Submitted by The beleaguered handset maker Nokia is setting itself up for what it hopes will be a lean and mean relaunch in the U.S. later this year: it has finally admitted that it will not launch its newest N9 device–the first and possibly only one based on the MeeGo platform–and that it plans to end sales of its Symbian-based devices as well as low-end Series 40 handsets, as it prepares for a generation of devices it is developing using Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform.
Dumping 160 million users (many who can’t afford a smartphone) for a shiny, young userbase of 1 million on a new smartphone platform behind everybody else. Sounds cool. Hope that works out for you Nokia
The less phones they release in the US market, means less to be sued from for patent infringement. Expect more manufacturers to do this with the way patents are in the US.
Nokia practically invented the cell phone; their patent arsenal is vast; they could sue essentially anyone into oblivion.
They are doing this because – in the US – they want a clear message that Nokia = Widows Phone.
They will certainly be monetizing that patent portfolio further; have no doubt.
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You know, it’s not about the volume. Nokia makes virtually no money from feature phones so keeping around lots of feature phone users is pointless and irresponsible (to their shareholders).
The profit is in the smartphones so this is a good move.
And those 160million users basically bring very little in when it comes to profit per unit – sorry to tell you this but businesses need to make a profit to pay the bills and give a return to the shareholders.
From what I see Nokia is stopping the scatter gun approach and instead focusing in on a narrow set of of phones that have good profit margins rather than trying to be everything to every one. When it comes to such a change in direction I wouldn’t be surprised if we gradually start seeing it occur in other markets – in NZ Nokia was *the* phone to have but Nokia has failed to keep up with the trend towards smart phones that do a lot more than just make phone calls so I wouldn’t be surprised if such a decision was made when it came to selling phones in NZ.
For all the bashing of Windows Phone 7 (as others have done on this forum) it is remarkable the number of people who post on this forum and many other ones that have never actually used a Windows Phone 7 device in their life – their only exposure they have to Windows on a mobile phone is some bad experience they had at work 10 years ago or something to that affect. I mean, it is really pathetic when you start to make judgement calls on a product today based on an experience 5 years ago!
I don’t own a Windows Phone 7 device (I have an iPhone 4 ‘White’) but I can see Nokia with their Microsoft partnership making good inroads – the Nokia brand will bring in the end user and once the user sees Windows Phone 7 running (will be Mango by the time Nokia phones are released) on the device and how cool it is there will be a sea change for both organisations.
Good comment!
But oh well, remember that first update to Windows Phone 7 that did provide no new functionality but broke half of the phones running it? It is not 10 years ago.
Time will tell whether Microsoft really learned their lessons. Nokia takes a very high risk.
I hope the best for them. Competition is always a good thing.
Edited 2011-08-11 08:51 UTC
You mean Samsung – the scumbag organisation that told a carrier they had no intention at all at any time to provide software updates for their phones in favour of FORCING hardware upgrades on end users? that scumbag organisation who produced a Windows Phone 7 device that ranged from a bricked phone all the way to repeated rebooting after the Nodo was released by Microsoft. Yes, I do remember that experience but I was smart enough NOT to purchase an Samsung device – I owned a LG Windows Phone 7 device and everything work perfect (I’ve since moved to a iPhone 4 because Microsoft hasn’t addressed compatibility issues between 64bit Mac OS X and their ‘Windows Phone 7 Connector’ that they provide for Mac OS X users to synchronise their phone).
I do hope that Microsoft has learned their lesson – to kick Samsung to the curb as fast as possible and make sure you choose good hand set vendors from day one such as HTC, LG and others with good reputations who don’t have scumbag customer policies (as I mentioned in the above reply to the first paragraph). So yes, Microsoft need to choose their partners well and resist the temptation to allow any old vendor to use their software or otherwise they’ll (Microsoft) be the ones who get the blame and not the hand set vendor itself.
Edited 2011-08-11 11:48 UTC
RIP Nokia
The writing is on the wall now. Nokia becomes an “also-run”. Great business move for pacification in today’s demands. It proves they don’t need to be in business.
