15 ms·

Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones

76 points by mlla 9y ago

eitland 9y ago
Actually looking forward to getting a new Nokia w/Android soon now. :-)
- Already__Taken 9y ago
  Just wish the Nokia 1 had a modern set of radios inside it, not the bare minimum.
- romwell 9y ago
  I have one now, it's quite pleasant. I liked the cameras on Lumias better, but overall, I have no complaints about my Nokia 6 - and it can probably stop a bullet too.
  - JTon 9y ago
    Hype train is chugging away for the 7 plus. And I have to admit, it hits many sweet spots.
    - eitland 9y ago
      AndroidOne being possibly the most important for me.
- nextos 9y ago
  It's really nice hardware. I'm looking forward to an unlocked bootloader.
- oblio 9y ago
  Same. I’m probably going to get a Nokia 6 2018. Built like a tank and it’s quite competitive performance wise.
- Maakuth 9y ago
  They seem to be nice devices, but they are made and mostly designed by Foxconn. Only thing from Nokia in those is the brand licensing.
glibgil 9y ago
> Elop combined two different CEOs cardinal blunders: The Osborne and Ratner Effects. > In 1983, the computer manufacturer Osborne announced several new models of computers, which they said would be launched in sales after one year. In the meanwhile, sales of the old models plummeted because the consumers were waiting for the new models. Osborne ended up in bankruptcy. Gerard Ratner, on the other hand, was the CEO of the jewelry company Ratners. He gave a speech in 1991, where he said that Ratners products were so cheap because they were “total crap”. The consumers believed him and stopped buying. > Elop announced that Nokia is giving up on Symbian before any Windows Phone smartphone was ready (Osborne effect) and with his “burning platform” speech, expressed that Symbian and MeeGo were trash (Ratner effect). https://medium.com/@harrikiljander/operation-elop-6f2b043f52c5#2b49 https://medium.com/@harrikiljander/operation-elop-6f2b043f52...
- oldcynic 9y ago
  I never did figure out what was supposed to be wrong with MeeGo/Maemo. Always thought it had a lot of potential and some great UX ideas that were nowhere else.
  - edent 9y ago
    Did you ever try using it? It was awkward to use and slow. Even on the hardware that was specifically designed for.
    - erikj 9y ago
      Was it bad enough to abandon all investments made into its development and jump to the less successful competing platform instead of incrementally improving MeeGo/Maemo?
      - edent 9y ago
        Yes. It suffered from the same problem as all of Nokia's home grown software. The performance was shockingly bad - in an era of jelly scrolling, it was still using janky scroll-bars. It was clearly made by disparate teams who didn't talk to each other. The design language was all over the place, the radio performance inadequate, and there was no sensible way to develop or release apps for it. Nokia made brilliant firmware, and amazing hardware. But they simply didn't have the ability to design beautiful, usable software. Personally, I'd have gone with Android. But you don't hire a Microsoft guy for anything other than getting in bed with MS.
thriftwy 9y ago
Upvote if you knew immediately where this "CEO from Microsoft" is headed.
- Nokinside 9y ago
  > On 16 March 2016, Australia's largest telecommunications provider Telstra announced, controversially, that Elop would be joining the company in a newly created position as Group Executive Technology, Innovation and Strategy.[72][73][74] Since joining Telstra, the company's share price has dropped by around one third. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#Telstra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#Telstra
- Niksko 9y ago
  Wow, didn't realise he went to Telstra. Sounds good to me, Telstra suck, if he can help to kill them then all the better.
pavlov 9y ago
The old Nokia crowd seem to have a tough time admitting that all of Nokia's old software operations were beyond salvage by 2010. Symbian had turned into a sprawling pile of crap, and Maemo/MeeGo was painted in a corner by internal politics that had marginalized its development. Nokia was spending ten times as much as Apple on R&D, yet had very little to show for it. Having two competing OS teams was a bad choice made much earlier by Elop's predecessors, who didn't understand software (the previous Nokia CEO came to that position from the legal department — a terrible mismatch for a company about to be overrun by Apple and Google). Elop was fundamentally right in killing both of Nokia's operating systems. Symbian sales were collapsing in early 2011 because the devices just couldn't respond to user expectations anymore, not because of anything Elop did. I can see why Elop picked Windows Phone over Android: it truly was a more innovative UI and Microsoft was willing to pay Nokia a billion USD per year for the partnership. Elop's grave mistake was not having a replacement ready to go. The Lumias shipped way too late. Playing "armchair CEO", I have no idea how I would have solved that either. In any case, Nokia didn't end up too poorly. Microsoft bought the phone division that was bleeding cash, and that money gave Nokia the opportunity to buy back its network division that had been a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens. The outcome was probably better than if Nokia had tried to downscale itself into a commodity Android vendor.
- subway 9y ago
  Meego could have been killer, if they'd made the devices available, and shipped Alien Dalvik to bootstrap off of Android's app ecosystem. I've been using a Xperia X running Sailfish for the last week, and can't get over how well Android apps run along side beautiful native Sailfish apps. While Google Play Services are kinda hacky to get up and running, if you can live out of F-Droid and/or the Amazon app store, everything Just Works. Even Prime Video and Netflix.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    BlackBerry tried that exact strategy with BlackBerry 10: brand new OS with an Android app compatibility layer. It didn't work. Nokia was coming from a similar position as BlackBerry, so I don't see how it would have worked for them either.
u801e 9y ago
I wonder if Nokia would have done better had they focused on markets outside of the US/North America rather than partnering with Microsoft and abandoning Symbian and Meego.
yannski 9y ago
I still love my N9 and I still reminds how fluid is UI was, especially at the time of slow Android...
coldacid 9y ago
I want to read this, but the lack of reasonable formatting for the ebook editions is driving me up the wall. I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up reformatting it myself and producing my own PDF and EPUBs.

