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Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#81

Post by marshray »

Yzupnick wrote: post #79
marshray wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of many times when Microsoft has "come up from behind place and crushed the competition" when the competition was less than ten times smaller than they were. Perhaps enterprise adoption of .Net over Java is once such example. Can you think of others? I'd probably put Microsoft and Nokia at even odds in the phone market, but I really don't expect them to pass Android with something non open-source.

Xbox for one

Looking at the numbers here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_... it looks to me like Xbox has been successful and competes well with the PS3 in North America, but has dismal acceptance in Japan. But both of them are trailing behind the Wii.

So that's clearly a success compared to the Windows-on-phones idea, but I don't think it counts as having "crushed the competition".

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#82

Post by ig1 »

ig1 wrote: post #22

I sincerely hope that Elop sold all of his Microsoft shares before he joined Nokia, otherwise he could be breaking all kinds of laws right now.

This is a legitimate point, Elop would have got options while he worked for Microsoft, that creates the scope for both insider trading problems and conflict of interest issues which are legally regulated.

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#83

Post by borism »

narag wrote: post #50
patorjk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's down 7.8% this morning (pre-market), so you may be right.

Layoffs have been announced. Sorry, I only have a reference from a spanish newspaper: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/02/11/economia/1297426004... Not only in Finland, but world wide. Edit, from the same source, quoting Nokia's CEO: the reduction will be "substantial".

usually stocks go up when layoffs are announced...

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#84

Post by btilly »

maxklein wrote: post #34

When I read such articles, that's when you realise that people are resistant to change. It's like those people still using Windows XP because it's the best. Tech is in constant change, but at some point, some people just give up and decide not to join in anymore: not to make facebook accounts, not to join twitter, not to upgrade their OS, not to switch browser. That's what this post is: someone refusing to face the c…

That's what this post is: someone refusing to face the changing landscape of tech.

You clearly don't know http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jacquesm very well. He is not at all resistant to change. To the contrary he understands tech better that most of us can ever dream of.

Microsoft has been trying to figure out how to create a decent phone, and has been failing. There is no reason to believe that Microsoft's team has addressed the causes of their past failures, and therefore there is no reason to believe that they will suddenly, miraculously, start succeeding now. Theoretically Nokia can tell Microsoft how to do things better, there is a lot of expertise there. But there is every reason to believe that a lot of that institutional knowledge is about to be laid off. For better or worse, Nokia is now dependent upon a team with a history of failure.

I know you believe differently. You expect Android to take the role of feature-phones now, while MS and Apple control and split the high-end market. So I'll offer you a bet. In 2010 Nokia is estimated to have held 33.1% of the phone market. I'll bet you $100 that by 2015 either Nokia and Microsoft have parted ways, or else Nokia will hold under 15% of the phone market.

Care to take that bet?

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#85

Post by borism »

dagw wrote: post #20
patorjk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's down 7.8% this morning (pre-market), so you may be right.

Currently down -8.9%, with a massive spike in trading volume, on the Finnish and Swedish stock markets after a few hours of trading. However it opened more than 10% down so it's picked up a bit during trading

it haven't picked-up one bit, now down -13%.

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#86

Post by jerf »

dspillett wrote: post #48
maxklein wrote: post #34

When I read such articles, that's when you realise that people are resistant to change. It's like those people still using Windows XP because it's the best. Tech is in constant change, but at some point, some people just give up and decide not to join in anymore: not to make facebook accounts, not to join twitter, not to upgrade their OS, not to switch browser. That's what this post is: someone refusing to face the c…

I think the main thing people have an issue with is partnering with MS and using their platform rather than buddying up with Android or persevering with their own stuff. As you point out, and as they have publicly admitted, sticking with their current platform is proving to not be a viable way forward. The apparent indignation at them choosing MS is, in many cases, a bit of fanboy-ism. The average man in the street w…

"I think the main thing people have an issue with is partnering with MS and using their platform rather than buddying up with Android or persevering with their own stuff."

