Nokia acquired by Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#441

Post by euroclydon » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:10 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #38

This is a great move. There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. With Windows Phone, Nokia and Microsoft at least have some hope of carving out a profitable stake in the market. Anecdotally, I'm very impressed with some of the new Lumias. I got a 620 to replace my stolen iPhone, and for $200 unlocked its phenomenal phone. The build quality makes a flag…

and for $200 unlocked its phenomenal phone

What does this mean? You paid $200 for the phone? You paid $200 to unlock it? What do these phones cost, with contract, without?

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#442

Post by jeffasinger » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:20 PM UTC

DominikR wrote: post #282

bdcravens wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market." Everyone throws this out there, but phones running 2.3 that cost less than $100 are practically a different product than what Apple and Samsung are offering, which is where the true battle is. Over 1/3 of all Androids run 2.3: http://www.ibtimes.com/android-vs-ios-adoption-rates-jelly-b...

A 2.3 Phone will run almost every existing Android app out there. In fact, most Android apps target 2.2 and up.

Which is a problem. There are a lot of things that have changed between 4.0 and 2.3, and it would make most developers lives easier if 2.3 would go away.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#443

Post by Pxtl » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:21 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #237

corresation wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android. The core problem with the "no money in Android" argument is that you can't choose not to compete with Android if you're in the smartphone game, which is pretty obvio…

WP8 suffers more from a perception problem than anything else. I just switched from android to wp8 and the way i see it i got the smooth interaction and ease of use of iOS at the price point of android. The US market is a special beast because the subsidies erase most of the price difference, but in markets where people buy unlocked I think WP8 can take a lot of market share away from android by virtue of its better…

Less price, even. I love Android, but compared to its competitors it's a system-requirements beast. No other platform needs a quad-core processor to get a pleasant user experience.

WP8 phones giving users better performance for less money will make Android feel clunky.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#444

Post by greedo » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:23 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #376

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. I remember when the consensus was that there was no money in being an Android vendor, period. I'm also not sure how the $10 billion valuation of Xiaomi, on sales of $2 billion Android phones figures into this "not making money" thing. Weirdly, those charts you see every few months that tell that "Only Samsung…

Lenovo doesn't make any money. $500m on $30bn revenue. No point in being in that game. For the downvoters: Nokia is losing money right now, but managed to post a profit for Q4 2012, which at $585m was more than Lenovo made in all of 2012, and about 5-6 times more than ZTE made in 2012. Beyond a certain point, market share is much less important than profits, much more so in the phone space because it's not like the d…

Amazon doesn't make any money. on $15Bn revenue. No point in being in that game.

Earnings aren't the sole determinant of whether a company is a worthwhile ongoing venture...

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#445

Post by cdf » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:24 PM UTC

corresation wrote: post #84

rayiner wrote: post #38

This is a great move. There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. With Windows Phone, Nokia and Microsoft at least have some hope of carving out a profitable stake in the market. Anecdotally, I'm very impressed with some of the new Lumias. I got a 620 to replace my stolen iPhone, and for $200 unlocked its phenomenal phone. The build quality makes a flag…

There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android. The core problem with the "no money in Android" argument is that you can't choose not to compete with Android if you're in the smartphone game, which is pretty obvio…

I think WP8 is ok. The biggest challenge is the image of Microsoft. In the hands of Apple, WP8 would be lauded insanely great too. The next CEO of Microsoft has to repair this image, and give Microsoft a new reason to be cool again.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#446

Post by AndrewDucker » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:28 PM UTC

What does this mean for Nokia's remaining feature-phone business?

I was under the impression that there was still a global market for people wanting cheap, low-function, phones.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#447

Post by cpursley » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #38

This is a great move. There is no money in being an Android vendor except if you're Samsung and are totally vertically integrated. With Windows Phone, Nokia and Microsoft at least have some hope of carving out a profitable stake in the market. Anecdotally, I'm very impressed with some of the new Lumias. I got a 620 to replace my stolen iPhone, and for $200 unlocked its phenomenal phone. The build quality makes a flag…

I bought a 521 for $100 and am super impressed. Put it on my petl plan and my phone bill is about $10 per month.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#448

Post by rodolphoarruda » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:40 PM UTC

rthomas6 wrote: post #423

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that point drove my decision to buy my now 2 year old Samsung Ace. It was a 2.3 device, thus it will run most apps without any issues. What I found later was that a particular hardware spec would really annoy me to the point that I couldn't install any more apps, and it's probably an issue that many low end phone users face: small internal memory. Hey, the phone has only 128Mb of memory for apps. The problem…

If it has an SD card slot, you can fix this problem by rooting the phone and installing a custom ROM that lets you force apps to be stored to the card. That's what I would do. In the process you would even get to have a 4.1 or so version of Android.

> installing a custom ROM that lets you force apps to be stored to the card

I almost tried that, but stopped when I read in the custom ROM page that in some cases it could brick the phone. Since my phone is a "branched" version of the standard Ace I decided not to take the risk.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#449

Post by OGC » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:48 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #388

nextw33k wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you could never prove it in a court of law.

It's not illegal, unless strong arm tactics were used to force the board into it against their will.

strong arm tactics probably weren't necessary, money was probably good enough.

Re: Nokia acquired by Microsoft

#450

Post by wvenable » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 2:56 PM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #272

grey-area wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

about a company that went from hero to zero largely at the hands of Android (RIM being another example). I think iOS had a lot more to do with Nokia's decline than Android. iOS came first and dominated the high end of mobile phones for years, displacing Nokia in that niche, and then Android also undermined them, but it was hardly all down to Android. Nokia used to sell a lot of high end phones, which they made money…

I think Nokia had more to do with Nokia's decline than iOS or Android. They had the hardware and software to do what Apple and Palm did at least a full generation before iPhone 1.

Nokia didn't have the software, that was the problem. Symbian was as dead-end of a technology as classic Mac OS was.

After the iPhone was released, Nokia scrambled around with a number of different alternative operating systems because they knew they didn't have the software. Unfortunately, they didn't commit to the future. By the time Elop came in and committed to Windows Phone, it was already far too late.