock in both Nokia and Microsoft, would it bother you at all to see Nokia collapse for Microsoft's benefit?
Hatred towards Nokia on Slashdot... Why not failing HTC, patent troll Motorola Mobility (nobody in Europe buys that Chinese crap btw)...
I think mentioning HTC is very relevant, ignoring the shear scale on which Nokia has been destroyed by Elop in Months, for the third ecosystem [in reality sixth], to produce Windows Phones. Ironically one of HTC's strategy is to produce Windows phones too next year, and they cheaper than Nokia's offerings for equivalent models.
They could have gone the route of a droid phone maker. The problem there was that all of their suppliers were already android makers, and competing with your suppliers isn't a great strategy.
Being just another android handset maker could have been equally catastrophic (after all, nothing they've released lately is on par with the droids from Samsung), so given the huge pile of cash microsoft was offering their options were limited. They would have been better to keep toes in both though, and been a Droid maker *and* a WP7/WP8 maker.
Yah well I have a Motorolla XPR 6550 @-way radio. Motoralla's radio products are awesome. The phones suck though.
Oh, a link to blog post by Ahonen, with nothing really new.
I agree that execution by Elop has been sub-par. But calling that "SYMBIAN WAS WINNING" is even by wearing Symbian-goggles a very red-rosed opinion of what was going on. Nokia was in huge trouble, it's UI teams competing with each other and handset teams not building on the same platform as noted in in an article from yesterday. Symbian as it was was dead. Developers hated it, users disliked it compared to competition and why it did so good up until the end was good quality Nokia hardware.
Ahonen is right on some points, but he seems to totally disagree on that Nokia had to do something, by going on with Symbian without major rework was just not feasible, the whole MeeGo thing was really screwed up with competing package managers, UIs and teamwork with Intel so as a CEO what what would have he done - he doesn't tell. Maybe MeeGo strategy would have proved to be success.
I don't want to resort to ad-hominems but in case of Ahonen I would take his comments with a grain of salt - he clearly has an axe to grind with Nokia and the postings he has made and appearances on interviews smell like bitterness. And they always boil to one point: Profits before elop and profits after Elop.
Apple sold 5 million iPhone 5s on opening weekend. As of 1 month ago, Nokia has sold 7 million Lumias. Total.
The Lumia was introduced in November 2011, so that's 10 months of sales. Apple sold over 100 million iPhones last year.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Neither Windows phone 8 or the Lumina 920 have been released and we have people already yelling "rrruuunnn!!!"
There is a fine line between working vigorously to save a sinking ship and trying to work the pumps and hand bailer after it is too late. You need equal quantities of balls and intelligence to make the correct decision.
What TFA is doing is seeing a puddle on the floor and immediately sounding abandon ship and running for the life boats.
There is no low hanging fruit left in business. Sometimes you need to slug it out and take risks because changing strategies every two seconds is not a winning proposition either.
I'm not saying they won't fail or that windows phone is good or bad. I'm only asserting it is too early.
Nokia had no true smartphone os so it was windows or android. And android is Samsung.
The geeks might have liked the n900 or whatever it was but the iPhone and droid had all the hype
The iPhone and droid may have had hype...but Nokia had growing market share; an App store; incredible phones...and most importantly choices. It decided to burn them in a memo and yes Meego was one of them, but regardless of dismissing other peoples opinions just because they are more technical than yourself. The cold truth is the current Strategy failed, and is continuing to fail!!
Nokia had an alternative, MeeGo. The trouble was at the time it was already outpaced by iOS and Android, so Nokia thought they probably could not catch up without a lot of rework.
And that's why they chose Windows Phone 7. But, as one of the comments in the article notes, the real problem is that Windows Phone 7 was not really a way to catch up either. It was a temporary solution, to be abandoned by Microsoft to the degree that even fairly powerful Nokia phones running Windows Phone 7 could not be upgraded to WP8.
If that were known (as the comment alleges) then Nokia probably would have been better off putting in an All-Hands effort to make MeeGo compete with other modern smartphone OS's. I'm not sure they would have been in a worse place than where they are now, and then they would be in full control of their own destiny.
But as things stand the fate of Nokia and Microsoft are intertwined (with more risk to Nokia than Microsoft).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's far too early to be predicting the death of Nokia or Windows phone. It hasn't gained popularity, but that could easily change.
TFA's thesis, though, is that Nokia was actually doing well before it went Windows and is now bleeding out. If true, that makes Elop a fuckup whether Nokia pulls out of it dive or not; the only possible vindication would be survival and some sort of mid/long term strategic gain that validates the present losses.
Other cellphone makers are leaving a lot of 'easy' niches open IMHO:
- You need a shop in high street. Android is too generic, Samsung is too much of everything else (TV's and stuff) - Nokia could have an 'Apple store' and get away with it.
- You need security and robustness. Smartphones are moving from a hipster-thing to a commodity right now, so it's time you start addressing companies to use smartphones for company uses. And then I mean properly - with security inside the phone, bigger batteries and compatibility with office tools. Huge market.
- Stop doing everything that's irritating about Apple: no app-store, no iTunes obligation, no stupid connectors, no wrong way to hold it. No selling your soul to placate His Steveness. Emphasize it. Android does that, but not enough - it has no commercial incentive: make sure that hipsters are on the defensive - it's easy: they're hipsters.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Nokia had their own OS in development, which came out before Windows (and now we learn it was one year early since apparently WP7 was just warming up and only WP8 is the real deal). Different from Windows, Meego already had an SDK out and a migration path from Symbian, so that developers could have their apps ported on day one.
We cannot say it would have been a hit for sure, but it had more than a small edge on Windows anyway. Why not give it a shot, along with Windows and then decide what was the best for the company? Nokia was full of cash at the time and could think long term.
Why not do that? Because Elop did what was best for Microsoft, not Nokia and wilfully sacrificed all the assets of his own company to benefit his previous one. Why he is not being investigated for breach of fiduciary duty is beyond me.
Nokia failed to realise is that their customers were buying because they had a reliable brand with a respectable name, but that in most other respects, most of their customers considered Nokia's phones to have similar features as all the rest. They were trusted and reliable - they were an IBM, not an Apple. When they stopped making phones with similar features as all the rest, they were taking a big step into unknown territory.
If they had simply built a solid android phone, they could have retained much of their customer base and charged a premium for brand/quality. I guess they still could.
> I meant "Windows phone" as in Windows on a phone in general, not specifically WP7. I own an Android phone, but I have to admit that I like WP7.
Then, trade in today. Nokia desperately needs the money.
> When I'm ready to upgrade my phone, I will definitely be looking at Windows 8 phones as well as all of the new Android phones. My biggest complaint about Android is it still feels clunky, like stuff is kind of cut and pasted together to create a Frankensteinesque amalgam of an operating system. WP7 feels a lot more unified and "device-like" and I hope Windows 8 on phones does too.
Nokia may not survive until then. That was the point.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There's no doubt that with smart phones now sub-$100, there will be a shakeout. It may be calculators and corded phones all over again. As for what nationality to buy, most of the world is now buying Asian, and much of the "Chinese crap" you write of gets reasonable reviews and appears to last the required 2 year life span.
The board probably had decided on a MS strategy before hiring Elop so they're as complicit in the current strategy as he is. That means they have face invested in the strategy which makes it unlikely that they'll fire Elop and change directions before it's too late. Once the board gets replaced the company may stand a chance, but that'll take some time.
So, after looking at another thread on Slashdot, is Nokia just a simulation or some kind of hologram?
But I'm very skeptical of this article's honesty.
Seriously, nokia's been delivering very high quality products lately, and I still see a LOT of people using their phones (I'd say 10:1 to apple's stuff) where I live.
So I'd say this is just paid FUD. By whom. No idea, but I'd point at whoever could benefit from nokia's stock falling.
Lets not talk about FUD but little thing called facts. This is the latest from IDC
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23638712
As you can see for each Windows Phone user there are TWENTY Android users and Five Apple users.
What phones aren't made in China?
Ironically Nokias before Elop sacked Nokias workforce
For that to be true MSFT would have had to plan that 1.- Nobody would buy WinPhone...okay I see that one, 2.- Nokia would leave them with a product to sell in that gap...which if they wouldn't buy WinPhone on Nokia a change of brand name sure as hell isn't gonna help move units, and 3.- The gap wouldn't just be absorbed by Google, with the CCC Android 2.x phones taking the low end while the more expensive Android and Apple units take the high.
So you see this is the problem I have when people describe Bill Gates kind of evil moves at MSFT....Ballmer just ain't that smart. I mean who was on stage bragging about his squirting Zune and not getting why he was being laughed at? Who spent a fuckton of money on products like Zune, Kin, Sidekick, etc, with no real plan on how to monetize the purchases? Who fucked over what few loyal WinPhone customers they had by not giving them Win 8 on their Win 7 phones and thus burnt the brand with many a customer? Who was fucking retarded enough to let IE get horribly fragmented in the vain hope that they could pretend its 2003 and they can actually get people to upgrade the OS just for a new version of IE?
Hell I could write a post the length of a Harry Potter book just pointing out the fucking DUMB moves that has gone on under Ballmer, his mobile "strategy" is a trainwreck, he is taking a shit on one of the few remaining cash cows MSFT has in order to push Windows onto...ARM? WTF? Are you shitting me? WTH would ANYBODY want Windows on a chip that...won't actually run Windows programs? Why, because they think the Win 3.x color scheme of Metro is just too damned sexy?
Actually I think one could argue that Nokia and MSFT are the same company, its just that MSFT has...for the moment at least..a couple of cash cows to keep its head above the water ATM but the simple fact is both companies seem directionless, completely devoid of any real innovation inside, waited until the market was already in the middle of a huge shift before simply reacting with half assed products, and both are acting like they have no real competition when in reality they have to bring their AAA game or get curbstomped which even Ray Charles could see the latter is exactly what is happening.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
With no legs?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
the iphone stole 14% of mobile PROFITS a year after it was first released. and that was only 1 million units sold.
almost all of those cheapo phones sold around the world make no money. all the profits are made on a few devices.
apple is now at something like 60% of PROFITS of all cell phones sold around the world. Samsung is 30% or more. everyone else is fighting for scraps
iPhone never stole anything! Apple make massive mark-ups to their products and have people prepared to pay for it. Most people aren't which is why Androids market share is 4 times that of Apples...and Apples is dropping. Apple does well with early adopters, but now the market is maturing not so much!
Apple sold 5 million iPhone 5s on opening weekend. As of 1 month ago, Nokia has sold 7 million Lumias. Total.
The Lumia was introduced in November 2011, so that's 10 months of sales. Apple sold over 100 million iPhones last year.
That is not the half of it Android activates 1.3 Million phones every day, and has a market share 4 times that of Apple, and Nokia could have had an Android product...and still had a Windows one if it really wanted.
I think it's clear now that Microsoft, as always, used a stopgap solution to make their followup successful. Winphone 7 was never going anywhere and the plan was always for Win8. Nokia fell into the EEE trap and was used to crack into the market to pave the way for Win8. Their carcass may still prove useful to MS down the road with their patents and such and also as an inroad to European and other world markets. This is yet another brilliant move by MS. I still find it hard to believe that companies partner with them knowing how it usually turns out. I guess the short term benefits are just too tempting. I expect to see Win8 phones from Microsoft. Wonder how that will play with Nokia? I'd say they are helpless.
"Ex-Nokia exec Tommi Ahonen's new article has a few suggestions. Is the Nokia board either asleep at the wheel, or incompetent, or in collusion with the incompetent CEO?"
..
