'Microsoft Lumia' Will Replace the Nokia Brand

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'Microsoft Lumia' Will Replace the Nokia Brand

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @03:35AM from the not-many-years-from-dominance dept.

jones_supa writes The last emblems of Nokia are being removed from Microsoft products. "Microsoft Lumia" is the new brand name that takes their place. The name change follows a slow transition from Nokia.com over to Microsoft's new mobile site, and Nokia France will be the first of many countries that adopt "Microsoft Lumia" for its Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts. Microsoft has confirmed to The Verge that other countries will follow the rebranding steps in the coming weeks. Nokia itself continues as a reborn company focusing on mapping and network infrastructure services.

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Recognition by msobkow · 2014-10-21 03:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

Nokia has more brand name recognition, so of course we won't use that.
Idjits.

--
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
1. Re:Recognition by sunderland56 · 2014-10-21 03:47 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  It's not exactly the name recognition, it's the name's reputation.
  Nokia: well recognized, well liked brand with positive reception everywhere.
  Microsoft: well recognized, universally hated brand, regular finalist in "most hated company" competitions.
  Marketing 101 says: they chose the wrong name.
2. Re:Recognition by binarylarry · 2014-10-21 03:52 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Does this make anyone feel bad for Steve Ballmer?
  The whole time I've assumed he was the reason Microsoft seemed to be run by idiots.
  But with this and their other recent moves, Microsoft seems to be run by a gaggle of idiots. A flock even.
  
  --
  Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
3. Re:Recognition by i+kan+reed · 2014-10-21 04:01 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The only error in your post is that most people can't bring themselves to care enough about Microsoft anymore to go as far as hating them. Say what you want about 95 through early XP era blue-screens, they were recognizable.
  Now, though, windows is basically synonymous with white collar office work, and not a lot else. A lot of people don't even use it at home for internet browsing anymore.
4. Re:Recognition by msobkow · 2014-10-21 04:05 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Then they were fools. The whole point of buying an established company is to buy the brand as well as the factories. Anyone can build a factory, usually for no more than it would cost to buy someone else out.
  
  --
  I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
5. Re:Recognition by gstoddart · 2014-10-21 04:11 · Score: 2
  
  Intellectual property ... market share ... product offerings ... future company direction.
  Maybe they weren't the fools you think they were?
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
6. Re:Recognition by Lunix+Nutcase · 2014-10-21 04:16 · Score: 2
  
  They didn't buy the company. They bought some of its divisions and IP.
7. Re:Recognition by sunderland56 · 2014-10-21 04:31 · Score: 2
  
  They didn't buy the company. They bought some of its divisions and IP.
  They bought the phone division...... you mean there were other divisions of Nokia?
8. Re:Recognition by pushing-robot · 2014-10-21 04:31 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  The correct word is "bungle". A bungle of idiots.
  Coincidentally, the same collective noun is used for managers. Microsoft seems to have both in great abundance, as well as a muddle of analysts and a quandary of advisors.
  
  --
  How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
9. Re:Recognition by jeffmflanagan · 2014-10-21 04:36 · Score: 2
  
  Lumia: Recognized as nice phones with excellent cameras.
10. Re:Recognition by serviscope_minor · 2014-10-21 05:13 · Score: 2
  
  Microsoft seems to have both in great abundance,
  In fairness, so does/did Nokia.
  Remember when Nokia were at or at least only a little past their peak? When everyone had a Nokia phone and pitied (rightly) those poor souls on non-nokia phones which were hilariously bad to use. When it was one of the most well recognised and liked brands in the world.
  Well, they decided to launch things like maps and so on.
  And for some reason they decided to launch under the brand "Ovi".
  Whey the hell would you squander one of the best brands in the world and spend millions trying to create one not nearly so well recognised?
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
11. Re:Recognition by unrtst · 2014-10-21 07:35 · Score: 2
  
  Name one large-scale email system that you fully control and is fully featured, has apps on all platforms, and is well-known by a lot of system admins.
  (bold added by me)
  If you replace "email" with some other term (ex. "groupware", or something that encompasses email, calendaring, contacts, etc), then you'd be a lot closer to having a point. There are still others, but that solution space is smaller when you demand those items be integrated in many ways. Just "email"... the list of excellent alternatives is too long.
12. Re:Recognition by UnknowingFool · 2014-10-21 09:58 · Score: 2
  
  Except MS didn't get Nokia IP. MS is licensing Nokia patents.
  
