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

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151–160 of 208 posts

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

#151
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…

> phone manufacturers not playing ball with its customers

They do. Their customers are the telcos. most phone manufacturers will do whatever they are told, without much regard of how much this will affect the life of their users.

As long as we prefer to buy locked-up, subsidized phones from our telcos, this unfortunate arrangement will persist.

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

#152
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this points out a potential weakness with the model of taking someone else's OS and slapping it in your device. Once the operators (typically) have added their crap on top it leaves you little margin to extract extra cash until you get someone to buy another device.

Seems to work alright for Apple - even though they're doing gangbusters on App sales, it seems the majority of iPhone's profitability comes from hardware sales themselves, and this is without any real shades of planned obsolescence. Nokia is renowned for their hardware build quality - well in advance of LG, Moto, or Samsung. I think the market has spoken that they want the full experience - solid software, beautiful…

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

#154
post #49

Ignoring the problems with WP7, if Nokia were to produce phones with other 'external' OSes why would they stick with just one? No one criticizes Samsung and they are pretty much a mobile-OS whore: SHP, Bada, WP7, Symbian (albeit a year or so ago), Android, Limo, etc. N.B. Regarding SHP: I can't remember the name properly but this was the old/existing Samsung feature phone platform, it probably has got rolled into Bad…

IMO, that's because Samsung doesn't have a clue and would rather hedge their bets. Most people I know who has a Samsung Galaxy, Captivate, etc have complained endlessly about the wait for updates. Samsung's business is in selling phones, not developing a software platform and therein lies the problem. They make their bread and butter on planned obsolescence and in the process screw over their customers.

> that's because Samsung doesn't have a clue

Maybe they just want to focus on selling profitable phones... Not every business model should depend on a single software platform.

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

#155
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this points out a potential weakness with the model of taking someone else's OS and slapping it in your device. Once the operators (typically) have added their crap on top it leaves you little margin to extract extra cash until you get someone to buy another device.

Seems to work alright for Apple - even though they're doing gangbusters on App sales, it seems the majority of iPhone's profitability comes from hardware sales themselves, and this is without any real shades of planned obsolescence. Nokia is renowned for their hardware build quality - well in advance of LG, Moto, or Samsung. I think the market has spoken that they want the full experience - solid software, beautiful…

Except Apple is a bad example as it makes it's own OS and own the end to end user experience with out a dependency on a 3rd party?

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locked as in "locked to one network"? Except for prepaid 20EUR-phones and perhaps the iPhone, which phones in Germany come locked?

Phones are usually "bought" for 1€ with a 24 month contract attached. At the end of the contract, the lock is lifted and you can use your phone on all networks.

I'm aware of the 1EUR contracts (I live in Germany). I was just surprised that most phones in such contracts were supposed to be netlocked.

I've bought most of my mobile phones of the past on eBay to use with my prepaid card. I've seen Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile brandings on them, but I never had to contact the seller because of a netlock problem. I've also found footnotes like "this telephone can only be used on XXX network, wait 24mo or pay us 99EUR" on brochures and paper ads, but only for prepaid contracts.

If there is a common practice of netlocking most German 24-month-contract phones, when did it start?

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too. If this holds true for France too, the vast majority of mobile phones in Europe is being sold locked. I don't know the details about the "illegal" claim, but normally those things are governed by EU laws, making it somewhat hard to believe that contracts common in the UK and Germany would be considered illegal in the Netherlands or Portugal.

Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too. You forgot to add that this is only the case for subsidized phones. Nobody stops you from going to Media Markt to purchase an unlocked, uncrippled phone for full price. In addition: SIM locked (i.e. only able to use a designated network) is not quite the same as a crippled phone (like in intentionally crippling the Bluetooth stack to force users to use a crappy service to up…

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

#159
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't care about different drivers, but they care when they want to download the Twitter app, only to realise that their new phone is on 1.6 and that they require 2.1, and Samsung will not upgrade their phone. A lot of open-source projects for community builds of Android get plenty of casual users wanting to get the most out of a phone they're currently tied to that the manufacturer has effectively dropped sup…

Frankly, I don't think most people care, either. They just want a phone that works, where they can find the features they use, and maybe some useful other things, like syncing contacts with gmail. Most people I know with Android devices have never downloaded apps, some have downloaded a few in the first few days they had their phone, and only my most hard-core tech friends download any regularly. Most studies seem to…

I'd be interested in seeing these studies, as all I have to go on is personal experience and experience with the GAOSP, MustyMod and the popular custom builds on Android forums.

So, you buy a new Android phone, try to download the Twitter app, and realise that your 2 month old phone will never be able to run it. Does the phone work?

A lot of custom OS projects wouldn't exist today if consumers believed it did.

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

#160
post #23

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 powerf…

Very well said. It's a great memo, but its main effect is to lay the groundwork for a strategy change. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem [...] When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company [...] The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and b…

No matter how good the strategy looks on paper, it's useless unless everyone buys in. Its effectiveness will depend to a great extent on how well the new strategy, and more importantly the need for it, can be sold internally.
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