Nokia’s vice president Bryan Biniak: “We are trying to evolve the cultural thinking [at Microsoft] to say ‘time is of the essence’. Waiting until the end of your fiscal year when you need to close your targets, doesn’t do us any good when I have phones to sell today.” Later Biniak adds: “As a company we don’t want to rely on somebody else and sit and wait for them to get it right.” There was a simple solution to this problem.
The glacial Windows Phone release schedule had me wondering if I was losing my mind. Could it really be that bad? But yes, it really is that bad. Thank this Nokia VP for the reality check
pretty much that. Windows phone is ages behind Android and iOS in feaures and usability, despite it being stylish and pretty. I had mine for a while and lack of updates is really dissapointing.
Watch out–if you say that three times in front of a mirror, Nelson will come out and tell you that Nokia is doing just fine, and pull some pointless numbers from… well, somewhere, to prove it! And claim that Elop is not running the company into the ground, and that they’re somehow thriving. Or something.
This has zero to do with Nokias financials and more to do with Microsoft’s corporate culture.
God forbid I actually know how to read a financial report. I’ve been consistently on target with how I think Nokia will do, whereas you, well you don’t take a concrete position so its hard to tell.
Anyway, Microsoft needs to pick up the pace.
It won’t make any difference. People don’t want Microsoft product, and in mobile and tablets they can buy market-leading gear that doesn’t have it.
http://infogr.am/Nokia-Lumia-sales
Clearly nobody wants Microsoft products. Nokia has increased volumes sequentially for every quarter except one of the Lumia’s availability.
What reality do you live in?
US market does not seem to give two shits about those Lumias (according to your graph). They never cared about Nokia devices in general and they don’t seem to be buying them now either.
I still can’t understand the reason to have 3 almost incompatible platforms. Windows for x86 then Windows RT and Windows Phone for ARM.
If MS wants to be a devices and services company as they say then they should man up, show some balls and come up with a phone as they would do them, according to their “vision”. Problem is they did some stuff in the past. Remember the Kin(s)? They sucked and got axed.
I’m quite baffled to see them going against a platform like android which does not have to earn Google any money on its own and think they have a chance of actually winning. They still don’t seem to understand that this is not the old PC market where they have OEMs, partners and basically everybody else by the balls.
Yeah, but that’s not the point I responded to and you’re not the person I replied to.
I replied to the specific claim that nobody wants Microsoft products, that much is provably false. Check the chart.
The claim that no one wants Windows Phone or MS products is indeed ridiculous but people aren’t exactly flocking to buy Lumias and HTC phones with WP on them either.
The devices do sell but it’s nothing spectacular.
But also as the chart says, volumes are growing sequentially at double digit percentages. It remains to be seen if Nokia can keep it up, but if they can then things will get better for them.
Double digit percentages are easy when volumes are low.
Last numbers I saw (in the last week, Forbes I think) were that Lumias sold 7 million; while Apple was over 30 million – and Android has dwarfed Apple.
Yes but if you look at other OEMs that aren’t Samsung and Apple they’re pretty comparable, and that’s progress.
Apple and Samsung are market leaders currently, Nokia is a battered company in transition and doing so rather well in my opinion.
If they keep the trend up they’ll get there. They aren’t going to go to 30 million over night.
Problem is if and when they hit 30 million, Apple will be closer to 60 million, and Android will be well over 100 million. They’re current trend does not bode well for them. It’s too little too late.
And that would be great for them if it happens, Nokia doesn’t have to be #1 to be a factor and get Microsoft the mobile influence it seeks. Once the mindshare is there the playing field becomes leveled.
Nokia has a lot of structural market deficiencies like mind share and entrenchment working against them, which will take a while to reverse. Sequentially they grew 3X faster than the market last quarter.
No, Microsoft (and Nokia by extension) have to make WP a Third Place runner at the very least to get the influence Microsoft wants. That is no where near the trajectory as the markets that Nokia had saturated with Symbian are either (i) picking Symbian up from someone else, or (ii) moving to other platforms like the Ubuntu Phone, Firefox OS Phone, and Jolla’s Sailfish (aka MeeGo). Ubuntu and spin-off Jolla really profited a lot from Nokia’s tanking as they are both well positioned for the Chinese and Indian markets that are not really interested in iPhone/Android, and where WP is still too expensive. (Symbian was a perfect fit for those markets; as was MeeGo/is Sailfish.)
If they can get the mindshare, and that’s a substantially big IF. And mindshare doesn’t necessarily reflect sales either. The two do not go hand-in-hand, though they do help each other out. (E.g you can have great mindshare but piss pour sales and vice versa.)
Having good mindshare shows that people keep returning to the product. Thus far, Lumia sells but they have a hard time reselling it to existing owners (poor mindshare). So that 7 million in sales will be mostly a one time thing with very few returning to repurchase the next version when the time comes.
Nokia had great mindshare prior to Elop; they had a great market structure – building, distribution, sales, etc. – until Elop.
So please. Those were not issues when Elop was hired. They are issues due to Elop and the company’s change of direction and now utter dependence on Microsoft’s WP due to casting off all of what they had – all of what they were working to transition from Symbian to MeeGo – when they switched to the sole platform without any of it – Microsoft’s Windows Phone.
This is all, of course, the entire point – they blew what they had to try to do something else, sacrificing the company in the process, and it’s coming back to bite them and bite them hard.
We’ll see. I find it odd you place no faith in Nokia, who has consistently shipped higher volumes quarter over quarter but are willing to place your bets on Firefox OS, Jolla, and Ubuntu which at this point are barely more than vaporware.