No, they are just another in the long line of suicide-by-Microsoft victims
AccountKiller
And yet only 2 people are making ANY money selling phones, and Nokia isn't one of them. Apple makes more than double the next in line, which means they can afford to lower their prices if they have to, but no one else can, at least not without going bankrupt. It doesn't matter who many units you sell if you make nothing on each one, and have next to no plan to make money after the fact. At that point, you are just waiting to go out of business.
... by getting a Windows Mobile 7 device.
She used to be a happy Nokia customer but being a M.D. she didn't pay attention to the gizmo market and unfortunatelly didn't ask me prior to deciding on her new phone.
Basic functionality that she needs for her job i.e. Outlook contact import, how long a call lasts, alarm function when the phone is turned off etc. are not working. The touch screen menu is so sensitive that sometimes she accidentally places calls, on the other hand she sometimes has a hard time accepting calls.
Other than that the phone and its software looks really sleek.
After spending hours on the Nokia hotline and getting answers like "we don't know if this is supposed to work" or "we never thought about that", she now considers returning the phone and has been turned from a loyal low attention Nokia customer to one that wants anything but another Nokia.
Because Elop did what was best for Microsoft, not Nokia and wilfully sacrificed all the assets of his own company to benefit his previous one. Why he is not being investigated for breach of fiduciary duty is beyond me.
I don't buy this argument, because I don't think Elop was a Microsoft mole. I think he is a Windows True Believer.
People talk about Steve Jobs and his Reality Distortion Field; but I've known Microsofties that believe just as strongly in All Things Windows. They truly believe Windows is the solution to everything, and everything else is an also-ran. They truly think that the world is just waiting for a Microsoft solution to any problem, and as soon as it's released by golly the world is going to flock to it in droves.
I remember sitting through a talk just before Internet Explorer 7 was released. This was at the point (pre-Chrome even, IIRC) where Firefox was starting to seriously eat into IE's market share. The speaker waxed eloquently on just how great Internet Explorer 7 was going to be, and how Mozilla should consider just folding up shop once the final version was released because no one was going to use Firefox after that point. It wasn't hyperbole - he really believe that.
#DeleteChrome
...which was exactly the line with Palm's WebOS. The fact that it COULD change doesn't mean it's LIKELY to, much as I wish it would have with WebOS.
Woah, he predicted Windows Phone would not succeed at the level of iPhone and Android? Better tell James Randi to hang it up, because we got a real god damned psychic right here!
Bra-vo, very sarcastic and blasé, but unfortunately it makes you look quite ignorant. Ahonen predicted this in February 2011 right after Elop's announcement. For example:
The optimism for Windows Phone in the press really does surprise me. Windows Phone 7 was really feature incomplete at launch but people made the excuse that it was their first Version. Ahhh No it was not, Microsoft had been making mobile OSs for a long time and Windows Phone 7 was Major version 7 and used the same kernel as Windows Mobile.
Microsoft has chopped Nokia off at the knees when it announced Windows Phone 8. Not only will it not run on the Nokia Lumia 900 it would not run on any existing Windows Mobile device. At that moment Microsoft was telling everyone to not buy a Windows Phone but wait for the next version and new hardware. Sales probably dropped to as close to zero.
Microsoft and Nokia need to understand that Windows Phone can not be almost as good as IOS and Android, it can not be as good as IOS and Android, it can be a little better than IOS and Android. It has to be much better than IOS and Android. Any new mobile OS that launches will have few apps than IOS and Android so you must be a much better platform than IOS and Android. RIM might get by with good enough because they have a large customer base that trusts them. Microsoft could have gotten by four years ago with Windows Phone 7 when IOS was limited to a few carriers and Android was just getting going. MeeGo could have leveraged the Nokia user base. Palm could have made it because it was at the right place and the right time but had a crippled SDK and not great hardware.
Also Nokia gave up the potential profit center of running the app store and selling media to the devices.
Nokia smelled smoke and jump off the platform and into a cold heartless sea and had to hope for Microsoft to save them. They should have put out the fire.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I think it's clear now that Microsoft, as always, used a stopgap solution to make their followup successful. Winphone 7 was never going anywhere and the plan was always for Win8. Nokia fell into the EEE trap and was used to crack into the market to pave the way for Win8. Their carcass may still prove useful to MS down the road with their patents and such and also as an inroad to European and other world markets. This is yet another brilliant move by MS. I still find it hard to believe that companies partner with them knowing how it usually turns out. I guess the short term benefits are just too tempting. I expect to see Win8 phones from Microsoft. Wonder how that will play with Nokia? I'd say they are helpless.
Wow dude. You almost make it look as if Nokia is already bankrupt and is NOT the one finishing the sexiest Windows Phone 8 device (if not the sexiest smartphone overall) to come out in 2012. And Microsoft is already pushing its own Windows Phone 8 devices to compete with Nokia, so it's not just a rumor. But then I go out of the Slashdot bubble and the vision disappears.
Windows Phone 7 was, indeed, a stopgap solution. For Nokia as much as for Microsoft. And it actually made engineering sense to overhaul the hardware platform requirements for Windows Phone 8, because of the depth of the software changes. Legacy hardware, in principle, could have been supported with some extra effort, but my armchair CEO skills are insufficient to give a verdict on how easy would it have been for both companies. The existing Windows Phone users do not have it much worse than the users of Android phones stuck on Gingerbread. Who was the latest refusenik OEM again, Motorola Mobility? Their new owner company, what was it? Must be evil.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I got way down the page and found that I was in reality not even a quarter through and still hadn't seen any explanation of the title of the article (three pillars). Just a bunch of rambling. I tried reading some more then hit the tl;dr; wall.
Can someone list succinctly (like the article should have) what the three pillars are?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
OK, you didn't read it yet, here you go: The story of MeeGo.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
HTC is more about being a step behind Samsung than failing. That one step behind is a giant profit margin, hurting their books... HTC is still OEM for important Nexus devices... They just aren't making PROFIT.
Moto was at one point the original Cellular phone company... Too much time resting on past fame, dropping Nextel so they make phones but don't even run a phone service...
Nokia has build and still builds great hardware, with great cameras. The Lumia phones are well designed and would surely sell well even with stock Android. Nokia had as much as 3000 people working on Symbian and other software. What if Nokia had just decided to build and sell high-end Android smartphone and tablets? As well as good and cheap ones too? They have world class maps and navigation, are experienced in manufacturing huge numbers of devices -- if independence was what they wanted they could have had more of it this way.
And the market could easily have a role for them. They were seriously good not all that long ago.
Microsoft invoked the Osborbe Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect) on their own fledgling product. Even Mighty APPLE had to admit all the waiting for iPhone 5 (that they didn't even officially announce themselves!) caused an Osborne Effect last quarter.
It's been almost SIX MONTHS since Microsoft started touting WP8 as the next big thing... And your WP7 apps don't get to come along.... So there is ABSOLUTELY no reason to buy a WP7 device, or develop WP7 apps, because it won't gain you anything. Apple gets flack for changing a CONNECTOR after NINE years...
How are companies supposed to survive with no product to sell for SIX MONTHS? Poor Nokia is just doomed...DOOMED!
Nobody in his right mind would buy one right now, even if they liked the platform, with Windows Phone 8 on the horizon. If 8 takes off, *and* Nokia can survive until 8 takes off
And here is me running android 1.6
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They had Symbian, the next generation,
As in Belle. Meh.
they got Meego with the very innovative user interface of the N9, and when they got both ready to take over the world,
No, they couldn't take over the world with a somewhat polished, but deeply troubled product, officially obsoleted one and a half years before it was ready (the N9) and a platform that is not yet usable on any kind of target hardware (MeeGo as in the shared effort between Nokia and Intel).
Announced Meltemi
Huh? Could you point me to a public statement from Nokia regarding anything so named?
Even those efforts, with mostly open software, could had leveraged their hardware offer, if they published enough specification on their hardware to have drivers to enabling them for alternate operating systems (nitdroid, cyanogen mod port, webos, meego, etc), or even push forward the groups trying to giving new uses to their phones giving them the specs, help and support to do so.
Your idealism is infectious. Surely you can provide examples of mobile phone companies leveraging this kind of benefits from the community?
Sorry to be rude, but your whole post is typical armchair CEOism: it would have been easy for them to do this, that, or the other thing because I like those and I'm ignorant of pretty much everything else, how stupid of them it was to decide otherwise.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Motoralla's radio products are awesome
Its not the same company as Motorolla mobility. Like Rolls Royce cars and turbine engines have nothing to do with each other.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Ahonen predicted this in February 2011 right after Elop's announcement
He and 90% of the /. crowd, myself included.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Suck on that you FOSS faggots
iOS is mostly free software.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
PROFITS PROFITS PROFITS.... They make the world go round.
The Android makers are basically filling market share.. They aren't GROWING. They all used to make their money selling knockoffs to individual phone companies... Then Apple came along and nixed their one advantage of having the "built-in" contracts to keep the lines running. Basically, all the old phone base is selling Android to keep the lights on and workers employed... Apple is out there making massive profit AND building out NEW capacity with new technologies that Apple's not sharing.
Microsoft used to tout "cash is king" in reasoning for their large cash hoard. apple has several YEARS of profits in the bank. They could grab market share, but at this point, they would only be taking money put of their own pockets. BMW could sell their cars for the same price as Chevies... But what's the point in that?
Yah well I have a Motorolla XPR 6550 @-way radio
Is that the one with the firmware upgrade to make it compatible with my Somy GameStation?
Um. More sales does not always mean more profit. Nokia is selling a lot of devices; however, they are selling them for little to no profit as they are at the low end of the market. PCs sell way more than Macs but most PC OEMs sell them for low margins while Apple sells Macs at decent margins. Apple does not have to sell nearly as many PCs and still turn a healthy profit.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm writing this from a n9. It's not perfect, but is only a little behind Apple in usability and much less confusing to normal users than Android.
They were plenty usable but the problem was not there, is from the developer side of things. Nokia was lacking a number of the higher level frameworks that iOS and Android had at that point to make crafting applications easier.
Microsoft managed to catch up from a similar deficit though, I thought Nokia could have as well given time and laser-like focus.
I think it is too late now though. Microsoft possibly can make it work, Blackberry I think cannot at this point come back, and Nokia is just too far back now to make MeeGo what it would need to be to compete.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
.. They just aren't making PROFIT.
Companies live and die by profit. You can have all the market share in the world, but you will die just the same if you are loosing money.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
> Apple gets flack for changing a CONNECTOR after NINE years...
By some, I guess. By many (including me) it gets flack for changing the connector to yet another proprietary connector, when the rest of the world has standardized on micro-USB.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What phones aren't made in China?
Blackberries aren't.
They don't trust the Chinese when it comes to security.
The plan I'm on is the same price as the Samsung SGS3. So no, it's not "huge markups". This same one trick pony is trotted out with respect to Apple PCs too, and it's as false there as it is here. A top of the line Android is every bit as pricey, depending on setup and/or contract.
If any hate is spewing, is targeted against the ex M$ bigwig Elop which brew this destructive strategy.
As pointed out above, it was the board that was already decided at ditching the previous CEO and hiring Elop/MS instead.
Now, as Dilbert has pointed out, this was a strategic move of sheer genius, with which MS has realised three very strategic goals:
1. Windows phone introduced in the market,
2. Nokia, the biggest competitor for their own phone hardware sales ambitions has been crushed,
3. Linux as OS for the mobile phone has been disabled.
Luckily, there is still the Jolla (currently connection time out) initiative with Tizen.
The grand question: How did the Nokia board get played up so much by Microsoft?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Nokia was on a downward slopes WELL before adopting Windows Phone, and now HTC is also hurting...it's the industry. Google and Apple are crushing the competition with patent claims, marketing blitz, buying up competitors etc. Android hasn't been enough to save HTC, I don't know why people think Android would help Nokia. Samsung and Motorola rule the roost in that platform, that's not going to change soon.
