“Stephen Elop only has a few months to show he can turn Nokia around if he is to survive but the new smartphone is unlikely to woo customers back from Apple and Samsung. Investors and analysts say the chief executive has until early 2013 to prove he made the right choice by partnering with Microsoft Windows or his future at the loss-making company will be called into question.” Well, I’ll be doing my part. I’m buying a 920.
And no you will not do enough.
Nokia now of all things need strong crier relations. This is primary cause of all those troubles. To solve it Nokia need to change CEO and hire people who know what they are doing.
And url do not work. Copied from source code, but still no luck. Maybe copied too much?
Edited 2012-09-19 13:37 UTC
It’s clear that Nokia requires strategic relationships which allow them to capture big chunks of marketshare without marketing directly to consumers, but I don’t think that the carriers are their way in. I’d be exploring contract opportunities in the enterprise, government, and military sectors. Find customers who don’t care about fashion or freedom: institutions.
Really? They’re giving him that long?
Till his job is done.
I can already imagine the memo in Q1/Q2 2013:
We thank Elop for applying a transparent and successful strategy to Nokia and wish him all best on his future way. As of today St.Elop is leaving Nokia and will be replaced by Noname who will help to execute the new split and selloff strategy Nokia applies starting today. You will find our first assets on ebay within next days. See you there!
Nokia – Collecting Buyers.
Edited 2012-09-20 11:52 UTC
may he rot in hell.
If anything I am voting with my wallet and lobbying everyone that I know that would buy a MS-Nokia phone in getting something else.
Microsoft (and their puppet Elop) are the other bullies of the mobile world nowadays.
Since the announcement that Nokia basically gave up the entire company (including NAVTEQ, App Store, Development tools and so on) to Microsoft in exchange for US$1B “deduction” on the price of a WP license I disliked his management.
A once great company that stood up for innovation, taking ownership of its own future (look at all the initiatives that Nokia started and notice that I am not saying that they succeeded in those innovations) backtracked so badly that it needs support from a “sugar daddy” to stay afloat?
IMO, Elop should be fired. New CEO should revert some of the policies: partner with Amazon to have access to a great content right out of bat, continue selling WP phones but without being the flag bearer of Microsoft.
Elop made sure that there was no going back to “old” Nokia. Sold QT, dismantled App Store, offloaded the “dead beat” Symbian developers and alienated almost the entire developer base.
</rant>
Agreed,
Simply firing Elop their stock shares would get more value immediately.
Nokia only has a few more years to live before some other company guts it apart for patents and valuables. The market wants iPhones and Galaxy smartphones now.
Nokia is going the way of the Amiga.
I was thinking the same thing, and in both cases, it was because the CEO was a giant douche.
Nokia should just dump him, and hire back all the Jolla people and control their own platform again. With how much buzz they received, there obviously is a lot of interest in a third mobile platform that isn’t a locked down nightmare like iPhone or WPx.
The problem is that as of today Nokia is an unstoppable sinking ship. Any company with good products and choice will prevent to come on board under this conditions. Even Microsoft was moving away from Nokia and moved closer to Samsung and HTC to not be dragged into the downwards-spiral Elop and his mates keep on to accelerate.
While a year back Nokia had still a strong stand what is left of today are mostly problems. Reading about Nokia’s still strong stand in the 3th world is crazy when in fact there its either about dumpphones like Asha or N8 and N9 as high-end smartphones (no, ther are NO Lumia offered/sold there) which both got irreversible aborted. The only still swimming boat left is S40 but there investment was drastical reduced. That single choice is losing ground too with Android going future down to low-end and Nokia decreasing investment to focus on Lumia.
What is left is the need to split that company.
Apart from ancient Ericsson GH688, all my subsequent Mobile phones were made by Nokia only. I have four phones at the moment (has to be that way). Maybe Nokia should care about the opinion of cush customers of theirs? Well, since two of those four phones are N900 and N9, you probably guess what I think of Mr. Elop…
By encouraging users to Android
Nokia had a huge opportunity with android in India. If win8 does not come under $200 i need not do my part as well.
Fuck Android!
