When I read such articles, that's when you realise that people are resistant to change. It's like those people still using Windows XP because it's the best. Tech is in constant change, but at some point, some people just give up and decide not to join in anymore: not to make facebook accounts, not to join twitter, not to upgrade their OS, not to switch browser.
That's what this post is: someone refusing to face the changing landscape of tech.
Mobile is greater than what it seemed to be at the start. Mobile operating systems are no longer button phones, they are computers, and they are going to integrate with the desktop tightly. That's the new world, and in such a world, there are only going to be just a few platforms.
Nokia had almost zero chance of being the new platform. Microsoft continues to maintain strong platform presence on the desktop, browser, gaming console/set-top, and they have brought in a strong mobile platform, even if sales are lack-luster now.
Android provides a free, single platform for everybody else.
Apple has their iPhone eco-system, which is not open to others to use.
If Nokia stays on their platform, they will surely fade into irrelevance, and at some point they will need to switch to Android, and be years behind all the other Android clones. That would be the end of Nokia.
The Microsoft-Nokia deal basically has given the Microsoft mobile platform relevance, and it means that a big chunk of the mobile market will be MS/Nokia, and that will ensure that Nokia remains relevant.
With this move, the integrated platform market has basically been divided into three equal chunks (Android, iOS, MS) and for the new few year people are going to have to choose between those. Nokia as a hardware manufacturer - if it does good deals with MS, will basically form one-half of the third major platform. That's how it will stay relevant.
After this deal, Android is likely going to become more popular, because most other hardware manufacturers will bet full-scale on android. However, the problem is that Android lacks a desktop environment, so canot be as tightly integrated as the other two platforms could.
So I expect Android to take the role of feature-phones now, while MS and Apple control and split the high-end market.
I'm not sure what role blackberry will play in all this.
> That's what this post is: someone refusing to face the changing landscape of tech.
I didn't read that at all, what I read was someone saying that change is necessary, but that this change has huge benefits for Microsoft but questionable benefits for Nokia.
We should be wary of falling into the "politician's fallacy" from the delightful Britcom "Yes, Prime Minister:"
We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do it.
Yes, I'd say that, if anything, Nokia has had entirely too much change. So much that you're never quite sure where they're headed. Symbian, Meego, Qt, now this...
Also, from some other article:
> Mr. Elop said “Nokia expects 2011 and 2012 to be transition years”.
It's going to take them a while to really get this strategy under way. Two years is an eternity in this market.
The way I see it Microsoft brings a lot to the table that only a few could: A fresh new OS in WP7, cloud computing infrastructure, it's own gaming ecosystem in XBox platform and its UX integration with the phone OS etc among other things. So I don't see that choosing WP7 (over Android?) is such a bad deal for Nokia. It wasn't a very long time ago that Android ecosystem wasn't very appealing to the mobile developers as iOS ecosystem was. So I would give this partnership some benefit of doubt and time to deliver on the promise.
Partnerships with Microsoft very rarely work out to the other business' advantage, unless it was their goal all along to be acquired by MS or be nothing more than a commodity hardware vendor.
We'll know this is the case if Nokia announces "the new Nokia Online Superstore where you get all your WindowsTM-compatible accessories at discount prices".
But without controlling their software, Nokia's almost entirely surrendered control over their product direction to Microsoft. Contrast it to Apple, where having their own hardware and software lets them do things like the retina display upgrade. In Nokia's case, MS says "This is what the OS is capable of," and Nokia has no choice other than "Ok, we'll make a touchscreen with some buttons that comply with your interface conventions."
They're going from a mobile phone company to a widget manufacturer. It's a position not very different from where Dell, Gateway, HP, etc have been in control of product design, but unable to innovate in ways that would really improve the customer experience. So they're relegated to hardware design (within some pretty narrow constraints) and differentiating their computers by loading some shitty bloatware on and saying "<competitor> doesn't have a dock on all four screen edges like we do!"
There's still money to be made in the hardware business, but it's not something I'd aspire to were I in the cellular industry. It's better than being put out of business, but Microsoft's lack of direction in OS design is likely to hobble them as they try to compete with Apple's ecosystem. I mean, WM7 tried to copy iOS 1 and say "Nah, you don't need copy/paste". Apple's continued to make progress toward a capable mobile OS, and MS still hasn't fixed it. Do you see them having a good chance at competing in the long run?
My prediction: Nokia and WM7 won't be able to compete on features or design, so they'll compete on price. As the smartphone market portion continues to grow, a lot of it will be on the bottom end, with people moving from crappy featurephones to crappy smartphones. If they can find a market niche, it'll be the people who just say "I want a phone," and not anybody who knows or cares any more than that. Which is a pretty big market to be calling a "niche," but it's got slim profit margins. Maybe they can make up for it in volume.
1. Develop a fantastic new platform/product/ecosystem that people wanted to buy (using local talent)
2. Support Android on some or most of their devices
3. Reinvigorate their current platform somehow (new features, reduced costs, new apps, developer incentives, etc)
Keep in mind, MS's product in this space is widely considered less than successful. The only thing MS has going for it is cash in the bank, but so do Google and Apple and Nokia.
How many people walk into the store thinking "I'd like to sign up to buy a Windows phone"? How is this going to benefit Nokia again?