Elop did the exact same thing when he effectively announced that Symbian was dead nine months before they had a Windows Phone on the market. So that's nine months without a product to sell during the transition to Windows Phone 7 and another six months with no product during the transition to Windows Phone 8.
At this point I'm expecting a Windows Phone 9 announcement the week after Windows Phone 8 launches.
I think when they said "nobody" they meant "very few people". It's a turn of phrase. Some people, like you, are happy to run old platforms. Most people want the shiny new one.
wp7 apps run on wp8 - wp8 apps won't run on wp7.
that makes the incentive to make wp8 apps very, very small for the time being. which is just as well since the wp8 sdk has been soo fucking late it's not even funny.
MS spent a shitload of money to get apps on wp7 - and to metro store, this shitload of cash includes directly giving cash to hundreds of companies worldwide, cold hard cash as long as you had an app to develop for either platform that supposedly had an unique angle(this means that you didn't make an exact port to another platform of the features of your winpho or metro app right away).
too bad they didn't do the things that would have taken no money and made more kinds of apps possible(because that would have been actual os sw development work and that's hard! wp7 is a shortcut design as far as an os goes, you'd think that it's made for a console, not for a mobile computer).
Elops problem is that he's more interested in what WSJ writes than what happens on the company bottom line. it's likely that the stupid, stupid board made Elop's bonus matrix depend on two things: cutting workforce(expenses) and increasing USA marketshare - while increasing USA marketshare isn't that bad, nearly all companies that have focused on it have been totally fucked - that's how Nokia fucked over Samsung, Motorola, Ericcson and others in the olden days: by not giving a shit about one country where operators choose how to fuck up your phone and which has extremely diverse network situation. Even back then people were bitching that Nokia is dead because it wasn't dumping money to be on a market where every player was getting fucked up the arse so badly they all went down the toilet(Apple and Samsung are current day exceptions to this rule, but if Samsung didn't have a lot of cash from other businesses their phone biz would have been dead before they managed to get a hit with Galaxy line).
they should have made Elops pay depend purely on yearly repeatable profitability(oh and the board was stupid, stupid, stupid or just didn't give a shit long before hiring Elop), in other words sales of profitably produced and sold phones. besides than that, Elop is a pussy ass - relying on bodyguards when laying off people in a nerd firm in a country where executives can shut down an entire regular industry plant and go drink their sorrows away in the same bar with the former employees while both parties kids go to soccer practice.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Well, I don't know about putting out the fire, but I'm almost positive they shouldn't have thrown chum into the shark infested waters and rolled in fish guts before jumping. Also, life jackets save lives.
And, just maybe, Elop should have chosen a better metaphor.
Log in or piss off.
It's far too early to be predicting the death of Nokia or Windows phone. It hasn't gained popularity, but that could easily change.
TFA's thesis, though, is that Nokia was actually doing well before it went Windows and is now bleeding out. If true, that makes Elop a fuckup whether Nokia pulls out of it dive or not; the only possible vindication would be survival and some sort of mid/long term strategic gain that validates the present losses.
at exactly that point it wasn't doing well.. sort of OK when you consider the mobile biz though - the phones business was profitable and they had good marketshare and not that bad momentum either. they had lines of phones which sold well, they had lines of shit hw(cpu/tech wise) they had selling at profit, which is sort of the optimum place. They needed a properly done cut of workforce to cut bullshit from development processes, but that's what they needed. they sure as fuck didn't need a new ceo yelling on newspapers that nobody should buy their phones.
the Nokia/MS deal was as much for MS's sake as for Nokias - every single other manufacturer was only producing windows phone as a token gesture towards MS to keep lawsuits from stopping them from selling Android phones, there wasn't a single manufacturer who's lunch depended on the windows phone platform and they desperately needed one or risk losing the whole mobile space completely.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You must have Apple stock. :) Congratulations. :)
You know, when I looked at Elop's initial strategy, those were my thoughts as well: it's so goddamn obvious what's going to happen next, that the cratering of Nokia has to be part of the overall strategy. The only actual strategy I could come up with was that the goal was to depress Nokia's stock price so quickly that the engineering and production resources were still largely intact, but that Microsoft could still acquire it at a firesale price.
Since Microsoft though seems to be intent on launching its phone lines (and a fairly complete set, at that), that's not possible anymore. Which means that Elop must have thought that his strategy (hah!) was actually valid... and that he is just the most incompetent CEO since Carly. What angers me the most about this is that he is going to take off with a giant severance package that means he can live in luxury until the end of his life. When the rest of the working folk screw up: get fired, and beg for a new job or prepare for a life of misery. When a CEO screws up: laugh all the way to the bank. And yet, somehow, I'm supposed to accept that they are my betters. Fuck them all with a pogo stick.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"The option was to go with Android or Microsoft, there is simply no third option to ready to compete" so Meego did not exist?
"Android, they would have been me too player". Yet Microsoft threw Nokia under the bus with WP8 and HTC have announced their windows phones first, and cheap than comparable offerings by Nokia.
"The Windows phone, as a product in itself is actually better than iOS or Android" No its not. It is be every measure behind them by years.
"Lumia 920 is the top contender in terms of display, features, camera, navigation" No its behind again. Its specs are massively outdated, so much so it cannot even run Windows Phone 8. A stillborn phone.
There are some serious denial issues going on here Nokia is dying, pretending that things are going to change is the problem. Worryingly its not just you that tells themselves this lie. It looks like Elop is going to continue on its current path of destruction.
Hatred towards Nokia on Slashdot... Why not failing HTC, patent troll Motorola Mobility (nobody in Europe buys that Chinese crap btw)...
I wouldn't count the article as hatred. At least in Europe until a few years ago Nokia was synonymous with mobile phone. When the leader in a major industry is falling steep in a short time, it is worthy to discuss it.
I don't see as hatred, but rather as pity for a once great company crumbling down right before our eyes because of wrong decisions. If there is any hatred, it's for Elop.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
the company was heading for dismal state before he took it on ... just like blackberry didn't take the iphone release seriously, playing catchup ever since...
The blackberry did not have a smartphone OS. It had a Push email OS. Nokia had SEVERAL smartphone OS's, and a market share in smartphones several times that of the iPhone, which in reality will never command as much market share as Nokia lost. Android had
And your WP7 apps don't get to come along
BZZZT! WRONG!
A. Nokia had been losing market value for quite some time before Elop was placed at the helm. More or less this is why he was placed at the helm
B. Nokia management effectively sabotaged engineering efforts via 1) destructive competition between different groups and 2) excessive corporate bureaucracy.
C. MeeGo was practically dead on arrival for multiple reasons. Political: essentially because Intel was involved. Technical: the Slashdot hive mind needs to learn that Qt is not very good. It has a variety of serious technical defects(memory leaks and performance issues being at the top) and is poorly suited for mobile. From the point of view of engineering, its innards are a mess and it's documentation is lacking to the point to figure out what a member function of a class is going to do, on one needs to examine the source code. One can witness that even Trolltech knows that is sucks to a large degree in that Qt 5.0 is about pushing QML driven by JavaScript. That is right folks, the C++ interface is such garbage to just avoid it.
D. The N9 (Harmattan) was late, very late. Moreover it is not even really a MeeGo device. By the time the device was out, the hardware was horribly outdated for a high-endish phone. The N9's hardware has some serious feature issues: slow GPU, no hardware video decode being the top issues.
What is awful is this: if Nokia had stuck with Maemo (which was not Qt based at all), then the N9 would have been out sooner and the platform would have been better. Weather or not to stick with Maemo/MeeGo or to dump it was a non-trivial call. That platform had a HUGE number of issues (some of which are caused by that Intel and it's Moblin involvement). It also had horror issues coming from Qt. Nokia was WISE to dump Qt to Digia, but it was terribly unwise to have bought it in the first place. I can name only a few programs that use Qt and I hate them all. KDE sucks ass, it is slow and gets in my way. Origin (that is right EA's version Steam) is also a Qt application. Anyone like Origin? I did not think so.
I think when you point out things to consider you should start by pointing out that Nokia was gaining market share, and then go on to describe how the N9 outsold the lumia range, with a limited market release. I think I covered the quantitative points.
Not sure what the value of saying "Windows Phone 7 is dead." How about we fair that statement up a bit with a couple similar statements:
"iOS 5 is dead."
"Android 3.x is dead."
If course they're dead. A newer version came out and no one's going to ship phones with the older version. Well, in the case of Android, maybe.
And if you look at the general reaction to WP8, it actually has been very positive, both in terms of reception from its growing fan base and the defensive reaction from iOS and Android fans. In other words, judging by the number of 1000+ post discussions on Engadget and The Verge, it seems WP8 is generating more discussion now than ever. Compare the discussion with that of, say, BB10, or WebOS. This isn't the same.
The worst thing Apple or Google could do is write off a credible threat, and they aren't. Which makes it curious why most /.ers here would.
Google is either lying when they 1.3 million phones are activated per day, or Android is such a piece of shit operating system that you have to activate it continuos over and over again to get it to work.
In 2011 there were a total of 491.4 million smart phones sold. 491.4/365 is ~1.3 million. As we all know not every one of those phones is an android phone.
Fun chart plotting Androids activation a day.
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-android-activations-per-day-2012-9
A friend of mine just bought one last week and I am sure he is in his right mind. He got a Lumia 710 and I dare say you can't buy a better smartphone in our country for the price he paid for it. Prices for WP7 devices are going down to the point where it makes perfect sense to buy one if you are looking for a cheap phone.
Wellll..and i'm sure I'll get hate for pointing this out...I really think Elop honestly didn't have a choice to make. i man look at the company he took over, they had no less than THREE noncompeting OSes, maemo, Java based Symbian, and the other one I always forget, but they had 3 different OSes, all trying to backstab and steal each other's thunder while losing share slowly but surely, they didn't have the money to pay the crazy price HP paid for WebOS and Maemo just was nowhere near ready and certainly wouldn't compete in the shape it was in, the only place they had real share was in dumbphones and the Indian and Chinese markets were already coming out with dirt cheap Android phones. So Elop made a call, frankly the only call i think he could have made, and it just...well it didn't work, that shit happens in business.
Now I ALREADY know what the fanbois are gonna scream, "Why they could have went with Android!" but they are wrong, they could NOT have went with Android and here is why: Not only were they not up to speed on Android which would have taken time they didn't have but more importantly they already saw that Samsung and HTC do Android better than anyone so their higher end hardware would have meant nothing as again, Samsung and HTC already do that better than anybody with Android. it would be like coming out with a HyPhone and wondering why you can't gain share against the iPhone. Duh! Apple has the buzz, they do that style better and people are already familiar with the brand. Go to any Android website with the wayback machine to that time period where Elop was first hired and you'll see it was Samsung this and HTC that, so by the time they got their half ass Android on the market it would look like an expensive also ran, just pointless.
Do I wish Elop could have made another call? Absolutely, I thought WebOS and Nokia would have been a perfect fit, great OS meets great hardware for great products, but they couldn't afford to just toss money like HP did so that just wasn't on the table, Android as I said done better by rivals, and Apple sure as fuck wouldn't license them iOS, so that pretty much left him only TWO choice: Either put everything on Maemo and hope to God they could get the bugs fixed and the OS ready to compete while bleeding share, or take an already finished product and actually get paid for taking it...I'm sure it seemed like a no brainer at the time, but what Elop didn't realize is tying the Windows brand onto a non X86 device is just retarded and doomed. So he made a bad call but honestly I just don't see what other call he could have made that would have turned out ANY differently for Nokia. They were backed into a corner and he had to make the call, the only call he really had.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If Microsoft wants it that bad, then Apple would be stupid not to bid the price up. They win if they win, and they win if they lose.
