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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)

#111

Post by samstokes »

pavlov wrote: post #103
beagle3 wrote: post #69

Does this remind anyone else of SGI? - Total domination of their own field - Resting on laurels while others snatch the market from under them - Panic - Get a CEO from Microsoft - CEO quickly decides that the O/S developed in house is not worth maintaining. And that the right O/S is no other than Microsoft's offering - Company continues dive to irrelevance, albeit at a much faster rate than before Well, the last one…

Goodbye old Nokia. You will be missed. By whom? The old Nokia was a terrible software company, with so many abject failures at creating platforms (Symbian, N-Gage, Ovi, etc.) that I don't think anyone else in this business can compare. It's a good thing that they're getting out of software and concentrating on stuff they're actually good at.

They were terrible at software, but managed to make some really good phones despite it.

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

#112

Post by TheCondor »

halo wrote: post #45
marshray wrote: 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 compelli…

No doubt there is plenty of MS hatred...

I guess my question is maybe a little different, if Nokia is in that much trouble, then isn't WP7 a gamble? Its not just flying off the shelf where Android on the other hand is. Two losers don't usually make a winner. I don't know, seems like Google is all in with Android, they've got a pipeline, they've established themselves and proven themselves and they are legitimately competing with iPhone.

Now if they think WP7 is the future and it's going to take the market away from iPhone and Android then it makes sense, but I don't know that anyone really thinks that, it might carve out a niche but it's not going to beat the other guys. There are now iPhone, Android, RIM, WebOS and WP7 in the smart phone market, seems like a lot to me.

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

#113

Post by pavlov »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #104
pavlov wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodbye old Nokia. You will be missed. By whom? The old Nokia was a terrible software company, with so many abject failures at creating platforms (Symbian, N-Gage, Ovi, etc.) that I don't think anyone else in this business can compare. It's a good thing that they're getting out of software and concentrating on stuff they're actually good at.

Symbian was not a failure... it was a giant succes for quite a long time. That's like calling MS-DOS a failure.

A success by what metric?

As a platform, surely not. The wheels came off by the end of 2008 when S60 5th Edition went touch-only, leaving keyboard devices still shipping with the hopelessly outdated 3rd Edition. Symbian touch devices never gained any platform traction.

Was it a success as a software foundation upon which handset makers could innovate, as had been the original idea behind Symbian? No. Everyone that used Symbian abandoned it for more flexible alternatives. The lack of a unified UI development track didn't lead to the hoped innovation, but merely fragmentation that ultimately doomed Symbian. (It didn't help that the most popular UI layer, Nokia's S60, was so poorly designed and thoroughly mismanaged.)

I actually use a Symbian^3 device, the Nokia N8. It's not bad at all. I love the physical design, and the software works fine for what I do (although the browser is a turd, it's replaceable by the fine Opera).

Still, I can't escape the feeling that this is the OS that Nokia should have had over two years ago. Also, it's a development dead end. Symbian^4 was supposed to be a UI rewrite, but it failed. The promised improvements to S^3 have been slow in coming. (Still no Qt 4.7...!)

How is Symbian a success at this point? What reason would Elop -- or anyone else -- have to believe that the existing software development structure at Nokia could substantially improve this situation?

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

#114

Post by fauigerzigerk »

_delirium wrote: post #11
pclark wrote: 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.

I think the market is pricing in an extended transition period that could hit smart phone sales for a couple of quarters.

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

#115

Post by hvs »

beagle3 wrote: post #69

Does this remind anyone else of SGI? - Total domination of their own field - Resting on laurels while others snatch the market from under them - Panic - Get a CEO from Microsoft - CEO quickly decides that the O/S developed in house is not worth maintaining. And that the right O/S is no other than Microsoft's offering - Company continues dive to irrelevance, albeit at a much faster rate than before Well, the last one…

I don't disagree with you in general, but IRIX was a dog of an OS. They dominated in hardware, but the OS was always something you just had to live with.

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

#116

Post by darklajid »

eiji wrote: post #60

Am I the only one happy that WP7 is NOT dead? I very much prefer a threesome! Every mobil user will benefit from this. And this is not like Desktop. Everybody will have to bring their A-Game.

I think the reactions are split into camps:

1) "Windows Phone is cool":

Think of all the people that like the tech (.Net) or the visuals (Remember the recent "No chrome in the UI" thread). That want this platform to succeed. I guess if you're in this camp the news are great: WP7 gains a very experienced hardware vendor. You can expect a couple of good/decent handsets soonish, pushing WP7 (with a lot of marketing and money) and thereby solving the chicken and egg problem (platform apps) with cash.