Nokia has shown over time that #1 & #3 aren't realistic. As for Android (#2) vs Windows 7 Phone (W7P), you can make a strong argument for either's adoption.
W7P is currently not a market hit. As you mention, Microsoft has cash in the bank, and they are not going to give up (see xbox, search, etc). Given a couple generations of W7P development, W7P will look like Android today (read: usable).
Nokia may eventually be relegated to a commodity hardware maker, but they do benefit by adopting a modern, competitive mobile OS (as opposed to their current in house options). The worst case for Nokia may look like Motorola. (In that Motorola was bleeding post-RAZR, adopted Android, and are now doing fine even though they don't create the OS.)
Windows Phone 7 has been on the market for less then a full quarter. It is a brand new OS, better on initial release then iOS 1.0 or Android 1.0. So stay calm. In time, people will see Windows Phone as an attractive alternative in the market.
RE point 1 and 3, Nokia did this already - it was supposed to be Maemo. They didn't go anywhere with it. They turned it into Meego. We know what happened with. Nokia failed MISERABLY in this regard.
App ecosystem, better camera software, better social integration, better notifications. These are all better. It's a given that WP7 1.0 is competing with the most recent revs of iOS and Android, but the gap of what they have to make up is much smaller, which works to Microsoft's advantage, if they're willing to put resources into iterating quickly (which they haven't so far).
That's what this post is: someone refusing to face the changing landscape of tech.
You clearly don't know http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jacquesm very well. He is not at all resistant to change. To the contrary he understands tech better that most of us can ever dream of.
Microsoft has been trying to figure out how to create a decent phone, and has been failing. There is no reason to believe that Microsoft's team has addressed the causes of their past failures, and therefore there is no reason to believe that they will suddenly, miraculously, start succeeding now. Theoretically Nokia can tell Microsoft how to do things better, there is a lot of expertise there. But there is every reason to believe that a lot of that institutional knowledge is about to be laid off. For better or worse, Nokia is now dependent upon a team with a history of failure.
I know you believe differently. You expect Android to take the role of feature-phones now, while MS and Apple control and split the high-end market. So I'll offer you a bet. In 2010 Nokia is estimated to have held 33.1% of the phone market. I'll bet you $100 that by 2015 either Nokia and Microsoft have parted ways, or else Nokia will hold under 15% of the phone market.
Of course I'm not going to bet on a company which the CEO describes as being on a burning platform. You do realise that jumping off a burning platform does not mean you fall into a safe bed, it means that you know what you're doing now doesn't work, so you're taking a wild jump into nothing.
If the CEO thinks it's a gamble, so do I, and I'm not going to bet money on it.
It's not a certain thing with a certain outcome, but it's the best chance they have. It can go wrong, but then, every big decision can.
Wish jacquesm is here to contribute to this discussion (and defend his article). Having said that, the article cannot be evaluated to be good (or bad) just based on his reputation and I'm sure even he would agree.
> and that will ensure that Nokia remains relevant.
Nokia becoming a WP7 OEM does not make them relevant. They're going to go the same path as they would have had they gone with Android instead: just another phone OEM.
Though between WP7 and Android, WP7 is probably a much better choice for them.
Given WP7's pretty disappointing launch so far, Nokia is customer #1 at MS. They can dictate the direction of the platform, and as the de facto (and one of the only) WP7 OEMs, the WP7 user experience will become synonymous with the Nokia user experience. They are in essence taking HTC's place back in the old Windows Mobile days - as one of the only actual supporters of the platform, they got front-row seats.
On Android, Nokia would've had no say in anything - being in the company of juggernauts like Moto and Samsung. They'd have trouble differentiating their UX from anyone else's, resulting in the commodification that Samsung, LG, and Moto are facing now. They'd be stuck in the same position as all the OEMs now: a UX they don't control, branding diluted across your competitors, and relegated to shipping crappy UI tack-ons in a desperate attempt to differentiate your Android offering from someone else's Android offering.
The WP7 launch hardware has been disappointing so far - build quality is middling, and resembles far too much like the hordes of Android phones out there. MS would do wise to tie WP7 tightly to Nokia - who have in the past created some of the best hardware in the entire industry (design and build quality inclusive).
The jury is still out but the general sentiment seems to be that Android is better software than WP7 and as you insinuated the "hordes of Android phones out there" aren't particularly well built, certainly not to the level of the iPhone. If Nokia is as good at hardware as they are being given credit for wouldn't they want to build premier hardware for the Android platform? It's not like MS will not license WP7 to all the other OEMs that are on Android right now and I haven't seen much evidence that Nokia is actually good at UX so it's unclear what they could add to WP7 that would be of so much value. After all "taking HTC's place back in the old Windows Mobile days" seems like a pretty scary image of the future.
If all they do really well is hardware, and both platforms are available to all OEMs, why not go for the more successful one, especially considering that WP7 is proprietary so MS can decide to play hardball with them at any point.
My own opinion of Nokia is that their classic line of phones had by far the best software, and while initially it had better hardware, that lead narrowed considerably pretty quickly. Yet that software was very good because it was an extremely feature limited and highly resilient phone OS. Nothing modern is as good at being a cellphone as a classic Nokia. And as the iPhone conclusively demonstrated, that doesn't matter these days. Symbian was a disaster and Meego seems promising but behind. They really lost a great catch in Palm, and I'm not really sure they'll be able to differentiate themselves as a hardware builder on any platform for that matter.