76 points by mlla 9y ago

eitland 9y ago

Actually looking forward to getting a new Nokia w/Android soon now. :-)

Already__Taken 9y ago
Just wish the Nokia 1 had a modern set of radios inside it, not the bare minimum.
romwell 9y ago
I have one now, it's quite pleasant. I liked the cameras on Lumias better, but overall, I have no complaints about my Nokia 6 - and it can probably stop a bullet too.
- JTon 9y ago
  Hype train is chugging away for the 7 plus. And I have to admit, it hits many sweet spots.
  - eitland 9y ago
    AndroidOne being possibly the most important for me.
nextos 9y ago
It's really nice hardware. I'm looking forward to an unlocked bootloader.
oblio 9y ago
Same. I’m probably going to get a Nokia 6 2018. Built like a tank and it’s quite competitive performance wise.
Maakuth 9y ago
They seem to be nice devices, but they are made and mostly designed by Foxconn. Only thing from Nokia in those is the brand licensing.

glibgil 9y ago

> Elop combined two different CEOs cardinal blunders: The Osborne and Ratner Effects. > In 1983, the computer manufacturer Osborne announced several new models of computers, which they said would be launched in sales after one year. In the meanwhile, sales of the old models plummeted because the consumers were waiting for the new models. Osborne ended up in bankruptcy. Gerard Ratner, on the other hand, was the CEO of the jewelry company Ratners. He gave a speech in 1991, where he said that Ratners products were so cheap because they were “total crap”. The consumers believed him and stopped buying. > Elop announced that Nokia is giving up on Symbian before any Windows Phone smartphone was ready (Osborne effect) and with his “burning platform” speech, expressed that Symbian and MeeGo were trash (Ratner effect). https://medium.com/@harrikiljander/operation-elop-6f2b043f52c5#2b49 https://medium.com/@harrikiljander/operation-elop-6f2b043f52...