2) "I liked Nokias history", "I'm a QT/maemo/MeeGo fan"

In this case the news are bad: Nokia changes direction. How much only time will tell, but the company that over the last couple of years slowly started to adopt open source is now going for a closed platform. QT and MeeGo are more or less declassed in the press release (research..? N770, N800, N810.. They did that in the past, the devices were unusable for non-hackers. I know, I own one). In this case you don't care much about WP7, you basically moan about the loss of plans that YOU had for that company/platform. That's what I see alot around now.

I understand both points, but the latter seems both easier to understand (I've got a bunch of maemo shirts, the N810 hardware etc..) and at the same time completely irrelevant (Seriously.. While mom and dad might have heard about Windows Mobile and that a new version is coming, who around you cared about MeeGo to succeed?). I'm quite sure this is the death sentence for MeeGo handsets. But we haven't even seen one of those yet. How do we know that we lost something of value? Please - no ideology (while I'd probably be with you, that's not something a company of that size should care about in a self-crisis) based answers about being open etc..

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

#117

Post by tres »

beagle3 wrote: post #69

Does this remind anyone else of SGI? - Total domination of their own field - Resting on laurels while others snatch the market from under them - Panic - Get a CEO from Microsoft - CEO quickly decides that the O/S developed in house is not worth maintaining. And that the right O/S is no other than Microsoft's offering - Company continues dive to irrelevance, albeit at a much faster rate than before Well, the last one…

> - CEO quickly decides that the O/S developed in house is not worth maintaining. And that the right O/S is no other than Microsoft's offering

And it's even better when you factor in that in each case there is a viable and much better suited free and open option available. Linux would have made a much better choice as a transitional platform from IRIX.

It's nepotism on the corporate level & just like nepotism will destroy the morale of a department, this kind of nepotism will destroy the morale of an entire company.

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

#118

Post by tygorius »

marshray wrote: post #85
trezor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was "throw out our current reasonably successful development efforts and become a licensee of Microsoft's failed platform instead". Reasonably successful? I dare you to name one single Nokia-phone made the last half decade which you would consider relevant. The truth is that platform-wise and software-wise, the bits you interact with, they've been stagnant since around 2000 and no amount of megapixels or Carl Zeis…

Reasonably successful? I dare you to name one single Nokia-phone made the last half decade which you would consider relevant. Well "dare" is a pretty big word, as if you're making some kind of threat of retaliation if I do. So let's just ask Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=nokia+market+penetration Second link: http://gigaom.com/2010/03/18/the-mobile-os-market/ Check that out. According to that data, in the 200…

No, stagnant would imply things were stable and they're clearly not. You can make an argument that Symbian OS was successful in the past, but the trend in the GigaOM chart you linked is pretty clear: rapid decline. In 2007, Symbian was around 2/3 of the total smartphone market, and two years later it had fallen below 50%. During the same period, RIM almost tripled its market share and the iPhone and Android numbers were showing even stronger growth.

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

#119

Post by ma2rten »

TheCondor wrote: post #112
halo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compelli…

No doubt there is plenty of MS hatred... I guess my question is maybe a little different, if Nokia is in that much trouble, then isn't WP7 a gamble? Its not just flying off the shelf where Android on the other hand is. Two losers don't usually make a winner. I don't know, seems like Google is all in with Android, they've got a pipeline, they've established themselves and proven themselves and they are legitimately co…

I think it's actually the other way around, moving to Android would be the bigger gamble. What would differentiate Nokia from any other company that develops phones for Android?

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

#120

Post by gaius »

hvs wrote: post #115
beagle3 wrote: post #69

Does this remind anyone else of SGI? - Total domination of their own field - Resting on laurels while others snatch the market from under them - Panic - Get a CEO from Microsoft - CEO quickly decides that the O/S developed in house is not worth maintaining. And that the right O/S is no other than Microsoft's offering - Company continues dive to irrelevance, albeit at a much faster rate than before Well, the last one…

I don't disagree with you in general, but IRIX was a dog of an OS. They dominated in hardware, but the OS was always something you just had to live with.

Hah! RHEL 6 is only just getting GRIO. XFS is still a world-class filesystem. If you didn't love IRIX you weren't using it for what it was for.
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