My weekend coach suggestion would be to take a leaf from the iPhone playbook and release only one phone every year or more, that has the best possible industrial design you can muster and that gets timely updates to a vanilla version of Android, properly tested and integrated. If you want a low-end model just tweak the previous year's high-end model and sell it cheaper (think PSOne).
With Android, as others have pointed out, Nokia would have faced immense competition from HTC, Samsung, and others who are established in the marketplace. With WP7, they at least have an opportunity to come in at the ground floor.
Also, given the relationship between Elop and MS, there can be some shared resources to make Nokia the flagship for WP7. With Android, they would have been just another manufacturer.
I would answer that implementing this strategy can't be a short term plan. This will take time to put in place meanwhile a lot of executives can change. Is it wise to rely on a relationship between one executive and another company as a long term strategy ?
I didn't say it was wise. I just believe that it is the reality of the situation. We have watched Nokia throw their immense resources in every direction, from Symbian to Maemo to Meego, all resulting in failure. The pathways for Nokia to take were pretty narrow, and I think spending more time in developing yet ANOTHER platform would have been death. Nokia cut their losses here, and went with a platform they could work with. They can focus their efforts on developing killer hardware and optimizing WP7 for it. It takes the biggest weakness of Nokia (interface design and software) out of their hands. It also makes the platform more attractive for developers - with Nokia backing WP7, there's guaranteed distribution and handset sales.
Actually WP7 is a better choice than what is obvious. WP7 will bring Office and Exchange to Nokia phones and hence bring it even closer to business users.
I think the main thing people have an issue with is partnering with MS and using their platform rather than buddying up with Android or persevering with their own stuff. As you point out, and as they have publicly admitted, sticking with their current platform is proving to not be a viable way forward.
The apparent indignation at them choosing MS is, in many cases, a bit of fanboy-ism. The average man in the street won't care, and those of us who would particularly prefer Android over Windows just won't be buying a Nokia phone in the near future, which depending on how big a demographic we are they may not care about.
I think going with MS makes more sense for them than following the Android path, despite my vague allegiance with the Android camp. If they went that way they would just be another Android phone manufacturer which could work well if the hardware is good and competitively priced, but by going Windows which is a small part of the market now they have a chance of being the leader of that pack if it grows to be the preferred alternative to Apple's output. And it may yet manage to become a bigger player than Android - the Windows phone platform has the advantage of not having any association with the many cheap and grotty devices that are being shipped with Android (this association could tarnish the public view of Android devices on the whole).
> It's like those people still using Windows XP because it's the best.
But always remember that there are people like me who are still using XP because they have no particular reason to spend money on an upgrade. No DX10/11? Not a problem, the games I do play (including those released in recent months) seem fine and if it became a problem (games requiring later versions of DX) then I'd just find something else to do with my time. IE9 won't work? No problem - the only thing I use IE for VMWare Server's console (which has issues with FF and C) and for is downloading Firefox or Chrome.
I'll have to upgrade in a while because security updates will stop. But until that time I'm unlikely to have reason to spend money and time on changing OS.
"I think the main thing people have an issue with is partnering with MS and using their platform rather than buddying up with Android or persevering with their own stuff."
No, I think it's stupid because A: Microsoft has shown little to no sign of "getting" the smart phone market B: Nokia has shown little to no sign of "getting" the smart phone market and inevitably C: Two companies who don't get it will probably not magically get it by joining forces. This is coming from my looking at their business and success up to this point, not a fanboy reaction. (I don't even have a smartphone. I have a Nokia 6205 in my pocket but not for any particular reason. It was cheap and I don't hate it but it's not generating brand loyalty for me either.)
Sure, the new partnership might get it and pull it together and make it work, but if that was going to happen it seems if anything more likely to happen without the inevitable chaos of a culture collision induced by this sort of deal. I'm not saying this is a 100%-chance of failure, it just doesn't strike me as a move that really increases it for anyone.
Just think of Jerry Yang from Yahoo!. How did avoiding a buyout from Microsoft turn out? Yea not so good.
Jerry's heart was in the right place, trying to be a rebel and avoid a big bad company coming in, but he completely ignored the business side. The truth was Yahoo! just had bad management, and it started with him.
But having said that, I hope Elop made the right move by putting all his eggs in one basket because they will be thrown back at his face.
"So I expect Android to take the role of feature-phones now, while MS and Apple control and split the high-end market."
is there really such differentiation these days? As every phone walks to become a smartphone, Android powers devices cheap and expensive and Apple plans on building cheaper iphones (at least according to the rumors), I'm not sure we'll see such a clear distinction in the future, as we saw in the past, when Symbian was pretty much the only higher-end OS in town...
I think the "the same happen without any risk to MS" is an excellent point - the downside for Microsoft is limited and the upside is pretty good. For Nokia the upside is limited (at best you are yet-another Windows Mobile 7 handset manufacturer - it's not like they have an exclusive) and the downside is huge.
Compared to what? I don't think the downside is greater than the downside of maintaining their own incredibly expensive and increasingly obsolete platform(s). This gives them their only hope of delivering a stable smartphones with a modern UI in the first half of this year (bonus: without spending tens-of-thousands of developer hours). I consider that "upside".
