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Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

engadget.com

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Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#11

Post by andrewljohnson »

A well-written email is more powerful than many people comprehend. We used to call them letters, and they were powerful then too.

You can change a person's or a group's mind about something, even after a decision appears to have been made. You can clinch a job, win a contract, stop a lawsuit, regain a friend, woo a lover, and change history itself with just a few words.

I'm not sure if people realize quite how powerful an email can be, directed at the right audience, at the right time, with the right message. And the flip-side is true too. A badly written, poorly directed, or mis-timed email can have terrible consequences. You can make or break a company with a single email.

Regarding this memo, it's a truly inspiring, and well-timed. I think this will be a Gettysburg moment for the CEO, and may mark a turning point for Nokia.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#12

Post by SandB0x »

> The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

Please, please, Nokia, adopt Android and put your efforts into making great hardware to go with it, without ruining the interface like so many other manufacturers do.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#13

Post by Geee »

That's really interesting read, but doesn't tell anything about specifics. I'm not really sure what they will announce on Friday. As we can see however, it's about ecosystems, not about the OS.

1. Qt is really valuable asset, they are keeping it. Actually they are keeping everything they have now.

2. Joining WP7 or Android as an OEM would cut Nokia out of their ecosystems, not going to happen.

3. Adopting WP7 or Android as is would require Nokia to cut back some custom hardware features and make differentiation harder.

My best guess is WP7 with Qt allowing Nokia's services and apps on those phones. This would be additional to Symbian and MeeGo devices. However, I'm pretty sure they are starting to ramp Symbian down.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#15

Post by kenjackson »

lamby wrote: post #10
avner wrote: post #6

Stephen Elop has finally put in writing what the market has said about Nokia ever since the iPhone came out. Props to him for finally initiating this intervention at Nokia; it has been long overdue. Someone has finally said "we have fucked up, its now time to get back on the horse and make it right" to the Nokia management. Less than a decade ago, nobody could touch Nokia in the mobile handset market, Nokia defined q…

Your comment and Engadget's article seem to imply that Nokia failing in the smartphone market means that Nokia is failing generally. But wouldn't Nokia still be making a lovely profit even if they stuck to the more vanilla phones? Don't forget that only a fraction of people can afford these >= £500 devices and only a fraction of those buy them without financing.

Nokia used to be up around 60% of the mobile phone market (in terms of profit). Now they're around ~20%, while Apple is more than 50% (on less than 5% marketshare).

Nokia is still making money, but pretty much all new profit is going to everyone else (especially Apple).

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2666565/posts

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#16

Post by rm445 »

lamby wrote: post #10
avner wrote: post #6

Stephen Elop has finally put in writing what the market has said about Nokia ever since the iPhone came out. Props to him for finally initiating this intervention at Nokia; it has been long overdue. Someone has finally said "we have fucked up, its now time to get back on the horse and make it right" to the Nokia management. Less than a decade ago, nobody could touch Nokia in the mobile handset market, Nokia defined q…

Your comment and Engadget's article seem to imply that Nokia failing in the smartphone market means that Nokia is failing generally. But wouldn't Nokia still be making a lovely profit even if they stuck to the more vanilla phones? Don't forget that only a fraction of people can afford these >= £500 devices and only a fraction of those buy them without financing.

The memo directly addresses how Nokia no longer owns the medium or low-end of the market either.

They're being squeezed by smartphone tech making its way down towards mid-range 'featurephones' (i.e. a cheap Android handset easily beats a mid-range Symbian featurephone), while the low-end stuff is becoming a commodity churned out by Chinese OEMs.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#17

Post by semanticist »

vessenes wrote: post #7

This is an excellent, really excellent call to arms from a new CEO. I have a few takeaways -- first: the board brought Elop in for a four to seven year turn-around. He's going to make enemies, but that's okay. If he executes the turn-around, they'll put someone more finnish back in to sooth the old guard after they're making money again. Second -- this guy has the Microsoft internal criticism DNA, through and through…

Nokia regularly cripple features, specifically including VoIP, at the demands of carriers. Perhaps not US carriers, but it happened frequently in the UK.

I took the calls of people angry that their 'top end' handset couldn't do VoIP because they bought it from Vodafone.

The carriers were always Nokia's customers, not the consumers, I can't see how that's going to change.

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#18

Post by jsnell »

donaldc wrote: post #8

I thought that this was the most interesting part of the article: and that Elop would start looking to Nokia's new Silicon Valley campus as its center of gravity, with execs and senior management expected to start spending more time outside Finland. That's quite an endorsement of Silicon Valley as a tech hub...

And also the part of the rumors that makes the least sense. Hack through the middle management and bureaucracy with a chainsaw, cut off all the incredibly inefficient contractors, clean all the dead wood from R&D, kill one or both of the in-house operating systems, give up on building services and just start preloading every phone with Bing services for big money, etc. One might not agree with those actions, but at least one could plausibly argue that they'd be beneficial to the future of the company.

But how exactly is moving the heart of the company into Sunnyvale going to help? Nokia isn't exactly in the position to compete for the best people in those horribly over-fished waters, especially soon after a round of brutal layoffs. Are the dregs of Silicon Valley really going to be that much better than the talent elsewhere? Does the world even need one more company centered around that echo chamber?

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#19

Post by danilocampos »

lamby wrote: post #10
avner wrote: post #6

Stephen Elop has finally put in writing what the market has said about Nokia ever since the iPhone came out. Props to him for finally initiating this intervention at Nokia; it has been long overdue. Someone has finally said "we have fucked up, its now time to get back on the horse and make it right" to the Nokia management. Less than a decade ago, nobody could touch Nokia in the mobile handset market, Nokia defined q…

Your comment and Engadget's article seem to imply that Nokia failing in the smartphone market means that Nokia is failing generally. But wouldn't Nokia still be making a lovely profit even if they stuck to the more vanilla phones? Don't forget that only a fraction of people can afford these >= £500 devices and only a fraction of those buy them without financing.

> But wouldn't Nokia still be making a lovely profit even if they stuck to the more vanilla phones?

Maybe. Until the smartphone market mostly cannibalizes the dumbphone market.

Then where are they?

Re: Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform"

#20

Post by ergo98 »

kenjackson wrote: post #15
lamby wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment and Engadget's article seem to imply that Nokia failing in the smartphone market means that Nokia is failing generally. But wouldn't Nokia still be making a lovely profit even if they stuck to the more vanilla phones? Don't forget that only a fraction of people can afford these >= £500 devices and only a fraction of those buy them without financing.

Nokia used to be up around 60% of the mobile phone market (in terms of profit). Now they're around ~20%, while Apple is more than 50% (on less than 5% marketshare). Nokia is still making money, but pretty much all new profit is going to everyone else (especially Apple). http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2666565/posts

Do you think there is a fixed "profit" out there for the taking?

Apple's profit margin is an extreme aberration, and it isn't sustainable. Any comparison that relies upon profit numbers is...disturbed.

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