  Microsoft Corporation and Nokia Corporation today announced that the Boards of Directors for both companies have decided to enter into a transaction whereby Microsoft will purchase substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, license Nokia’s patents, and license and use Nokia’s mapping services.
  
  --
  Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Brilliant! by ArhcAngel · 2014-10-21 03:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Throw away a brand synonymous with durability and communication and replace it with...ZUNE II !
What could possibly go wrong?

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"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
1. Re:Brilliant! by dontbemad · 2014-10-21 04:04 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I'm fairly certain that in the layman's mind, that same "durability and communication" that the brand name Nokia implies conjures images of the old Nokia brick phones. While those certainly were durable and useful, they are also very archaic. Nokia might represent good, durable technology, but that is meaningless when the general public perceives it as "old". In an age where 2 years between new phones begins to sound like an eternity, a phone manufacturer would probably do well not to let the public still think of its main product as a monochrome, extremely basic cellphone from the early 2000s.
Re:Not a very exciting name by CRCulver · 2014-10-21 04:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

In a number of European languages, "lumi-" has resonances of "light, brightness". Perhaps the name won over a then-Finnish company for its association with snow (Finnish lumi), another bright, pure thing. You can always find something in a product name to critique, and I don't think that one guy saying "Well, it rhyhmes with gloom" (a word rarely used outside of native-speaker English anyway) would have been much dissuasion.
ZUNE by ron_ivi · 2014-10-21 04:07 · Score: 2

I love how Zune has now become a word for Microsoft screwing a partner.
https://gigaom.com/2006/07/22/...

Microsoft Partners, You Been Zunked
More on that some other day, but the real and perhaps the only story in the news is that Microsoftâ(TM)s partners â" from device makers to music services â" just got double crossed by the company they choose to believe in. I like to call it Zun-ked (a tiny take off on Punked.)
Re:Not a very exciting name by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 04:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

In Spanish "lumia" is an old word for prostitute. It is not of common use but it shows like that in the dictionary: http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=lumia
Re:The holy trinity ... by Nemyst · 2014-10-21 04:20 · Score: 3, Funny

Feels like they remembered the mantra but not that the last step was supposed to apply to competitors.
lumia... by roc97007 · 2014-10-21 04:27 · Score: 3, Funny

"Microsoft Lumia. Because it will function as a flashlight."

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
1. Re:lumia... by itzly · 2014-10-21 04:54 · Score: 2
  
  And Microsoft had tuned the OS so that rebooting the phone only takes 2.3 seconds, which means you don't have to wait very long if you want to turn the flashlight on.
2. Re:lumia... by roc97007 · 2014-10-21 06:54 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  And Microsoft had tuned the OS so that rebooting the phone only takes 2.3 seconds, which means you don't have to wait very long if you want to turn the flashlight on.
  ...but they reboot in 2.3 seconds by restoring a state image from the previous session. A full reboot after BSOD will still take 23 minutes.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Re:Which no one will buy by TheRaven64 · 2014-10-21 04:34 · Score: 2

Microsoft poisoned them killing the company
Bullshit. Nokia mismanaged itself to death by promoting infighting and sabotaging other product groups (rather than competing with other companies) until adopting Windows Phone and killing internal OS development was the least bad option.

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I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:Which no one will buy by Uecker · 2014-10-21 04:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

The numbers seem to imply other wise. Profitable with increasing sales before and loss-making and collapsing sales after declaring Symbian dead and switching to Windows Phone. In don't doubt that there was infighting which delayed things a lot, but the awesome N9 and its brother (with keyboard) were ready before Lumia - even when it took a long time, they had their own modern smartphone OS which got a lot of praise. And then there was always Android as an option. Switching to Windows Phone which was already loosing on the market was simply the most stupid thing to do.
Re:Not a very exciting name by ShanghaiBill · 2014-10-21 05:21 · Score: 2

You can always find something in a product name to critique
There is marketing research that shows that people remember words with hard consonants better. So a word like "Nokia" or "Kodak", is in some ways a measurably better brand than a word like "Lumia". Of course, the name wasn't enough to keep Kodak from going bankrupt.
Re:Microsoft... by PPH · 2014-10-21 12:13 · Score: 2

Micro... soft...
Small electronic devices that bend easily. No, wait. That's Apple's product line.

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Have gnu, will travel.