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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

#111

Post by sirkneeland »

vesinisa wrote: post #15
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…

Either way, how was the unit worth $7.2 billion in 2013 to anyone? Why did Microsoft pay such ridiculous money for a loss-making business, only to essentially burn it down over the next two years? From April 2014, when the deal was finalized, to May 2016, when the last employees are being laid off, the damage Microsoft incurred from this deal amount to about $1.8 million per HOUR of business. Did they really think th…

It was driven by Ballmer's ego more than a rational plan.

They imagined they could speed time to market for devices by eliminating frictions inherent in being 2 companies working on 1 product (and as an employee I can say there were indeed inescapable frictions). But ultimately it couldn't get around the core problem: (almost) nobody wants a Windows Phone.

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

#112

Post by tn13 »

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 agree. In India Nokia was voted as "Most Trusted Brand" for years. Cell phone == Nokia in India. All they had to do was to put Android in some phones as an arbitrage move and they could have still been the leader in that space in India. Which has grown like 8x in last 5 years.

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

#113

Post by sirkneeland »

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 stock price in the last few months would disagree with that assertion.

I say this as an unfortunate shareholder.

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

#114

Post by patkai »

I see it as Nokia was a very good hardware company that couldn't turn itself around into a software company. Before iPhone you needed many moving parts, good supply chains, great hardware variety, spare part production and who knows what. Now you need good software. Nokia was less likely to turn itself around than IBM.

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

#115

Post by twblalock »

BorgHunter wrote: post #44
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…

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…

If Elop had bet on Android instead of Windows Phone, Nokia would probably be doing well.

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

#116

Post by Ezhik »

unlinker wrote: post #109
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.

This HMD global was founded by an ex-Nokia employee.

Seems like the sleeper agents are being activated.

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

#117

Post by honkhonkpants »

mongol wrote: post #91
pjmlp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

If the 770 was also a phone, it would have been a ghastly tablet with a phone inside.

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

#118

Post by mbesto »

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.

> Never let yourselves be acquired.

Ha. Tell that to someone who's about to make millions of dollars from an acquisition.

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

#119

Post by x0x0 »

twblalock wrote: post #115
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…

If Elop had bet on Android instead of Windows Phone, Nokia would probably be doing well.

Almost certainly not. Have you seen the profit numbers at Samsung, Motorola, and HTC? They're getting destroyed by Android competitors like Xiaomi, Huawei, etc and Apple.

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

#120

Post by ptaipale »

nickik wrote: post #96
nextos wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Symbian devices were actually very good phones. For making and receiving voice calls, they were better than Android has ever been.

Of course, as a platform for Web browsing, and particularly for app development, Symbian was not good.

But I still miss the phone functionality of my E71, or the Symbian devices I had before it.

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