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Can Nokia Save Itself?

Posted by timothy on from the with-enough-phones-you-can-put-out-any-fire dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "When ex-Microsoft executive Stephen Elop took the reins of Nokia back in 2011, he memorably compared the Finnish phone-maker to a burning old platform in the North Sea. 'I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform,' he wrote in a widely circulated memo. 'And, we have more than one explosion — we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fueling a blazing fire around us.' Elop suggested competitors such as Apple and Google had 'poured flames on our market share,' with the damage accelerated by Nokia's failure to embrace big trends. His solution: abandon Nokia's homegrown operating systems, including Symbian, in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone. Nokia's Windows Phones managed to attract some significant buzz at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, and early sales seemed solid. But now there are signs the situation could be deteriorating."

6 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. No of course not, Nokia is dead by gelfling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can't 'fix' not having a clue how to save yourself. You can't 'fix' looking for other people's money to help you do the same things wrong some more. Nokia is a dead man walking like HP phones, Palm, Symbian and others. And make no mistake, Windows phones will once again be killed off by Microsoft soon with or without Nokia. MS has no stamina, and their credit, they quickly recognize the instances where they themselves have failed to promote something.

  2. Can Nokia Save Itself? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Short Answer:
    No.
    Long Answer:
    Nooooooooooooooo.

  3. Not with those decision making skills by grasshoppa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sorry, but you have two major players in the smart phone market, along with a third minor player, and you bet the bank on a non-entity in the market? That stinks of a hail mary. By itself, that is less than encouraging. Their choice of MS, given MS's history in the mobile arena, should immediately call into question the sanity of the decision makers. Or at the very least, their bias.

    Were I trying to save the company, I would have thrown my lot in with a line of android devices which had distinctive features. Maybe aimed at the mobile market. Hell, maybe I would have even approached RIM about developing a secure platform for corporate users to pair with my hardware devices.

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
  4. Meego by Jack+Malmostoso · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The more I use Android the more I LOVE my N9 the more I hate Nokia for killing it.
    I know there is a lot of politics involved (not last the usual OSS community circle jerking) but the capabilities of that OS over anything else are amazing.

    1. Re:Meego by Frekja · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mod parent up! The decision to EOL Symbian sort of makes sense, though it was totally stupid to say so. The decision to axe Meego was stupidity in the extreme. The N9 swipe user interface is so transparently superior to WP7/8, Android, and iOS that this alone should have told Nokia to keep Meego alive. It also does all that normal back-end stuff (bluetooth OBEX push, actual multitasking, etc) that WP still doesn't do. And the N9 won loads of awards and tech blog / reviewer love. I'm not a developer, so don't understand if Qt makes it as easy to port things as Nokia implied, but if apps are the measure of the ecosystem, it's hardly better than WP.

  5. Re:yes it can by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So the solution is to jump into a super-saturated, undifferentiated market with reckless abandon.. With a worse product that's doesn't play in the established ecosystem?

    Nokia died the day it hired that hatchet man from MS. I said it then, I say it now.

    MS is there to rape and pillage Nokia's IP. They're using the company as a testbed for development, and will throw it's corpse in the ditch when they're done.