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Nokia Wants To Make Phones Again
An anonymous reader writes: Nokia has indicated that it's interested in returning to the phone-making business. In a post on the company's website, spokesman Robert Morlino explains that although they sold their devices business to Microsoft last year, they're still interested in the phone industry. They're not capable of building their own devices, and it looks unlikely that they'll be able to build a new hardware section in a reasonable time frame. Instead, they're looking for a partner to build the actual phones (and support them). Nokia would contribute design and branding. All that said, their deal with Microsoft prevents them from getting back into the phone business until Q4 2016, so we won't be seeing Nokia phones soon either way.
...it will be difficult for them to restart, since they're already finnish.
By 2017 the brand name of Nokia will probably have as much worth as the IBM Simon does to cell phone consumers.
Would the Nokia "design and branding" actually still be viewed as a net contributor to product value?? I've never had a Nokia phone myself, but I always had the perception that they haven't been any good for a while (Windows 8 for Phones probably contributing to that impression...)
The problem most manufactures are having is how do you distinguish your slab of glass from someones else slab of glass? If you held up a motorola next to a samsung and didnt know which brand looked like what could you guess?
Seriously, WTF happened? Well Microsoft happened we all know that. The way forward was clear when the iPhone and then Android came about - either improve Symbian or move to Android. They could at least have been where Samsung is now as the de facto Android manufacturer and done a far better job.
The past 4 times I was in Africa, I'd just buy a Nokia phone, and local number and I'd be able to roam and talk without an issue.
With a 3G modem, I even transferred funds from one account to another in the middle of the Kalahari.
They made great low cost and perfectly functional phones.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I really cannot imagine why they would want to get back into the business.
There are only two companies making substantial profits in cell phones (Apple and Samsung with Apple making by far the largest profit. Samsung makes pretty much all the profit in Android with nobody else really even being a player. Nokia would bring nothing to the table that I can see to change that equation. Their brand is nothing special today. They would be just another me-too Android phone with nothing uniquely valuable to offer. Basically they are hoping some suck.., err... partner will license their brand in the (probably vain) hope that it would set them apart. This is a near zero risk strategy to Nokia but it has a near zero chance of succeeding.
It's like picking up an old cigarette that is almost used up and trying to get a few puffs out of it before it goes out forever.
Simple, I have run my Motorola through the washing machine and it still worked fine; not so with another brand. So, put them both in pockets, run them through the wash. Put them on the balcony to dry, see which one is still working.
So, the hollow shell of a once viable company wants to smear its necrotic brand on pacific rim ODM crap in the hope that it is still worth something?
Such a familiar story. Sad; but ultimately profoundly pathetic, like a washed-up and balding boy band doing a reunion tour for coke money.
Nokia just bought Alcatel Lucent, makes sense for them to keep the relationship with TCL Communications Ltd, makers of the Alcatel One-Touch devices.
their deal with Microsoft prevents them from getting back into the phone business until Q4 2016, so we won't be seeing Nokia phones soon either way.
New phones typically take years to develop and bring to market. I don't think Q4 2016 is prohibitive at all.
That's about a year...even if Nokia started today designing a new phone it would be kind of amazing if they had it ready to go to market by Q4 2016.
They say "You have to go away to come back" and Nokia definitely went away so....
Thank you Dave Raggett
Would the Nokia "design and branding" actually still be viewed as a net contributor to product value?
No. Nobody thought Nokia designs were all that amazing even when they were the top dog in the market. They were solid but never anything earth shaking. And they completely missed the boat when it came to smart phones. Today pretty much nobody cares about Nokia any more and whatever value their brand once had is just a fraction of a shadow of its previous glory.
I've never had a Nokia phone myself, but I always had the perception that they haven't been any good for a while
I owned several. I used Nokia's exclusively from 1999-2010 or so. They were fine but never great. Generally pretty durable though their reputation for durability exceeds the reality of it. The hardware design was decent if unspectacular. The software however SUCKED big time. I actually got to meet their CEO about 10 years ago during a speech he gave. He admitted during the Q&A the criticality of software to their business. But from my own experience with Nokia software they never really quite figured it out. They thought their customer was the phone companies and tailored their software efforts accordingly. They were wrong and Apple showed them just how wrong they were.
Nokia phones would have what I call checkbox features - great on paper but not in actual use. I bought one of their smartphones around the same time as the first iPhone. Both on paper had roughly the same capabilities but the Nokia's were basically unusable in the real world. The Nokia could technically email or surf the web and it could but even a geek like me couldn't really use it productively because the software and the interface were just horrid. Syncing with a PC was an exercise in futility. Updates to the phones were uncommon if they happened at all and sometimes involved sending the phone to Nokia.
You should have tried the N9. Best phone I've ever had. Had Nokia continued their line and distributed it to more countries, it would have taken a significant bite of the market.
Onda Technology Institute
Gringo, please. Everywhere except North America (the only region where Nokia wasn't king), they still are a respected brand. It is only Microsoft that people (and carriers) hate.
