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Nokia Turns To Android To Regain Share In Emerging Markets

Posted by timothy on from the reaction-time dept.

puddingebola writes "Nokia is preparing to release its first Android phone, as the lost market share in emerging markets from the death of Symbian has never been recovered. Windows Phone could never be adapted to the entry level devices that have driven growth in these markets, necessitating the move. From the article, 'Nokia was once the king of cellphones in emerging markets. But it has lost ground because it was slow to respond to Android's popularity in many countries. In India, where Nokia's Symbian-powered phones held a big share of cellphone sales just a few years ago, Android was installed on 93% of new smartphones shipped there last year, according to estimates from research firm IDC.'"

14 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. And another pointless phone by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, who's going to buy a Nokia Android phone when you know they've been bought by Microsoft and won't care one bit about supporting it? Same as the Maemo/MeeGo based phones that Nokia released after the Nokia/Microsoft deal was announced, it's stillborn. And unlike those who might have some unique features this is yet another Android phone that you can get from other companies, so it makes even less sense. Nokia must be running out of feet to shoot itself in.

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    1. Re:And another pointless phone by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously, who's going to buy a Nokia Android phone when you know they've been bought by Microsoft and won't care one bit about supporting it?

      Possible customers include anyone who doesn't follow mobile phone news very closely. Which is most people. Tech business news is not exactly gobbled up by the public. Most slashdotters won't buy, but mobile nerds aren't common. AND I might buy one if the hardware's nice enough and I can root it. What do I care about support for it if I can just install cyanogenmod?

    2. Re:And another pointless phone by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm guessing they're not going to waste enormous effort on this to produce a me-too Android phone that they have to discontinue. The relationship between Nokia and Microsoft being what it is, I suspect this is a face-saving way Microsoft has of adopting Android in some shape or form.

      Something the summary didn't highlight: this isn't GMS/Android (GMS - Google Mobile Services, the apps and infrastructure that make up Google Play and that are bundled with most modern Android devices), Nokia are building this from AOSP in much the same way as Amazon have with the Kindle Fire version of Android. It will have no Google Play Store nor any of the underlying Google non-AOSP infrastructure, and apps written for GMS (an increasing body of work that grows by the day) will need a fair amount of work to make them available in the Nokia app store.

      Windows Phone hasn't exactly been a roaring success. Maybe it should have been, perhaps Windows 8's failure to take off has hurt it, but it hasn't been, and at some point Microsoft is going to look for options. I think it's a pretty major change of direction to jump on a third party product and tweak it for their own needs, but it's not impossible or unheard of - Microsoft tried to do that with Java. Hey, they even had Xenix once. With the exceptions of Linux and Busybox, AOSP has the kind of FOSS licensing Microsoft isn't scared of.

      And Amazon's made a success of the strategy. There are only two popular alternatives to iOS, one is Google's Android, the other is Amazon's.

      If nothing else, allowing Nokia to use a version of Android that's under Nokia/Microsoft's control lets Microsoft buy time.

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    3. Re:And another pointless phone by Sockatume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As an S60 fan from their glory days, this is a traditional Nokia mistake. You'd be amazed at the incredible products Nokia has managed to render obsolete or irrelevant by competition between different business units.

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      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    4. Re:And another pointless phone by Lisias · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They had a rough go with Qt/Maemo, then they changed course, to a dead end street.

      I have a hilarious history from the time I used to work to a Nokia partner. :-)

      Nokia had given us a free QT for Mobile workshop for our team. We attended the workshop, and we enjoyed it very much.

      However, roughly one year later, someone on Nokia had called us bitterly complaining why in hell our shop didn't released any APP using QT yet.

      Our answer? "Because YOU had hired us to develop APPs for you, and YOU had NOT asked for it!"

      The funny thing is that in that year, we were called to develop APPs (or prototypes) on J2ME, Symbian, Android, iOS and even BADA (serious! I made a APP for BADA!! Honest!). But nobody on Nokia had asked us for anything using QT.

      Go figure it out - I couldn't.

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      Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
    5. Re:And another pointless phone by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      From what I've heard from ex-Nokia people, it wasn't just senior management that lacked direction. They had internal teams all developing complete stacks in isolation and competing for resources. Elop wasn't completely wrong: making them all focus on a single platform was probably the only thing that could have saved Nokia, and Windows Phone wasn't a completely ludicrous choice, as they did want something to differentiate themselves from the competition and there weren't any other significant Windows Phone vendors to compete with.

