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

engadget.com

131–140 of 208 posts

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

#131

wow, that is one way to motivate the troops. The lack of mentioning of WP7 at all and the re-emphasis of Andriod as a competitor makes me think it's unlikely they will be running Andriod any time soon.

I don't follow your logic. Windows 7 isn't much of a competitor. It had a smaller debut than Android and iPhone, by a large amount, and is being outsold by both so the gap is widening. If I were Nokia, I wouldn't be worrying about fellow also-rans in the industry, like Microsoft. I'd be worried about the products that were eating my lunch, and I'd let Microsoft figure out how to protect their own lunch. If Nokia choo…

Remember that Microsoft has a trick up its sleeve: Midori. It quietly incubated the Singularity research OS, a pure .NET operating system, a couple of years ago and is turning it into a commercial product. The advantages of the OS are increased security and massive parallelism, both due to the fact that .NET code is inherently memory safe.

My hypothesis is that Windows Phone 7 is a stop-gap measure introduced to build their brand and app portfolio while they're working on the 'real' thing. Note that WP7 apps are .NET apps, so transition to a pure .NET kernel would be relatively easy. Of course I have nothing but a hunch and some rumours, to base this on, but I find it highly unlikely that MS is just going to sit there while Google is building the dominant platform for internet usage (note that in some countries, like India, smart phones are now the most popular device for accessing the internet).

Remember that although us geeks are picky about the OS our phone runs, a the large majority of phone buyers really don't give a crap and switch easily. My girlfriend goes into a store and just picks out something shiny, possibly looking for specific features like a keyboard to type out email on. And app portfolio isn't just a matter of quantity. About 10% of the apps on any given platform probably satisfy 90% of a user's needs. Microsoft really just needs to have that 10% to be a compelling alternative, and they have the cash to simply write it themselves or pay people to write it for them.

So all in all, I don't think that Microsoft is out of the game just yet. On the contrary, they're just getting started, and this deal with Nokia is going to be very valuable for both companies.

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

#132

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And suddenly I remember Valentine's Day is almost here.

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

#133
post #10
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.

Although you'll not hear about it on Engadget (as it's not interesting to high-end gadget hounds, they barely mention the low-end Androids, which are high-end by world standards), Nokia got demolished at the low end by a bunch of companies you've never heard of. It was basically coincidental that at the same time they missed the bus on the new portable computer (with phone capabilities) market that Apple invented.

Pretty bad luck for a company that was raking in billions selling lots of different low-cost phones to developing nations (which you wouldn't even believe is possible if you went to the John Gruber School of Business). Unfortunately those billions insulated them from the shocks, much like Microsoft happily ignored the internet for years. But the perfect storm of Apple, Android and low-end commodity competitors hit them hard from multiple directions (nice hardware, open ecosystem, low prices were all previous Nokia advantages).

Elop mentions it though, so at least Nokia is aware of the problem: "Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets."

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

#134
post #12

> 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…

One of the big problems with Android at the moment is phone manufacturers not playing ball with its customers. Samsung have repeatedly neglected their phones in favour of releasing more new Android phones. At the moment, HTC is probably the king of Android phones, and most non-casual Android users will probably want to go with them, or with a newer hyped phone.

If Nokia were to enter the Android market and promote their open ethos throughout the Android community then the company could make a mint. Something as simple as releasing driver code for their phones so people can modify code to be run on their phones would put them miles in front with the Android community. If Nokia were to do these simple things then projects like the GAOSP wouldn't be so relied on to provide a usable phone with support.

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

#135
post #18
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 l…

At least in the US they'd be free to fire the dead weight. The laws in Finland are made to protect the workers, and a previously fired employee must be considered before hiring somebody new. This might be a reason why Nokia have so many external contract workers.

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

#136
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather Nokia actually be the only truly open mobile platform out there. No, Android isn't sufficiently open. It's my phone, at a minimum I should be able to pull all my own data off it in any form I choose.

The problem is that openness at the cost of user experience isn't good enough to keep a company alive. Ideally you'd get both, of course; but so far Nokia has been unable to deliver on user experience compared to iPhone and even Android.

Google is not delivering a truly open handset because it's in their corporate interest, not because it would detract from the user experience.

I'd rather wait for one company to try to and get their UX together than wait for Google to do an 180 on their data collection policies or for Apple to tear down the walls of their garden.

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

#137
post #16
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.

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.

There is no such thing as "Symbian feature phone". Every Symbian phone is a smartphone.

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

#138
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather Nokia actually be the only truly open mobile platform out there. No, Android isn't sufficiently open. It's my phone, at a minimum I should be able to pull all my own data off it in any form I choose.

IMO a GNU/free fork of Android would still be a better platform than MeeGo or Symbian, and would be cheaper to develop.

There is no such thing as a free Android, except if you tear the whole Java user space away.

And I'm REALLY curious about why you and 14 other people think that Android is such a good mobile OS. The VM is both a legal and speed liability, the Android UI is not GPU-accelerated and the entire OS is still immature (see the embarrassing bugs with the SMS or the browser security holes).

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

#139
post #41
post #12

> 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…

This is the way forward, a company that wants to develop native apps for mobile must already work with so many different systems. A new startup is going to focus on an iphone app, if they are successful or well capitalized from the start then they will look at android. The third choice in the market is shaping to be windows 7 phone. Expecting companies to develop for then yet another platform, one which seems to be r…

WP7 isn't shaping up to be anything. Nokia sold more N8's than all the WP7 manufacturers combined.

Secondly, there is room in the market for other players as indicated by Bada's success.

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

#140
post #12

> 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…

One of the big problems with Android at the moment is phone manufacturers not playing ball with its customers. Samsung have repeatedly neglected their phones in favour of releasing more new Android phones. At the moment, HTC is probably the king of Android phones, and most non-casual Android users will probably want to go with them, or with a newer hyped phone. If Nokia were to enter the Android market and promote th…

Please stop thinking like a HN-er when discussing the entire market. If Nokia were to enter the Android market they would be just another Android producer. No one cares about drivers except hackers.
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