In addition, I wouldn’t rule out Nokia pushing Windows Phone further downward, I don’t think they’re done with the 520. We’ll see how they move in this regard, especially given the 520’s great reception in the market.
I think sales, or more precisely put, critical mass are a lagging indicator. It takes a lot to build brand awareness and mindshare around Windows Phone. BlackBerry will find out how difficult it is to establish a beach head with BB10 for example. Bootstraping an ecosystem is serious, costly business.
Consumers need to be aware, the awareness in pop culture needs to rise, sales reps need to push your devices, and a lot of stars need to align for the sales cycle to become virtuous and self sustaining.
I think that’s an extremely bold statement given that Windows Phones generally review very well — which indicates that the devices/OS aren’t as big of a problem as awareness and ecosystem is.
Ecosystem is dependent on volumes, mindshare is dependent on ecosystem, and from there you attain critical mass. Nokia needs to focus on volume, which is where you see the 520, 620, and 720 being pushed. That in turn helps the high end with the 820, 920, and 1020 benefiting from it.
Replace those model numbers with whatever the next generation ends up being as well, as this won’t be done over night. 7.4 million in 3 months is impressive any way you slice it, and going to say 10 million in 3 months will be even more impressive.
If Nokia ends up somewhere where they move 20 million phones a quarter, then slowly the install base will start to build and so will the ecosystem. Its all a cycle.
Nokia had a rapidly declining market share, which finally couldn’t be kept afloat by the expanding market any longer and their sales contracted sharply in Q1 2011. Far from the rosy picture you try to paint.
MeeGo was many years late, badly mismanaged, and STILL has nothing to show for it. Jolla devices have yet to hit the shelves. Tizen is vaporware too. What the hell? They’d still be dicking around with Intel if they stuck with MeeGo.
Bite them hard..like double digit sequential growth for multiple quarters.
The Chinese and Indian already picked Android; those other platforms likely won’t have a chance.
And nobody else picked Symbian, even though it was made open source (you can grab a dump at sf). It was a turd. I’m guessing it was turning people away from Nokia… (seriously, it did that with me, after owning a Symbian handset; likewise with two of my buddies). Meego was late and unfinished (as will be Sailfish).
So please. A company which was selling for a long time something so horrible as Symbian (did you ever had a Symbian phone?), without structural issues?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/30/microsoft_surface_sales_dis…
Microsoft’s Surface sales figures are in: OH DEAR
Microsoft spent more in a single year advertising the Windows 8 and Surface launches than it took in from Surface sales that same year.
This is not Surface RT, this is Surface.
Edited 2013-07-31 13:04 UTC
Nothing like the super compatible Google platforms like ChromeOS then Android for ARM then Android for x86 or compatible Apple platform OS X for x86 then iOS for ARM.
Edited 2013-07-30 16:26 UTC
My point was that I did not get the reason to have Windows RT for tablets and Windows Phone for , well, phones. Nobody else does that. iOS goes on all of Apple’s mobile platforms. Write for the phone and it will just run on the tablet. Depending on skill, the code might not need any tweaking to run just fine (GUI wise) on both.
Same goes for Android. Phones and tablets use the same OS. Target one and it will also run on the other.
Windows RT and Windows Phone? Errrr, maybe if you just use HTML5 and js.
Android for x86 exists as a by-product of the portability of the Android OS. Also because the source is also made availabe so people can do whatever they want with it. Not actively pushed by Google.
Writing software for ChromeOS is basically writing chrome extensions.
Having both ChromeOS and Android does not hurt Google’s bottom line while it does hurt MS’ to have Windows RT and Windows Phone. Google does not make money from selling licenses. Android and ChromeOS enable you to use the internet and google’s services to accomplish tasks. As long as you are using the internet and/or their services Google is making money off of you. It’s a frictionless business model which has been proven by Google’s own success.
Edited 2013-07-30 16:45 UTC
I think the point was to have a real/full Windows OS running on a tablet, not a limited “phone” OS like Android or iOS. That said Microsoft’s execution coupled with the inadequacies/incompatibilities of ARM made Windows RT a dud.
If anything the whole Windows RT debacle did get Intel to re-think their mobile processor future.
Its both, Surface Pro (Intel x86) and Surface RT (ARM), which failed completly and lead to the $1 billion write-off at Microsoft.
At this point in time with all that past ranging from Kin over WP to Surface, its pretty save to say: Windows was not able to extend beyond its classic workstation PC. It just failed 100% on any- and everything else.
And while the workstation PC market is crashing so is Microsoft’s Windows. They had 95% market share 10 years ago. Its 20% now and future falling while Android raised.
Be sure that IF the PC market would grow again Android would join it like Chrome Boom already did (and is growing fast). Be sure that Android being cross device means Windows would lose any such battle long-term.
And if they don’t? Would you admit that Nokia (specifically, Elop) fucked themselves over hardcore? All I see according to the article is Microsoft screwing up and dragging their feet around with Windows Phone… and that is nothing new. It’s also nothing new that Nokia is hurting over this. I don’t need to read financial reports to tell me that:
1. Microsoft has been screwing up their phone platform forever now, and
2. Elop has made Nokia a Microsoft-only shop, despite the above fact.
I’m sure Microsoft loves their former employee for the loyalty he expressed by locking an entire phone hardware company into their operating system, but you’d think that after all this time they’d have already repaid him by supplying his company with a workable product that people (hardware manufacturers, phone customers) expect. But no–and now even Nokia’s admitting that they’re feeling the heat from the fact that Elop got them stuck between a rock and a hard place by making them dependent on Microsoft, and their well-being is effectively in the hands of Elop’s partner.