Recently I bought a Nokia N9. It's not as cool as my good old N900 (which is still my primary cellphone), but MeeGo really looked promising. Why did they ditch it in such a bad manner is something that still puzzles me.
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
The dinghy could then rise Nokia like a phoenix into a new burning platform.
...this, after last week we heard that Jolle (itself an offshoot created by some ex-Nokia folk) wants to spin off it's hardware making business.
I predict Nokia will magically find it's hardware partner by this time next week.
The title of this submission talks about "phones", the Fine Article discusses Nokia's possible entry into the smartphone world after the noncompete agreement with MS lapses. This being /. I can comprehend that "smartphones" and "phones" are synonymous in most readers minds but Nokia is still building and selling dumb phones and feature phones (profitably, I presume) and has been all the time they were being funded by MS to make the Lumia range.
The Nokia board probably have a good idea about their ability to leverage the good name of Nokia in the Android smartphone biz by looking at the sales of their N1 Android tablet in the markets it's already been released in. No public numbers yet though.
The two big differentiators that Nokia could bring to a new smartphone design based on its long phone-making track record would be voice call quality and the radio hardware, not something any of the other smartphone makers (with the exception of the Lumia series spawned by Nokia) seem to bother with much.
You should have tried the N9
Why would I buy a phone that had an operating system that was dropped by Nokia prior to the phone going on sale? Plus it was never released in the US so Nokia apparently didn't value my business very much.
Had Nokia continued their line and distributed it to more countries, it would have taken a significant bite of the market.
That is extremely doubtful. It was too little, too late and not supported by the company that made it.
Answer: Sailfish OS
The N9 had a large Retina (really high DPI) screen? Because that's the only thing the latest iPhone has that the previous generation did not.
You mean except for:
* Optical image stabilization
* 1080p video recording @60fps
* VoLTE and VoWiFi calling
* A barometer
* ApplePay
* Faster processors
* Larger screens
* Better camera
I suspect that your knowledge of iPhones and iOS begins and ends with the names.
Pot meet kettle.
Don't forget battery life. I miss when my non-smart Nokia would last for days on one charge.
Umm, yeah great. Of course the phone couldn't do shit except for making calls and the odd bit of text messaging (usually without the benefit of a QWERTY keyboard). I'd certainly like longer battery life but that wasn't a feature unique to Nokia or something special. It was possible because the phones had tiny displays, slow processors and they couldn't do much.
And re software, yes it was pretty basic, but don't forget predictive text. If they weren't first with that feature, it sure felt like they were. And it was a killer app, definitely.
"Pretty basic"? No it was terrible. Flat out terrible.
Predictive text was not a killer feature under any reasonable definition of the term. It didn't even work terribly well. I tried it on several of my Nokia phones and every time ended up turning it off because it was more annoying than useful. If you liked it that's fine but it was hardly earth shaking.
kissed by the beast? sorry, no soup for you. just like no soup for suse after the kiss.
They may well still have a chance in China...they had huge brand recognition there. Apple is big there, but people get pissed off with it a fair bit. Google has no presence at all, but companies use the FOSS Android to build phones and that's pretty common. I think Nokia still have a chance there, and I'll bet that's where they'll start too, since they're looking for a manufacturer.
Max.
Going to use my N900 until it dies and will not purchase another Nokia device. You guys lost my trust and pretty much killed your brand for a VERY long time.
Not sure what I'll get to replace my N900. I have an iPhone 5s from work and it sucks almost as much as the Mac Book Pro Retina I received with it (awesome touch pad).
Maybe a MS Phone ... can't believe I am actually considering it....
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Like smartphones that are full of candy. My daughter would totally be into that.
I thought the N95 was amazing, and the N90 was pretty awesome too....and the N9 was spectacular.
Nokia made some fine products over the years. I never claimed otherwise and I used their phones exclusively for over a decade. But I have never once used a Nokia phone where the software wasn't terrible. On their old non-smart phones the interface was usable but clumsy. On their smartphones (at least every one I tried) it was just rubbish. Not just on the phone either. Their PC software like their Nokia (Ovi) Suite was absolutely hopeless. I'm aware they came out with some arguably decent smartphones but they were too little, too late and some like the N9 were abandoned before they were even released. Nokia's approach to software was schizophrenic at best and largely incompetent in general.
Miss the boat when it came to smart phones...they were *years* ahead of the current crop.
So if Nokia was so far ahead of everyone like you claim then why are they gone? They were financially sound, their hardware was fine and Symbian was the most popular mobile OS until about 2010 but it's market share plummeted. It's fundamentally because of their software. Nobody wanted it once there were alternatives available. Worse Symbian was fragmented with tons of incompatible versions. Smartphones are almost entirely about the software. It's the only thing that really sets one apart from another. Ergo Nokia failed because they failed in their software for smartphones.