Or one of them overpays hugely and never recoups the investment. It is very possible to overpay for a company like Nokia and overpaying is always a bad thing.
Top tip when investing, if you hear a company start talking about "transformative acquisitions", run away as fast as you can. That is an almost sure sign that a company is about to overpay for something.
Yeah. It might even get as high as 5 or 6% market share!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nokia makes excellent hardware at a good price.
Maybe back in the day. Nokia's hardware now is fine (not great, just fine) but the prices are nothing special. Their high end stuff historically has tended to be wildly overpriced.
Their gear tends to be much more rugged than Apple's fragile mobile devices.
I have no general data to point to but I used Nokia phones almost exclusively for 10 years and have used Apple's for the last 3 and the Nokia stuff I had was no more or less durable than my Apple gear. I'm pretty sure Nokia's current smartphones will break at pretty much the same rate as iPhones.
Their problems are more on the marketing side.
Their problems have been on the product side. They have had no answer to the iPhone and Android phones. Their software has seriously sucked for a long time. Symbian was a dead end years ago and MeeGo wasn't going to get the job done. Nokia's problems are simply that they have had no phones anyone wanted for quite a while now. Their dumb phones were fine but they missed the smartphone revolution big time.
Yes, at the top of the mobile phone market, even the smartphone segment, despite Apple having the iPhone in that segment.
The 3 different OS problem was not even as big as it should have been since Maemo was a low budget skunkworks project where everyone involved would almost fit into a lift. They did amazing work considering the budget, and it has better integration with MS apps (MS Exchange and MS Office) than Windows7 phone does even now.
Not that micro-USB standards are all that standard. I just got a Blackberry Playbook through work to go with my BB phone. Imagine my surprise when my micro-USB charger and USB cable for the phone don't work to charge the Playbook. All the sins great and small attributed to Apple have been committed by RIM on its users since time immemorial.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
There was absolutely a third option. Go with both platforms Android and MS. ( Ignoring that they already had a new OS ready to go. Tested, proven and in phones )
Who in their right minds would put all their eggs in the Microsoft basket when the entire planet knows Microsoft's track record with consumer products. At the time of the decision to go with Microsoft the Zune platform was circling the drain. Zune was a disaster from conception straight to it's death. Somehow the decision was made to go with an OS that really didn't exist. Wasn't in a consumer product that anyone had played with. And came from the same creative minds as:
Zune
Kin ( One of the shortest lived phones in history )
MS Bob
Saying that the market was already flooded by cheap Asian android phones makes no sense at all. Since all the these manufacturers make MS phones as well. So you could easily state that the market will be flooded with cheap MS phones. ( I say will because at the time MS didn't really have a viable OS for mobiles ) So not matter what path was chosen Nokia would be battling Asian phones.
I have to completely disagree that choosing MS was the best option.
Choosing MS was a long shot. So to safe guard that bet Nokia had to have a backup plan that was and is clearly Android.
Selling more phones worldwide than all others put together in every segment is not doing well? The only thing that sucked was their US smartphone sales, but globally they were selling more smartphones than all other suppliers put together. The iPhone wouldn't even work on a Chinese network at that time but Nokia were in there selling millions.
Because so many people plug in cables with their eyes closed.
There's a solution looking for a problem.
Good one. One I didn't dare to propose because I have no shred of any evidence.
Swiss bank accounts maybe?
(Or bitcoins, anonymously generated over TOR?)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
C'mon, you know the answer to this. You don't declare a previous platform dead until you're ready to ship the replacement. And if you're wise, you provide some manner of backwards or forwards compatibility. New versions of iOS will often install on older devices, as will newer versions of Android. iOS and Android apps tend (not always, but often) to work on a wide range of OS versions.
WP8 will not install on WP7 machines, making them orphans by definition. WP8 apps won't work on WP7 phones, giving developers little incentive to create WP8 apps until it's clear whether the platform will be a success, leading to a chicken-and-egg problem.
Every platform becomes obsolete eventually, but Microsoft should know better than to declare a platform dead months before the replacement becomes available. That's a newbie mistake. It's almost like they're trying to sink Nokia. Maybe they're thinking of buying the wreckage and fleshing out their hardware portfolio?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Even teenage girls loved the N900 when they became aware of it. With the stupid internal politics or whatever that delayed its introduction in a lot of markets by over a year, and the almost complete lack of advertising that it existed, it was really only the geeks that even heard about it in most cases.
You appear to have confused the verb 'lose' with the adjective 'loose'
http://loseloose.com/
The plan I'm on is the same price as the Samsung SGS3. So no, it's not "huge markups". This same one trick pony is trotted out with respect to Apple PCs too, and it's as false there as it is here. A top of the line Android is every bit as pricey, depending on setup and/or contract.
Not "huge markups" for you, but (at least in the U.S.), for your mobile carrier. Apple is well-known for demanding substantially higher subsidy rates from their partners, who then have to try to recoup the extra cost from subscribers. For instance, back when Sprint finally caved in and offered the iPhone, they broke their own records for new subscriber enrollments -- and simultaneously lost 1.3 billion that same quarter, in large part due to the exorbitant price they had to pay.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/12/technology/iphone-5-carriers/index.html
The price customers typically pay for a new iPhone is a heavily discounted rate cushioned by the carriers, who buy the devices from Apple for close to their full retail price tags. (The 16 GB iPhone 4S that generally goes for $199 with a two-year contract has a list price of $649.) Carriers eat the difference and make it up by padding the monthly cost of their customers' phone contracts. The iPhone's subsidy typically runs about $400 per device -- the highest of any smartphone on the market.
"Microsoft must be getting rather frustrated with the Nokia partnership and its inability to break through in smartphones."
http://www.unwiredview.com/2012/10/01/microsoft-is-working-on-its-own-branded-wp8-device-windows-phone-surface-to-launch-in-h1-next-year/
A top of the line Android is every bit as pricey, depending on setup and/or contract.
Is that so?
I just logged onto my Verizon account, since I'm eligible for a discounted upgrade with a two-year contract extension. I clicked "upgrade", then selected "category: smartphone", then "sort by price, high to low". Here's what I got:
And in virtually every way, the Galaxy SIII is a better device than the iPhone 5. Granted that it only has 32 GB of storage, rather than the 64 GB you can get in an iPhone for $150 more -- but you could buy the Galaxy SIII, spend $50 on a 64 GB micro SD card and have 96 GB of storage in your phone and $100 left in your pocket.
You definitely pay a significant amount for that Apple logo, and that's why Apple's profits margins are so high. More power to them, if they can maintain that... my point isn't that what they do is somehow wrong. My point is just that you do pay a premium for Apple hardware.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
you're joking right?
Elop took over in 2010. iPhone and Android handsets started shipping in 2007, and that's - coincidentally - just about the time that Nokia's stock price, revenues, and profits, began to collapse.
Any "industry leader" standing Nokia still had remaining by 2010 was based on:
1) Inertia - they were successful up until they were blindsided by iOS and Android;
2) Feature phones - an extremely low profit segment of the market;
Elop took over a company that was in a nose dive. The alliance with Microsoft has changed the plummet from free fall, to a slightly shallower trajectory. It's debatable whether or not Nokia was salvageable - period - by the time he took over, but Microsoft was their best option. Jumping into the collapsing-profit Android market would have been a recipe for disaster (see: HTC's recent profit reports), and they simply didn't have time to continue hammering on their three platforms to make them credible alternatives to iOS and Android - they were being left behind, and didn't have the money or time to catch up.
Nokia was not a "successful company" that Elop took over and ran into the ground; Nokia was a "quickly failing company" that Elop has been trying to wrestle out of a nose dive. He may not be equal to the task, but frankly, this bullshit about "they should have just doubled down on Maemo/Meego/Symbian and made it work," is fucking stupid - that strategy had already failed by 2010, and refusing to change it would have simply meant Nokia would have gone into bankruptcy and probaby been acquired by an Android manufacturer, or Microsoft, in the bankruptcy proceedings.
Microsoft has a history of scamming (naive mobile phone) companies
http://slashdot.org/story/02/12/26/1423247/sendo-accuses-ms-of-stealing-smartphone-ip
I do this every night when I go to bed, using a Nexus One with a micro USB connector. Never had any problems with it though. Not even the suggestion of a problem really, I don't know what the GP is talking about.
Has no teen hacker rooted the WP7 Lumias so that Android or Linux can be installed? That would make them start selling like hot cookies.
I plug in cables in the dark, or when I don't have my glasses on, every day.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm curious how a strategy has failed when it's just starting to be implemented. Windows 8 has yet to be released, a handful of Windows 7 phones were released just before Windows 8 was announced, Nokia's market share is growing worldwide (US market being the exception), and Christmas is just around the corner. Nokia has enough on-hand cash and income to keep operating for another 2 years, even if nothing changes.
I'm anticipating that we start seeing signs of a turnaround by first quarter 2013.
Then you offer a cheap upgrade path to your loyal customers not give them a trollface and let a big nasty fart in their general direction.
I mean a company the fucking size of MSFT shouldn't need me, a little PC retailer in the middle of BFA, to explain economics 101 to them but I guess i have to...Hey MSFT? yeah com 'ere. you see its is like this Sparky, you make people happy? they tell 3 to 5 friends and that is how you build what is called "word of mouth" but when you give them a trollface and fuck 'em over? then they not only tell over a dozen that you suck and your products are shit but they make blogs, they jump into forums, you'd be surprised how badly people that feel like they were fucked over will want to hurt you back.
Again I should NOT have to explain this shit, its business 101. This is why I'll ALWAYS offer some kind of trade in on a new unit, even if I'm just gonna take that trade in and throw it in the garbage because it makes people feel like they are being treated fairly, which REALLY fucking matters MSFT. Hell you could have refurbed those Win 7 units, put them on Woot! and made some of your money back while more importantly giving people who were loyal to you a reason to stay loyal instead of filling the net with "You fucking suck!" rants.
I man for the love of God you couldn't even do this ONE thing right? Hell you like ripping off Apple and even Apple, the kings of hardware churn, support at least ONE upgrade per unit! So if you needed the hardware to be upgraded for Win 8 fine, no problem, at least give a reason those units that are for sale now with Win 7 should be bought and give those that already bought a reason to stay with you.
Because I hate to break the news to ya but you ain't got billions of dollars in third party software to keep them loyal like you do Windows, so this was a seriously fucking retarded move, but what can we expect under Ballmer was seriously fucking retarded moves? I swear he thinks its 1999 and Windows can just walk in and take over a market without trying...wrong.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
But it's entertaining to see the armchair quarterbacks here on Slashdot yelling about Elop and MSFT collusion to force Nokia to fail.
Firstly, CEOs make money when the company succeeds. Elop makes decisions and strategy that are going to try to put Nokia into a positive market position, because if he does that well, he makes a shitload of money. That's first off.
Secondly, would it be the opinion of people here that Nokia would have been better served by sticking with Meego, which was barely in a finished state? Or switching to Android, where they'd be pitted against people who could make a phone a lot cheaper than they could, plus Google throwing its weight wholly behind Motorola?
Elop chose a strategy where they are the biggest fish in a little pond. I'm not saying this is a winning strategy, but it's probably one of the best ones at their disposal.
The Lumia 800/900 were mediocre phones all around. They were basically the exact same body with a different OS, and nothing spectacularly different than their Symbian counterparts. It's not a big wonder that it didn't sell.. Microsoft screwed up Windows Phone because v8 has a lot more features and v7 is a stopgap that doesn't upgrade. Not a lot of people are going to jump onto that bandwagon, and as a result, you should think that Joe Belfiore and Sinofsky should have been canned, along with Ballmer.