Nokia screwed up. Now it’s up to Microsoft to determine their fate, or for Nokia to consider a plan B. Nokia doesn’t appear to be going anywhere fast.
If they don’t, then yes I will. Nokia for their part is doing all they can. That much is obvious.
No what if, they don’t what lead to the strong public critic raised by Nokia now. Read the interview. According to Nokia Microsoft was all in for the first half of 2012 and stopped since then. Why? Connect the dots.
Its not that big secret that reasons human and financial resources are removed is that, for Microsoft, the WP strategy did not work out. It failed and behind the scene work towards an alternate strategy goes on. That’s where resources where shifted to.
I suspect Microsoft aborting negotiations with Nokia has the same reason. Microsoft is working on an alternate strategy since more then a year now. Maybe a Windows Phone 9 bundled with a Surface Phone. I think we will see soon and Nokia may well aware of it what is why they raise public voices now.
This isn’t any longer a warning, its a loud Nokia-investors alarm-bell ringing here. Microsoft may show off there new strategy soon and Nokia will be sidelined.
Edited 2013-07-30 16:30 UTC
Which is why you NEVER partner with Microsoft.
So you’re predicting a Surface phone? Just so I can add it to the list of things you’ve been wrong about.
No, that’s why I added a “Maybe” in front of that sentence. Sorry, I realize now that wasn’t idiot-prove enough. I will color it yellow next time, okay?
What I predict is that somewhere between 2012/Q3 and 2014/Q2 Microsoft announces what can be understood as strategy-shift. Some new products that effectively sideline WP8 and with it Nokia. I mean much much more then they got sidelined ever since 2012/Q3. More in that Microsoft stops investment into WP8 in favor of an alternate (yellow-begin) like for example WP9 with Android emulator and a new strategic partnership with Samsung to bring it to the masses (yellow-end).
Microsoft is well aware that the Nokia-partnership failed. WP had a higher market share before the partnership. Goal is to increase massive and not decrease it. Even Bill Gates himself sayed it didn’t worked out. So, question is not if but when and what. Its only clear that Nokia as of today isn’t of much interest for Microsoft. Let them continue with WP8 and focus yourself on (yellow-start) WP9, Surface Phone, … (yellow-end).
You make a deal with Microsoft, and then are surprised when they don’t dance to your tune. If someone would give me the address, I’ll send some cheese to go with that whine.
Then again, when it comes to mobile versions of Windows, Microsoft seems to have been trying “to get right” ever since Windows CE in 1996.
let go almost all your own development staff and then complain that the company you depend on and have zero control over isn’t working hard enough for you?
How long before nokia is allowed to follow LG, HTC, sony, etc and start producing their own android phones as well?
Edited 2013-07-29 22:35 UTC
What did you expect?
First you guys buy Symbian.
You control the OS and product timeline.
Then you buy Qt.
You control the OS and product timeline.
Next you kill Symbian, sell Qt and go with Windows-Phone-OS.
You loose control of the OS and product timeline.
Decisions, decisions…
From a different point of view, Nokia doesn’t “get” software (and operating systems in particular), so, it made sense to stop trying to make “their own” OS. After they purchased Symbian ltd, they tried with Symbian for a long period of time, no success. They tried with Linux and waited forever for their MeeGo OS to mature when at the same time the world was filling up with Androids, no dice.
Nokia decided it was in their best interest to stop making OSes, because they just couldn’t, and use someone else’s OS. If they hadn’t picked the wrong OS (Windows Phone) but went with Android, they might not be where they are today.
The best years for Nokia’s smartphone line were when Symbian S60 phones where being bought as feature phones by the general public (pre-iPhone days, of course), and that says a lot.
Here are some interesting reads for you, fellow Symbian user:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/23/symbian_history_part_one_da…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/29/symbian_history_part_two_ui…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/12/symbian_history_part_three_…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/10/nokia_ui_saga/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/11/nokia_meego_inside_story/
Edited 2013-07-29 23:34 UTC
If you wanna build an Android phone and have it released through carriers, you (unfortunately) still have to hack your own variant of Android, so would they have really been better off? If they couldn’t build the OS, would they be able to build their own Sense or Touchwiz? It doesn’t matter how slick your hardware is; if you totally botch the bloatware, nobody is going to buy it.
Edited 2013-07-29 23:58 UTC
The problem is not that they didn’t have much luck creating their own OS. They could have hired the right people in order to fix that. (development, marketing etc.)
The problem is that they gave up control to another company. Now they are like peasants that gave up farming – depending on someone else to feed them. (…but they had enough money to buy seeds on their own and be self sustainable)
It depends what the company culture is. I work as a web dev in a large gambling company, but I work in “operations” and I don’t have any clout with IT Infrastructure so basically any request I want sorted takes weeks of negotiation.
You could still be talking about Nokia
What passes for jokes on here is horrific.
Uhh, Symbian was doing well up to the point that Nokia killed it. Before its decline in 2009, they had around 50% of the market share. The reason it died was Nokia announcing that it was dead. While Nokia did other things wrong, the software was not the problem. They did so poorly with Qt that a lot of projects have been switching over to it. Elop kill Nokia, no doubt about it.
Edited 2013-07-30 02:15 UTC
What 2009????