Love them or hate them Apple was the one who figured out the basic formula for what we now consider smartphones. They nailed the interface which is something Nokia struggled with and people liked it better than what Nokia offered. Other handset makers went with Android because Google was giving it away. I actually bought a Nokia smartphone after the first iPhone came out because on paper it was a better device. Had more features and better battery and I'm not a brand loyal person. But it was utterly unusable, never updated, and pretty much neglected by Nokia. Emailing was a pain, web surfing basically impossible, and syncing with my PC via their suite served no purpose. Nokia's software sucked and after that I've never been back because their software was so bad.
Actually, I find myself disagreeing with almost everything you say...not much point in continuing.
Disagree all you want but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Nokia dug their own grave with their incompetence at software. They filled the grave in when they threw their lot in with Microsoft.
does that mean MS fucked me?
My burns have almost healed!
Sell the business, including all the headaches and DEBT, wait out the non compete time, start fresh with no debt, fresh and do it all over again.
Recent reports concluded from Satnya Nadella's communication that Microsoft is radically scaling back its phone business. Maybe Nokia could pick up some organizational units that are becoming redundant, and maybe even some know how or IP.
Nokia sold the design patents, ~8,400 of them, to Microsoft. The other patents were license to Microsoft for a limited time.
So no, Nokia did not retain all their patents.
"their deal with Microsoft prevents them from getting back into the phone business until Q4 2016, so we won't be seeing Nokia phones soon either way."
Was it worth it for Microsoft to take a $7.6 billion hit just to take Nokia out of the mobile phone business?
There's a heap of manufacturers in China who are making no-name devices. I'm sure one of them would be more than happy to attach themselves to the Nokia name, as it would pull them out of the pit of insignificance, pretty much immediately.
As to your later part of your comment, Nokia really dropped the ball at the start of the smartphone era. They were in a great position, with some solid offerings for the time, but realistically had nothing to offer when the market moved to the 'slate' form factor. Nokia's first slate phone was about 4 years after they were introduced by competitors. Then couple that with some really dud offerings, plagued with hardware issues, by the time their lumia series was released, it was much too late. Their lumia phones, in terms of hardware, have been nothing short of excellent. Windows Phone, has been quite good, but for too long as well, it lacked basic functionality, meanwhile, the great features have gradually been dropped because they were too difficult to maintain, when integrated with the OS.
My gripe with the phone industry now is that flagship phones are going to absurd levels of specmanship. At some point, makers should realise that 1440p displays on a phone is just getting silly. I'd much prefer a ~720p display, for purposes of; it's good enough, and it should use less power, in terms of the display and processing requirements.
Apparently you never heard of the Burning Platforms memo.
We'll never know if Elop was actually a mole inside Nokia,
Did you read the last sentence of my post? I'm well aware of what transpired with Elop & friends. But Nokia was on thin ice even prior to that. They were already hemorrhaging market share well before Elop got involved. Elop just added gasoline to the fire and burned the house down while they were still in it.
But just when maemo/meego was stable enough to depreciate Symbian after >10 years of development, they choose to throw everything away and go the W7->W8 way.
Bizarre isn't it? It made no sense at all. Not at the time and not in hindsight. They threw away years of work to go to a closed source system which they didn't control with close to zero market share. Worse they announced it a year before they had any products on the new system thus killing any demand for their existing products. They'll be teaching that as a case study in stupid management decisions in business schools for the next 50 years.
This decision was made when Nokia still dominated the smartphones market (yes, Symbians were smart phones), android was a bag full of crap, and the Iphone 1 was prettier but inferior than the N900.
Symbian phones were technically smart phones but generally rather poor ones. I owned several myself and they were disappointing to say the least. I bought a Symbian phone right when the first iPhone came out because it seemed to be a better deal. It had a little better specs and a physical keyboard too. But in hindsight it was a mistake. The email was almost unusable and the web browser was totally unusable. The calendar didn't integrate with anything, the to-do list didn't etc. It technically had all the features the iPhone had and more but you couldn't actually use any of them. The phone was clearly made so that they could say it had all those features but clearly no effort was put into actually making them useful.
Maybe before the end Nokia figured Symbian out but by then I and most other people were long gone. They had years to get it right before Apple and Google came to the party and they couldn't be bothered.
Meanwhile in a parallel world, Nokia's meego might have stood a chance (or might lay somewhere between Palm and BlackBerry )
Perhaps. I never got my hands on one to evaluate but by most accounts they were promising. But we'll never know. My guess is that it's technical merits were insufficient by the time it was released. Google was giving Android away to every other handset maker. Apple had a tight vertically integrated solution. Nokia on the other hand was unfocused. They had several different operating systems, no coherent design strategy, and a close source system. Basically take all the worst things about Android and the worst things about iOS and mash them together and you have Nokia's "strategy". It's hardly shocking it failed.
a world where you have successfully reproduced sexually is a terrifying one for many reasons. please tell me that entire comment was a joke.