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RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

pandodaily.com

41–50 of 53 posts

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#41
post #28

"If Nokia had gone with Android, the best that it might have achieved was to become an also-ran—another in an endless stream of me-too commodity smartphone makers." No. Nokia could've been Samsung, which has the lion's share of the Android market. And Android Lumia would be the prettiest Android handset on the market.

The Pando author also seems to have forgotten that Android saved Motorola, took HTC to new heights and enabled Amazon and B&N to make tablet lines of their own.

Android saved Motorola, took HTC to new heights and enabled Amazon and B&N to make tablet lines of their own.

Both Motorola and HTC's sales and profits are depressing. Motorola was bought by Google for its patents, not because it's such a healthy company.

Amazon and B&N don't share any data regarding their Android offerings, we have no idea if they are making any profit off it. Also, they're not exactly using stock Android — they're building platforms that have nothing to do with Google, its Marketplace, or any other Google services and apps.

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#42
post #15
post #5

Nokia won't last until 2014. They are declining too fast. They went from 45% market share to 18% in China, one of their strongest and biggest markets, last year alone. This year they will probably fall way below 10%. Nokia will most likely be acquired by the end of this year or in the first half of next year (or go bankrupt otherwise).

Who are they losing marketshare to in China?

Samsung is king, then ZTE, then Huawei, then Apple. But, China is filled with domestic brands that pepper the market with Android phones (Honor, Huawei, Lenovo, Coolpad) that bite at mostly Nokia's well-chewed heels.

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#43
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pando author also seems to have forgotten that Android saved Motorola, took HTC to new heights and enabled Amazon and B&N to make tablet lines of their own.

Android saved Motorola, took HTC to new heights and enabled Amazon and B&N to make tablet lines of their own. Both Motorola and HTC's sales and profits are depressing. Motorola was bought by Google for its patents, not because it's such a healthy company. Amazon and B&N don't share any data regarding their Android offerings, we have no idea if they are making any profit off it. Also, they're not exactly using stock A…

> Both Motorola and HTC's sales and profits are depressing

Motorola was left for dead before Android. HTC jumped out to an early lead with Android and their stock went up 400%.

> they're not exactly using stock Android

I think you're missing why Google open sourced Android. What B&N and Amazon did with it is exactly the point of why Android is open source. Google would rather have no one "win" the mobile space than have a closed source company like Apple or Microsoft win the war again and get into a situation like Windows / IE was for the last 20 years on desktop.

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#44
post #5

Nokia won't last until 2014. They are declining too fast. They went from 45% market share to 18% in China, one of their strongest and biggest markets, last year alone. This year they will probably fall way below 10%. Nokia will most likely be acquired by the end of this year or in the first half of next year (or go bankrupt otherwise).

Nokia won't last until 2014. They are declining too fast If the failboat called RIM has managed to stay afloat for so long, I cannot see Nokia failing any faster. At least Nokia has (finally) released something which belongs in this time and age, while RIM still insists it will release BB OS 10 "real soonish now", like it has for the past year. Or is it years? Plural? I don't know. I just know that their current prem…

RIM still has secure enterprise messaging for large companies, something that Nokia lacks. Where I work, we still have a busy bunch of BES servers, despite making the iPhone an option for corporate phones; though the iPhone is clearly the choice for anyone getting a new phone.

Nokia has nothing like this in terms of stickiness for customers.

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android saved Motorola, took HTC to new heights and enabled Amazon and B&N to make tablet lines of their own. Both Motorola and HTC's sales and profits are depressing. Motorola was bought by Google for its patents, not because it's such a healthy company. Amazon and B&N don't share any data regarding their Android offerings, we have no idea if they are making any profit off it. Also, they're not exactly using stock A…

> Both Motorola and HTC's sales and profits are depressing Motorola was left for dead before Android. HTC jumped out to an early lead with Android and their stock went up 400%. > they're not exactly using stock Android I think you're missing why Google open sourced Android. What B&N and Amazon did with it is exactly the point of why Android is open source. Google would rather have no one "win" the mobile space than h…

Motorola was left for dead before Android. HTC jumped out to an early lead with Android and their stock went up 400%.

And they're both in the toilet now. Android saved neither company.

I think you're missing why Google open sourced Android. What B&N and Amazon did with it is exactly the point of why Android is open source

Google cares about selling ads. It shows those ads on websites, in emails, in apps, and in services like search and mail.

Before iOS and Android, smartphones ran Symbian, Blackberry or Windows Mobile. None of those had a decent web browser, which Google needed to attract users and show ads.

So it's pretty obvious why Google bought Android and why they open sourced it.

Now, do you want to guess what would happen if Amazon and B&N added built-in ad blocking to their Android devices?

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#46
post #20

"If Nokia had gone with Android, the best that it might have achieved was to become an also-ran—another in an endless stream of me-too commodity smartphone makers." No. Nokia could've been Samsung, which has the lion's share of the Android market. And Android Lumia would be the prettiest Android handset on the market.

With Nokia on Android, we could have had top-rung Android phones with iPhone appearance and build quality, and greater-than-iPhone ruggedness.

Keep telling yourself that. When was the last time you used a Nokia phone? When was the last time you saw a Nokia UI?

