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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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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
... 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
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.
OK, you didn't read it yet, here you go: The story of MeeGo.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
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!
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
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?
From the Article "three pillars, one on the dumbphones unit (as before); one on Symbian but one that would be run down (changing from before) and one new leg, that built on Windows Phone, which would fully replace the Symbian leg over time - and more - would even take some of the business from the dumbphones unit."
Basically
The First part is saying how Nokia was doing great before Elop...In fact great up until the Burning Platform Memo. Where basically Elop said what Nokia was producing was garbage, and they should go for the three pillar stratergy.
The Second part is about the three pillars, Dumbphones(Keep em), Symbian Smartphones gracefully being replaced by Windows Phones, and about Nokias graph of the plan in graphical form with detailed explanation.
The Third part is showing how well this plan went sown (Spoiler now well) Explaining each portion of the graph from plan to execution.
The Fourth part is basically justifying getting rid of the Stratergy and Elop. The Twist at the end is that even though The strategy is not only failing Nokia's current stratergy is to keep following it!?
The short version is you should really read the article before posting here, the longer version is its an invaluable blog if you have the vaguest interest in Mobile Phones.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
They are seriously good now, too. It's only Android fanbois who refuse to see it, because Nokia devices do not run the One True Platform.
They are a shadow of their former self in every way, their hardware is less impressive than it was years ago!! As for Nokia choosing Android, they are saying so because Android holds a market share of 70% of the market and has 1.3million activations a day...and they could go android tomorrow!!! The reality is Nokia went Microsoft exclusive and it has predictably turned out truly awful!!! But And5roid could be Meego, WebOS, Something else just as easy.
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
And your WP7 apps don't get to come along
BZZZT! WRONG!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you're plugging in a cable while you're driving, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!
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.
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.
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.
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)
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 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.
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
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.
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.