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Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

uk.businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#51

Post by pjmlp »

Joeri wrote: post #46
pjmlp wrote: post #32

I guess it is about time I stop making my hobby coding portable between WP and Android, focusing just on Android. Sad, because WP is actually much better from tooling and architecture point of view, but the way the whole WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and the yet to become stable WP 10, just drove everyone off. Personally I was kind of pissed off, when the 512 MB devices were left out of the last preview update. Also it was the…

OTOH, can you name a single feature of WP10 that you wanted to upgrade for? I went from a 920 with wp8 to a 950 with wp10, and the only good new features are ones that required new hardware (continuum and hello). I regret buying the 950. Excellent hardware, but unstable battery hog of an OS, with an app situation that's bad and getting worse. WP 8.0 was the high mark. All the changes since then made things worse.

From developer point of view, more mature .NET Native instead of MDIL, ability to use VC++ 14 improvements and best of all the 8.1 Universal App solution model finally merged as UWP.

From the user point of view probably nothing.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#52

Post by arielweisberg »

stevehiehn wrote: post #14
anjc wrote: post #13

Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway. At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a…

Seems clear to me. They executed on a strategy and consumers weren't interested.

My wife really likes Windows Phone and wanted a Lumia 1020 for the camera. I offered her my 6+ and she refused.

Trying to upgrade her to a new model is basically impossible. At the time we bought it if you went to any carrier store the Windows phones were clearly second class citizens with the best models not present. Carriers like T-Mobile wouldn't even sell you a decent model because they don't carry them at all and if you buy one separately you find that carrier specific stuff (tethering) is broken.

With Windows phone it was really like they weren't even trying to move units. Sure they built the software and hardware, but actual retail presence seemed pretty broken.

They also failed at continuity. There is no Lumia 1020 successor. The lineup in general seems fragmented with no regular predictable upgrade path and iteration.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#53

Post by kristofferR »

nametakenobv wrote: post #39
anjc wrote: post #13

Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway. At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a…

It's pretty easy to understand. Nokia was bought by the previous CEO.

It only makes sense if Microsoft is planning to kill Windows Phone (or whatever it's called now).

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#54

Post by facepalm »

dijit wrote: post #42

I was around when the takeover of Nokia R&D happened in Febuary 2011, I remember walking around the offices of Ruohulati in Helsinki and seeing a massive queue to the IT room, previously linux laptops were being reformatted to run windows. I asked one of the project managers: "why, will it really change that much for us, I mean, there's hope right?" they responded: "This is a takeover, I've seen it before, they're ju…

What would have happened to Nokia phones if MS hadn't taken over? They pretty much dug their own hole.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#55

Post by newjersey »

rospaya wrote: post #49
BorgHunter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia was doomed before Elop took over. Kallasvuo was CEO when Apple released the first iPhone, and Kallasvuo was the one who decided that Nokia's existing offerings were good enough to compete, just keep minorly refining things every generation. By the time Elop came in, the ship was already sinking (or, if you prefer, the platform was already burning). Elop's decisions did not turn that around, but realistically, c…

I agree that Nokia was too slow to compete, but they had massive advantages over both Apple and Google and with good guidance could've survived successfully. Even years after the iPhone came out, Nokia outsold Apple, had a bigger R&D budget and a bigger foothold in practically every market except North America. Smartphones outsold feature (dumb) phones only in 2013, five years after the iPhone came out. When did Noki…

I don't have any inside information but as an outsider the main thing that puts pressure on everyone is the margin that Apple commands on its products. People have repeatedly said that even when iPhone had 20% of the smartphones sold, they were taking in a much bigger slice of the pie when it came to profits. How do we tell potential shareholders "you can put your $1 on Apple or you can put your $1 on us but just so you know we have to ship n times as many phones as Apple does just to make the same amount of money that Apple does".