The one thing which made the iPhone great was that it finally broke the streak of smart-phones all cloning the horrible, messy and unintuitive Nokia-model which had plagued the industry since the mid 90s.

Take my words for it: Nokia would have fucked up Android just as much as it messed up Symbian. Nothing pretty would have come out of this.

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For the average non-tech user, is the lack of third party apps really that big of an issue?" Yes - http://paidcontent.org/2010/09/09/419-average-number-of-apps...

That was written almost 2 years ago when it was thought to have mattered. I have about 7 apps installed on my phone, 2 of which are angry birds and angry birds space. I have the kindle app, facebook, and a weather app which sucks. Any really strong selling app for iPhone, will make it to Andriod which will make it to Windows. The number of apps in your market is not really important when you have the web. [ADDED] Thi…

I hate it when people say 'just use the web'. Just because you have a great data connection, doesn't mean everyone does. I have a terrible[1] data connection where I live. I have quite a few apps which I need to work with only intermittent connectivity to fulfil their main purpose: Mail, Theodolite (Photos with telemetry), Outdoors GB(Offline maps), Numbers(Spreadsheets), Sketches, Collins FrenchEnglish, Billings (Time charge app), Dropbox (Files favourited for offline access), Fill That Hole... and more I can't be bothered to list. If these required a data connection to launch them they would be useless to me and therefore it would be pointless to own a smartphone. I know there are probably web equivalents with offline storage for one or two of these (although how do you know if a web app is really offline capable?) but its unrealistic at this point in time to say that the web can replace native apps feature for feature for most users especially with the current local database size limits for web apps.

The whole assumption of a constant connection thing really gets on my nerves and there are plenty of native apps which are hobbled by it. There's nothing more frustrating than launching a native app which logically should be self contained only to have it sit there with the UI blocking for ages while it tries to access something on a crap data connection. For example, I truly hate the CalMac ferry app because it should just cache the timetable data in a CoreData (or a web app with offline database would work well too), its probably PDF for my ferry seemingly every time I try to access it......Grrrrrrr (timetable stashed in dropbox instead).

[1]About 1-3 bars of 2G signal. No 3G signal within 100 miles in every direction from where I'm sitting.

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#48
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Nokia on Android, we could have had top-rung Android phones with iPhone appearance and build quality, and greater-than-iPhone ruggedness.

Keep telling yourself that. When was the last time you used a Nokia phone? When was the last time you saw a Nokia UI? The one thing which made the iPhone great was that it finally broke the streak of smart-phones all cloning the horrible, messy and unintuitive Nokia-model which had plagued the industry since the mid 90s. Take my words for it: Nokia would have fucked up Android just as much as it messed up Symbian. No…

Keep telling yourself that. When was the last time you used a Nokia phone? When was the last time you saw a Nokia UI?

I have an N810 Internet Tablet and the UI is beautiful and easy to use, despite the hardware having drawbacks. (Resistive touchscreen, CPU a bit too slow.)

The N900 and later N9, based on the same Maemo codebase, fixed these problems and reportedly have beautiful, easy, fast UIs.

So no I won't "take your word for it" when the data suggest otherwise. Symbian was fucked to begin with. If it's a pain in the ass to develop for, nobody but NOBODY is going to put in the requisite UI polish.

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#49

I don't think it's necessarily game over for Nokia, but they've got to drastically rethink their game plan. They burned through cash getting the Lumia phones ready, gorgeous as they are, which is a gamble not yet to pay off. They're using the third horse in the race, a platform which it's creators have yet to successfully manage into the mainstream consciousness. Too many flaws to stand next to Android and iOS, but n…

I don't think it's necessarily game over for Nokia, but they've got to drastically rethink their game plan.

Flash their back catalogue of 800s with stock ICS, call it the Nokia Lumia A, sell them for $200 a pop (sans contract). That'll stem the bleeding and give them time to come up with their real Galaxy-killer.

Re: RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

#50
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was written almost 2 years ago when it was thought to have mattered. I have about 7 apps installed on my phone, 2 of which are angry birds and angry birds space. I have the kindle app, facebook, and a weather app which sucks. Any really strong selling app for iPhone, will make it to Andriod which will make it to Windows. The number of apps in your market is not really important when you have the web. [ADDED] Thi…

I hate it when people say 'just use the web'. Just because you have a great data connection, doesn't mean everyone does. I have a terrible[1] data connection where I live. I have quite a few apps which I need to work with only intermittent connectivity to fulfil their main purpose: Mail, Theodolite (Photos with telemetry), Outdoors GB(Offline maps), Numbers(Spreadsheets), Sketches, Collins French English, Billings (T…

Note, I didn't say just use the web.

I told you what I do which is what everyone else will do. I don't need to tell them, it will happen on its on.

The vast majority of people who can afford smart phones live in areas where there is consistent internet.

In heavily populated areas the trend toward improving internet connectivity will continue. Eventually the productivity gains from creating apps will only be useful in specific situations.

Areas now that are still hard to use internet are improving in most cities. Places like metros, basements, etc will all have internet some day.

If you are stuck somewhere very rural, you will be increasingly fustrated.

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