The 920 is really a great piece of hardware. It's got the best camera, hands down, of any smartphone. Has the best PPI (better than the "Retina" display). It has the extreme Nokia durability we've all known to love. And with Windows Phone 8, it should be a good contender.
However, to knock it down before it's made it out of the gates because it's associated with Microsoft is just silly. I skipped the 900 because it was mediocre. I want the 920 because it's a stellar phone. And because it's really durable. It has more to do with being a Nokia, than it does with anything that MS has to do with. And that still plays very well for Nokia. I think they have a shot, they have carrier partnerships and relationships worldwide that other companies envy, and they can make a good push back into the market because they weren't afraid of tossing a POS operating system out (unlike RIM, whom will find themselves in the unemployment line soon) and going with something that is pretty good. Yea, I said it -- Windows Phone is pretty good. I have owned an iPhone for 5 years, and after seeing Windows Phone up close and personal -- I don't see any real benefit in staying with it. The Windows Phone OS is very slick, very fast, and very nice to use even on mediocre hardware. Battery life is good too.
So while I know it's fashionable to lay down the MS hate early on, let's at least wait until Nokia brings out the 920 and see how it is received worldwide. I think most folks here will be surprised that people actually think that the phone itself is better than most out there, in almost every way.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Wow, it's been years since someone reminded me of the comicbook store guy in the Simpsons. Thanks!
And your WP7 apps don't get to come along.... So there is ABSOLUTELY no reason to buy a WP7 device, or develop WP7 apps, because it won't gain you anything.
What are you talking about? WP7 apps DO carry over to WP8. from: http://www.liveside.net/2012/09/26/will-windows-phone-7-apps-just-work-in-windows-phone-8/
Microsoft said that Windows Phone 7 apps would run in Windows Phone 8
Dude, get away from the keyboard until you sober up.
How has Microsoft declared the platform dead, when Windows Phone 7 will continue to run apps developed for it? Windows Phone 8 apps are those that take advantage of things specific to that platform, just as iOS 6 apps cannot run on iOS 5. No developer is going to target iOS 6 only if it doesn't require it, and same applies for WinPhone7/8 developers. Windows Phone 7 is hardly any more dead than iOS 5, and I'm still waiting for you to provide a link where Microsoft has officially declared it dead.
The optimism for Windows Phone in the press really does surprise you? Why? It may be distinctly mediocre, but it is backed by massive advertising and connections.
Android may have 4x the monthly sales figures (not market share, which is total devices deployed) but that's because carriers live Android, as the phones cost a nickel and can be billed for hundreds over the course of the contract.
Now, even if Android has 4x the monthly sales totals, it doesn't matter because 1) Android users are cheap and don't buy apps, 2) Android phones are cheap and rarely get OS upgrades, and 3) Profits on Android phones can be measured in the $5-10 per unit range, not the $150-350 *PROFIT* per device that the iPhone has.
Who cares what the monthly sales figures of Android are? You could fling them out the cargo door of a C-130 over Somalia and it'd be no less profitable for the phone manufacturers.
Ahonen gets it wrong. You can see the problem in his chart here: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/.a/6a00e0097e337c8833017ee41902ae970d-pi
Samsung and Apple were already on their respective trajectories when Nokia stumbled. Like Blackberry, Symbian wasn't. The writing was on the wall and Elop read it. If Nokia stayed the course they would promptly slide from #1 to #3. Perhaps not as painfully but every bit as surely.
Unfortunately, Elop then made two inexplicable mistakes. And in this Ahonen and, well, everyone on Slashdot at the time saw it.
1. Planned obsolescence of the core product. Did he learn nothing from the 60's and 70's disaster with the U.S. automobile industry? Customers don't like that!
2. The new product line to challenge the meteoric rise of Samsung and Apple would be... Microsoft Windows? Really!?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Facebook app data shows that Windows Phone was already a dead duck when Elop penned his "burning platform" memo. Much less than one percent. Absurdly poor showing. Many of us knew it, and it is just not plausible that he didn't know it. That makes what happened to Nokia deliberate. It's not just that in hindsight he might have chosen better. He KNEW he was putting Nokia on a train to nowhere.
A friend of mine just bought one last week and I am sure he is in his right mind. He got a Lumia 710 and I dare say you can't buy a better smartphone in our country for the price he paid for it. Prices for WP7 devices are going down to the point where it makes perfect sense to buy one if you are looking for a cheap phone.
And this is the whole fucking point.
Nokia is still slowly dying, because they're certainly not making money on such sales.
People that are buying Lumias are not buying them because of the features and whatnot, but because they're cheap as fuck.
And that doesn't help Nokia.
Declaring a platform dead means (a) declaring that a device running the current OS can never be upgraded to the next OS, (b) declaring that the next OS is an essential part of Microsoft's new framework (pc/tablet/phone) and will therefore be the platform getting support going forward, (c) announcing that applications written for the new OS will not run on the old OS, and (d) doing a huge marketing push for the new product six months before it was due to be released. (Google The Osborne Effect.) Microsoft did everything exactly right to put Nokia in as bad a position as possible. Anyone interested in buying a Windows 7 phone in the last two business quarters would naturally wait until Windows 8 phones are released. And then wait a little longer, because every Microsoft user knows that they never get it right the first time. The thing is, I strongly suspect Nokia can't survive three dead quarters. They're not going to make it. At least, not as a company even fractionally the size they are now.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If you're plugging in a cable while you're driving, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!
Even with your eyes open, you have to look - sometimes in the dark or without reading glasses - and react, and turn it around and try again and you know what, why can't we just plug the connector in without worrying about orientation. It's trivial, when reduced to a single event, but doing this day in and day out adds up. People don't get Apple. For me, every bit of friction removal like that has value. It's the attention to detail, the shine on the chrome, the icing on the cake.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
That's kind of like talking about "the sexiest transvestite hooker" around.
Being acquired by Google seems like a good thing. Google looked at Nokia and passed on it...
Who modded this garbage "Interesting"?
[citation needed]
[citation needed] - (see: Samsung's recent profit reports)
[citation needed] See the ratio to which the N9 completely outsold the Lose-mobiles. Without marketing, and being excluded from the major markets by Nokia.
Maybe, like Elop, the board members also hold a lot of Microsoft shares they hoped would increase, or at least hedge against Nokia somewhat?
No matter what, it seems a matter of politics and greed vs. soundly running a business with engineers and manufacturing.
Don't forget: the carriers have always hated Nokia's support for VOIP, even before Microsoft bought Skype and who owns Skype. The carrier's that subsidize phones were not favorable to Nokia *before* Microsoft/Skype came along.
If Steve Job was in the same position as Elop at the time Elop wrote the burning platform memo, well not only would Steve not have written such a memo, but Steve would have been hawking the glories of the in-house OS N9 for all they're worth, meanwhile he'd quietly be developing the next big thing without killing off his revenue (and dare I say his relationship with Intel also). When the N9 team delivered a Seriously Quality Product a few months later they proved what a fraud Elop and his timely burning platform memo is, as well as his decision to relegate the Meego N9 device to a few regional markets of minor signifigance. Also we know very well about the never-made-available-for-sale-anywhere N950 from the chosen few (developer) owners. Those products and their successors would have generated plenty of revenue so Elop could have kept his job. What an idiot Elop is.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Actually your Windows Phone Apps 7 apps do get to come along. The problem is that the Windows 8 apps you wrote for Desktop, Tablets and Windows Phone 8 back to Windows Phone 7. Microsoft wasn't stupid enough to actually shaft their developers, just their customers.
iPhone appeared in 2007 but did not have chart topping sales at day one, indeed not until after Elop took over Nokia.
Nokia was doing better than any other phone manufacturer but were not growing, which is very different to "freefall". That describes what happened after Elop did an Osbourne. I really can't believe you idiots are taking the reaction to his incompetance, which happend some time after he was hired and not before as you fantisise, as the reason he was hired in the first place.
A slowing of sales growth since 2005 in not equal to a massive decline in sales since 2010. Nokia were the largest thing in the market making the most profit in that sector.
The male micro USB connector is not symmetrical as its big brother, as it is trapezoidal, and on the wider side it has two small hooks that anchor it inside the female connector on the phone. So, as long as you have memorized the orientation of the female connector on the phone, it is dead easy to plug in the male connector, even in the dark. It's pretty much what i do almost every night before bed. The hooks are really easy to identify by touch.
In technical terms Windows phone was worse than anything Nokia already had (not even fucking multitasking back then - what was it still 1980 not 2010?), was very resource hungry on hardware so wouldn't run on anything Nokia had, as well as there being zero expertise with Windows phone inhouse. Initially they couldn't even use Qt on the platform. It's the sort of choice than is not driven by any practical consideration on the point of view of the company so it appeared that Elop was in the wrong place to do something that ignored available resources - the idiot was acting like he was in a startup in somebodies garage.
Anyway, I can't understand why you are pushing this line since the last two years have proved it. Nokia's Symbian phones are still vastly outselling the Lumia despite all the cuts to the Symbian division.
Look at total sales and proportion of the market for a better idea of what was really going on than stock price - but of course you know that but were cherry picking for excuses.
Sticking with their OS is what's hurting Blackberry so much, so I don't think that was much of a choice either. The truth is that the mobile landscape got competitive as hell after Apple released the iPhone and the major tectonic shift that ensued was too much for big traditional companies like Nokia, Motorola and Sony/Ericsson to handle. LG and Samsung were smarter and switched to Android. So as crappy as the decision to play along with MSFT is, it was kind of like the only choice they had. That argument about the ovi ecosystem being great and whatnot is a complete lie. My brother had a E62 and he liked his Nokia phones, eventually buying the newer models. I remember him showing me the ovi store and I remember when we compared that to the iOS App Store on my iPhone 3G. The difference was so great that it was pointless to discuss the merits of the two.
So Nokia had a rough ride, and they are stuck with Microsoft now whether they like it or not. The release of Windows 8 for PCs and Windows 8 for Mobile should help them quite a bit, since Nokia could be the top quality phone maker for Windows while you have HTC and others pumping out the cheap and intermediate models.
Microsoft is a software (and now hardware supposedly) company that I would rather avoid but the reality is that they are very good at one thing, making you need their products one way or the other, even if sometimes their quality is inferior to other stuff out there. It has happened time and time again throughout their history. Right now I'm stuck using Windows because of videogames and I can use other OSes for everything else. I had an XBox360 that died on me, something I have never experienced with a console, and after hearing that the PS3 multiplayer gaming was free of monthly charges I switched. Now I have to say I miss the damn Xbox360 controller, especially to play first-person shooters because of the triggers, the grip and the extremely nice sticks. Same deal with Visual Studio. Same deal with Office. I have tried liking other stuff like LibreOffice, Xcode, the PS3 and desktop Linux among others and have only found success with Safari, Mail and OS X in general. This is the reason why I predict that eventually Microsoft will take over the extremely guarded approach of Apple and the fragmentation and some design issues of Android.
Well Nokia invented the SmartPhone (the Communicator) about 10 years before anybody else.
Atleast, that's more logical than assuming the new guy managed to convince the board (in a few months) to make a massive change to the strategy by killing everything.
Ex-Nokian here. I lost my job due to "Elop's" strategy. But pre-Elop Nokia was fucked. Perhaps he accelerated the decline, but atleast I see a possible (unlikely) future for Nokia now. Previously I saw no future (MeeGo had been stabbed multiple times over a period of many years by the Symbian team as was going nowhere)
Meh whatever. I've got Nokia lumia 710 supplied by work and quite like it. I used to have android but really don't miss it. Regardless of what the haters say - its not bad
Ah, the magic of "market share". "We are losing money on every unit but will make it back in volume"... I see how you conveniently wrote "sales" and not "profits" there.
