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Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

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Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#51
post #46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working at a place trying to do smartphone type stuff with symbian way before it was cool and have been a MeeGo fan since the days when it was called Maemo so I'm about as a big a fanboy of both as they come. But the truth is that Symbian had simply been stagnant for too long and would never catch up and MeeGo for all its potential was just another platform with even less backing than WP and even less ready to…

Yeah, it's true that the stagnation was a huge letdown, but when N8 and later 808 came out, I strongly believe the OS was (and still is to a degree) competitive. Incomparably more so than WP7 devices which first came out around the time of 808 as well. Just out of curiosity, what do you mean "smartphone type stuff"? Symbian has been a smartphone OS since its inception.

The iPhone set a new standard for smartphones. Symbian did not compare.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#52
post #46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working at a place trying to do smartphone type stuff with symbian way before it was cool and have been a MeeGo fan since the days when it was called Maemo so I'm about as a big a fanboy of both as they come. But the truth is that Symbian had simply been stagnant for too long and would never catch up and MeeGo for all its potential was just another platform with even less backing than WP and even less ready to…

Yeah, it's true that the stagnation was a huge letdown, but when N8 and later 808 came out, I strongly believe the OS was (and still is to a degree) competitive. Incomparably more so than WP7 devices which first came out around the time of 808 as well. Just out of curiosity, what do you mean "smartphone type stuff"? Symbian has been a smartphone OS since its inception.

@Sammi

Did not compare in speed/pretty animations, collection of "apps", and marketing. What else? Would you like me to list how doesn't the latest iOS compare to latest Symbian?

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#54
post #52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's true that the stagnation was a huge letdown, but when N8 and later 808 came out, I strongly believe the OS was (and still is to a degree) competitive. Incomparably more so than WP7 devices which first came out around the time of 808 as well. Just out of curiosity, what do you mean "smartphone type stuff"? Symbian has been a smartphone OS since its inception.

@Sammi Did not compare in speed/pretty animations, collection of "apps", and marketing. What else? Would you like me to list how doesn't the latest iOS compare to latest Symbian?

Did not compare in speed/pretty animations, collection of "apps", and marketing.

So you're saying it was slow, kind of ugly, had no apps and the brand was so tainted that nobody wanted it.

Don't you think those are good reasons for abandoning Symbian?

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#55
post #50
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia Networks has been very separate venture from the better known Nokia-mobile. It was previously a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens known as NSN (Nokia Siemens Networks). In 2013 Nokia bought rest of the stock from Siemens and renamed it Nokia Networks.

Yeah former Nokia Networks employee here, that whole NSN thing was a big mistake.

I'm also former Nokia Networks: I would not say the "whole" thing was a big mistake. I could understand the business sense. Some parts of merger worked better and some were worse. Myself, I got a new boss from Siemens who was a good guy. Got laid off later on, though. Overall, the execution of that merger seems to have been better than the Alcatel-Lucent merger a year earlier. Nokia Networks is actually alive, which is much better than what I thought back in 2006. And not only alive, but actually doing rather well (at least until this).

The bad feeling I have about this is that in the picture, Suri shakes hands with Hollande. That tells how political the deal is, and how wrong it can go (with all that protectionism etc).

On the other hand JTB says this is not good, so I have the instinct reaction that it must be good.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#56
post #15
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that Microsoft('s lackey) took care of lowering their value as much as possible before buying the Devices and Services unit for some spare change.

Come on. Nokia was doing a fine job of lowering the value of their handset business on their own.

Every little bit helps!

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#58
post #50
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia Networks has been very separate venture from the better known Nokia-mobile. It was previously a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens known as NSN (Nokia Siemens Networks). In 2013 Nokia bought rest of the stock from Siemens and renamed it Nokia Networks.

Yeah former Nokia Networks employee here, that whole NSN thing was a big mistake.

I remember that culturally Siemens saw itself as a oil-tanker plowing through, and Nokia saw itself as a nimble and agile fish school. No wonder it ended up where it did, if the cultural differences in the way of working was so different.

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#59
post #27
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. Nokia was doing a fine job of lowering the value of their handset business on their own.

Yeah. It wasn't Elop who created one of the most dysfunctional software development units ever. He was brought in when the damage of previous bad management was just becoming fully apparent. Nokia in 2007-2010 was spending many times more than Apple on R&D. For that money, they got multiple infighting operating system teams each developing their own half-baked thing (Symbian, MeeGo, Qt, S40) and device teams that wer…

For anyone interested in this (very good) story, you can read about it here: http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego

Re: Nokia Agrees to Buy Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6B

#60
Nokia recently auctioned off literal tons of engineering equipment. Looks like they closed a huge engineering facility in Oulu, Finland. A lot of it looked like obsolete stuff (like for a big product line sustaining-engineering group). I don't know enough about cellular to say whether or how much of the stuff was really useful for new product development; but some of the equipment looked very recent. The only thing that I inferred at the time was that T&M resellers are going to have a better year than Rhode & Schwarz.

http://www.equipnet.com/auctions/exceptional-offering-of-com...

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