The sad thing is I HAVE an android phone and I LIKE it too, but I would really like to see another OS besides iOS and Android on the market. Android is getting too strong for my taste and Java is beginning to become a problem. Oracle suing Google over Java was a big mistake. What are the chances of Java 8 hitting Android as a dev platform now? Android was the only place I would consider using Java and now I don’t think the changes sorely needed to make Java TOLERABLE probably won’t make it into Android anytime soon if ever. Thanks Oracle! Your boneheadedness has done more to hurt Java than anything since Visual J++!
Now I WANT another platform besides iOS and Android, I just don’t want Windows. With Windows, Office and their Dev tools Microsoft haven’t given me the feeling they actually know where they are heading and as a developer I don’t want them to become successful on smart phones. Right now I at least have c/c++, OpenGL ES, SQLite running on Unix on iOS and on Andorid. The success of Windows phone would only make life for me as developer worse in my opinion. Right now I am hoping RIM will take of as the third platform with Blackberry 10.
Besides how funny and fucked up would it be to see RIM licensing Blackberry (looking ever more likely) to other manufacturers just to see Nokia running QT (just on QNX instead of Symbian or Linux) on their smart phones around this time next year?
Good point about de facto standards like OpenGL ES you will find on *ANY* platform out there including Windows Desktop but not on Windows Phone.
That makes them so incompatible to industry standards that as user and developer I have to ask: WTF? And conclude: Without me! May they fail on there own paper formats while the rest of the world uses letter, A4, etc.
Edited 2012-09-20 11:29 UTC
I would not disagree with you
I would have preferred meego but do not want a windows dominance.
Read this:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/09/failure-versio…
And this:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/08/open-letter-to…
It looks like everyone knows that he made a wrong (for Nokia) choice, including himself. What is surprising however, that Nokia shareholders don’t seem to care.
Edited 2012-09-19 15:01 UTC
One of the things that puzzled me about the financial crisis was that one of the bogus reasons given for it was that shareholders weren’t given enough power to stop bad decisions from happening.
Shareholders don’t care. They’re the ones driving companies to become quarterly voodoo numerologists.
Its time to kick the Microsoft Trojan out and hire someone that knows what they are doing.
Only in the OSNews bizarro world of armchair CEOs is a company’s recovery expected to occur within months.
Nokia lost money because it has a size problem. It was on a wild downward spiral, and couldn’t downsize fast enough to accommodate the lack of demand.
I have serious doubts Android would’ve changed their fortunes, and by all accounts, the Lumia range has not sold badly. It in fact is not even the principal problem Nokia faces.
Windows Phone and Nokia have enjoyed sequential growth in sales every quarter since the launch of the Lumia line, and WP8 will only help this.
Besides that, Nokia’s Asha line up is excellent, and will actually be what saves them, more than Windows Phone. That’s their real white knight on the low end.
Plus, its quickly becoming clear Nokia besides Google is the only competent location platform around, with Amazon having signed on.
There is clear, clear, immense value. However most of the post will fall on death ears, some smart ass will reply with the usual vitriol, and OSNews will be OSNews. Nokia apparently killed your first born when they did away with MeeGo.
We have local Andorid mobiles eating into Nokia asha share. In fact samsung might also loose lower end android market to local brands if they don’t update the specs.
I have said many times a Nokia android at least in India would be a big hit. Nokia still has brand value in India but don’t think wp8 prices would come anywhere near low end android.
You must not remember the burning platform memo then.
A CEO that calls it’s current line up of products “rubbish” and tells all the customer base to “wait for a year until we make the current prototype into a working product” is either crazy or incompetent.
He could have gently phased out Symbian in favor of WP, for example. But he just went ahead and killed Symbian prematurely and didn’t even have anything to replace it with. There was a myriad of ways to go but he chose to “jump from the platform to the water” without checking if there was a raft down there. This is business 101.
Besides, he said that there was “no clear strategy” in Nokia’s smartphone business. And, yes, MeeGo won praises of reviewers left and right, which is no guarantee that it would be a success since WP also won reviewers. It is so much more than “killing our MeeGo”.
And what about the faster development that would be ushered when the great MS system would be implemented?
And no, Nokia was not in a “wild downward spiral”. What do you call this now? Batsh1t crazy tornado?
And as you mentioned, Nokia has a great location which was “partnered” with Microsoft, meaning, MS got to ditch their horrible location service in favor of a much superior one. Talk about a great deal!
But go on, cherry pick all you want.
