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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

#91

Post by mongol »

pjmlp wrote: post #48
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…

I too was there during those days, in Espoo. But to be honest we also had our share of alienating developers, it wasn't only MS fault. First the Symbian development was a mess with the Metrowerk tools and that Symbian C++ dialect, then came PIPS, followed by Carbide (Eclipse based). Followed by the whole mess of open sourcing Symbian and closing it again. Or the Symbian model moving from Symbian C++ / PIPS to Qt, als…

What if Nokia 770 also was a phone? History could have been so radically different. I will never understand...

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

#92

Post by facepalm »

dnissley wrote: post #88
facepalm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They could've been in Samsung's place if they hadn't bet the farm on Windows Phone.

They were too proud to simply adopt Android. They were broken before they made deals with Microsoft.

Shame - personally I think people would have bought a Nokia Android phone. They were renowned for their hardware.

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

#93

Post by joecool1029 »

Zigurd wrote: post #24
tim333 wrote: post #8

I wonder how it would have played out for Nokia if Microsoft had not bought them. Rather better in some ways I'd imagine.

For the view that it would have been better without Microsoft, I'd recommend Tomi Ahonen's blog. I agree with him to the extent that, in hindsight, it would be hard to make more destructive management decisions than what actually happened. The people inside Nokia often seemed to be trapped in a nightmare. It was a sad, hollowed-out place well before it was sold to Microsoft. Stephen Elop killed several projects that…

Are you kidding me? Both BB10 and Harmattan/Meego were far ahead of iOS and Android when they were released. There's a lot of arguments you can make, but they both have created modern OS's. People think of BBOS and Symbian but they were in the roadmap to be replaced.

Where they failed it was assuming their market leads at the time would allow them to take their time deploying a solid OS while the app ecosystems for iOS and android blew up. By the time they shipped it became a question of where they fit in the world anymore.

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

#94

Post by criddell »

gulpahum wrote: post #28

Just few weeks ago, Nokia announced that Nokia branded smart phones and tablets will be entering market soon. This time they are based on Android OS. It'll be interesting to see how well they'll sell (compared to Windows Phone). http://company.nokia.com/en/our-businesses/nokia-technologie... http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/05/18/n...

Other than the Nokia brand name (which is still pretty valuable), I wonder how they will differentiate themselves from other Android handset makers?

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

#95

Post by dmix »

nihonde wrote: post #67
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #36

A lesson from Palm, Nokia, Motorola, and every other small-to-midsize company in the Telco arena: Never let yourselves be acquired. It won't end well.

Apple could easily have agreed to an acquisition in the 1990s. It takes true serious chutzpah and goodwill to nose up from a failing product line.

> serious chutzpah and goodwill to nose up from a failing product line

The bigger question is maintaining a controlling interest. VCs love quick easy exits. Seems to be the default pattern these days which is sad. And we wonder why so few long-term large scale businesses get created in SV these days.

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

#96

Post by nickik »

nextos wrote: post #70
rospaya wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but they had massive advantages over both Apple and Google and with good guidance could've survived successfully. I can't agree more. Few people remember the Nokia 770 was released almost 2 years ahead of the iPhone. With a bit of polish it could have grown into a fantastic product line. In fact, the N9 was pretty much a masterpiece.

I remember wanting to buy it. I didn't because back then it was to much money for me. I remember thinking that I defently want a future version of it.

For some reason that I don't understand, they continued to push Symbian, and those phones were not good. I remember thinking, either push further on the MeeGo stuff or drop it and move to Android. They did neither and suffered for it.

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

#97

Post by nickik »

vesinisa wrote: post #57
felipeerias wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ecosyst…

Their was a time when they could have competet with their own software. Maemo was great back in 2009 and if they had continue to push it, it could have been a viable alternative.

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

#98

Post by hellbanner »

chflags wrote: post #90

"... linux laptops were being reformatted to run windows." Microsoft/Windows is a cancer. Ballmer once said Linux was a cancer. He later retracted, after it was well-known Microsoft itself uses Linux. There's nothing more pathetic than when you see Microsoft's businesspeople or lawyers at conferences all faithfully using Windows, as if there was no other choice, and rambling on about how their products can solve any…

They are simply following incentives set by the economic environment they operate in.

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

#99

Post by burkaman »

chflags wrote: post #90

"... linux laptops were being reformatted to run windows." Microsoft/Windows is a cancer. Ballmer once said Linux was a cancer. He later retracted, after it was well-known Microsoft itself uses Linux. There's nothing more pathetic than when you see Microsoft's businesspeople or lawyers at conferences all faithfully using Windows, as if there was no other choice, and rambling on about how their products can solve any…

What do you make of all the Windows-unrelated stuff that comes out of Microsoft Research? Seems like a lot of money and effort they're spending to cover their real mission of infecting the world with their zombie cancer.

I recently saw a Microsoft Research paper about a memory mapping prototype the authors implemented in Linux. I now realize they must have been personally executed by Satya "Kim Jong Un" Nadella when he learned of their non-Windows treachery.

We can only pray that one day these minds will be set free, and we can finally enter the golden age of AI that would surely have arrived 30 years ago if not for the scourge of Microsoft.

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

#100

Post by hellothere789 »

mevile wrote: post #89
hellothere789 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also in Ruoholahti as well as Nokia House when they closed down Ruoholahti. Overnight Nokia turned into a cesspool of backstabbers who didn't add any real value, but managed to steal the credit from everyone else.

> but managed to steal the credit from everyone else. Steal credit for what? What has come out of Microsoft's phone business since the Nokia purchase that anyone would want to take credit for?

I said NOKIA turned into a cesspool, not Microsoft.

As an example, Lumia 1020 had a lot of people working hard on it... but a very select few went out and took all the credit.

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