Stephen Elop is running Nokia into the ground. I wouldn’t be surprised if they never actually release a wp7 phone either and Microsoft ends up buying Nokia for something like $2/share.
Nokia’s patents are worth much more that $2 per share.
Yes, the effects of the 02/11 deal are sending the shares to the ground
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/dynamic_charting.aspx?selected=NOK&symbo…
I don’t understand why Nokia can’t have both platforms in the U.S. N9/Meego for the geeks and enthusiasts and WP7 for everyone else.
B/c the N9 looks sweet and they don’t want anything to compete with WP7, which is still just hitting the market. Lagging quite far behind by my count.
(and Symbian for those that don’t want a radiator in their pocket)
Edited 2011-08-10 20:58 UTC
Because there aren’t enough geeks/enthusiasts to make it worthwhile.
Simple. Microsoft doesn’t want any competition.
Make a push with a simple product line, perhaps only a couple of models. All running W7 obviously.
Don’t underestimate the marketing push that will come with this.
Seems to work for Apple.
Apple owns and creates iOS. Nokia will have to license Windows.
Yes but compared to the insane funds spent on various OS projects inside Nokia the net unit cost for operating system may not be much more, perhaps even less.
In fact, based on the “sweetness” of the deal between MS and Nokia it could probably be argued the OS cost is guaranteed to be less.
Edited 2011-08-11 16:23 UTC
Having played with Mango, I look forward to Nokia WP handsets. WP7 rocks.
A shame they aren’t planning to release an NDK for Windows Phone because of monopolistic interests.
By NDK do you mean a native dev kit like the Android NDK? All of Microsoft’s dev tools are available here: http://create.msdn.com/en-us/resources/downloads
I wonder what this means for everyone waiting for the symbian anna update.
I predict that Nokia will decline over the next few years and then will be purchased by Microsoft for the patents and the perceived marketshare.
The future belongs to Android, iOS and, yes, Windows.
Since the 02/11 deal, they are on that way
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/dynamic_charting.aspx?selected=NOK&symbo…
No need to buy N9 from carriers or Nokia. It’ll be available through on-line distributors like Amazon even in US. Full price, but works well with non contract plans.
Edited 2011-08-11 06:08 UTC
Yes, it will. But y’know, I did that with the Maemo devices, and I’m kinda tired of being a second class citizen. I used various Microsoft products for two decades, and I’m tired of their arrogant attitude, too. That leaves Apple – no arrogance there! ha! – or Blackberry, which seems dated, or webOS, which is an outside possibility, or… Android.
I wonder why Android owns half the market. Hmmm…
Well, sounds like the amount of manufacturers which sell the kind of handsets I’m interested in is shrinking. Maybe at some point I’ll find myself thinking that those horrible numeric keypads aren’t so bad after all… Or just give up on cellphones altogether.
Edited 2011-08-11 06:49 UTC
My company (huge corporation) in my country are providing really bad phones as business phones. I mean I just got a Nokia C5, previously I’ve had a pretty decent Nokia E51, but it died, before that it was something along Nokia 6230. I mean come on, so sucky phones?? All from Nokia?
Maybe if Nokia stop doing crappy / useless phones, I could get one that actually is usable.
I mean my current Nokia C5 is so crap I can’t stand it: I can’t even find a calculator or a stopwatch. When I found them I know it takes like 5 clicks to get there, they changed how you lock the keyboard; the phone is plastic, fragile, no wifi, blah I hate it.
Okay, my wrath is gone, thanks osnews
I find it odd how people are saying “Not everyone can afford a smartphone”.
Here in Australia, both Telstra and Optus sell a rebadged Huawei Android phone for $99.
Some of Nokia’s dumbphones sell for more than that.
The $99 smartphone isn’t very good, but it is a smartphone.
Nokia has never been very good strategy-wise – their product range is confusingly large; it seems like they are trying to release phones with as many different combinations of features as possible. The Symbian product line could have been streamlined down to a couple of models for business and budget consumer, the dumbphones streamlined down to maybe two low-end ones, no more feature phones, and then put most of the development resources into flashy smartphones.
Meego is a great OS from what I can see, and some of the features that were in the pipeline seemed pretty awesome.