5 ms·

No PR campaign can save Nokia from this well-deserved disaster. Btw, NOK is down 15%

joelhaasnoot 16y ago
Not sure this is well-deserved, but it certainly has been a couple of years in the making. Who didn't see this coming? Oh, and there go our tax euros. Symbian has been given EU tax money to develop a "European localized mobile operating system"
- mayank 16y ago
  In fairness, those tax dollars could be used to "European-localize" WP7 as well.
shareme 16y ago
Maybe next they will try Bada?
pclark 16y ago
Better than continuing with Symbian and having to lay off all the employees in a few years time.
- _delirium 16y ago
  The stock market appears to predict otherwise, believing that this move lowers the net present value of the company. Of course, stock markets aren't necessarily accurate prediction markets, but given suitable efficient-market hypotheses they're an approximation of such a thing.
  - pclark 16y ago
    Of course. Nokia is going to take a beating until they have proven they are turning the ship around. The company will be in both public and private turmoil until it either emerges as a turned around company, or a dead one.
  - saturdaysaint 16y ago
    The market could just as easily be registering the fact that new management determined that Nokia's product pipeline was uncompetitive.
  - bvi 16y ago
    The stock market isn't predicting anything. It just believes given the current information and Nokia's decision, $NOK's value deserves to be lower now than what it was prior. It's just a current snapshot - no indication of the company's future whatsoever.
    - stanleydrew 16y ago
      Well technically a company's stock value is supposed to represent the discounted present value of all future profits. So you can interpret a reduction in stock price as an indication that the market expects profits to be lower in the future.
      - Groxx 16y ago
        PR scandals do that. They also frequently have little bearing on a company's profits, unless it's sufficiently nasty to warrant significant numbers of boycotters for longer than the average consumer memory is. Stocks are nowhere near that deterministic. When people think others will jump ship, they try to jump first, to lose the least money. When people think others will want buy, they buy first or sell higher, because they can get away with it. There's more games theory than future prediction if you ignore long-term investors, as they make up a microscopic amount of the daily trading and thus the daily prices of stocks.
  - shimi 16y ago
    The stock market just reacted for admitting defeat, Nokia drilled that Symbian is the better option for years and only today acknowledged that is not the case.
  - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
    I think the market is pricing in an extended transition period that could hit smart phone sales for a couple of quarters.
- protomyth 16y ago
  Is Symbian really that bad or is it a case of not cool/new?
  - rexf 16y ago
    Symbian has not been doing well, and their fans won't support it forever. Prominent Symbian enthusiasts (Symbian-Guru) on giving up the platform: (engadget summary) http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/symbian-guru-shuts-down-says-nokia-is-losing-hard/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/symbian-guru-shuts-down-s... (same story summarized by TC) http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/01/self-declared-longtime-nokia-and-symbian-fanboy-gives-up-goes-android/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/01/self-declared-longtime-noki...
    - protomyth 16y ago
      Those articles point more towards Nokia's support. I am more curious if there is something wrong with the actual OS.
      - dfox 16y ago
        That depends on you viewpoint. The OS itself is technically good (as in significantly better designed than android and friends). On the other hand, Symbian has some generally good design assumptions (for example client-server division of almost anything) that are hard for programmers that come from other platforms/just don't care and thus it's architecture is often hacked around, which sadly includes many applications written by Nokia itself.
  - dfox 16y ago
    It's certainly "case of not cool/new".
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Sticking to Symbian and finishing MeeGo were not their only options. AFAIK, the Android stack would run just fine on top of the MeeGo kernel. They could have gone with Android in their high-end while gradually pushing Symbian down towards their dumbphone range.
notahacker 16y ago
Hmmm... and RIM is up. I'd be betting on them to be the big losers if Nokia/Microsoft's partnership actually works.
Kilimanjaro 16y ago
Wow, they just lost 10B in market cap in the morning. Ten billion dollars!

Not sure this is well-deserved, but it certainly has been a couple of years in the making. Who didn't see this coming? Oh, and there go our tax euros. Symbian has been given EU tax money to develop a "European localized mobile operating system"

mayank 16y ago
In fairness, those tax dollars could be used to "European-localize" WP7 as well.

shareme 16y ago

Maybe next they will try Bada?

pclark 16y ago

Better than continuing with Symbian and having to lay off all the employees in a few years time.

_delirium 16y ago
The stock market appears to predict otherwise, believing that this move lowers the net present value of the company. Of course, stock markets aren't necessarily accurate prediction markets, but given suitable efficient-market hypotheses they're an approximation of such a thing.
- pclark 16y ago
  Of course. Nokia is going to take a beating until they have proven they are turning the ship around. The company will be in both public and private turmoil until it either emerges as a turned around company, or a dead one.
- saturdaysaint 16y ago
  The market could just as easily be registering the fact that new management determined that Nokia's product pipeline was uncompetitive.
- bvi 16y ago
  The stock market isn't predicting anything. It just believes given the current information and Nokia's decision, $NOK's value deserves to be lower now than what it was prior. It's just a current snapshot - no indication of the company's future whatsoever.
  - stanleydrew 16y ago
    Well technically a company's stock value is supposed to represent the discounted present value of all future profits. So you can interpret a reduction in stock price as an indication that the market expects profits to be lower in the future.
    - Groxx 16y ago
      PR scandals do that. They also frequently have little bearing on a company's profits, unless it's sufficiently nasty to warrant significant numbers of boycotters for longer than the average consumer memory is. Stocks are nowhere near that deterministic. When people think others will jump ship, they try to jump first, to lose the least money. When people think others will want buy, they buy first or sell higher, because they can get away with it. There's more games theory than future prediction if you ignore long-term investors, as they make up a microscopic amount of the daily trading and thus the daily prices of stocks.
- shimi 16y ago
  The stock market just reacted for admitting defeat, Nokia drilled that Symbian is the better option for years and only today acknowledged that is not the case.
- fauigerzigerk 16y ago
  I think the market is pricing in an extended transition period that could hit smart phone sales for a couple of quarters.
protomyth 16y ago
Is Symbian really that bad or is it a case of not cool/new?
- rexf 16y ago
  Symbian has not been doing well, and their fans won't support it forever. Prominent Symbian enthusiasts (Symbian-Guru) on giving up the platform: (engadget summary) http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/symbian-guru-shuts-down-says-nokia-is-losing-hard/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/symbian-guru-shuts-down-s... (same story summarized by TC) http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/01/self-declared-longtime-nokia-and-symbian-fanboy-gives-up-goes-android/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/01/self-declared-longtime-noki...
  - protomyth 16y ago
    Those articles point more towards Nokia's support. I am more curious if there is something wrong with the actual OS.
    - dfox 16y ago
      That depends on you viewpoint. The OS itself is technically good (as in significantly better designed than android and friends). On the other hand, Symbian has some generally good design assumptions (for example client-server division of almost anything) that are hard for programmers that come from other platforms/just don't care and thus it's architecture is often hacked around, which sadly includes many applications written by Nokia itself.
- dfox 16y ago
  It's certainly "case of not cool/new".
rbanffy 16y ago
Sticking to Symbian and finishing MeeGo were not their only options. AFAIK, the Android stack would run just fine on top of the MeeGo kernel. They could have gone with Android in their high-end while gradually pushing Symbian down towards their dumbphone range.

notahacker 16y ago

Hmmm... and RIM is up. I'd be betting on them to be the big losers if Nokia/Microsoft's partnership actually works.

Kilimanjaro 16y ago

Wow, they just lost 10B in market cap in the morning. Ten billion dollars!