Get the facts straight first:
Q1 2010 . . 22.7 Million smartphones . . 42% market share . . 3.4B Euro Revenues . . +350M E profit
Q2 2010 . . 25.2 Million smartphones . . 41% market share . . 3.5B Euro Revenues . . +283M E profit
Q3 2010 . . 27.1 Million smartphones . . 34% market share . . 3.6B Euro Revenues . . +335M E profit *
Q4 2010 . . 28.6 Million smartphones . . 29% market share . . 4.4B Euro Revenues . . +548M E profit
As You can see NOBODY killed Symbian in Nokia. In fact Elop managed to show its true strength in Q3/4 2010…
And then in Q1 2011 called Symbian “burning platform”. That is what killed Symbian.
(FYI, those number are ONLY Symbian…)
The idea that a fucking memo killed SYMBIAN is the most monumentally stupid idea I’ve ever heard of. This is unreal.
Really? It was a great example of the Ratner Effect with a little bit of Osborne effect thrown in for good measure. “Not doing that” is the kind of thing they teach you in MBA school, precisely because of people like Gerald Ratner, Adam Osborne and now Stephen Elop.
I don’t think the average Symbian buyer knows who Elop is or what he has said, but I think we can be certain his remarks didn’t cause more Symbian phones to be sold.
And we must not forget those great WP 7.5 Lumia’s that got stuck on 7.8, unable to move up to WP8. Had I known that in advance I wouldn’t have bought one.
It’s rather annoying to read an article about a new app, only to get a “your device is not supported” message when you try to install it.
I can buy an accelerated demise, or even a slow down in sales but to be the single cause for its demise is unfounded even by the Ratner and Osborne effect. I suggest you do some reading, or learning, given that you brought up business school.
Symbian sales were rising.
Then Elop announced the death of the platform.
Then sales dropped for the first time.
From growth, to dropping.
Do you deny these plain and cold facts?
No, but obviously correlation is not causation. I think it’s kind of insane to suggest there’s a singular reason like a memo for its demise.
Marketshare was dropping like a rock, and other explanations are just as plausible.
Edited 2013-07-30 16:19 UTC
Do you honestly think that a large percentage of people walking into a shop to buy a mobile phone keep upto date on every statement of a CEO?
Edited 2013-07-30 17:30 UTC
Considering how much that single memo got out in the press, I’d find it hard pressed that people that knew they were buying Symbian or Nokia (ie Brand Loyalists – the people you really want to keep around as buyers) didn’t hear about it.
My point was that I wonder how many customers actually bother checking the CEO announcement before buying a phone or even care what the CEO says.
I would say it would be a higher percentage than normal for Apple customers, but nokia .. I would think it was low.
I don’t believe for a second that most people that aren’t technical say “better search blogosphere and tech news sites for my next phone purchase”.
Normally I would agree. Customers are not going to check the blogosphere, etc.
However, for this particular case I think the facts would be different given that the memo from Elop was all over the news media at the time – publicized from everything from the NYTimes to Forbes etc in the US – a country that doesn’t give a lick about Nokia, so just think how much more it would have been noted in countries that do. It would have been all over the news in Norway (Nokia’s home); it was all over the open source sphere at the very least due to the Qt and Nokia channels that were directly affected (it was on the mailing list the same day and discussed for weeks with respect to Qt alone). All-in-all, it was not a normal memo.
Nor was the presentation where Elop killed MeeGo – a product launch in front of the worldwide press.
So as I said earlier – this is an exceptional case – everything Elop did was done in front of the world and discussed at large by the world, and while historic information shows both financials down and Symbian sales up, it also shows pretty clearly that in the quarter after the memo that both dropped like rocks to the bottom of the ocean.
Forbes and NY aren’t even a thing over in Europe. Nokia in its home country … I can buy that. But anywhere else I just don’t believe it was the cause.
I think we are going to have to agree to disagree.
Edited 2013-07-30 18:42 UTC
True. Forbes and NYT are any big deal in Europe – I only used them as example for the US where Nokia doesn’t normally even hit the radar of any news company.
Nokia in its home country? Certainly.
But what about all the other countries (China, Japan, in Africa, in the middle east, etc) that do pay a lot of attention to Nokia and use a lot of Nokia product? It would have certainly made the headlines there too – especially in countries where people had a lot tied up in the Nokia Ovi app store for Symbian. it’s these markets that really built the majority of Nokia’s business – and which Elop was quick to undercut and cast off.
In the UK I didn’t even see it on the BBC Tech section … it was minor.
Uhm, Finland is Nokia’s home
But anyway, to address what you wonder about – I live in one of traditionally strong Nokia markets, Poland; the memo was mostly ignored by mainstream media. Such tech news don’t really surface here, and I guess it’s similar in many ~developing markets where Nokia also had traditionally strong presence.
Consider that North American news outlets paid more attention due to other factors – maybe because of where the present Nokia CEO comes from, and/or an anticipation of Windows Phone (so, an OS from NA) shift.
PS. Nearby you also write:
Or maybe people in many of those places just have more pressing issues than the future of Nokia, and their media reflect that…
But WRT Japan, Nokia never had much presence there.
About Ovi… don’t forget that Ovi works also for Series40 (non-Symbian) handsets, with j2me apps; that’s where most of Nokia handset sales were, and most of traffic on Ovi – generally, j2me games, working bad on touchscreen Symbians. “a lot tied up”, if it was a factor, would be also when moving from one Nokia handset to another…
Edited 2013-08-05 17:39 UTC
Thom, two more plain and cold facts about the OS:
Symbian was open-sourced (you can grab a code dump at sf).
No company picked up that free OS.