The suggestion that consumers en masse read some memo online is nonsensical. There is no evidence to suggest that the memo had such a drastic effect. Symbian sales were already collapsing.
Which is true. Nokia did lack a definitive direction and mindshare. Qt was taking them nowhere, MeeGo lacked the ecosystem, and Symbian was, well, Symbian.
There was a definite vacuum in their lineup, and its where Windows Phone came in.
Yes they were, according to Tomi, an ex Nokian analyst many Nokia haters on OSNews like to quote:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/01/return-of-the-…
You’ll note he said this before the Microsoft and Nokia announcement. I’ll loosely quote here “Nokia’s market share is in a death spiral”
Of course it is. Bing has a large presence and the exposure for Nokia is great. Also included is Amazon and Yahoo.
It is beyond logical to blame Elop for a company that was in a clear free fall. But you know, its okay, you did your job. You did your stupid comment, you got your jabs in, you revised history. You carried the flag well. Now go sit down.
Edited 2012-09-19 18:18 UTC
hehe my “jabs” in? I didn’ try to throw “jabs” at you.
The only part i mentioned you directly you twisted what I said to point that “consumers en masse don’t read”. Which makes me think that you are part of those that do not read.
<- that’s a jab
But I will go to sit down and stop responding to you because you clearly get the hibiby-jibies when someone on the internet doesn’t agree with you. <-that’s another one
I’m sorry if it was too much to ask of you to keep your bullshit down to an acceptable level.
Edited 2012-09-19 18:52 UTC
Let’s see if I got this right… Someone who in his first post in this thread said “some smart ass will reply with the usual vitriol” and in his second post said “You carried the flag well. Now go sit down” is complaining about supposed bullshit from others.
Hilarious.
You’re exactly the person I was talking about. It took you long enough, my friend.
And so did WindowsPhone.
Actually the Symbian+Meego ecosystem was well alive when Elop joined. Meego was not there yet but Symbian was ecosystem #1 using Qt. That is till Elop started burning.
Yahoo maps are now using Nokia as well.
I’ll note, that no one has replied to the core of my argument with something other than a snide remark or a made up claim.
Elop killed Nokia. He decided to move away from in house technology and believe in Microsoft/Windows platform.
Moving away from Symbian, Meego, QT, made them arrive late to the smartphone revolution. If they would have kept working with Meego/QT they would have a market share much bigger that with WP8.
I will not give a penny of my money to Ellop. The sooner he gets fired, the better.
It will take ages to rebuild Nokia from its ashes.
“What if” is always a tricky game to play. The N9 received rave reviews, but was hobbled by Nokia’s decision to limit distribution. Had it been marketed as their flagship phone and a high-end complement to “Symbian Forever” (even with a knowing wink that no OS is forever), with the follow-on phones we now know were in the pipeline, would Nokia hold double-digit market share today?
Maybe.
But it would certainly be a more independent company, and I would certainly be able to rationalize their strategy and support them with enthusiasm (and my wallet). The current Microsoft-centric Nokia, not so much. “Windows” just doesn’t call “leading edge tech” to mind any longer.
And yet, the nutjob seemed to have dismantled, disintegrated, and just completely destroyed the company seemingly overnight.
I honestly didn’t think such a thing was possible. At least, not so damn fast. Even the Titanic probably didn’t sink so fast (at least not in the lousy movie).
Edited 2012-09-20 00:39 UTC
I never understood why Nokia hedged so much on WP8.
They didn’t want to sell Android for fear of becoming just another handset company, but then decided to ship WP8 phones, which HTC, Samasung, and other players will do as well, which have turned them into just another handset company.
Elop’s comments about Nokia competing with Android just reinforces the theory that he’s just a Redmond stooge. At one time Nokia was planning to compete with Android with Meego, but by gutting Meego you’re no longer competing with Android. So now, how does competing with HTC, Samsung, etc on on the WP8 front differ against competing against those same brands with Android… Stupid, stupid, stupid CEO….
They needn’t even go all in on MeeGo against Android – Nokia was big enough to build Android handsets in addition to MeeGo and Symbian. Samsung seems to be prospering under a similar multi-OS strategy.
But dissing your cash cow for a future risky platform was just… Well, you summed that up nicely.
Elop is the 7th biggest Microsoft shareholder and he didn´t sell his shares like he had promised.
Bald faced lie. Yes he did.
