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1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

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Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#41
post #9

Let's see 1. Hire someone from Microsoft to run the company 2. He says "our platform is burning, we have to do something drastic" which most people interpret as "prepare to come up with a strategy and fight like hell to win". 3. Guess what, he already had something in mind! It was "throw out our current reasonably successful development efforts and become a licensee of Microsoft's failed platform instead". And piss o…

>1. Hire someone from Microsoft to run the company

Except, he was only at Microsoft a year and a half and before that he was with Juniper Networks and before that with Adobe Systems.

What I mean is, he knows more about Microsoft and how their offerings might fit in at Nokia (than say an OS by a company he's not familiar with), but it's a stretch to couch it as if he was an old time Microsoft employee who is going to force Microsoft on Nokia.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#43
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An executive switches from company M to competitor N then abruptly throws much of N's development investment in the trash and signs a deal to license all of it from M instead, it smells funny. I'm not saying anything actually is wrong, I don't know enough about it to care. But what I do see is Nokia being a big employer and part of national pride for Finland. This will likely become an issue in politics there. They'd…

I am assuming the board talked about something like this happening - even directly with Elop - before hiring him. It's not like it's totally surprising.

It certainly surprised the Nokia staff. Wasn't it communicated inside the company? If so, why? I bet the answers to those questions are very interesting.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#44

No PR campaign can save Nokia from this well-deserved disaster. Btw, NOK is down 15%

Not sure this is well-deserved, but it certainly has been a couple of years in the making. Who didn't see this coming? Oh, and there go our tax euros. Symbian has been given EU tax money to develop a "European localized mobile operating system"

In fairness, those tax dollars could be used to "European-localize" WP7 as well.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#45
post #9

Let's see 1. Hire someone from Microsoft to run the company 2. He says "our platform is burning, we have to do something drastic" which most people interpret as "prepare to come up with a strategy and fight like hell to win". 3. Guess what, he already had something in mind! It was "throw out our current reasonably successful development efforts and become a licensee of Microsoft's failed platform instead". And piss o…

It's amazing how hyperbolic people are being about this, presumably out of blind Microsoft hatred.

Pretty much everyone agreed that Nokia's Symbian/MeeGo strategy was a failure, that Nokia were quickly losing marketshare and that they needed a new OS.

The only options were Android and Windows Phone 7. WebOS would have been a better fit than either, but that option had already been and gone.

I think there are compelling reasons why Nokia would choose WP7 over Android.

There is a competitive advantage in being the flagship manufacturer of a platform, they won't have to play catchup against much more established competitors, or have to directly compete with cheap Chinese phones from companies like ZTE in the low-end. That's without going into the favourable terms that Microsoft no doubt offered.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#46
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than continuing with Symbian and having to lay off all the employees in a few years time.

The stock market appears to predict otherwise, believing that this move lowers the net present value of the company. Of course, stock markets aren't necessarily accurate prediction markets, but given suitable efficient-market hypotheses they're an approximation of such a thing.

The stock market just reacted for admitting defeat, Nokia drilled that Symbian is the better option for years and only today acknowledged that is not the case.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#47

Regardless of whether you agree with the CEO's position I think it's pretty childish to walk out on your job.

If you think the CEO is leading your company or your job into the trash, there's nothing wrong with taking a vacation day to work on your resume'.

You can bet he's working on his on the clock.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#48
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market appears to predict otherwise, believing that this move lowers the net present value of the company. Of course, stock markets aren't necessarily accurate prediction markets, but given suitable efficient-market hypotheses they're an approximation of such a thing.

The stock market isn't predicting anything. It just believes given the current information and Nokia's decision, $NOK's value deserves to be lower now than what it was prior. It's just a current snapshot - no indication of the company's future whatsoever.

Well technically a company's stock value is supposed to represent the discounted present value of all future profits. So you can interpret a reduction in stock price as an indication that the market expects profits to be lower in the future.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#49
post #5

No PR campaign can save Nokia from this well-deserved disaster. Btw, NOK is down 15%

Better than continuing with Symbian and having to lay off all the employees in a few years time.

Sticking to Symbian and finishing MeeGo were not their only options. AFAIK, the Android stack would run just fine on top of the MeeGo kernel. They could have gone with Android in their high-end while gradually pushing Symbian down towards their dumbphone range.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#50

Regardless of whether you agree with the CEO's position I think it's pretty childish to walk out on your job.

If you are afraid that this decision means that your job is in danger it's quite okay to show protest in my book. And - they even did it on their own free time (using flexible working time), not 'stealing' paid time for their protest. I like that move a lot.

I apologize for not fully reading the story before I commented. Using your own PTO is quite admirable. I was under the wrong impression.
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