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Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

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Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#51

Post by killme »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #44
killme wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>best phone (N9) and OS (Meego) Best phone and OS according to who? The same folks who cheered on the OpenMoko? As Elop said, the market has turned from a battle of devices into a war of ecosystems. Meego would've ended up like BB10 running on QNX(remember how many folks on here salivated about a QNX based mobile OS?), critically appreciated but with no apps and sales. Nokia recently became the fourth largest OEM in…

According to everyone who saw it and touched it. I was watching their unveiling of the phone, trading their stock and listening to market opinion, and I remember that very day. Everyone in the market agreed that Meego could have been huge (it was also open-source like Android, and in many ways a better OS), and it was only Elop's allegiance to Microsoft which killed it. Meego was good enough that Jolla picked it up,…

> (it was also open-source like Android, and in many ways a better OS).

Open source is not a very big selling point to the masses. WebOS was open source and better than Android at the time, had good reviews, but it flopped miserably.

>Speaking of ecosystems, fast forward a few years, if Nokia had indeed attempted to push Meego and failed, Android would have been the logical choice You're assuming that Nokia would not be dead from all the losses in the meantime. Microsoft was pumping $250M into them per quarter to ease the transition. If Nokia went alone, it may not have survived the big transition to Meego.

>and it was only Elop's allegiance to Microsoft which killed it.

No, it was Nokia's board that hired him in the first place and approved all his big decisions.

You do know that a company's board can fire the CEO at any time right? So Elop's allegiance had nothing to do with anything there. Here's a good read. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b42320567...

Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#53

Post by Geee »

Danieru wrote: post #45
adventured wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not accurate. They're flush with cash. End of fiscal 2010, they had $16.4 billion in cash. Today they have $12 billion in cash. With zero long term liabilities. They have drastically more money than they would need to remake their business and target Android. If it didn't work, that might be the last shot they get at it however.

To be fair if I was Nokia and wanted to save myself this microsoft deal would still make sense. It all depends on the contract terms. Sell the smartphone division, aka Windows Phone division, to Microsoft. You get rid of Elop and still scavenge a portion of the money poured into WP. Then start a new smartphone division leveraging Android. On the employees front most of your best former designers and engineers are sti…

This is quite plausible scenario, if that's what they want. The truth is that the smartest engineers have jumped ship a long time ago anyway to the network division or other companies, and rest of them will leave soon.

Most of what Microsoft bought was truly just dead weight and Elop. Also, the deal included just the employees and Nokia brand licensing, not patents or other valuable IP, so it's not comparable to Google/Motorola deal, which was mostly about patents.

The 'new' Nokia will soon release their new strategy, that'll be interesting. They have already released information that they will stay in 'device business' although they can't release phone products until 2016.

Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#54

Post by Mikeb85 »

killme wrote: post #51
Mikeb85 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to everyone who saw it and touched it. I was watching their unveiling of the phone, trading their stock and listening to market opinion, and I remember that very day. Everyone in the market agreed that Meego could have been huge (it was also open-source like Android, and in many ways a better OS), and it was only Elop's allegiance to Microsoft which killed it. Meego was good enough that Jolla picked it up,…

> (it was also open-source like Android, and in many ways a better OS). Open source is not a very big selling point to the masses. WebOS was open source and better than Android at the time, had good reviews, but it flopped miserably. >Speaking of ecosystems, fast forward a few years, if Nokia had indeed attempted to push Meego and failed, Android would have been the logical choice You're assuming that Nokia would not…

> You do know that a company's board can fire the CEO at any time right?

Oh really?

> Open source is not a very big selling point to the masses.

No, but it enables other manufacturers to hop on board and create an ecosystem. Nokia had Intel and others in their corner...

> WebOS was open source and better than Android at the time, had good reviews, but it flopped miserably.

It wasn't open source until it had already failed. Plus it never felt as though HP really cared all that much about mobile devices, they were a huge monolithic entity making too much money on desktops, servers, etc...

Contrast this with Nokia, the world leader in phones (including smartphones) for quite some time.

Also, at one point Symbian held 70+ percent of smartphone market share, Nokia obviously did know how to create an ecosystem.

> No, it was Nokia's board that hired him in the first place and approved all his big decisions.

Obviously a mistake on their part. Corporate boards don't always make the best decisions, though in theory they should.

Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#55

Post by objclxt »

Zigurd wrote: post #37
throwawaykf02 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that was bunk in Nokia's case. When they realized that Symbian had to go, they also realized that the vast bulk of the company was organized around that one OS. And if sources are to be believed, most of that deadweight was fiefdoms jealously guarded by entrenched groups, which meant they were not going to be conducive to "pivot" to a new direction. Now they had to shed that humongous deadweight and prod…

Re Skyhook: Google has made no such demand on any OEM. Google demanded Moto not replace Google location services with Skyhook. Many Android phones have shipped with, e.g. Verizon's location services and maps. Based on what has appeared in commerce, you can run, and preload if you are an OEM, any competing service on an Android device. But Google draws the line at denying Google data from their own apps. Seems reasona…

> you can run, and preload if you are an OEM, any competing service on an Android device. Seems reasonable.