oldcynic 9y ago
I never did figure out what was supposed to be wrong with MeeGo/Maemo. Always thought it had a lot of potential and some great UX ideas that were nowhere else.
- edent 9y ago
  Did you ever try using it? It was awkward to use and slow. Even on the hardware that was specifically designed for.
  - erikj 9y ago
    Was it bad enough to abandon all investments made into its development and jump to the less successful competing platform instead of incrementally improving MeeGo/Maemo?
    - edent 9y ago
      Yes. It suffered from the same problem as all of Nokia's home grown software. The performance was shockingly bad - in an era of jelly scrolling, it was still using janky scroll-bars. It was clearly made by disparate teams who didn't talk to each other. The design language was all over the place, the radio performance inadequate, and there was no sensible way to develop or release apps for it. Nokia made brilliant firmware, and amazing hardware. But they simply didn't have the ability to design beautiful, usable software. Personally, I'd have gone with Android. But you don't hire a Microsoft guy for anything other than getting in bed with MS.

thriftwy 9y ago

Upvote if you knew immediately where this "CEO from Microsoft" is headed.

Nokinside 9y ago
> On 16 March 2016, Australia's largest telecommunications provider Telstra announced, controversially, that Elop would be joining the company in a newly created position as Group Executive Technology, Innovation and Strategy.[72][73][74] Since joining Telstra, the company's share price has dropped by around one third. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#Telstra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#Telstra
Niksko 9y ago
Wow, didn't realise he went to Telstra. Sounds good to me, Telstra suck, if he can help to kill them then all the better.

pavlov 9y ago

The old Nokia crowd seem to have a tough time admitting that all of Nokia's old software operations were beyond salvage by 2010. Symbian had turned into a sprawling pile of crap, and Maemo/MeeGo was painted in a corner by internal politics that had marginalized its development. Nokia was spending ten times as much as Apple on R&D, yet had very little to show for it. Having two competing OS teams was a bad choice made much earlier by Elop's predecessors, who didn't understand software (the previous Nokia CEO came to that position from the legal department — a terrible mismatch for a company about to be overrun by Apple and Google). Elop was fundamentally right in killing both of Nokia's operating systems. Symbian sales were collapsing in early 2011 because the devices just couldn't respond to user expectations anymore, not because of anything Elop did. I can see why Elop picked Windows Phone over Android: it truly was a more innovative UI and Microsoft was willing to pay Nokia a billion USD per year for the partnership. Elop's grave mistake was not having a replacement ready to go. The Lumias shipped way too late. Playing "armchair CEO", I have no idea how I would have solved that either. In any case, Nokia didn't end up too poorly. Microsoft bought the phone division that was bleeding cash, and that money gave Nokia the opportunity to buy back its network division that had been a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens. The outcome was probably better than if Nokia had tried to downscale itself into a commodity Android vendor.

subway 9y ago
Meego could have been killer, if they'd made the devices available, and shipped Alien Dalvik to bootstrap off of Android's app ecosystem. I've been using a Xperia X running Sailfish for the last week, and can't get over how well Android apps run along side beautiful native Sailfish apps. While Google Play Services are kinda hacky to get up and running, if you can live out of F-Droid and/or the Amazon app store, everything Just Works. Even Prime Video and Netflix.
- pavlov 9y ago
  BlackBerry tried that exact strategy with BlackBerry 10: brand new OS with an Android app compatibility layer. It didn't work. Nokia was coming from a similar position as BlackBerry, so I don't see how it would have worked for them either.

u801e 9y ago

I wonder if Nokia would have done better had they focused on markets outside of the US/North America rather than partnering with Microsoft and abandoning Symbian and Meego.

yannski 9y ago

I still love my N9 and I still reminds how fluid is UI was, especially at the time of slow Android...

coldacid 9y ago

I want to read this, but the lack of reasonable formatting for the ebook editions is driving me up the wall. I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up reformatting it myself and producing my own PDF and EPUBs.