Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
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Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
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Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#2How Stephen Elop destroyed Nokia
https://seekingalpha.com/article/916271-how-stephen-elop-des...
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#3You know it's going to be a bad memo when it starts with a LinkedIn story. Very sad they chose to jump instead of innovating their way out.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#4Boy, did Nokia elope after this with M$ft phone which was supposed to right Nokia's collective "ship". Elop joined the hallowed hall of fame of abysmal CEO's who ran their firms into the ground. Remember Lumia, Windows Phone 7,8 & 10 blehh.
Was it Balmer that hired Elop?
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#5Here's a contemporaneous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2195520
I'm surprised how positive HN was about this. I don't remember reading any positive coverage at the time. I personally thought the guy was an idiot. He wound up performing worse than my expectations.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#6Yeah, and then they jumped from this (allegedly) burning platform to a sinking platform - lot of good it did them...
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#7I had a Nokia N9 as my daily driver for years (2011-2015 if I recall right) and still have it.
That phone was absolutely top tier at the time. It lacked some apps but overall it was an amazing phone. Everyone always wanted to know what it was I was using.
I wish they had continued pushing it forward.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#8Nokia had a chance, but their developer experience was terrible. They should have invested in it. And also open source. They could have open sourced their platform and compete with Android.
What did they do instead? They made an extremely stupid bet on Microsoft, which by that time was even further behind in mobile world than Nokia itself.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#9Here's a contemporaneous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2195520 I'm surprised how positive HN was about this. I don't remember reading any positive coverage at the time. I personally thought the guy was an idiot. He wound up performing worse than my expectations.
Looks like that discussion was before Windows Phone was announced as the replacement. E.g. " The idea of a Nokia device running Android is pretty appealing. They've always had good hardware, but Symbian has become a develpment dead-end, and Meego isn't yet here. "
Symbian definitely wasn't the way forward. MeeGo wasn't looking like it was gonna be an iOS or Android killer.
Elop was right about needing to change horses. Terribly wrong about which one to pick, in retrospect. One could argue that MS fucked that up as much as Nokia, though - this was before MS continually screwed up their WP strategy for several subsequent years, like with the WP8 hard reset. Even best case, though, it was a high-risk/high-reward gamble to try to be "the" WP7 phone instead of one of many Android contenders. Would've been interesting to see them take on Samsung instead of just HTC and zombie Motorola, though.
Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
#10People pick on nokia for making the wrong choice, but i dont think they were wrong. Apps are important and they are a bit of a winner takes all market (or at least half). Nokia was screwed and i think the memo correctly identifies that.
Unfortunately identifying the problem is only half the battle. Figuring out what to do next is the other half, and that is where nokia failed.