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Nokia has as many people for smartphone software as Apple does for all products

asymco.com

1–10 of 29 posts

Re: Nokia has as many people for smartphone software as Apple does for all products

#4
post #2

So? What are we supposed to take away from that? They have more numbers? That doesn't extrapolate to better products or better anything.

>That doesn't extrapolate to better products or better anything.

Agreed. So maybe we should be asking how Apple is growing faster than Nokia with fewer resources?

Re: Nokia has as many people for smartphone software as Apple does for all products

#5
post #3

Might be interesting to look at the total salaries instead of just the headcount. I understand Nokia did quite a lot of cheap outsourcing in the last decade.

According to Asymco's data, Nokia also spends 10.2% of their phone revenue on R&D, versus 2.5% for Apple.

Re: Nokia has as many people for smartphone software as Apple does for all products

#7
post #2

So? What are we supposed to take away from that? They have more numbers? That doesn't extrapolate to better products or better anything.

I don't think this article is praise for Nokia, quite the opposite. They are saying that Apple is much more efficient.

More to the point, Nokia is losing profit compared to Apple:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:NOK&fstype=ii

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL&fstype=ii

so measuring efficiency as net income per employee the contrast is more stark.

Re: Nokia has as many people for smartphone software as Apple does for all products

#8
In my mind, this proves how important it is to hire people that can hit the high notes

    The Creative Zen team could spend years refining their
    ugly iPod knockoffs and never produce as beautiful,
    satisfying, and elegant a player as the Apple iPod. And
    they're not going to make a dent in Apple's market share
    because the magical design talent is just not there.
    They don't have it.

    The mediocre talent just never hits the high notes that
    the top talent hits all the time. The number of divas
    who can hit the f6 in Mozart's Queen of the Night is
    vanishingly small, and you just can't perform The Queen
    of the Night without that famous f6.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html

Re: Nokia has as many people for smartphone software as Apple does for all products

#9
post #2

So? What are we supposed to take away from that? They have more numbers? That doesn't extrapolate to better products or better anything.

>That doesn't extrapolate to better products or better anything. Agreed. So maybe we should be asking how Apple is growing faster than Nokia with fewer resources?

Nokia suffers from the mythical man-month. They've only recently discovered that throwing 6,000 engineers at Symbian didn't make it better.

Re: Nokia has as many people for smartphone software as Apple does for all products

#10
I was going to submit a comment about how poorly written the article is. Instead I will just mention that this has always been one of Apple's best qualities. They have managed to stay lean and capitalize on the inability of their competitors to do the same.
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