Compared to joining an ecosystem that has already succeeded (Android). The downside if WP7 turns out to peak at 5% of the market - which is entirely possible at this juncture - is that Nokia will suffer a horrific drop in profits and probably go out of business. They now need WP7 to reach 30 - 50% of the market simply to consider this strategy a success. It's incredibly risky to take a bet like that.
Elop has given a credible reply to this argument: Android would put them on the fastest track imaginable to commoditization. Nokia's support and supply-chain would have taken Android from the marketshare leader to the undisputed ruler of the smartphone market. In this kind of atmosphere, it could be safely surmised that no manufacturer would have any leverage with Google and there would be very little opportunity for interesting differentiation.
> Android would put them on the fastest track imaginable to commoditization
The way I see it they are on that track anyway. As far as I can tell they got absolutely no hard concessions from MS about control of WP7 - I'm sure Microsoft said lots of nice things but when it comes to the crunch Nokia has to be delusional if they think Microsoft is going to let them have any real influence over WP7. If you are going to get commoditized it might as well be in a market that is a known success rather than one which might totally fail.
> In this kind of atmosphere, it could be safely surmised that no manufacturer would have any leverage with Google
Nokia is easily big enough and powerful enough that they could take Android their own way. They could forgo licensing Google's apps and put their own on, thus maintaining a foot in the ecosystem but remaining entirely independent. Android would have given them a lot more options than just becoming subservient to Google (which, even if they did do, I would maintain is better than being subservient to MS).
This deal is strange enough to me that I half suspect there is another surprise - perhaps MS and Nokia joining together to sue the living daylights out of Google with every patent in their arsenals.
And it is entirely possible. Remember, Nokia has a huge hold of lower/middle-end mobile market. If they can manage to get WP7 on devices in that segment without making them much more expensive, WP7 might just as well become a respectable competitor.
Remember that the burning platform memo was specific.. Not only are they losing on the top end -- there's phones coming out of China now beating them on the bottom end.
eh, tens of thousands of developer hours is pretty small potatoes to Nokia. consider 2000 hours a year, give or take, per developer.
Consider that nokia just completely alienated all of their external developers, and likely most of their internal software people.
Even if the windows mobile 7 turns out to be reasonably good, they've just thrown away the software half of their organization. It's gone. If windows 7 doesn't work out for them a year from now? they will have to start over from scratch. Developer goodwill? gone. Developer mindshare? gone. those are some pretty valuable things they just threw away.
Personally, I think their shareholders would have been a whole lot better off if they had sold to microsoft outright.
They're currently going from not making smartphones... to making smartphones and actually trying to compete in the current market. It's better than nothing.
Here's what is happening. Microsoft wants to buy Nokia, but not with all those buildings full of people. The announcements mean than Nokia can now get to work laying off tens of thousands of people. They don't need 120,000 employees anymore. Everybody involved in Symbian can go. Most of the Meego staff, too, as well as lots of middle and upper management. It won't cost Microsoft a cent in severance pay.
Once it's all cleaned up, Microsoft can complete the purchase. The stock price should be lower too, reducing the total cost further.
"Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same. With 200 million users worldwide and Nokia planning to sell around 150 million more Symbian devices, Symbian still offers unparalleled geographical scale for developers.
Extending the scope of Qt further will be our first MeeGo-related open source device, which we plan to ship later this year. Though our plans for MeeGo have been adapted in light of our planned partnership with Microsoft, that device will be compatible with applications developed within the Qt framework and so give Qt developers a further device to target. "
So, QT on Symbian dies with Symbian, but stays on with crippled Meego.
The whole thing feels like shark-jumping if you ask me. I'd watch Nokia stock today and see if investors don't agree. I'm betting they do. I wish I knew a damn thing about investing, I'd short this one for sure.
He specified a North Sea rig in his memo. I don't know if he's aware (he is Canadian) but it's relatively common knowledge in this area that due to the low temperatures your life expectancy even if you make it into the water conscious and in one piece is under 15 minutes, less the further north you go. Sharks are the least of your worries.
Interestingly, that's not because you'll get a thermal shock that will kill you. The body is surprisingly good at maintaining temperature for a while after being plunged in icy cold stuff. The problem is, it's so good at it, that it will block off the arteries to your legs and arms to stop them from leaking so much heat (better survive without limbs than die with them), and you'll drown because you can't swim. As far as hypothermia is concerned, you have about an hour before passing out due to hypothermia. But you have about 10 minutes if you're not wearing a life jacket.
In the worst North Sea rig disaster, Piper Alpha, there were six unlucky men who did jump from the rig, were rescued and were killed when the rescue boat got caught in a huge explosion.
Android and WP7 make no difference for Nokia. In fact WP7 is clearly a better deal as they can talk and negotiate with Microsoft's moneyhat and they become by far the foremost WP7 phone maker. They bring a lot of hardware expertise and knowledge to Microsoft's camp. Going with Android, they'd just get to get bent.
If their choice was to get out of software and choose between WP7 and Android, WP7 is a much better idea.
Err, what? HTC has 3 (4? Not sure) WP7 phones, LG has at least 2, Samsung has at least 1, Dell has 1, and those are just the ones that I know about. Are there any big exceptions here except Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson?