Ponder that for a while…
Oh certainly, Nokia’s inability to develop Symbian further, and their inability to produce a convincing migration plan, certainly didn’t help. But the “Burning Platform” memo is probably the single largest cause of the cliff-like drop off of Symbian sales at that time.
What, precisely, would you suggest I need to read and learn? The analysts reports which almost all mention the “Burning Platform” memo as a factor in the drop in sales of the Symbian platform? The text of the memo itself[1], with such Ratneresque gems as “The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience.” or a quote Osborne would be proud of “We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.”?
While I agree with you that a lot of people have misunderstood what Burning Platform was all about, the fact is that Elop said and did some things that made a lot of people nervous about the future of Nokia.
[1]: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/02/09/full-text-nokia-ceo-ste…
Edited 2013-07-30 16:44 UTC
No one attributes either effect to be the single (or even most significant) cause of demise. Just a cause. Which is what I’m saying here, and what you’ve come to agree with. So either you learned and took a crash course or you realized the error of your ways.
Now this dubious Frankenstein Osborne/Ratner effect that is attributed to Elop makes, what to me, is the rather astounding leap to suggest that an announcement in February caused a sales crash in Q1 (which ends March 31st), which is so unrealistic that its almost laughable.
If Nokia counts sales as shipments into the channel, there’s no way the feedback loop from retailers reflected some mythological unified global reaction to a memo in a few short weeks.
I think too many people on OSNews drink the Tomi koolaid. The guy sources numbers from himself. Its unbelievable.
http:/en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
“immediate effect” means starting from the moment its out. Come on, that’s first grader material.
immediately = instantly = right away = direct.
There is no magical years long “retailers feedback loop” needed: immediately.
I’m talking to Vanders, who at the very least is insightful. Not you.
I think Burning Platform had a larger effect than you downplay it for and a smaller effect than a lot of other people think it did. In reality in order to have such an effect during Q1 the rot in the sales would have had to kick in earlier, probably sometime around the time that Elop was appointed, which still isn’t very good news for Elop. The memo and signing up with Microsoft pretty much just sealed the deal, IMHO.
I think we can strike some common ground here. I think it was damaging, a candid but damaging assessment of the state of affairs — but its hardly the world ending singular event that some portray it to be.
That said, its all water under the bridge now. Symbian is dead. What they need to do now is execute on their Windows Phone strategy as best they can.
Microsoft needs to stop being Microsoft and get a sense of urgency.
I think we sometimes agree on more things than people might sometimes think.
The Burning Platform speech was indeed a frank assessment. Elop’s mistake was making such a frank assessment in front of people who then went on to make it public.
I’m not confident of Nokia’s & Microsoft’s ability to execute the Windows Phone strategy, but I’ll wait and see if the complete 2013 results show any real trend.
And thank you, Vanders, for your balanced posts in the sea of feeding frenzy crazed “discussion”
If Nokia strength is on hardware, the bad news here is it became a commodity some time ago. On a software side of things, open-source is sailing winds those days with few exception. The thing is, they sailed away from their core competence long ago and took ages to realize it. Too bad, I had more Nokias than anything else before but I am not in the market anymore… good luck with that.
I disagree. Build quality is what sells HTC One’s. A good camera is what sells lumia 720s. I wish Nokia would take a few Windows Phones and just put Android on them and sell them in secret on a almost impossible to find website. Like developer devices.
Bunch of crazy ideas:
Nokia had 2nd biggest app store with profits from this. (Second after Apple App Store).
Nokia had extensive partner ecosystem centred around Symbian.
Nokia had nice migration strategy for its own assets (Symbian, ivo store, qt, maps, ads, hardware division, software division, etc…), their partners business (which would not be disrupted), their carrier clients who liked Nokia headings…
Nokia had great offering for their MOST LOYAL customers, including features Nokia LOYAL customers LOVED (QWERTY keyboards, strong sms, bluetooth, that actually is bluetooth-no-strings-attached).
Nokia had software platform that would continue to enable their crazy (and not so crazy) hardware development (cameras, physical designs, etc…).
In other words MeeGo (this is what I talk about), had EVERY ANSWER RIGHT for Nokia and their partners, and carriers interested in Nokia offerings, and Nokia loyal customers.
Only problem was that MeeGo had no LTE capability (and would not have before Nokia could offer it in WinP).
With WinP:
No Nokia owned app store, and no profits from it.
No Nokia partners. WinP is completely different game. Assets build around years of Symbian could not be reused by partners.
Hardware and software divisions since then been butchered. Other assets either discontinued, spinned off, or sold. Partner ecosystem is non-existing, and carriers hate and distrust WinP as too closly tied to Skype…
Nokia have BIG problems with keeping their users. (To the point where its easier for Nokia to get new user, than to get old one to buy another Nokia handset).
Nokia hardware, software, and designs efforts are strongly limited by what Microsoft is willing to certify for their WinP.
LTE is still no-no for Nokia as EU and USA market shares are too low.. (And other parts of the world are mainly 3G/2G…)
Add to it insult:
Nokia pre Elop did good job products/solutions wise, bad management wise (stronger leadership hence was seen as needed remedy).
After Elop took charge, for few first quarters (and now with NSN), he did good job restructuring, and focusing Nokia efforts (those RECORD PROFITS and GROWTHS…), and then he destroyed that gains (and Nokia brand as a brand) by declaring Nokia products/solutions obsolete/crap/inferior, etc…
So Nokia instead of getting better management, got jerk who fail at 101 of management (Never, ever, ever call your own products bad, never, ever, ever call your product obsolete unless you already have successor ready, never, ever, ever call your product dead in the water, on the day before its launch…)
But You can focus on “but android …” if you like to ignore real problems.
