1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate) • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by whatusername » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 2:36 AM UTC

nerme wrote: post #108

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…

Nokia sells LOTS of phones. You've got to remember than not everyone lives in the Bay Area and has a Twitter account... People living in Sub-saharan Africa and central Asia still need cell phones and the majority can't afford some flashing thing with a touch-screen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_pho...

And to quote the CEO: "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: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#152

Post by jackvalentine » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 4:01 AM UTC

yangyang wrote: post #132

redthrowaway wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually not surprised by the choice of wp7, and not simply because the new ceo is ex-MS. Going with Android would make Nokia just another Sony/Samsung/HTC, but throwing all of their eggs in the WP7 basket at least gives them a chance to maintain some relevance as a distinct entity. It's going to be rough on the hardware guys though, making every new phone with a Windows logo on it.

Why does Winphone 7 make them more distinct? It offers far fewer opportunities for distinction than Android.

Because there is such a limited range of Winpho7 handsets (and as a matter of personal opinion, I feel they're all token efforts) Nokia can step in and become "the" Windows phone handset. Microsoft needed a hardware partner that was all in with them, not diddling android on the side.

If you put out android phones, you're just another fish in a sea of commodity handsets, no matter how you differentiate your product.

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

#153

Post by runjake » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 4:02 AM UTC

I'll miss Series 40 phones. A basic, no frills dumb phone OS with a UI that made sense. I'll miss the flexibility of Python for Series 60, even though the Series 60 OS was crud.

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

#154

Post by podperson » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

tres wrote: post #117

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 de…

Linux wasn't viable when SGI started selling NT workstations. BSD might have been viable. (It would still be viable now.)

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

#155

Post by dasil003 » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 6:34 AM UTC

tres wrote: post #150

kragen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux would have made a much better choice as a transitional platform from IRIX. It would have, but this was 1998, so very few of us knew this at the time. I don't know if you remember the tech zeitgeist in 1998, but Linux was still a pretty hardcore geek alternative at the time, maybe like Vim today. NT had things like journaled filesystems. You can delve into history to see what the Linux community was talking ab…

Excellent response. The the historic state of Linux at the time makes all the difference. I should have been more general and said "Open Platform." Because at the time BSD was a much less risky choice -- it was more mature & didn't have the GPL license stigma being pushed so hard. The outcome of the SGI WinNT decision is even more interesting when juxtaposed with Apple's decisions during the same time period. The ado…

The Apple story is interesting. I switched from Windows to Mac in 2000 to get on the OS X Public Beta, and it really was all about the BSD underpinnings for me.

But at that point Apple was already on an upward trajectory thanks to the iMac and iBook, with the iPod to come the following year. Granted OS 9 was a dog that has long since seen its day, and the technology in OS X was necessary to create a modern operating system that would enable the kind of UX that Jobs sought. But I question how much of it can really be credited to open source or the geek early adopters per se; certainly it helped, but was it pivotal?

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

#156

Post by redthrowaway » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 7:18 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #137

redthrowaway wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually not surprised by the choice of wp7, and not simply because the new ceo is ex-MS. Going with Android would make Nokia just another Sony/Samsung/HTC, but throwing all of their eggs in the WP7 basket at least gives them a chance to maintain some relevance as a distinct entity. It's going to be rough on the hardware guys though, making every new phone with a Windows logo on it.

> Going with Android would make Nokia just another Sony/Samsung/HTC IIRC, Samsung, HTC and Dell are offering WP7 phones.

But they're doing it as an afterthought. They're committed to Android, and are supporting wp7 to cover their bases. Nokia's going all in, which would position them at the top of the WP7 hierarchy. If wp7 is a hit, Nokia rides the wave back to relevance, If not, well, they tried.

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

#157

Post by Flam » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 7:57 AM UTC

The Nokia n900 (Maemo) albeit with some flaws, is the greatest phone I will ever own. Allow me to explain.