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#56

Post by biokoda »

rospaya wrote: post #49
BorgHunter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia was doomed before Elop took over. Kallasvuo was CEO when Apple released the first iPhone, and Kallasvuo was the one who decided that Nokia's existing offerings were good enough to compete, just keep minorly refining things every generation. By the time Elop came in, the ship was already sinking (or, if you prefer, the platform was already burning). Elop's decisions did not turn that around, but realistically, c…

I agree that Nokia was too slow to compete, but they had massive advantages over both Apple and Google and with good guidance could've survived successfully. Even years after the iPhone came out, Nokia outsold Apple, had a bigger R&D budget and a bigger foothold in practically every market except North America. Smartphones outsold feature (dumb) phones only in 2013, five years after the iPhone came out. When did Noki…

> Smartphones outsold feature (dumb) phones only in 2013, five years after the iPhone came out.

Yes but who had higher profits? That's the real factor. Outselling by itself is meaningless if your margins are poor.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#57

Post by vesinisa »

felipeerias wrote: post #47
pavlov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. Nokia got $7.2 billion from Microsoft for a loss-making device business. Nokia still exists today and swallowed Alcatel-Lucent last year. It's hard to imagine a better outcome for Nokia than Microsoft buying the phone albatross in 2013. I honestly believe that it was part of a contingency plan that had made Nokia's board approve the Windows Phone plan -- that Ballmer basically promised a buyout in c…

Nokia had far better industrial design, logistics, marketing and brand recognition than any current Android manufacturer. If they had carried out that switch (and survived in the short term - they were on the brink of bankruptcy at the time), Nokia would be doing pretty well nowadays.

What were they indeed thinking when they decided to turn Android down? I fully agree with your points about Nokia's strengths. My understanding is that they decided to go with Microsoft because going aboard Google would be entering a "race to bottom": they thought Android manufacturers can not differentiate themselves, and are essentially reduced to minions which compete to make cheap hardware to run Google's ecosystem. They thought all Android manufacturers would see diminishing profits, and only Chinese vendors would probably remain in the long term.

I think their situation is somewhat similar to Sony. Sony is also well-recognised electronics brand globally. But Sony pushes on with its 'premium' Android smartphone brand (Xperia).

Xperia is the closest you can come to a Nokia-like Android phone these days: it has a great physical build, good camera and excellent battery life. The pre-installed apps seem like they were carefully selected unlike with Samsung phones.

Sony's mobile division is not doing super-well, but it's not a disaster either. I'm myself a proud owner of a Xperia Z3 device and will likely also buy my next smartphone from Sony. I keep wondering, is the existence of a 'premium' Android manufacturer really an oxymoron, like Nokia's management in 2013 predicted?

PS. Nokia is doing pretty well nowadays, though not as a handset manufacturer.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#58

Post by criddell »

pjmlp wrote: post #32

I guess it is about time I stop making my hobby coding portable between WP and Android, focusing just on Android. Sad, because WP is actually much better from tooling and architecture point of view, but the way the whole WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and the yet to become stable WP 10, just drove everyone off. Personally I was kind of pissed off, when the 512 MB devices were left out of the last preview update. Also it was the…

Why do you think Microsoft continues to develop Windows Phone?

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#59

Post by lmm »

criddell wrote: post #58
pjmlp wrote: post #32

I guess it is about time I stop making my hobby coding portable between WP and Android, focusing just on Android. Sad, because WP is actually much better from tooling and architecture point of view, but the way the whole WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and the yet to become stable WP 10, just drove everyone off. Personally I was kind of pissed off, when the 512 MB devices were left out of the last preview update. Also it was the…

Why do you think Microsoft continues to develop Windows Phone?

Pride and/or poor internal incentive structures that prevent them from acknowledging its failure.

Re: Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production

#60

Post by pjmlp »

criddell wrote: post #58
pjmlp wrote: post #32

I guess it is about time I stop making my hobby coding portable between WP and Android, focusing just on Android. Sad, because WP is actually much better from tooling and architecture point of view, but the way the whole WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and the yet to become stable WP 10, just drove everyone off. Personally I was kind of pissed off, when the 512 MB devices were left out of the last preview update. Also it was the…

Why do you think Microsoft continues to develop Windows Phone?

Maybe they don't want to loose their face?

You should follow this tweeter discussion from Sinofsky

https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/733699065763004416

It wasn't the difference between desktop and mobile stacks that pushed most away, rather the breaking changes between WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and WP 10. As explained recently on the Ars Technica article,

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/onecor...

And as a developer I cannot really get why WP 10 is still so buggy (according to the reports) versus the already stable 8.1.

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