3 ms·

"The downside is huge." Compared to what? I don't think the downside is greater than the downside of maintaining their own incredibly expensive and increasing

"The downside is huge." Compared to what? I don't think the downside is greater than the downside of maintaining their own incredibly expensive and increasingly obsolete platform(s). This gives them their only hope of delivering a stable smartphones with a modern UI in the first half of this year (bonus: without spending tens-of-thousands of developer hours). I consider that "upside".

zmmmmm 16y ago
Compared to what? Compared to joining an ecosystem that has already succeeded (Android). The downside if WP7 turns out to peak at 5% of the market - which is entirely possible at this juncture - is that Nokia will suffer a horrific drop in profits and probably go out of business. They now need WP7 to reach 30 - 50% of the market simply to consider this strategy a success. It's incredibly risky to take a bet like that.
- silversmith 16y ago
  And it is entirely possible. Remember, Nokia has a huge hold of lower/middle-end mobile market. If they can manage to get WP7 on devices in that segment without making them much more expensive, WP7 might just as well become a respectable competitor.
  - whatusername 16y ago
    Remember that the burning platform memo was specific.. Not only are they losing on the top end -- there's phones coming out of China now beating them on the bottom end.
- saturdaysaint 16y ago
  Elop has given a credible reply to this argument: Android would put them on the fastest track imaginable to commoditization. Nokia's support and supply-chain would have taken Android from the marketshare leader to the undisputed ruler of the smartphone market. In this kind of atmosphere, it could be safely surmised that no manufacturer would have any leverage with Google and there would be very little opportunity for interesting differentiation.
  - zmmmmm 16y ago
    > Android would put them on the fastest track imaginable to commoditization The way I see it they are on that track anyway. As far as I can tell they got absolutely no hard concessions from MS about control of WP7 - I'm sure Microsoft said lots of nice things but when it comes to the crunch Nokia has to be delusional if they think Microsoft is going to let them have any real influence over WP7. If you are going to get commoditized it might as well be in a market that is a known success rather than one which might totally fail. > In this kind of atmosphere, it could be safely surmised that no manufacturer would have any leverage with Google Nokia is easily big enough and powerful enough that they could take Android their own way. They could forgo licensing Google's apps and put their own on, thus maintaining a foot in the ecosystem but remaining entirely independent. Android would have given them a lot more options than just becoming subservient to Google (which, even if they did do, I would maintain is better than being subservient to MS). This deal is strange enough to me that I half suspect there is another surprise - perhaps MS and Nokia joining together to sue the living daylights out of Google with every patent in their arsenals.
lsc 16y ago
eh, tens of thousands of developer hours is pretty small potatoes to Nokia. consider 2000 hours a year, give or take, per developer. Consider that nokia just completely alienated all of their external developers, and likely most of their internal software people. Even if the windows mobile 7 turns out to be reasonably good, they've just thrown away the software half of their organization. It's gone. If windows 7 doesn't work out for them a year from now? they will have to start over from scratch. Developer goodwill? gone. Developer mindshare? gone. those are some pretty valuable things they just threw away. Personally, I think their shareholders would have been a whole lot better off if they had sold to microsoft outright.

zmmmmm 16y ago

Compared to what? Compared to joining an ecosystem that has already succeeded (Android). The downside if WP7 turns out to peak at 5% of the market - which is entirely possible at this juncture - is that Nokia will suffer a horrific drop in profits and probably go out of business. They now need WP7 to reach 30 - 50% of the market simply to consider this strategy a success. It's incredibly risky to take a bet like that.

silversmith 16y ago
And it is entirely possible. Remember, Nokia has a huge hold of lower/middle-end mobile market. If they can manage to get WP7 on devices in that segment without making them much more expensive, WP7 might just as well become a respectable competitor.
- whatusername 16y ago
  Remember that the burning platform memo was specific.. Not only are they losing on the top end -- there's phones coming out of China now beating them on the bottom end.
saturdaysaint 16y ago
Elop has given a credible reply to this argument: Android would put them on the fastest track imaginable to commoditization. Nokia's support and supply-chain would have taken Android from the marketshare leader to the undisputed ruler of the smartphone market. In this kind of atmosphere, it could be safely surmised that no manufacturer would have any leverage with Google and there would be very little opportunity for interesting differentiation.
- zmmmmm 16y ago
  > Android would put them on the fastest track imaginable to commoditization The way I see it they are on that track anyway. As far as I can tell they got absolutely no hard concessions from MS about control of WP7 - I'm sure Microsoft said lots of nice things but when it comes to the crunch Nokia has to be delusional if they think Microsoft is going to let them have any real influence over WP7. If you are going to get commoditized it might as well be in a market that is a known success rather than one which might totally fail. > In this kind of atmosphere, it could be safely surmised that no manufacturer would have any leverage with Google Nokia is easily big enough and powerful enough that they could take Android their own way. They could forgo licensing Google's apps and put their own on, thus maintaining a foot in the ecosystem but remaining entirely independent. Android would have given them a lot more options than just becoming subservient to Google (which, even if they did do, I would maintain is better than being subservient to MS). This deal is strange enough to me that I half suspect there is another surprise - perhaps MS and Nokia joining together to sue the living daylights out of Google with every patent in their arsenals.

lsc 16y ago

eh, tens of thousands of developer hours is pretty small potatoes to Nokia. consider 2000 hours a year, give or take, per developer. Consider that nokia just completely alienated all of their external developers, and likely most of their internal software people. Even if the windows mobile 7 turns out to be reasonably good, they've just thrown away the software half of their organization. It's gone. If windows 7 doesn't work out for them a year from now? they will have to start over from scratch. Developer goodwill? gone. Developer mindshare? gone. those are some pretty valuable things they just threw away. Personally, I think their shareholders would have been a whole lot better off if they had sold to microsoft outright.