It’s incredible to me how little coverage has been given to the true tech scandal of Nokia: Nokia was brought low by under-investment years before Elop was even hired. Nokia’s core technical competence, what distinguished it from almost all other companies, was Nokia’s expertise across the entire wireless hardware stack. And then Nokia stopped investing in its core hardware competency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/technology/07nokia.html?_r=0
“As handset manufacturing has evolved, wireless modems are increasingly being included in larger, multifunction chipsets along with the phone engine, applications processor, power manager and software.”
Nokia failed to invest in a modern ARM SoC unlike Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, etc. Nokia failed to invest in an LTE chipset unlike Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei, etc. Nokia knew by 2008 they were going to lose their fab partner Texas Instruments. Nokia also knew a patent cross-license agreement with Qualcomm was going to expire, was drawn into litigation, and eventually had to make a payment of around $2.3 billion USD to Qualcomm to settle the case.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/17/business/fi-qualcomm17
So the one company that just a few years ago could have gone toe-to-toe with Qualcomm in IP, and was an existential threat therefore to Qualcomm’s IP licensing business, was suddenly left at Qualcomm’s mercy having to buy its chips from Qualcomm.
Nokia also had the brilliant idea to ally with Intel promoting WiMAX instead of developing LTE compatibility with Verizon like Ericsson did. Great timing to advocate a technology WiMAX that was hyped to possibly disintermediate the carriers in the decade following 9/11.
Q1 2010 . . 22.7 Million smartphones . . 42% market share . . 3.4B Euro Revenues . . +350M E profit
Q2 2010 . . 25.2 Million smartphones . . 41% market share . . 3.5B Euro Revenues . . +283M E profit
Q3 2010 . . 27.1 Million smartphones . . 34% market share . . 3.6B Euro Revenues . . +335M E profit *
Q4 2010 . . 28.6 Million smartphones . . 29% market share . . 4.4B Euro Revenues . . +548M E profit
And current NSN affairs, show that Nokia only lacked good MANAGEMENT.
(You know like not calling its own products “burning platform”, not announcing successor to obsolete products when its not ready, not announcing discontinuation product on the first day of sales REGARDLESS of how well it will do)
can’t customise the UI themselves (other than that little dab on the Lock screen). They could, especially, spruce up the Live Tile screen.
The tech press, especially United States press, totally missed the Nokia/Qualcomm IP war story. That must not be allowed to happen again.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/17/nokia-qualcomm-idUSL17223…
Here’s an example of the outrageously ignorant coverage of the case, coverage that left readers without information over who was winning. One would never have guessed that within a year Nokia would be cutting a check to Qualcomm for about $2.3 billion USD.
http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/13/qualcomm-nokia-patent-markets-equi…
This article claims that Nokia got a special deal
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/24/technology/qualcomm-royalty.fortune…
yet subsequent events show that Nokia took no action that indicated it received such a special deal. Nokia was not able to re-enter the US markets in force until it was using Qualcomm ARM SoCs and LTE chipsets. Furthermore, after this settlement, Nokia sold off its wireless modem business for only about $200 million USD.
This was Nokia and TI in 2002, a complete 2.5G and 3G solution, hardware and software reference platform. They owned the IP for the entire stack.
http://newscenter.ti.com/index.php?s=32851&item=125951
And this is Nokia and TI 6 years later, well before Elop joined Nokia:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2009/08/13/texas-instruments-recent-wir…
Note the massive decline at TI’s wireless division in 2007 and 2008 well before Elop took over at Nokia. Nokia had already switched to a multi-vendor strategy which robbed TI of revenue and made TI’s exit from that business very easy, which it promptly announced.
By 2008, Nokia knew its relationship with its major fab partner TI was coming to an end. Consider how it appears Apple will be unable to end its relationship with Samsung as a fab partner, for given Apple’s volumes and need for the latest technology, the number of potential fab partners is extremely small.
There is a bit more to the story, TI had already announced their intentions to become a fabless outfit by then.
Edited 2013-07-30 04:18 UTC
History merely repeated itself which makes Nokia’s failure to anticipate Texas Instruments’ leaving the business even more mystifying. TI had already demonstrated it was unwilling to absorb the risk of paying for itself the cost of the newest fabs just to satisfy a customer in its former relationship with Sun. TI’s business model is based around dominating segments, such as I believe today analog, not trying to slug it out risking untold billions in fabs.
There was a time when Sun’s fabless strategy looked like genius, back when there were more candidate fabs, especially in the US. And then there weren’t because good business relationship don’t work like that with one party assuming all the risk and the other freeloading. Sun had a programming language Java which it had tailored for multi-threading, and it had machines it was trying to design to exploit large numbers of threads, but found itself unable to produce those machines because it had failed to develop suitable long-lasting relationships with fab partners.
IMO the view inside the industry is not as “dramatic” as you’re making it out to be. Most of the issues with SUN’s own chips in the past half decade were not due to the choice of fab partner.
And although SUN did indeed rely on TI for most of their own SPARC product, there were still plenty of 3rd party SPARC parts manufactured elsewhere. They are now getting their Niagara parts from TSMC, although they are named Oracle now, not SUN.
If being fabless is bad, how does that explain ARM?
Let us not forget that during the mid 2000s, Nokia decided to ally itself with Intel on WiMAX and other initiatives. And how did Intel repay Nokia?
What Nokia needed first was a fab partner to replace Texas Instruments. I have read nothing to indicate Intel ever offered Nokia the use of Intel’s fabs.