I've been reading Tomi's blog for a few years now, and while he has some points, i started to question him when he talks about symbian as a top smartphone OS. Then i found another ex-Nokia employee who writes counters to Tomi and actually debunks some of Tomi's statistics. The blog is: Dominies Communicate
Turns out that Tomi sometimes just makes stuff up - eg, Only 40% of all smartphones sold are not touch screen. Unfortunately people believe Tomi's word. He was right about WP7, but wrong about Android and very wrong about Symbian. I'm not Elop isn't at fault, or has been exemplary, but Tomi's word shouldn't be taken at face value.
The point is: NO WP 7 device - despite their relatively young age - can be upgraded to WP 8 because of changing hardware requirements. Meanwhile, plenty of older devices like the 3GS can run iOS 6. And even for older devices, devs can make apps targeting the older platforms, but no older than iOS 4 with the latest XCode release.
(For Android you should have used 2.3.x instead of 3.x since the latter was just a frantic half-assed attempt to make a tablet-friendly Android after the iPad launched. And 2.3.x still lives on, and people write apps for it.)
It's not that Kodak rejected it - they bloody invented it after all - it was just that they saw it as a gimmick instead of the way ahead, plus they did not want to kill off their cash cow and kept on making film in a dwindling market. Kodak had a few digital cameras - including a collaboration with Apple - but every other manufacturer out there bypassed them in that race.
You seen to know different teenagers than I do.
The N900 was big, clumsy and if you enabled WiFi, Skype and IM integration (which it did brilliantly, better than any other device) you would be lucky to get 12 hours of battery life out of it. The OS lacked portrait / landscape switching and responsibility was not good because of lack of memory.
Geeks loved it because it had a terminal and root access was easy, and you could scrap together a Ruby / Perl script to do very powerful things with it. But teenage girls? I think you are talking about N9 which was/is a very nice touchscreen phone (although it is starting show aging) but hardly a game-changer and delivered too little too late.
... and Kodak invented the digital camera. Tough shit, it's not about being first it's about being best. Otherwise your spreadsheet would still be VisiCalc, your word processor would be WordStar, and you would run them on the latest iteration of CP/M.
... and if Apple dropped their prices to reduce that margin, it would wipe out the rest of the market. This is what non-Apple users who complain about the margins don't realize: If they were cheaper they would be the only player in town.
You mean "selective" not "quantitative" there. Market share gain in the non-profit feature phone market is not a plus: The gain could be attributed to other manufacturers abandoning it to make smartphones. And the N9 sold much on the myths that grew during its delays, and outselling a WP 7 phone is as hard as winning a race against a one-legged pirate.
Again, I'm not a competent armchair CEO and all that, but the current deal with first gen Lumia devices — full support for the duration of warranty/contract lifetime, update to WP7.8 in the pipeline, continuing updates for applications — does not seem exactly "trollface" to me. Hey, it's better than some of those Gingerbread users get.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I think mentioning HTC is very relevant, ignoring the shear scale on which Nokia has been destroyed by Elop in Months, for the third ecosystem [in reality sixth], to produce Windows Phones. Ironically one of HTC's strategy is to produce Windows phones too next year, and they cheaper than Nokia's offerings for equivalent models.
I'm trying to understand what you are trying to say, but I can't. There must be something, all those insightful mods couldn't be given "because it sounds right, and I don't care what the words mean", right?
What "scale of destruction" are you talking about? Compared to the rate of decline (or, more significantly, loss of thrust) before Elop?
HTC's foray into Windows Phone 8 is bound to be successful, it's only Nokia who can fail at that, or what?
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I remember my astonishment at seeing people very far from the geek stereotype using the N900. Granted, my daughter's school teacher is fairly tech-savvy... But there were also pretty girls, and there were middle-aged ladies who looked like first-generation immigrants.
What could it become... But things had already been bad with the development of N900, and they only went downhill with the N9.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Yeah, and all those new Gingerbread users probably don't give a shit that the OS in their cheap crappy phone is oh so two years old.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
(Disclaimer: I'm no fan of M$)
First of all: It wouldn' t be the first market that they rolled up from 0% marketshare: see the whole xbox stuff. They have the money reserve to fight a long uphill battle.
If you look at the big picture things start to make sense in their strategy: Basically they want to bundle everything. It doesn't matter where you enter your data (pc|phone|tablet) it will be synchorinzed with skydrive. Your dashboard will look the same regadless of what device you have. Some of the applications will be on all your devices.
They even add all the xbox stuff so you buy your game on your phone and will arrive home to find the game on your xbox.
As for nokia? well they will be on the lifeline until windows 8 is out..
Lets see what kind of marketadoption this will get.
Windows 8 is mainly a feature redux. But this will lead to it that many people who shy away from complex things will buy such a phone.
What exactly do you think was missing of S60 for example so it was not a "true" smartphone OS? I have always been a bit disturbed by these definitions that seem to assume that iPhone == smartphone...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
I have to admit I was surprised and did not expect it, but that is what happened. Maybe it was the novelty of having something the other girls had not seen and getting to show it off.
The micro-USB charger for the phone DOES charge the Playbook.
But due to the current limitation in the phone charger it will only charge it when the playbook is in standby mode. If the playbook is in use the phone charger only supplies enough current that the playbook runs on power from the charger and thus does not use the battery.
There is no possible way for a 500 mA charger to charge a device while the device is using 450-500 mA to stay on.
However the Playbook charger which delivers more than 1A over micro-USB works perfectly fine as a quick charger for a BlackBerry phone.
Why would it have been better to NOT use micro-USB??
But you have to look at what market they are going for and its pretty obvious they ain't trying to go for the "CCC bargain basement Android" market but iPhone turf.
Now I'm sorry but you can't do things worse than an already established and popular brand and not expect to bomb. Its already been widely reported they spent $450 in ads for every person they got to sign a 2 year contract to take a WinPhone so its obvious they are committed to the brand...why not go all the way instead of half ass? Remember people get stuck for 2 damned years with these phones, that's 2 years to be stewing and building hatred against the brand.
And in the end how much would it have really cost them? They could have sold those refurb units for $99 a pop on Woot!, got the people taking advantage of the offer to sign up for a 2 year extension to their existing contract which I'm sure the carriers would have been happy to kick them back a little for each customer they could count on for another 2 years above their existing contract, and it most importantly would have built damned good positive buzz, which when you are a VERY far behind third place is a 3 man race is EXACTLY what you want.
Again this is why I hate comparing the Gates MSFT to the Ballmer MSFT, as Gates was evil but at least he was smart. You look at Ballmer's reign and it just looks like what would happen if you put the PHB in charge of a multi-billion dollar company, just a slow mo train wreck. They can't afford to end up locked out of this crucial market, yet bonehead moves like this seriously hurt their chances, its just stupid.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Wow dude. You almost make it look as if Nokia is already bankrupt and is NOT the one finishing the sexiest Windows Phone 8 device (if not the sexiest smartphone overall) to come out in 2012
Surely the only Windows Phone 8 device...
Sticking with their OS is what's hurting Blackberry so much, so I don't think that was much of a choice either.
Actually, being slow to make Blackberry competitive is what's hurting them so much. If the new system is any good, they'll make a huge comeback.
The truth is that the mobile landscape got competitive as hell after Apple released the iPhone and the major tectonic shift that ensued was too much for big traditional companies like Nokia, Motorola and Sony/Ericsson to handle. LG and Samsung were smarter and switched to Android.
This much is true.
So as crappy as the decision to play along with MSFT is, it was kind of like the only choice they had.
That just makes no sense unless Elop has the management skills of a backwards teenager. All he had to do was merge all the Symbian departments, transfer much of the talent back to MeeGo, release the N9 and sell 5 million units, release a version with a keyboard and sell another 2 million units and the rest is obvious.
That argument about the ovi ecosystem being great and whatnot is a complete lie. My brother had a E62 and he liked his Nokia phones, eventually buying the newer models. I remember him showing me the ovi store and I remember when we compared that to the iOS App Store on my iPhone 3G. The difference was so great that it was pointless to discuss the merits of the two.
True enough.
This is the reason why I predict that eventually Microsoft will take over the extremely guarded approach of Apple and the fragmentation and some design issues of Android.
No, Apple is in a very privileged position, with hundreds of millions of effectively brainwashed customers. All they have to do is copy the obvious upgrades ie everything that is successful on another platform.
Apple will be there for a long time. So will Android. Windows Phone is unlikely to be able to compete at that level simply because of the branding. Hopefully Blackberry, Tizen and Jolla can find their niches.
Nokia was not a "successful company" that Elop took over and ran into the ground; Nokia was a "quickly failing company" that Elop has been trying to wrestle out of a nose dive. The alliance with Microsoft has changed the plummet from free fall, to a slightly shallower trajectory.
Economically Nokia wasn't in a nose dive when he took over, yes they were losing a market segment to iPhone/Android but they were still covering their costs through their massive feature phone sales and needed to reinvent itself to take back the high end market and start making profit again. I'll spare the discussion on whether Nokia could have salvaged one of their own systems or gone with Microsoft for another day, but no doubt the single biggest reason for their crash is how. When you're making a switch like that, you can either talk up the
new system (the last one was good, the new one is great) or you can talk down the old system. His "burning platform" memo basically told all their customers that they were idiots who still bought Nokia because they sold obsolete dog poop.
That basically killed all of Nokia's sales - even those who didn't really compete against iPhone/Android in the first place. It turned a market problem (we're losing the high end) into an economic crisis. They could have just introduced Microsoft as their partner for smart phones, instead it became an "abandon ship, nothing of salvage value to keep here" message to the market. Shallower trajectory, what are you smoking? Elop pointed the nose straight down, claiming they'll be able to pull up again before they hit the ground. He must be praying pretty hard for rave reviews of Windows 8 right now, otherwise he'll need even bigger miracles to do that.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Much as I think Nokia deserve to die, it's possible that Microsoft are paying them enough to make it worthwhile.
Keep in mind that Windows Mobile 6.x users also recently screwed over a few years ago by having their application marketplace shut down, even though many of them still had a year left in their two year phone contracts.
Buying a Windows Phone 7 phone right now would be downright foolish, because they aren't going to get a Windows 8 upgrade and the same problems with dwindling application support is likely to happen to them as well. Looking at past support of their legacy phones, it would make me think twice before buying a Windows 8 phone as well.
The N900 was big, clumsy and if you enabled WiFi, Skype and IM integration (which it did brilliantly, better than any other device) you would be lucky to get 12 hours of battery life out of it.
I get about 72 hours out of mine for that. Then again, it's gone through several OS updates including the community one.
The OS lacked portrait / landscape switching and responsibility was not good because of lack of memory.
The former's been fixed, the latter is only a problem with 2-3 big apps and has been somewhat improved by circumventing a couple of hardware bugs and switching to an alternate, more efficient instruction set: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84829
And that is why the N900 is so cool.
I have no general data to point to but I used Nokia phones almost exclusively for 10 years and have used Apple's for the last 3 and the Nokia stuff I had was no more or less durable than my Apple gear. I'm pretty sure Nokia's current smartphones will break at pretty much the same rate as iPhones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf1fRu9YgfE
Their problems have been on the product side. They have had no answer to the iPhone and Android phones. Their software has seriously sucked for a long time. Symbian was a dead end years ago and MeeGo wasn't going to get the job done. Nokia's problems are simply that they have had no phones anyone wanted for quite a while now. Their dumb phones were fine but they missed the smartphone revolution big time.
I guess you're oblivious to the N9. And many people won't give up their N900s.
So where's the drop in profits?
Market share is one factor to profit, but not the only. Chase market share and you're doomed like Nokia or GM were.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I guess you're oblivious to the N9.