Currently down -8.9%, with a massive spike in trading volume, on the Finnish and Swedish stock markets after a few hours of trading. However it opened more than 10% down so it's picked up a bit during trading
Investing: Great if you can get a position in a market that is open when the news is announced and thus be there for the fall....but it sucks if you have to get in after the stock has declined and then you're hoping that the impact will take a couple days.
I wouldn't try to play something like this. I've done highly leveraged, highly speculative investing successfully in the past. But even then, I was making bets on the order of weeks and months, not minutes.
Do you think it is a sure thing that nokia will be down by %20 beyond the current price over the next year? IF you can make that argument mathematically, then it is soemthing worth investing in. (at least, this is the method I used. I can't say anything about nokia's valuation as I have never analyzed it. But I only invested in mathematically sure things that were consistent with the overall trend.)
PS- When I say "sure thing" I mean "presuming no black swan events". I know there is no really sure thing. I also used leverage and hedged to limit my downside.
I think the post is unnecessarily harsh on both Nokia and Microsoft. Windows Phone is now a lot better and is comparable with iOS/Android, only thing it is lacking is apps.
Nokia making this decision much late in the game clearly knows that Microsoft also came late to the game. It needs MS as much as MS needs Nokia. Together with huge marketing muscle of MS, they can surely make something out of the partnership.
Missing apps is like being BeOS: you can be the best OS in the world, but without apps you are not going to sell.
App-less, you are nothing in this product segment.
Besides, their Mac support is not that great, no support for syncing calendars. This is not 90'ies anymore, you need Mac support at this time to get the teenagers and cool people to use your product.
All I use on my Android phone is e-mail, maps, the browser, and general phone stuff - honestly, I would trade the entire app store for a little more reliability and a better touch screen.
The Windows Phone does this. It also integrates those contacts with the status updates, contact details and pictures from your Facebook, Hotmail, YMail & Exchange accounts
From everything I've read, WP7 is really good. However, I think that it's a huge fault of Microsoft that it just hasn't been marketed well. I've wanted to try one... I go to Best Buy, and all they have is one non-functional demo unit (the kind with just a picture of a screenshot). Can you ever imagine Apple launching an iPhone, and not having working versions of it in their store to try out?
I'm skeptical, but hopefully Nokia will give them enough exposure and allow people to actually get their hands on a WP7 phone.
Android does the gmail / google calendar sync fine. If there's one thing Android has never messed up, it's that. My Android phone messes enough stuff up often enough that I do wish I had an iPhone instead.
Second sentence is unrelated to the first one; I was in a hurry.
My wife has an LG Optimus One (e.g. cheap Android).
It's really nice for the price paid, but she has had problems with it.
I tried to say that the iPhone provides the best experience (out of the box at least), and if you want an Android, you should check out the ratings on that product because quality varies.
I found webOS to be superior to iOS and Android in most ways, only to be hindered by poor hardware and marketing. WP7 will not take off just because it is objectively better in some ways.
Thing is, Android / iOS cover pretty much every need of the smartphone market right now. The iPhone a well made, high-end, kick ass, user-friendly and kind of expensive product with tons of third-party support available.
Android on the other hand is already selling big on cheaper phones, and although it is so popular and all the tools you'll ever need are open-source and well-made, still it doesn't have so many quality apps like iOS. But it's getting there.
This is not like the XBox versus the PS3.
PS3 took a long time to market and was considerably more expensive (it has been gaining significant ground btw).
This is also not like Windows versus Mac OS or OS/2. At that time Windows was the cheaper and the more versatile one.
It is also not like IExplorer versus Netscape. Microsoft doesn't have much leverage on this industry, besides a handful of patents. And phone makers aren't stupid. They've been burnt already by mobile operators.
This is too bad actually. My first mobile phone was a Nokia 3310, which I loved. Now the brand is dying.
> most of Nokia's brand loyalty is because of the indestructible and unbelievably reliable phones they made in the 90's, since then they've been steadily dropping on that front
Nokia phones are still the most reliable and solid, by far... for now.
Really? Here in Norway, people are complaining constantly about a few Nokia models that are notorious for bad reliability, and I've never heard complaints about iPhones, for example.
If Nokia phones are actually "the most reliable and solid, by far", they've got a serious perception problem in the marketplace, at least in these parts.
I don't buy phones everyday, so maybe the most recent models are weaker, but I have a Nokia from 2009, and so does my wife. Our kids have taken them to the most incredible abuse imaginable and they're still working fine.
I had Sony phones, Samsung phones, all very fragile and sensitive to dust, water, being stepped upon, etc.
We don't have iPhones but we have iPads (which are a different beast altogether, of course)... the fist iPad to enter our home lasted exactly one day (it doesn't like being dropped from a table -- even a low table).
I would like to see statistical information how people perceive reliability of their phones. I have 3 years old Nokia smartphone and I'm constantly dropping it on hard surfaces.
In Jamaica, Nokia phones, particularly the lower end models, are perceived as being very reliable. Drop them, throw them, wet them up, and they just keep on going. Battery life is good, too.
My perception of this is a bit different; Nokias and iPhones are the most seen brands on the different meetings I attend, and especially the E-series from Nokia which are considered solid and straight to the point for busy business people.
