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This, is a classic management lesson. Take stock. Confer with key stakeholders and the engineers. Draw a composite picture of the state of the system. And take

This, is a classic management lesson. Take stock. Confer with key stakeholders and the engineers. Draw a composite picture of the state of the system. And take a painful decision to abandon your approach, hopefully in time. Much as I liked 'Meego' as an idea, and much as I like Nokia as a phone company( Symbian phones were incredibly useful. And the hardware and design is always top class.), this was a correct decision. I hope Nokia can find its feet again and dazzle us with some amazing phones again.

stcredzero 15y ago
Symbian phones were incredibly useful. And the hardware and design is always top class. What's keeping Nokia from playing the same game that HTC is? Is it entirely manufacturing/labor costs? From the article: "MeeGo had been the collective hope of the company," he says, "and we'd come to the conclusion that the emperor had no clothes. It's not a nice thing." Maybe the culture and social organization of a company is analogous to its autonomic nervous system? A shock to that is very risky and not to be undertaken lightly.
- rrrazdan 15y ago
  Because Nokia R&D spend is 8 times that of HTC, and 5 times of Apple for that matter.[1] Nokia needs the flexibility with the OS. In an ideal world, Nokia most certainly should make an OS by themselves, but clearly that didn't happen, so they choose the one that gives them the most flexibility to do what they want, much more than just putting a custom UI on top. And yes, the shock is risky. But the way things were going, very necessary. [1]http://www.itpro.co.uk/630721/nokia-r-d-spend-outweighs-apple-and-htc http://www.itpro.co.uk/630721/nokia-r-d-spend-outweighs-appl...
  - bad_user 15y ago
    What flexibility? According to Microsoft, WinMo7 is allowing less flexibility than Android, that being one of its selling points (less fragmentation).
    - rrrazdan 15y ago
      From the article, "To that point, Microsoft had forced handset makers to obey strict rules about how they could customize Windows Phone 7, and they wanted the same from Nokia. Not only did Nokia respond that it wanted the right to innovate freely, it asked Microsoft to commit to using Nokia technology as a foundation of the Windows Phone platform, particularly its detailed Navteq maps database."
  - fhars 15y ago
    Judging from the Symbian phone I'm typing this on, Nokia is actually incapable of writing a decent phone os. The hardware is great (after four years the corners of the case have a few scratches from falling out of a shirt pocket on the concrete pavement several times and the chome color on the D-pad is mostly gone) but the software, ah, how to say it, less so. The browser randomly reorders all bookmarks every time you open the mail client, sometime the phone will stay offline after you have left cell coverage in the wrong moment and ever so often you have to use the hardware garbage collect button (the one with the circle with the small vertical bar within) if you want to keep using it. I'm mostly using third party software now (opera mini for the web and mutt in a putty session for mail). So in a way it is fitting that they go with Microsoft, Microsoft has a reputation of being a better hardware than software manufacturer, too (at least for keyboards and mice, which cannot RROD).
- rst 15y ago
  Sez BusinessWeek: "[Elop] tried to negotiate a deal with Google to run Android, but Google refused to give the world's biggest phonemaker any advantages over its smaller partners, meaning Nokia's corps of 11,600 engineers would have next to no ability to add their own innovations to Google's software. 'It just didn't feel right,' Elop says to the crowd [of Nokia engineers]. 'We'd be just another company distributing Android. That's not Nokia! We need to fight!'" This is, at best, a half-truth --- Nokia would have the same freedom to tinker, reskin, and add their own apps as any other Android maker, which has so far been considerable. With Windows Phone, being able to reskin is a special favor, but with Android, it's part of the package. What's believable here is that Nokia wanted _some_ kind of special favors from Google, and Google didn't want to play that game. Microsoft did. And it isn't clear from the outside what all those special favors were --- we'll have a clearer view, perhaps, when the first devices ship, though we still probably won't know the size of the "marketing payments" --- or how the other manufacturers will react, long-term, to being relegated to second-fiddle status on the platform. Bizweek quote from here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b42320567...

stcredzero 15y ago

Symbian phones were incredibly useful. And the hardware and design is always top class. What's keeping Nokia from playing the same game that HTC is? Is it entirely manufacturing/labor costs? From the article: "MeeGo had been the collective hope of the company," he says, "and we'd come to the conclusion that the emperor had no clothes. It's not a nice thing." Maybe the culture and social organization of a company is analogous to its autonomic nervous system? A shock to that is very risky and not to be undertaken lightly.

rrrazdan 15y ago
Because Nokia R&D spend is 8 times that of HTC, and 5 times of Apple for that matter.[1] Nokia needs the flexibility with the OS. In an ideal world, Nokia most certainly should make an OS by themselves, but clearly that didn't happen, so they choose the one that gives them the most flexibility to do what they want, much more than just putting a custom UI on top. And yes, the shock is risky. But the way things were going, very necessary. [1]http://www.itpro.co.uk/630721/nokia-r-d-spend-outweighs-apple-and-htc http://www.itpro.co.uk/630721/nokia-r-d-spend-outweighs-appl...
- bad_user 15y ago
  What flexibility? According to Microsoft, WinMo7 is allowing less flexibility than Android, that being one of its selling points (less fragmentation).
  - rrrazdan 15y ago
    From the article, "To that point, Microsoft had forced handset makers to obey strict rules about how they could customize Windows Phone 7, and they wanted the same from Nokia. Not only did Nokia respond that it wanted the right to innovate freely, it asked Microsoft to commit to using Nokia technology as a foundation of the Windows Phone platform, particularly its detailed Navteq maps database."
- fhars 15y ago
  Judging from the Symbian phone I'm typing this on, Nokia is actually incapable of writing a decent phone os. The hardware is great (after four years the corners of the case have a few scratches from falling out of a shirt pocket on the concrete pavement several times and the chome color on the D-pad is mostly gone) but the software, ah, how to say it, less so. The browser randomly reorders all bookmarks every time you open the mail client, sometime the phone will stay offline after you have left cell coverage in the wrong moment and ever so often you have to use the hardware garbage collect button (the one with the circle with the small vertical bar within) if you want to keep using it. I'm mostly using third party software now (opera mini for the web and mutt in a putty session for mail). So in a way it is fitting that they go with Microsoft, Microsoft has a reputation of being a better hardware than software manufacturer, too (at least for keyboards and mice, which cannot RROD).
rst 15y ago
Sez BusinessWeek: "[Elop] tried to negotiate a deal with Google to run Android, but Google refused to give the world's biggest phonemaker any advantages over its smaller partners, meaning Nokia's corps of 11,600 engineers would have next to no ability to add their own innovations to Google's software. 'It just didn't feel right,' Elop says to the crowd [of Nokia engineers]. 'We'd be just another company distributing Android. That's not Nokia! We need to fight!'" This is, at best, a half-truth --- Nokia would have the same freedom to tinker, reskin, and add their own apps as any other Android maker, which has so far been considerable. With Windows Phone, being able to reskin is a special favor, but with Android, it's part of the package. What's believable here is that Nokia wanted _some_ kind of special favors from Google, and Google didn't want to play that game. Microsoft did. And it isn't clear from the outside what all those special favors were --- we'll have a clearer view, perhaps, when the first devices ship, though we still probably won't know the size of the "marketing payments" --- or how the other manufacturers will react, long-term, to being relegated to second-fiddle status on the platform. Bizweek quote from here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b42320567...