How many people have you actually seen with an N9 in their hand. I haven't seen one in the wild yet and I do pay attention to this sort of thing. Almost no one cares, myself included. I don't have anything particularly against Nokia but they are playing catch up and so far have done a poor job of it.
And many people won't give up their N900s.
Which proves what exactly? A device that never sold particularly well is beloved by a tiny few devotees. You'll find some people who love all sorts of devices. I'm not even saying the device is a bad design. It just isn't what people actually want and it runs software that no one cares about.
My own experiences with Nokia devices is that they engage in checkbox design. My last Nokia smartphone had a browser and email and all the same features as the iPhone that was available at the time. However in practice they were so badly designed that they may as well have not bothered. The browser was horrific, the email clumsy, it required special headphones and installing music was a joke, etc. The software never got upgraded or improved. And the worst bit was the interface with my PC which was worse than useless. Their Ovi suite was just a mess. Nokia produced such crap devices that they're going to have to work hard to win me back as a customer. They can't just match Google or Apple, they have to be significantly better - and I doubt they can be.
Nice bit of editing, there, leaving off the point at the end. You can go through life believing what you will, but there are ways to manage a new platform that doesn't alienate buyers and put a strain on suppliers, and there are ways to mismanage a new platform that hurt suppliers, (see: last two quarters of Apple's 4s sales) sometimes driving them out of business (again, see osbourne). This exists; belief is optional.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
For that to be true MSFT would have had to plan that 1.- Nobody would buy WinPhone...okay I see that one, 2.- Nokia would leave them with a product to sell in that gap...which if they wouldn't buy WinPhone on Nokia a change of brand name sure as hell isn't gonna help move units, and 3.- The gap wouldn't just be absorbed by Google, with the CCC Android 2.x phones taking the low end while the more expensive Android and Apple units take the high.
So you see this is the problem I have when people describe Bill Gates kind of evil moves at MSFT....Ballmer just ain't that smart. I mean who was on stage bragging about his squirting Zune and not getting why he was being laughed at? Who spent a fuckton of money on products like Zune, Kin, Sidekick, etc, with no real plan on how to monetize the purchases? Who fucked over what few loyal WinPhone customers they had by not giving them Win 8 on their Win 7 phones and thus burnt the brand with many a customer? Who was fucking retarded enough to let IE get horribly fragmented in the vain hope that they could pretend its 2003 and they can actually get people to upgrade the OS just for a new version of IE?
Hell I could write a post the length of a Harry Potter book just pointing out the fucking DUMB moves that has gone on under Ballmer, his mobile "strategy" is a trainwreck, he is taking a shit on one of the few remaining cash cows MSFT has in order to push Windows onto...ARM? WTF? Are you shitting me? WTH would ANYBODY want Windows on a chip that...won't actually run Windows programs? Why, because they think the Win 3.x color scheme of Metro is just too damned sexy?
Actually I think one could argue that Nokia and MSFT are the same company, its just that MSFT has...for the moment at least..a couple of cash cows to keep its head above the water ATM but the simple fact is both companies seem directionless, completely devoid of any real innovation inside, waited until the market was already in the middle of a huge shift before simply reacting with half assed products, and both are acting like they have no real competition when in reality they have to bring their AAA game or get curbstomped which even Ray Charles could see the latter is exactly what is happening.
==================
The difference is that MS has deeper pockets and can afford to lose, MS may in the end hire away Nokia's top performers
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
One example: I worked for a young company that announced a major new OS release, a real departure, that was not compatible in any way with what had gone before. Apps written on the old would not run on the new, even with compatibility mode. Apps written for the new would not run on the old. The biggest change was the network stack, which was a huge departure, and the company decided that forcing customers and software vendors to cut over was more important than providing backwards compatibility. So this wasn't just compile and test, it required a major rewrite of anything that touched the network, which is in a sense everything.
The company announced this new OS a year ahead of time, and for reasons of their own announced they would stop renewing service contracts on the old product. Within three months, their biggest customers had moved to a different platform, and most new purchases were put on hold. The company went from $250M/year in sales the previous year to $70M the year they made the announcements. More than half the company was laid off. They managed to suck it up and somehow survive, (much of which involved putting stuff back in the new product that they had pulled out) but it was a massacre. And it didn't have to happen. The new release was managed arrogantly and without regard to existing customers or customers ready to purchase, and they paid the price.
I'm sorry if you don't understand "what that even means". Your job may someday rely on someone understanding it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Strategy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Belluzzo
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Well, given the vast majority of Android phones on the market aren't the latest version and aren't ever going to be upgraded, and the fact that Android is doing very nicely, I would say you're greatly exaggerating the importance of being up-to-date. I think you'd be far more accurate using "very few people" to refer to the number of people who know or care about staying up-to-date.
And truthfully, the Apple owners only care about staying up to date because it happens automatically and it gets lots of publicity.
On another note why is the clown writing the original article now and not in a month when he could have some numbers on win 8 success.
Because he doesn't want numbers on Win8 success, he wants numbers on Win7 failure, to support his anti-Nokia view and make him sound credible. Frankly, he's just another zealous douchebag, like half the posters on this site (in this very article) who wont be happy until Nokia files annual reports stating they're closing the doors and selling all the office equipment.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Uhhh...dude? You DO realize you just used the "we'll lose money on each unit and make it up on volume!" excuse, yes? the only place they had real share by 2010, which is when Elop got the job, was in feature phones where the RETAIL PRICE, not wholesale but retail price, is less than $20, most selling less than $15...there just ain't no money to be made on cheap shitty Tracphones anymore. Hell Walmart is selling a smartphone for $70 with their prepaid, the age of the dumbphones is gone and betting the future on dumbphones would be like betting on cassettes.
Agaion do I wish they would have brought him or somebody else in early enough they could have made a different call? Absolutely. If they would have killed the other two OSes and bet it all on Maemo in 07, or if they'd have bought WebOS? Then things might be VERY different. But nobody is making shit on Android but Samsung, their stocks and sales were cratering, their internal OSes didn't compete and couldn't gain mass market appeal with the N series selling less than 4 million units WORLDWIDE...there just wasn't any other call to make that would have done anything for the company, that's all.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Paying an extra 100GBP for 16GB of storage that you could buy on Amazon for less than 10GBP instantaneously stopped me from getting an iPhone or iPad irrespective of how good the hardware is. Apple are truly brilliant. They completely take the piss out of their customers and those customers will still lie in a fucking sleeping bag for 48 hours to be ripped off again. You can only shake your head at both the brilliance of the marketing and the sheer stupidity of the people buying into it.
I've used 'em all, but my least favourite is Android. This experience may be somewhat coloured by the fact that OEMs ship it on crappy hardware that makes it seem sluggish, bloated and just all around unpleasant to use, but neither Apple nor Microsoft allow this so from my experience they beat Android hands down.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
The optimism for Windows Phone in the press really does surprise me. Windows Phone 7 was really feature incomplete at launch but people made the excuse that it was their first Version. Ahhh No it was not, Microsoft had been making mobile OSs for a long time and Windows Phone 7 was Major version 7 and used the same kernel as Windows Mobile.
No, no it did not. Windows Mobile/Windows CE was a very different (and much shittier) beast. Windows Phone was closer to the FrankeNT kernel (bastardised NT like the Xbox runs).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
... and if Apple dropped their prices to reduce that margin, it would wipe out the rest of the market. This is what non-Apple users who complain about the margins don't realize: If they were cheaper they would be the only player in town.
I don't think that's true. I've owned both, and if they were the same price, I'd buy an Android phone... in fact I'd even pay a little bit more for it, because it's more flexible and a better fit for me. I have no doubt that Apple would see a resurgence in its market share if it were to lower its prices, but I strongly doubt that it would "wipe out" the rest of the market, and not only because of geeks like me. I know lots of people who've gone through the same comparison process and prefer Android.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
WP7.8 is the absolute epitome of troll face.
If you're a user you bought a phone which had a staggeringly poor selection of applications. Just when it looked like it was starting to get some traction Microsoft announced thant WP8 would be based on a new API, WinRT. WP7 Silverlight apps would run on WP8 but only in compatibility mode. What about XNA. Well some Microsoft bloggers have been talking up MonoGame but the actual details of what will happen are going to be kept secret until launch. I.e. no SDK.
So obviously at that point no one in the right mind is going to develop for WP7. If you go here
http://pages.appcelerator.com/Q32012AppceleratorIDCSurveyReport.html
You don't need to give it real data, just random junk for the name, phone number and email
Or this might work
http://www.appcelerator.com.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/Appcelerator-Report-Q3-2012-final.pdf
There's a graph of developer interest on WP7 on page 7. In Jan 2012 40% of developers were thinking of developing for WP7. By August when it had fallen to about 20%. The reason for that is that Microsoft had announced a new and better but incompatible platform.
This is not the first time this has happened. Development for Windows Mobile essentially stopped when people like Opera and Skype found out that WP7 would be incompatible with their WM6.5 code. Admittedly Microsoft bought Skype so sooner or later it will be an WP exclusive. But Microsoft didn't need to buy companies to make them support Windows - those companies did it because it sold well.
So if you're one of the schmucks that bought a WP7 phone what do you get? WP7.8. It's got the same start screen as WP8. but it can't run WP8 applications. People are going to develop apps for WP8 because that is the future.
So you've got a phone that looks a bit like the future until you try to install anything new on it, in which case it won't let you.
As someone who went from WM6.5 to Android it's actually funny how much of a catastrophe Windows Phone has been.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It's like something out of Doctor Who really. New leader takes over and behaves in an odd, aloof way. It turns out he's preparing the way for an alien invasion and when it arrives he is obsequious to his new 'masters'. Who proceed to round up the heroes.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Nokia has one (probably their last) shot : transform "featurephones" into "smartphones".
No, they have missed the boat, and nothing they can do will save them now. They may be bought up, but they had their chance when the mini-tablet (N800) and tablet-phone (N900) were handed to them on a plate and they simply couldn't see the potential.
Windows Phone 8 is going to the NT Kernel Phone used the CE Kernel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone#Windows_Phone_8
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
My word processor is Wordstar and it runs on CP/M-80 v2.2c (N8VEM). :-)
"There is nothing to suggest that changing course and going with in-house-customized Android would have somehow been a magical panacea"
Why does it have to be a "magical panacea"? How about "not as bad as the other alternatives?"
Going with Android---even if it were not customized in the slightest but just reasonably modern build from Google would have resulted in this thing which they really need, called "money".
"was going to magically correct their course and turn back to profitable, when pursuing that course had ALREADY put them well down the road to ruin?"
Well, if the problem were that they weren't sure about the mass-market appeal of Meego, that applies twice as much to Windows Phone. Maybe being a #2 in Android phones to Samsung wouldn't be so bad, and they can play with Meego and Windows 8 on the side.
It did look like Elop took an action which was optimal for Microsoft and not for Nokia.
Google was heavily in talks with Nokia around the time Nokia was looking for a new strategy - Elop is a MSFT boy though, so it was written in stone.
Meego is a poor copy of ios with no developers.
Nokia announced their phones about a fortnight before htc, and yes htc cost less but that's because it's made of much cheaper components. Also Microsoft is using htc because they have a more vanilla version of win8, if they used nokia people might expect wireless charging, city lens, pureview and all the other extras nokia gives on every windows phones.
Windows phone is defiantly more advanced than ios and windows phone 8 is potentially better than android (more libraries and compatibility, even if you can't cover your desktop image with dodgy apps).
Lumia 920 is an awesome phone. What are you talking about it cannot even run windows 8 (youtube lumia 920 and you'll see it work), that is the os it's being sold with? (it's running the dual core s4 at 1.5ghz which uses semi a15 architecture like apple a6). If your too biased (or stupid) to realize it beats the competition is almost every area then it's your own loss.