...that's only kind of true. OEM's who are members of the Open Handset Alliance are prohibited from producing devices which run forked versions of Android. This is why Amazon has so much trouble finding manufacturing partners to produce Kindle devices.

So OEMs can load competing services onto Google supported Android devices. They cannot produce devices which run flavors of Android not supported by Google. This seems less reasonable.

Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#56

Post by wsc981 »

3825 wrote: post #9
Artemis2 wrote: post #2

This will probably not happen. I think Nokia will help Microsoft to compete with Apple in the field of smartphones, especially with custom-designed hardware and exclusive OS.

I don't know what the new Microsoft wants. What is it that they want to sell? This is important and you can't just say "everything to everyone". Amazon.com has a focus on retail. They sell stuff and the Kindle (including Kindle Fire) line is just a medium to get it to the customer. If FedEx and others kicked the bucket tomorrow and Amazon felt UPS was too strong as a vendor, they'd probably start their own logistics…

From what I understand Microsoft's goal is to become less of a software company and more of a devices and services company[0]. In that light, the acquisition of the mobile devision of Nokia seems to make sense.

And I guess it's pretty much the same strategy as Apple is following, especially now Apple has made Mavericks and several Mac OS apps free of charge.

[0]: http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar13/shareholder-l...

Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#57

Post by Mikeb85 »

davissorenson wrote: post #3

> On this last point, they talk about leveraging a non-corporate image, like the Dudesons or Madventures, and throw “the largest events, gigs, and parties of human kind”. Well that sounds really sustainable.

Compared to manufacturing costs and the revenues at stake, gigs, events and parties are cheap.

Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#58

Post by Geee »

killme wrote: post #50
makmanalp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4th at 4.1%. Beating Motorola (which was stagnating, even after the Google buy) and ZTE (which didn't have much US brand recognition anyway) wasn't super difficult. Also, Meego Harmattan (released with the N9) got pretty stellar reviews all round. See for your self: http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/22/nokia-n9-review/ http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n9-review-65…

BB10 got great reviews too, so did WebOS. That in itself doesn't signify success. The ecosystem is the weakness. No apps = no sales.

N9 had more apps at the time than Windows Phone today. Nokia had a large developer base and the Qt development environment for N9 was really good. There was nothing to stop it gaining market share as it was overall a really decent platform/ecosystem.

Only thing that killed it was Elop who decided to limit sales to just 23 small countries, and left big markets for their WP launch device, which was horrible at the time (Lumia 800). Of course the whole MeeGo strategy was killed earlier which made the device DOA.. And it still sold 10x more than the Lumia 800.

Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#59

Post by JeremyNT »

jgreen10 wrote: post #19

Can someone explain why Elop did a bad job? No one was buying Nokia phones anymore... they are now.

The long and short of it: he bet everything on Windows Phone.

I think you can envision a successful strategy that would have included Windows Phone, potentially even as the only platform they offered, but Elop killed off everything else in a very visible way before WP was really ready. When it became the only offering, they alienated existing customers and left them with no obvious migration path.

WP sales have started to recover, but IIRC they're still lagging behind what Symbian was doing at the time Elop took over. Conceptually WP may have been a reasonable long term choice, but there were certainly ways to get there that didn't cost them so many existing customers so quickly.

Re: Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft

#60

Post by pavlov »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #54
killme wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (it was also open-source like Android, and in many ways a better OS). Open source is not a very big selling point to the masses. WebOS was open source and better than Android at the time, had good reviews, but it flopped miserably. >Speaking of ecosystems, fast forward a few years, if Nokia had indeed attempted to push Meego and failed, Android would have been the logical choice You're assuming that Nokia would not…

> You do know that a company's board can fire the CEO at any time right? Oh really? > Open source is not a very big selling point to the masses. No, but it enables other manufacturers to hop on board and create an ecosystem. Nokia had Intel and others in their corner... > WebOS was open source and better than Android at the time, had good reviews, but it flopped miserably. It wasn't open source until it had already f…

Also, at one point Symbian held 70+ percent of smartphone market share, Nokia obviously did know how to create an ecosystem.

That data point actually proves the exact opposite: Nokia knew how to sell mobile phones, but they had no idea how to create an ecosystem.

Despite Symbian's huge marketshare, the market for 3rd party Symbian apps was in shambles. There had been an initial enthusiasm for Symbian app development in 2002-2004, but that was slowly killed by Symbian's obtuse certification processes and SDKs that kept growing in complexity and crappiness.

When the iPhone was introduced, Nokia was marketing their Symbian phones with the slogan: "This is what computers have become." But almost nobody was doing computer-like things on Symbian phones. The browser sucked, even though it was WebKit-based (Nokia had forked the code and left it to linger). There was no channel for selling apps to ordinary consumers.

A few geeks installed weird stuff like Quake ports on their N95 phones, but the average Symbian user just did phone calls, SMS and occasional photos.

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