And while Intel and Nokia were working on Meego, Intel hired Mike Bell in July 2010 to begin a skunkworks phone project at Intel for an ANDROID phone:
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/ff_intel/all/
“And so in July 2010, three months after the release of the iPad, Otellini brought in Bell … He hired a huge number of Android software developers to adapt Google’s open source mobile operating system so it could run apps on the Intel phone. One month after Bell was hired, Intel paid $1.4 billion to acquire German chipmaker Infineon Technologies’ wireless division.” Nokia hired Elop in September 2010. Intel had already planned to jump ship to Android before Elop was even hired at Nokia.
And what was Intel doing for Meego which Nokia needed as a successor to Symbian?
http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego
“In addition to the lack of LTE support, another MeeGo developer described that Intel was trying to slow down the development of MeeGo on its own part. MeeGo was designed to support both x86 and ARM architectures, and the hardware adaptation of Intel’s Atom SoC mated with MeeGo, codenamed Ilmatar, wasn’t ready yet.”
IN MY OPINION THEY CAN SWITCH OS AGAIN AND TRIED THIS AGAIN AND GO WITH THE FLOW OF SUCCESS…….3 CHOICES THEY ARE GOING TO MAKE…
1. ANDROID OS (NOT NOKIA STYLE TO USED BUT ITS VERY SUCCESSFUL)
2. SAMSUNG TIZEN OS (MIGHT BECOME SUCCESSFUL IN LONGRUN)
3. BLACKBERRY 10 (THIS MIGHT BE THE WINNER SINCE BOTH NOKIA AND BB SHARES SIMILARITY ON DEVICES ABILITIES SINCE BOTH ARE VERY MATURE THIS POINT IN THE MARKET)
Why not iOS? Apple seems to be doing well with it.
That VP should be promoted to Captain Obvious.
There has got to be a reason why Lumia sells so poorly. It’s not the hardware or features, these are universally liked. It’s not Nokia’s brand image. It’s not Nokia’s carrier relations, these were the best in the industry right until the announcement of Symbian death. It’s not marketing either, you would see entire cities plastered with Lumia posters at every launch. It’s not Thom and the other evil tech writers dissing Lumia phones, as they get very high ratings in reviews.
So the poor sales have got to do with Windows Phone, and it is good that at least someone at Nokia woke up to this.
I will quote one commenter from the Inquirer article[1] who put it best:
The mistake is yours! Don’t point finger at them. What stopped you from releasing both windows and android phones? like Samsung? Nokia Lumia has (arguably) the best hardware in the market, but your business strategy and bureaucracy lead you to dead end now.
[1] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2285336/nokia-blames-micro…
So it is indeed an extremely big marketing problem. Plastering cities with Lumia posters is publicity, not marketing. Choosing going only with Windows for all segments is marketing.
I would not be surprised if the “dragging feet” could be linked to some MS strategy. As far as I remember, MS relationship with big companies has always been a kind of “going to total domination” or assimilation.
Granted, I don’t think they want to buy Nokia, they could do it some time ago after the PR blunt of Elop sent Nokia value to its lowest, but, perhaps, MS dream is to repeat the kind of partners subservience they had with “MS Windows”, only that at this time it does not sounds possible.
The sad truth is that Nokia found itself without the suppliers to greatly expand N9 production nor build on the N9’s success. Nokia simply ran out of ways to keep making its old phones.
According to
http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego
“In October 2008 Texas Instruments announced that they would stop investing in smartphones’ baseband modems and that they were looking for someone to purchase the wireless department … For Nokia this meant the end of the TI OMAP path for MeeGo, because the company had decided to buy the smartphone chipsets, that is the application processor and the baseband modem from the same vendor.”
The lifespan for Nokia phones based on TI OMAP was not going to be long, especially since:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2009/08/13/texas-instruments-recent-wir…
“TI expects revenue from baseband to come to zero by the end of 2012.”
Note the above article was written in August 13, 2009, more than a YEAR before Elop was hired at Nokia, and the article is talking about how TI expected to zero out it baseband business by the end of 2012. Nokia was simply going to be cut off. Nokia could not have greatly expanded N9 production even if it wanted to because its fab partner had clearly indicated it was exiting the baseband business by the end of 2012.
At the time of 2010, the only alternative that met Nokia’s requirements of a vendor who could supply all of what Nokia wanted was Nokia’s mortal enemy Qualcomm, a company Nokia had only recently made a massive $2.3 billion USD payment to settling multi-year litigation perhaps more heated than today’s Apple vs Samsung struggle.
Sampsa Kurri claims that Qualcomm did offer its chips for Nokia-based OSes, but “Qualcomm would have offered to do the hardware adaptation, that is the lowest level of the software that connects the operating system to the chipset, but wouldn’t help developing the operating system … however Qualcomm probably had not prioritized MeeGo very high compared to other projects such as Android and Windows Phone.”
But another complication had arisen for Nokia continuing by itself. Verizon’s adoption of LTE had forced AT&T to launch a similar effort.
According to CNET, by 2010 AT&T was demanding support for LTE, even forcing Microsoft to greatly accelerate its schedule for LTE support:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57408903-94/how-at-t-nokia-pulled-…
“AT&T was looking for a unique device suitable for its customers, but its principal hang-up was the lack of 4G LTE support, which was a dealbreaker.”
Nokia’s failure in the 2000s to invest in either a modern ARM SoC like Apple did, an integrated LTE baseband chip like Qualcomm did, or another fab partner to replace Texas Instruments resulted in Nokia’s being unable to even continue its status quo of selling older phones, let alone have a path for selling more advanced smartphones.