No, I think it's stupid because A: Microsoft has shown little to no sign of "getting" the smart phone market B: Nokia has shown little to no sign of "getting" the smart phone market and inevitably C: Two companies who don't get it will probably not magically get it by joining forces. This is coming from my looking at their business and success up to this point, not a fanboy reaction. (I don't even have a smartphone. I have a Nokia 6205 in my pocket but not for any particular reason. It was cheap and I don't hate it but it's not generating brand loyalty for me either.)

Sure, the new partnership might get it and pull it together and make it work, but if that was going to happen it seems if anything more likely to happen without the inevitable chaos of a culture collision induced by this sort of deal. I'm not saying this is a 100%-chance of failure, it just doesn't strike me as a move that really increases it for anyone.

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#87

Post by Uchikoma »

rm445 wrote: post #44
Uchikoma wrote: post #39

Nokia wants to be Apple but acts like Dell, this does not make any sense. Disclaimer: Being Dell is nice, but you need to think like Dell concerning their, much lower, margins. And whatever Microsoft tells you, you're just one of many and compete with HTC, not Apple.

Nokia used to have levels of consumer satisfaction and devotion similar to what Apple have. Consistently, for about a decade (from the mid-nineties), they made the most desirable phones, with the best combination of hardware and user experience. But the user experience just didn't keep up as phones developed more features. To continue the Apple analogy, the current Nokia smartphone experience is as though Apple had c…

It's not about consumer satisfaction but about business models. They want the high margin Apple model (into which HP also wants so they bought Palm and in which RIM is).

Then they need their own OS. That their OS setup is behind the market hurts their sales, but is irrelevant to the Apple vs. Dell business model discussion (full stack high cost high margin vs. commodity hardware low cost low margin)

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#88

Post by ansible »

_b8r0 wrote: post #57

My favourite phone was the Nokia 6210. That thing was damned near indestructable. The 6310i was also great but it only really added bluetooth and had no authentication on the AT modem profile (which meant anyone could connect to it and dial up to the Internet, snarf data and so on whenever bluetooth was on). The problem with Nokia was that they kept messing around with Symbian and didn't really know what it was for,…

Years ago it seemed to me that Symbian was a dead-end. Just reading about the programmer APIs was enough to convince me of that.

Motorola finally realized that P2K and their other proprietary stuff wasn't going to cut it for the future. Most of these mobile phone OSs were designed for very small, resource-constrained devices. Which is fine... that's all that was viable in the market at the time. But they weren't designed to scale up.

For example: Android uses Linux, and it has had MP support for a long time (late 1990's?). Even as of five years ago, many people would have thought that a phone with a multi-core CPU is crazy. Why would you need all that power (and power consumption)? And here we are in 2011, with the Nvidia Tegra 2 and other CPUs in shipping phones. For most of those phone OSs, adding multi-core support would be a multi-year re-write. Linux? No problemo.

And beyond that, there is database support, and support for various Internet-based protocols (chat, radio, web, etc.). And what is needed for that is a really solid TCP/IP stack. I've seen (and done) things to a TCP/IP implementation to get it running on a small device. It wasn't pretty. Or high performance. It will 'work', but not for heavy duty use like you'd need on a smartphone these days.

Edit: grammar. Mention of TCP/IP stack.

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#89

Post by msg »

marshray wrote: post #73
SudarshanP wrote: post #52

Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development as posted on another HN thread. http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-notifies-developers... Linux(KDE) has a lot of Qt stuff. Will the Nokia Microsoft marriage hurt Linux badly in some way?

Oh wow, I hadn't thought of that. Yeah I imagine this is likely to piss off Nokia's most loyal developers. I doubt Linux distributions are going to notice. QT will continue to be a rock solid first class platform even with minimal new development. It already has more features than it needs. They could probably coast for a decade before it begins to hurt on Linux.

When I used it Qt was dual licensed, one way for commercial closed source, and GPL for open source. It can just be forked right?

Re: Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0

#90

Post by alxp »

daeken wrote: post #59
danh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that Nokia will "become by far the foremost WP7 phone maker" mostly because everyone else shuns it.

Err, what? HTC has 3 (4? Not sure) WP7 phones, LG has at least 2, Samsung has at least 1, Dell has 1, and those are just the ones that I know about. Are there any big exceptions here except Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson?

Arguing against fanboy conventional wisdom with mere facts? Sadly I don't think that's enough.
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