I’ve always liked Nokia hardware: they’re sturdy, Nokia has never been afraid of trying new features, they were not afraid of trying new looks and so on. I had for example the Nokia 5510 ( http://nokiamuseum.com/view.php?model=5510 ) at one time and I was actually pretty happy with it even though it was perhaps a little unwieldy; it was a fresh, new take on things, with a unique look and while the features included could have been better atleast there was effort there to try to rethink what and how one can do with a phone and how to fit it into our daily lives. The N-Gage tried to improve on the 5510 and to compete with the PSP, but it was never terribly successful. Nevertheless, it was another attempt at trying to stir things up. Or how about the Nokia Communicator – line of phones? Those were totally badass, both in features and as plain status symbols back in the day. Of course the more recent examples of daring to step out of the line are the N900 and N9, both of which are quite unique beasts even as of right now.
With the move to Windows Phone Microsoft is saying what features must be there and what mustn’t, and they’re saying quite a lot about the looks, too, something that I view as a very sad development. It kills all the attempts at innovation, it ruins the creativity, and while it may provide for a more stable and predictable income for the company it also ruins the chances of coming up with something completely new that could become a useless money sink or a veritable cash cow of the decade. Sure, I love the looks of the new Lumia-phones, but the company has become boring, predictable and eschewed its previous individuality.
As a former Nokia employee I have seen this happening live, at least until they disbanded our development site.
At least I did travel a few times to Helsinkia/Espoo.
Agreed on this point. I would say that one of their core competencies is well-designed hardware. The decision to go Windows Phone was a way to outsource software development to a reputable company (and therefore allowing them to exit the smartphone OS business), while also allowing them to leverage their core competency (hardware) through product differentiation. Had they simply become another Android manufacturer, they would have opened themselves up to litigation (the Oracle case was still going on) and would have had little to offer that Samsung/HTC/Motorola aren’t already doing. Windows Phone is a cost-cutting decision that is also future-proof in terms of possible litigation and there is certainly a void to fill in enterprise IT when BlackBerry goes under.
As for myself, I’m still an S40 (or whatever it’s called these days) user. I’ll probably get an Asha 311 later on this year. For a company that had so many problems modernizing Symbian (both stylistically and with touch responsiveness), they sure are doing a great job expanding the capabilities of their entry-level phones.
And still, the Lumia 920 got more praises for their hardware specs (wireless charger, camera, screen/glass, unibody build, etc.) which have been developed in-house than for the WP8 that is running on.
Cause all the WP8 devices out there including Samsung and HTC are the same on the software-front thanks to Microsoft’s customization-limitations. The only thing that is different are the hardware-specs and as such anyone focus on them. For the software you just write a generic Windows article what Microsoft offers and attach the info that Samsung, HTC, Nokia and others ship that.
Edited 2012-09-20 11:16 UTC
Please, Do not buy Windows Phone devices. They’re horrible and don’t function the way I expect Nokia devices to work.They lack things I need in my daily life. WP devices have horrible and complex UI.
I want Nokia back on track making MeeGo devices like the N9. It works vastly better, and does more things than Windows Phone devices.
I want Elop fired, and rest of the Microsoft scum cleaned from the Nokia. They are cancer that is killing the company, and burning its cash reserves for stuff no one wants or even needs.
From my perspective as a consumer, Nokia is dying as a brand. Their best market was the low-cost world, although I know they had some great mid to high range phone. Many consumers in the world, unless they JUST want a very cheap phone, are going to avoid a dead end like Nokia. They know nothing of the high level games between different companies, they just want a phone that they see having a future. Everything Nokia created for Windows until this month is a dead end with no upgrading options. Before that, Nokia dropped everything to concentrate on one OS and so they produced nothing new that anyone wanted. Regardless of memos created at the top, people who are going to invest several hundred dollars in a phone are not stupid and want a phone with cool options and future upgrades. Nokia put all its eggs in one basket and will pay the price. They may not die as a company, but no one is out there looking for the latest and greatest from Nokia, like they are with Apple and Samsung. That lack of interest is the nail in the coffin for the Nokia phone market unless something dramatic changes in the world.
Hope his way of managing people dies off.
He is the epitomy of evil in our company structure, and acts like a feudal lord firing people because they did something he did not like.
Hope the new one does not suck.