Meego on snapdragon: http://wiki.meego.com/ARM/MSMQSD
Its Linux, it runs everywhere with little work 🙂
Last I heard the successor to Meego, Sailfish/Jolla, was going to use ST-Ericsson chips:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/jolla-unveils-first-smartphone-…
“Jolla had announced a chipset deal in November with ST-Ericsson, the joint venture that Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and STMicroelectronics agreed to shut down in March.”
My employer had a Lumia 800 device on trial which I handily managed to borrow. I think the O/S is quite good, there were some quirks with it however the way the WinPho8 upgrade was handled was poor. I still use the device on occasion now and it’s only ever had one update for the O/S to 7.8. While I know major updates aren’t going to happen I thought they may have released more trivial incremental updates to fix minor issues.
BB10 in comparison is on it’s 2nd update since the version when the device was released. Even if the changes in the incremental updates aren’t major they are noticeable and worthwhile changes.
I think Blackberry formerly RIM is the perfect illustration of how self-defeating the mobile device strategy was of trying to cut costs by not having one’s own ARM SoC. Just since 2008, now Blackberry is using Marvell’s chips, now it’s using Texas Instruments’ chips, and finally it has switched to Qualcomm.
The business theory of sucking one supplier dry then moving on to the next only works if there are still suppliers left who are willing to work at a cheaper price, who are reasonably up-to-date in technology, and who have the scale for one’s business.
While Blackberry was wasting time switching SoCs while also switching to a new OS, an Apple could concentrate on optimizing its software for its own hardware, with one hardware switch from Infineon to Qualcomm baseband chipsets.
I’d love to see Nokia make a comeback! And for this they need to sell Android devices..
I invite people to read the following site for a perspective on the history from Ericsson’s view:
http://www.ericssonhistory.com/changing-the-world/The-future-is-now…
As late as 2007, it was not clear that LTE would be the winner over WiMAX, in fact, it appeared that WiMAX might beat LTE to market. But this just shows the importance for companies to make the right decision in consultation with the players who matter. In this case, it was Ericsson who worked with the US major telecoms, in particular Verizon, to make the future of LTE happen, to help create the future.
Ericsson’s reward is to win massive contracts for equipment and support that will last for over a decade or more with the major US telecoms in their switchover to LTE, and at some point their switchover to LTE advanced.
Fortunately for Nokia another major opportunity is opening in China with China begging European companies to help China establish TD-LTE as an equal competitor to FDD-LTE.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-07/03/content_16716093.h…
Ironically TD-LTE is using spectrum similar to what WiMAX was supposed to use. And if only Nokia had kept more of its wireless modem expertise. Still, the only way forward appears for Nokia to do what it did: buy out Siemens for the rest of Nokia Siemens Network and bet the company on that.
It’s funny to listen to all the Symbianologists fomenting about the platform demise – it was Elop and his disappearing platform shoes. No, it was the early Windows phones that forgot how to grow at age 7.8.
I’ll settle it for you once and for all – THE BUTLER DID IT! Now go pay your respects, get some crackers and cheese, and have a seat.
But was the butler a plant from Microsoft whose ultra secret goal was to overthrow the vast MeeGo empire?
Bypass Google altogether with all open source. Merge the best parts of Cyanogenmod with Replicant, release it natively.
Profit.
“As a company we don’t want to rely on somebody else and sit and wait for them to get it right.”
I guess it is too late for them to worry Microsoft about using a homegrown OS, since they have killed 3 development efforts.
But if they go with Android they have to “rely on somebody else”. Could they be thinking about purchasing the Maemo/Meego startup?
Why would anyone choose Nokia Lumia today? or any WP7/8-based phones? Nokia’s phone hardware is no longer superior to others, and WP8 is more like BB10 without unique features or iOS with only 1% of its apps.
As a non-techy pensioner watching this from the sidelines I think Nokia is a sinking ship, they probably were before the Microsoft invasion. The “Elop insertion” just increased the rate of descent and my determination to get myself an N9 “before all the good phones were gone” (they didn’t last long in Brisbane).
The only dogs I have in the tech wars are my cash and my passions (Linux zealot) and I will expend neither on any Microsoft product if I can help it.
So I suppose all that could be re-stated as a question….
Am I the only person who dislikes Microsoft enough to not give them money, even if it hurts Nokia ?
Or perhaps a short statement….
I will never buy a Nokia product with a Microsoft operating system.
Thanks for reading.
Everyone interested in honest debate should read Michael Copeland’s article “An Empire Strikes Back: Intel Muscles Into the Mobile Market” at Wired.com.
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/ff_intel/all/
Nokia’s Meego partner Intel had already decided by July 2010, before Elop was hired at Nokia, that it was going to hire Mike Bell, a veteran of Apple and then Palm, and give him almost unlimited resources and almost unlimited control over his team to produce an Intel-hardware ANDROID phone from scratch. It had already been announced to the public that Intel was going to buy Infineon’s Wireless Solutions Business before Elop was hired at Nokia. Intel had already decided that Meego was dead and that Android was the future for Intel phones before Elop was even hired at Nokia.
The entire reason it was Meego and not Nokia’s Maemo was the alliance with Intel which was already dead in spirit by July 2010, at least on Intel’s side. With Intel acquiring Infineon’s unit, there was absolutely nothing Nokia had left that was of interest to Intel. It certainly was not in Intel’s interest to create another phone OS for an ARM-based phone.