Is it that hard to understand that not everyone is happy with either ios's simplicity or androids bugs and tracking. Note, i currently use android nexus s running jellybean, but i'm defiantly tempted by the lumia 920, and some internet troll won't change that.
Rocket Surgeon.
Almost right.
The problem for Nokia is that they've got almost all of their eggs in the one basket.
Before Elop, Nokia's strategy was massive diversification: a phone for every segment in every market. Elop, like Ballmer, became hypnotised by Apple's success in the anglophone markets. Elop decided he had to compete with Apple, in Apple's home market, using Apple's strategy, and that everything had to be sacrificed to this idea. So hypnotised was he that he completely ignored the two most important facts of Nokia's existence: that Nokia Mobile's biggest markets were in Eurasia, and that the big growth markets in mobile are in Asia.
Thanks to his obsession. Elop has systematically crippled Nokia Mobile's ability to compete in its key markets by removing product lines. Now it's left with S40 dumbphones, Windows 7, and very little else.
Paid by Microsoft to take a dive
I think there's an element of truth there, though I don't think it was paid my MS to take a dive, per se. I think the board was manipulated to hire Elop who essentially was brought in to make Nokia an MS Platform. It was ripe for that kind of takeover. IMHO Elop is still working for MS.
It's not "mediocre." I defy you to walk into a store and actually play around with a WP7 device, to get some real experience with it, rather than just living in the Slashdot echo chamber. Yeah yeah, I expect cracks about "I can't even find them." But seriously -- judge the product on its merits. The interface is actually pretty damn good.
There are two problems with Windows Phone. 1) The apps market is tiny, compared to iPhone. 2) The poor perception / reputation. But the product *itself* is pretty good. I use a WP7.5 device (Samsung Focus), and I'm very happy with it. Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft employee. However, I have a choice, and I choose Windows Phone. And I plan on buying a Lumia 920 when they're out.
I have used them actually. We did a three way test here, iphone/android/w7. The phones were OK, nothing to rave about. 90%+ of the staff went with apple, primarily due to you point 1, the apps. The other 10% chose android. The w7 phones aren't "bad", as such, they just don't "wow", to unseat iphone/android from dead dead last they have to be fantastic, and they are not. I personally like using the iphone best, even though I personally have some reservations about the Apple walled garden.
So anyone who proposed such a strategy without taking these factors just wouldn't be all that smart, then?
Hmmm ... Explain the problem to me again? :)
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
It wasn't the board, it was some US based institutional investors who also saw an ailing MSFT (WP had little interest from platform builders and as for the rest, they were hardly high-growth now) and thought they could put the two together. If major shareholders tell you that they are unhappy, your board tends to listen. The issue is that Nokia had never bothered that much with the US market. They had some stuff there, but mostly they were selling to the rest of the world. Nokia was having major issues with their MeeGo project, but their dumb and feature phones were still selling. Yes, smartphones were a weak point but were less of a problem than the R&D costs. They even had the high-end sorted with the Vertu brand (now sold off). Their US funders didn't really get it.
At the time, I would have said, persist with MeeGo at a lower staffing level but roll out an Android phone. People may complain that the market was crowded, but Nokia had a very good hardware rep, both on the RF modules and overall quality.
Now, it would be more difficult and it all comes back to the investors. Who now would want Nokia as anything other than a long-term gamble? There is that spin-off that is trying to launch a MeeGo phone. If they become successful, then of course, bring them back into the Nokia fold, but that would still need some serious strong-arming of their investors.
See my journal, I write things there
Yes, Nokia had plant in Germany and Eastern Europe as well as in Finland. Now all closed.
See my journal, I write things there
Which is why I just don't get it. You FINALLY start to get a little uptick so...you fuck your loyal customers in the ass, depreciate your API so the phone is now worthless, and then just to let a big ripping fart right into the face of those loyal customers AND Nokia you announce this months before the phone comes out, thus making sure that all those WinPhone 7 units will rot in warehouses. i looked online and you still see retailers trying to sell these things for $300+...how long before they realize that MSFT fucked 'em and their inventory isn't worth a hundred bucks?
If they would have just offered a cheap trade in plan people could still be buying the WinPhone 7 units, upgrade them to 7.8, and when they were ready switch to Win 8 without getting reamed. instead the retailers get stuck with stock they can't move, the users get stuck with a contract on a phone that won't have shit for apps and has ZERO resale, the developers that have ANY fucking sense at all will avoid Win 8 like the plague, because what is to stop them from announcing WinPhone 9 in 6 months and making all their efforts worthless?
I swear to God you couldn't make the MSFT "mobile strategy" any more of a train wreck if you tried. this is why me and the other shops stocked up on Win 7 and will be avoiding Win 8 like the clap, because its obvious their plans for the entire platform change from minute to minute and I'm betting its Vista all over again. Burning all those mobile users was just the rotten shit icing on a foul dead cat carcass cake.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If you can run with three broken legs I'll be very impressed.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, my point is that 21MHz talked about being acquired by Google as somehow a bad thing. I bet both Nokia stockholders and Nokia employees would have loved to have been acquired by Google.
Hm. I think you read the parent comment differently than I did. I read it as saying the dude predicted it correctly, but then, so did the rest of the world. There was nothing about the consequences of Nokia's decision that was not immediately obvious to anyone even slightly familiar with that field of business.
In other words, Ahonen is not an idiot but then, a genius was not needed to get the prediction right.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I think he is saying ... HTC has been a succesful company over these past 6 years and they will also be producing handsets for lower cost and just as high quality as Nokia's handsets are expected to be. Yet HTC has not put all their eggs in one basket but is still able to perform better as a business (i.e. maintain sales and see growth).
It is true that Samsung is trouncing over HTC in the very short term right now but I do not expect this position to stay as-is, HTC will fight back after working out what the problems. Especially when they broaden their available OS on handsets through WP. Maybe Samsung is getting better marketing right now especially in light of Apple's actions, any publicity is good publicity right!
The thing is I can not see Nokia making a useful recovery many "business" people prefer their iDevices now they have already become entrenched in business now. The Microsoft and Nokia partnership looks perfect on paper for this market sector but I think they have been too slow to capture it. The only hope is in these users become disillusioned with their iDevices and wanting to try something different, but I suspect many of them will go back to iDevice right after as WP8 won't actually be that great and their children won't think it is cool enough phone.
I can not at all say (in my opinion) that Nokia has been a sucessful company these past 6 years, I can't find a measure by which to make such a claim. I've purchased Nokia's year after year since 2000 but the E6-00 is likely to be my last. I own an N900 and would have been an owner an N950 or N9 if they had only released it via offical support with warranty channels in my country, not grey import only (9110, 9210, 3210, 6230, 6630, E71, E72, N900, E6-00) to name the models I remember owning. Farewell Nokia I'm happy to let other people be "first movers" on your new platform and tell us all how great it is, but it is going to take a couple of generations of handset and good reviews for me to consider it seriously. After looking a Win8 on desktop I think you have much work to do yet.
I always love this argument.... Why do you *want* a corporation to be making money out of you??
Whoa. Citation please? You can't make an assertion like that without some kind of evidence.
If you're referring to the Surface tablet, that's Windows 8 RT (a slightly shrunk down version of the Windows 8 desktop OS), not Windows Phone 8 (a smartphone OS). This is in contrast to Apple's strategy which is to have the smartphone and tablet share the same OS, distinct from the desktop OS.
I don't think acquisitions were on the table - it was more trying to get them on board the Android juggernaut. Google hit their ceiling at something like $6bn though. Beyond that it wasn't worth it. But yes, I understand what you were getting at and I agree that the shareholders would have preferred Google if they had been given background information on MSFT (ie. "everything" they touch dies).
Well, my point is that 21MHz talked about being acquired by Google as somehow a bad thing.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. My point was, even the company recently acquired by Google had its reasons not to offer an upgrade from Gingerbread on some of their phones, even despite their earlier promise to do so.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
That was of course not the case. Are you really so deluded that you think they were selling thousands of units of each model below cost?
The optimism for Windows Phone in the press really does surprise you? Why? It may be distinctly mediocre, but it is backed by massive advertising and connections.
People said this 2 years ago when WP7 first came out. 1 year ago when the first Nokia WP7 phones came out and 6 months ago when Nokia's flagship WP7 phone came out.
That's an issue with the charger not the connector.
Profits on Android phones can be measured in the $5-10 per unit range, not the $150-350 *PROFIT* per device that the iPhone has.
Who cares what the monthly sales figures of Android are? You could fling them out the cargo door of a C-130 over Somalia and it'd be no less profitable for the phone manufacturers.
You know it really cracks me up when people say shit like this, "people buy Android phones because they're cheap" and then you bring up devices like the Galaxy S3 which is sold at the same price as the iPhone and was outselling it for most of the year and they go red in the face and say "IT'S MADE BY SAMSUNG IT DOESN'T COUNT".
No why the fuck are Samsung's WP7 devices not selling at all?
You seen to know different teenagers than I do.
I'd hope so. I mean, slashdot has an international reach and all that. What are the odds?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Samsung shipped a lot of S3s to retailers but they aren't actually saying how many of them sold. I have only seen three in the wild, approximately one for every seven hundred iPhones I have seen.
Samsung shipped a lot of S3s to retailers but they aren't actually saying how many of them sold. I have only seen three in the wild, approximately one for every seven hundred iPhones I have seen.
Ah yes, the old shipped but not sold bullshit, here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2203312/samsung-brags-that-it-has-sold-20-million-galaxy-s3-handsets
Also, their sales are increasing, not decreasing:
http://www.itproportal.com/2012/10/04/iphone-5-launch-and-apple-patent-trial-boosted-galaxy-s3-sales/
I think you should spend some time reading Tomi's blog before spouting such nonsense. He does a GREAT job of explaining in detail that Nokia was most definitely NOT "in free fall." Take a look at this graph from the very post that this Slashdot post linked to. Or this one. Or this. (The blue line on top is Nokia, as Tomi explained in a long, rambling post earlier this year.)
That sure doesn't look like a company in free fall to me! Far from it. It looks instead like a company that is comfortably atop its market and still showing excellent growth.
Yes, sure, 20 million S3s sitting around collecting dust in warehouses. Samsung never says how many of their phones make it into the hands of consumers, and both your links actually avoid talking about this.
If you look at where the second article gets their facts, it's from an analytics package included mainly in Android software. The only apps running Localytics on iOS are from a few worthless TV networks.
You're correct, we did read it differently :) I read it as pretty much making fun of Ahonen.
While I wholeheartedly agree that the consequences of Elop's "strategy" were quite obvious, Ahonen did more than speculate - he tried (and, for the most part, succeeded) to back up his statements. He provided hard data, several possible market share collapse forecasts (which turned out to be faily accurate - much closer than the projections issued by any other ratings agency), and several ways to try and fix Nokia's decline.
That's why I was a bit miffed - I dislike other people's actual work to be brushed aside with a shallow joke. I know this kind of belittling "humor" is endemic, but it's representative for the pernicious "bah, big deal, I could've done the same thing if I'd only bothered to work at it" mindset.
"Any one with objective mind will appreciate what Microsoft has done."
Bzzzzt wrong. All Nokia should have focused on is what consumers would appreciate, and they are most certainly not objective minds....
All the arguments about android being too 'me too' conveniently ignore the massive handicaps of WP adoption - low single digit user base, poor carrier / channel relations, MS being MS esp in mobile space.... and also overlook the fact that android would have let Nokia leverage their traditional brand instantly (I don't know if you're American, but in case you are, prior to 2009 or so, Nokia was seen as the IBM of the mobile phone world by the entire world barring the USA and possibly Japan) - something you could trust.