The main problem of the late Nokia is the (lack of) speed in innovation.
If they jump on the Android boat they'll have to fight against Samsung, Motorola, HTC, LG, etc.. Look at the current performance of Sony-Ericsson.
On the Windows Phone 7 boat they are the big fish, and they can try to deliver some good products without to much competition (in the WP7 environment).
Microsoft does not want a platform dominated by one hardware manufacturer. Their interest is for Nokia to be the Compaq of phones, or something along those lines.
There's no way that Nokia can really own the platform so that the same stuff that runs on their phones won't run on other phones in the future. Microsoft owns it, period. With Android, being open source, they would have had a bit more leverage.
Android is already saturated with almost all hardware vendors jumping in and entry of low cost Chinese handsets. Microsoft may own it, but remember that they are an upstart now in the mobile business, not an established player. I am pretty sure this deal would allow them a lot more leverage to influence the OS design and software. Pretty much like the early WinTel era.
That could work, but I don't think they have it in their culture to be generic, low-margin, no R&D sorts of people, especially given labor and other costs in Finland.
Whilst at the front of the race they took their eye off for a little distraction called Symbian. The problem there was the complete lack of control over the UI. Symbian forked their UI for phone and tablet, and phone producers forked their own UIs again (UIQ, Series 60,80,90), making upgrading the existing UI centrally practically impossible. The only option was to start from scratch... oops. The committee appears to have made a big deal out of binary compatibility. Yet with today's consumer, that is not important on a smart phone, when we want to get apps from a store.
Nokia looked up and has realised it's now running on a different track to everyone else - the finish line moved and they can't catch up (3 years to get from the old UI's, and we've still not got shiny new Symbian in mass market products). Time to get into the current race.
The problem with branching Android, is that it puts them back in exactly the same sort of situation they were in when they backed Symbian. By going with Microsoft they have moved to a much more controlled system. Microsoft have buckets of experience with smart phones, and I believe that WM7 will be the XP of mobile. Let's just hope they don't Vista it.
A one-time few hundred million would be peanuts at this scale, I can't imagine it affecting the decision unless it was quietly deposited to somebody's private Swiss bank account.
Microsoft will help a lot in the marketing department for the new devices, with money and with mind-share. One important point in this deal is the US markets, it would be impossible marketing effort for Nokia to gain ground on with Symbian and MeeGo, even if they succeeded in making them technically superior.
$0 is a precise number. "Microsoft bought Nokia for $300 million" doesn't have the same ring to it, but seems to be closer to the truth. Which makes the headline sensationalistic.
Ok really thick comment. If the mass market is being stolen by Android... why didn't Nokia start using Android?
It would seem the logical idea; if the platform is burning rather than trying to stand on a piece of planking that has a history of falling in the ocean.. why not dowse yourself in petrol and fling yourself into the inferno.
I mean; if the argument is that Android is eating up the market Nokia wants... then why not have the easiest slice?
Nokia made a lot of mistakes in the past but I think the biggest one was not buying Palm/WebOS.They could have had a great OS and have total control of there future.
I completely disagree with the article. He treats both Nokia and Microsoft as though they have no idea what they are doing. Microsoft has decades of experience in coming up from behind place and crushing the competition. As for Nokia, they make really good hardware. They got caught up in selling cheap handsets because it was great business for a while but that does not mean they cannot make great hardware. I think this is a great move for both companies and even better for consumers.
I can't think of many times when Microsoft has "come up from behind place and crushed the competition" when the competition was less than ten times smaller than they were.
Perhaps enterprise adoption of .Net over Java is once such example. Can you think of others?
I'd probably put Microsoft and Nokia at even odds in the phone market, but I really don't expect them to pass Android with something non open-source.
Looking at the numbers here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_...
it looks to me like Xbox has been successful and competes well with the PS3 in North America, but has dismal acceptance in Japan. But both of them are trailing behind the Wii.
So that's clearly a success compared to the Windows-on-phones idea, but I don't think it counts as having "crushed the competition".
Xbox has been the highest selling console for six straight months now. Expect that to continue given how wildly popular Kinect has been over the holiday season.
A fair bit of hyperbole and fanboy-ism happening here. Which is completely understandable.
It is pretty clear that WP7 is not Windows Mobile, that Microsoft does in fact finally get it.
Jumping on the Android bandwagon is not in any way clearly a better or safer move. In fact from a market perspective those waters are considerably more bloody and getting worse every day.
This is a desperation play by Nokia in the high end of the market for certain, but of all the bad choices they had available this may be the least bad. I is also likely true that there is no move they could make that would ever result in bringing them back to the heights of their past. Innovators dilemma in action.
Why is this on the front page? Come on. Anyone who thinks this deal isn't good for both parties is kidding themselves. After years of trying to create their own operating system Nokia have finally admitted they need to invest in an ecosystem. If they were to take on Android they'd be late to an already full party.
With WP7 there's no one seriously pushing it, Dell, LG both aren't famous for their phones. HTC owes most of what they have to Android. Nokia and Microsoft working together is a partnership not to be written off. It's a point of difference for Nokia, and Microsoft isn't going to be out of this game, they'll invest and invest and they will be a major player, you watch.