      Pushing ahead with Linux + Qt might have worked, but only if they'd fired about 90% of middle management and reorganised the teams. Even then, there would likely have been a lot of resentment from the various teams that had their work discarded in favour of another's. Remember that Nokia didn't have a Linux + Qt platform, they had several, all with mutually incompatible frameworks built atop Qt, none of which was compellingly better than the others.

      It's a shame that the Qt on EKA2 project was killed. The EKA2 kernel was a much better fit for mobile devices than Linux (it still amazes me after all of Google's investment how few of its features Android has), and Qt would have given them the base of a modern development environment that would have competed well with other platforms.

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      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Microsoft caused it ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But it has lost ground because it was slow to respond to Android's popularity in many countries.

    And just how much of this can be laid at the feet of Microsoft?

    Because once Stephen Elop got in there, he took what was a profitable company and turned it into a dog by changing their focus.

    Microsoft doesn't care about Nokia, they care about having a division which makes Microsoft phones.

    That Nokia is now realizing they might need to embrace Android to turn things around means it's going to be interesting to see when Microsoft finishes buying them. Because there's no way Redmond is going to allow them to make phones running anything but Microsoft stuff.

    Microsoft has been nothing but bad for the viability of Nokia, and I don't see that changing in the future.

    Because, really, these are appalling numbers:

    During Elop's tenure, Nokia annual revenues fell 40% from 41.7 Billion Euros per year to 25.3 Billion Euros per year. Nokia profits fell 92% from 2.4 Billion Euros per year to 188 Million Euros per year. Nokia handset sales fell 40% from 456 million units per year to 274 million units per year. Nokia share price which was at 7.12 Euros on the day Elop was hired, had fallen to 81% to a bottom level of 1.44 Euros two years later, after which it began trading at 4.14 Euros, up 36% on the day.

    Elop was either grossly incompetent, or was there to lower the price of the company for the take over. Because he sure as hell failed to actually grow the company or do anything good for it.

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    1. Re:Microsoft caused it ... by Sockatume · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nokia's revenues were already falling dramatically; they peaked in 2007:

      http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...

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      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  3. ...and the high end? by Richard_J_N · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If I can get a high-end Lumia and have Android, that would be amazing.

  4. Hey Nokia.... by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do it right. your flagship phones, rip that garbage Windows OS off of them and install Android. I would LOVE your 900megapixel phone with a nice clean Android 4.4 on it.

    you could get it to market in 30 days, no hardware to change. Want it faster?? contact the Android hackers and tell them how to unlock the bootloader and give them full details on the hardware. You will have android ported to it within the week.

    You will INSTANTLY gain market share.

    --
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    1. Re:Hey Nokia.... by Type44Q · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Want it faster?? contact the Android hackers and tell them how to unlock the bootloader and give them full details on the hardware

      Easier said than done? Seriously, with the amount of 3rd-party IP you're likely talking about, six to twelve months sounds more like it...

  5. Re:Hmmm. by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well, it's not going to work well to capture emerging markets. Most windows phones are pretty high end, and not in the price range of consumers in emerging markets.

    Microsoft hasn't exactly cornered the high end market either...

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  6. Re:Which goes to show how much you know... by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Android's super-open, it just turns out people are more interested in the idea of having Google services on a phone than in Android itself. And that part is certainly not open. If you want to find your own supplier for maps, email, calendar, and browser, then you can launch your own Android gizmo; Microsoft has all those things.

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    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  7. Re:Actually, it IS that easy by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't understand. They have a completely open source operating system. Why should that automagically give everyone unrestricted rights to all of Google's services?

    Just because I needed to buy a copy of a program doesn't make Linux any less free and open source. And by extension there are several other Android platforms out there which don't have any of Google's Services including the app store, (see Amazon, B&N etc)

    It hasn't moved any functionality out of Android. Just because the Google Play Music app exists doesn't mean the old app has stopped working. Just because Google Cards is now the default search on their phones, doesn't mean the old Google Search stopped, and by extension just because Google is forcing man+dog to the G+ platform won't mean that the SMS app suddenly stops sending SMSes. In fact I'm willing to bet that the apps will happily interact.