I live in Canada. We get a lot of snow over here. Last winter, I lost my Nokia phone. I remember it was a night we had a huge snowstorm, and I stayed in drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace only to wake up the next day stressing out because I couldn't find my phone. After an hour of searching, I came to terms that I must have lost it in the mall the day before.

I end up leaving later that day, and find it on my driveway buried in snow. Snow plows came twice and cleaned my driveway and they must have driven over it with the plow part of the truck. Not only that, it was completely submerged in snow for over 12 hours. I picked it up, brushed off as much snow as I could, and tried using it.

It still worked. It didn't even have any scratches (1 minor one). I've owned many phones in my life, and most of them break in the stupidest ways. Nokia is the rambo of phones.

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

#158

Post by tres » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 8:27 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #155

tres wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent response. The the historic state of Linux at the time makes all the difference. I should have been more general and said "Open Platform." Because at the time BSD was a much less risky choice -- it was more mature & didn't have the GPL license stigma being pushed so hard. The outcome of the SGI WinNT decision is even more interesting when juxtaposed with Apple's decisions during the same time period. The ado…

The Apple story is interesting. I switched from Windows to Mac in 2000 to get on the OS X Public Beta, and it really was all about the BSD underpinnings for me. But at that point Apple was already on an upward trajectory thanks to the iMac and iBook, with the iPod to come the following year. Granted OS 9 was a dog that has long since seen its day, and the technology in OS X was necessary to create a modern operating…

Yeah, I guess it does sound like I'm crediting Open Source and the geeks with singlehandedly saving Apple.

I don't think it was open source itself that saved Apple, but the decision -- as revolutionary as it was at the time -- proved to be an excellent business decision. They added value to their product (hardware sales) by integrating Open Source. And as a bonus, they appealed to a specific audience without having to invest significant resources in selling to that audience.

It was a brilliant business decision because it not only opened a new channel of potential customers, it opened up a whole new set of possibilities for integrating Open Source software; they could leverage the movement. And that's really the significance of the decision in this context.

Apple, Nokia and SGI all focused on their core business -- making hardware -- but only Apple saw the value of leveraging a movement to add value to their hardware/brand. All three were in desperate positions, but only Apple saw the merit of leveraging the Open Source movement for the good of the business.

Where Nokia could have built on the goodwill of their brand by adopting an open and vibrant platform -- one where they could have as much control as they desired -- they have chosen to chain their fortune to a third party that has relatively little vested in their success.

The biggest irony here (other than Apple's role in Nokia's demise) is that choosing Android comes with very little risk compared to the risk that Apple took: there's ongoing development underwritten by a single organization; there's no licensing or quality stigma about the platform; there's a worldwide consortium of companies already using the platform; and there's already a significant and growing market share.

They have missed the opportunity to leverage the movement.

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

#159

Post by marshray » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 9:17 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #101

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…

Marsh, these appear to be people walking off the job because Nokia management is insufficiently nurturing to Symbian . How much sympathy can you muster for people protesting on behalf of Symbian?

I don't know enough about Symbian to have an opinion about it in particular. I've never been the least bit interested in playing with it, which suggests to me that it's not a very attractive development platform.

But I have a lot of sympathy for developers who have good reason to think their employer is steering their job into the trashcan, especially if they're in a city where there aren't a lot of other places to work.

Apparently the market isn't too keen on this either http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:NOK

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

#160

Post by statictype » Sat, Feb 12, 2011, 9:58 AM UTC

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.

The only way you could say Symbian was an abject failure is by comparing it to Android or iOS. Before those two systems came out, Symbian was the best mobile OS that was available.

I agree that Nokia is better at hardware than software, but I wouldn't go so far as to call Symbian a complete failure. It served its purpose at its time and did it well. [My old N70 with S60 from years ago ran a python interpreter on it. Can iOS do that? :) ]

It's biggest issue was probably fragmentation. There were too many releases - Symbian 3, 1st Edition, Symbian 2, 3rd Edition etc... That made it difficult to write software that could target more than a handful of the latest models. And with so many models available, the audience you reached was significantly less.