A lot of ridiculous statements have been made by bloggers of late when discussing smartphones, but I don't think I've heard any as silly as this:
"And to those whose Nokia/Windows smartphones will give them the mobile variation on the MS 'BSOD' while calling 911, my condolences to you too."
Plus Nokia certainly negotiated a great deal. If they get WP7 licenses for 1$ when others get it for 10$, they have room to provide better quality for the same retail price, while making comfortable margins. It's not because Apple develops its own OS that this strategy is the best for everyone. Nokia should better be the next Dell than the next Amiga. Also, carriers can't break WP7 like they can break Android (and block its updates).
I think it would be just like giving a discount to bulk orders. Nokia will buy a huge amount of licenses compared to dell, htc or any other supplier. Once the app ecosystem grows other suppliers will want to be a part of it.
But they still have huge market share with people who are not likely to care that there exist an iPhone because it's too expensive.
And if the market is in fact trending smartphones in 2011-2012 nokia will have great opportunity to develop a market into a smartphone market with their existing base.
My favourite phone was the Nokia 6210. That thing was damned near indestructable. The 6310i was also great but it only really added bluetooth and had no authentication on the AT modem profile (which meant anyone could connect to it and dial up to the Internet, snarf data and so on whenever bluetooth was on).
The problem with Nokia was that they kept messing around with Symbian and didn't really know what it was for, making clunky interfaces that while better than Windows Mobile at the time were just blown away by the iphone.
Instead of trying to provide a better experience than the iphone, they went crazy trying to imitate it and as a result failed to innovate. Ultimately Nokia's marriage to Symbian pretty much screwed the pooch. They had to ditch it but for what? If they're just another android OEM they're going to have some interoperability issues and it'll still be quite expensive. Switching to Microsoft means that if the tech is good it'll be well supported with a long term roadmap by guys with a good track record elsewhere. Nokia won't be just another OEM - they will be able to influence Microsoft's development. They still shift huge amounts of phones especially at the lower end of the market, and Microsoft will recognise that.
Sure Nokia are down but not out, and I think this is better for both than the title suggests.
Years ago it seemed to me that Symbian was a dead-end. Just reading about the programmer APIs was enough to convince me of that.
Motorola finally realized that P2K and their other proprietary stuff wasn't going to cut it for the future. Most of these mobile phone OSs were designed for very small, resource-constrained devices. Which is fine... that's all that was viable in the market at the time. But they weren't designed to scale up.
For example: Android uses Linux, and it has had MP support for a long time (late 1990's?). Even as of five years ago, many people would have thought that a phone with a multi-core CPU is crazy. Why would you need all that power (and power consumption)? And here we are in 2011, with the Nvidia Tegra 2 and other CPUs in shipping phones. For most of those phone OSs, adding multi-core support would be a multi-year re-write. Linux? No problemo.
And beyond that, there is database support, and support for various Internet-based protocols (chat, radio, web, etc.). And what is needed for that is a really solid TCP/IP stack. I've seen (and done) things to a TCP/IP implementation to get it running on a small device. It wasn't pretty. Or high performance. It will 'work', but not for heavy duty use like you'd need on a smartphone these days.
That's a good comment, but bear in mind that the MP support in the 90s was Pentium Pro only (and expanded to x86/64). While multi-processing algorithms can be generalised, they're best when they're optimal for the architecture they're running on. MP on Arm is quite different when it comes to things like thumbing and pipelining compared to x86.
I only know this because I did some work on Arm 7 after doing some MP work on Pentium Pro 200s a few years earlier. It's amazing the crap your brain collects over time!
Oh, indeed. My point was that the rest of the kernel (VFS, device drivers, etc.) was already fairly well prepared for MP when ARM multicore came into the picture.
Here's the thing: as a phone, the 6310 was simply never beaten. It's almost as though Nokia thought that if they left it on the market, those sales would result in consumers stepping off the upgrade treadmill for several years. I know several people who still have theirs, and frankly I'm utterly envious.
My 6310 was the last phone I could use (as in, answer calls, dial arbitrary numbers, use the phone book, whatever) without actually looking at it. Damn, I miss that phone.
You are right. As a phone it (and the 6210) scored a flawless victory. I've never had a phone since that was as perfect for it's purpose. Sure, I like my iPhone but it's not without it's flaws (like putting mute on because the screen comes on mid call, or not being able to hold it in my left hand without a cover) but the 6210 and 6310 just worked. The day I found the exposed bluetooth profile I threw up in my mouth a little, because my perfect phone wasn't perfect anymore.
Nokia wants to be Apple but acts like Dell, this does not make any sense.
Disclaimer: Being Dell is nice, but you need to think like Dell concerning their, much lower, margins. And whatever Microsoft tells you, you're just one of many and compete with HTC, not Apple.
Nokia used to have levels of consumer satisfaction and devotion similar to what Apple have.
Consistently, for about a decade (from the mid-nineties), they made the most desirable phones, with the best combination of hardware and user experience. But the user experience just didn't keep up as phones developed more features.
To continue the Apple analogy, the current Nokia smartphone experience is as though Apple had continued to push OS9 while the rest of the world moved on around them. Symbian is Mac OS classic in 2011.
It's not about consumer satisfaction but about business models. They want the high margin Apple model (into which HP also wants so they bought Palm and in which RIM is).
