Microsoft is cutting 1,000 jobs in Finland as it stops phone production • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by sirkneeland » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #20

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…

A lot of people believe Nokia was about to switch to releasing Android phones and Microsoft had no choice but to buy them or exit the phone business. Nokia was in dire straits at the time.

This is not incorrect.

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

#102

Post by sirkneeland » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

facepalm wrote: post #54

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.

3 possibilities (and probably many more):

1) go all-in with their own Symbian/Qt/MeeGo strategy

2) go all-in with Google Android

3) go all-in with a Nokia fork of Google Android (a nonstarter today, but back in 2011, with Nokia's considerable heft and before Google started rolling so much of Android into non-open Google Play Services, things could have played out differently)

In terms of Nokia's performance as a phone company, it is more or less impossible for any of these options to have done any worse than Nokia did with Windows Phone.

HOWEVER, for Nokia as a company, Windows Phone "worked out" in the sense that they had a willing buyer for an asset that was long-term uncompetitive against Asian players in a commodity market. (then again that too has a counter-argument that the phone division would have been worth more than $7 billion had it not dedicated itself to the losing proposition of Windows Phone)

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

#103

Post by unlinker » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

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…

The story of Nokia MeeGo: http://muropaketti.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego

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

#104

Post by unlinker » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #61

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…

Minecraft is very much not destroyed. Nokia .. well, the burning platform was while they were still an independent company. Like Blackberry they failed to adapt to smartphones, and failed to understand their own niche.

Minecraft is in a death spiral, but it's normal, since it's already an old and overplayed game for its target.

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

#105

Post by sirkneeland » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #71

arielweisberg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

The wireless carriers have the final say on which phones they stock and promote, not the manufacturer. There most likely weren't enough sales of Windows Phone devices to make it worthwhile for them to bother trying.

Carrier sales reps didn't like selling Windows Phones, and you can't blame them. From their perspective, they want to sell you a phone in the shortest amount of time that has the lowest probability of return.

Windows Phones had a different UI that meant the sales rep had to spend time showing how it worked, and even if he/she did make the sale, he faced the high risk of a Lumia getting returned because the customer found out some key app wasn't available on Windows Phone but was easily available on iOS and Android (their bank, or airline, Snapchat, and let's not forget Instagram wasn't there for a while)

(source: I'm a former Nokia employee)

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

#106

Post by dave2000 » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #53

nametakenobv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It's just dipped below 1% market share. It doesn't matter if Microsoft kill it or not - either way it's not coming back.

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

#107

Post by sirkneeland » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #94

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?

Nokia brand, Nokia design. And an outlet for whatever cool tech Foxconn has stumbled upon in Shenzhen?

In an era when smartphones are increasingly commoditized, it could work well enough to carve out a sustainable business.

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

#108

Post by znpy » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

Nokia is dead.

Get over it.

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

#109

Post by unlinker » Wed, May 25, 2016, 7:59 PM UTC

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...

As the second article says, it's not Nokia building them, but letting another company ("HMD global Oy") build them under the Nokia brand.

This is similar to what they did with the somewhat recent Nokia N1 tablet: it was built by Foxconn.

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

#110

Post by rifung » Wed, May 25, 2016, 8:01 PM UTC

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…

I'm surprised at the negative attitude you have of MSR. People at MSR seem to have it pretty good and are free to publish their results to the open, so I don't see anything wrong with what they do. It actually seems nice that Microsoft is willing to fund researchers on things that are not directly related to products like Theoretical CS.