Then they need their own OS. That their OS setup is behind the market hurts their sales, but is irrelevant to the Apple vs. Dell business model discussion (full stack high cost high margin vs. commodity hardware low cost low margin)
This is a legitimate point, Elop would have got options while he worked for Microsoft, that creates the scope for both insider trading problems and conflict of interest issues which are legally regulated.
I'm fairly sure this has been explored very thoroughly by the lawyers of both companies. Actually, I think this deal was something that the board was preparing for when they decided to hire a Microsoft man.
This is a ridiculously bad article that glorifies Nokia as something they haven't been in many years. It was sink or swim time for them. Choosing Android 2 years ago may have been a really smart move but there are already established leaders in Android handsets. It was too late for Nokia to go anywhere with Android. They will be a first class citizen of WM7 and get a tremendous amount of support from Microsoft who will be willing to piss away millions, if not billions, of dollars to promote WM7. They could have never got that type of treatment from Google. They'd be just another player in an overcrowded market. At least this gives them some potential to offer a unique product.
Note that a couple of hundred million was on the table from several bidders. If there are more than a few living braincells left at Nokia they probably got significantly more out of it than that.
Contrary to everyone else I actually think this is a smart move. Personally, I didn't find Windows Phone 7 too bad compared to an iPhone.
The only thing that Apple has in its favour is the RDF.
Nokia needs a differentiating OS, Android is not that OS. I don't think Nokia wants to become a bit part commodity hardware manufacturer. So Windows Phone 7 might turn out to be a smart move.
Nokia is in a position to capture the cheap smartphone category, a category that is still up for grabs.
but other companies like htc, motorola etc. can also manufacture WP7 phones.
and nokia cannot make too many changes to functionality even if allowed as it would fragment the WP7 app-market. even gui based changes would kill the ui-consistency that MS is touting..
so i do not understand how nokia is differentiating itself by becoming a WP7 phone manufacturer...
I think it is about the developer/apps/market place "ecosystem". Elop mentioned that in the burning platform memo. I'd give Microsoft some credit in their developer relationship machine that's already in place.
The deal makes sense to me in terms of economies of scale ... more popular OS = more developers/apps.
2) Nokia still leads in feature phones in terms of ruggedness and reliability
If my wife is replacing her current Nokia, she'd certainly weigh towards Nokia. But she'd want something a little more current, as long as it is just as reliable.
As nice touch phones are, the form factor required for finger interaction means it is not as convenient as a smaller phone. Symbian will continue to have a life for a very long time.
Yeah I imagine this is likely to piss off Nokia's most loyal developers.
I doubt Linux distributions are going to notice. QT will continue to be a rock solid first class platform even with minimal new development. It already has more features than it needs. They could probably coast for a decade before it begins to hurt on Linux.
+1. what a gorgeous little phone that was. I honestly still believe that, for that time (and a few years beyond it), the 3310 was the best phone a non-business type could have. The buttons on it were perfect, and no one did t9 like it.
So months ago, using an external OS (Android) was like "Finnis boys peeing their pants to keep warm", but now it's a good strategic partnership? And especially given Elop's very recent Microsoft ties, could there possibly be some other agenda?
When jumping off a burning oil platform into the freezing North Atlantic, don't look down and think "Oooh, I'll jump into the burning oil slick, that'll be warmer!"
Considering that Nokia's decision to stab other Symbian partners in the back form way back and do an UI and than have the failure of Symbian for years blow up in their face I would state that Nokia is about worth $0.
I dislike when essays swear at me, particularly long ones. If you want me to take what I am reading seriously, I expect you to choose your words carefully, and using the word "shit" doesn't smack of careful word choice. I kind of swear like a sailor when I talk sometimes, but not when I write.
That's what this post is: someone refusing to face the changing landscape of tech.
Mobile is greater than what it seemed to be at the start. Mobile operating systems are no longer button phones, they are computers, and they are going to integrate with the desktop tightly. That's the new world, and in such a world, there are only going to be just a few platforms.
Nokia had almost zero chance of being the new platform. Microsoft continues to maintain strong platform presence on the desktop, browser, gaming console/set-top, and they have brought in a strong mobile platform, even if sales are lack-luster now.
Android provides a free, single platform for everybody else.
Apple has their iPhone eco-system, which is not open to others to use.
If Nokia stays on their platform, they will surely fade into irrelevance, and at some point they will need to switch to Android, and be years behind all the other Android clones. That would be the end of Nokia.
The Microsoft-Nokia deal basically has given the Microsoft mobile platform relevance, and it means that a big chunk of the mobile market will be MS/Nokia, and that will ensure that Nokia remains relevant.
With this move, the integrated platform market has basically been divided into three equal chunks (Android, iOS, MS) and for the new few year people are going to have to choose between those. Nokia as a hardware manufacturer - if it does good deals with MS, will basically form one-half of the third major platform. That's how it will stay relevant.
After this deal, Android is likely going to become more popular, because most other hardware manufacturers will bet full-scale on android. However, the problem is that Android lacks a desktop environment, so canot be as tightly integrated as the other two platforms could.
So I expect Android to take the role of feature-phones now, while MS and Apple control and split the high-end market.
I'm not sure what role blackberry will play in all this.