11 ms·

RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

fidz 14y ago
Nokia get rid this problem by doing some encouragement to develop in their old J2ME/Symbian platform in such country that still have good market share like Indonesia. In Indonesia, Nokia encourage developer to develop games in their platform in a contest named "Developer War", and now it has 4 episode/chapter.
- mtts 14y ago
  I hear Blackberry is still going strong in Indonesia as well. Still, worldwide, they're doomed.
  - joeguilmette 14y ago
    Anectodally I saw 1 person in Indonesia with a Blackberry - and she hated it. I saw hundreds of (local) iPhone users.
- obiterdictum 14y ago
  old J2ME/Symbian platform No. Just... no. I'm really pleased that Symbian is dead (or on life support). It is, so far, the worst platform I have ever had to deal with. Eclipse-based IDE for €300-1300, partner-only premium APIs, completely unusable multi-gigabyte emulator (if you needed to run two instances, you had to install... two copies in different directories!), awful documentation, terrible system libraries, and quirky Symbian C++ dialect... it was quite an experience, but I will never miss it. Anything we have today is better than Symbian.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    For an hobbyist like myself, PyS60 was nice, though. Easy to install and really fast to code something up. Is there anything like that for Android?
nicholassmith 14y ago
I don't think it's necessarily game over for Nokia, but they've got to drastically rethink their game plan. They burned through cash getting the Lumia phones ready, gorgeous as they are, which is a gamble not yet to pay off. They're using the third horse in the race, a platform which it's creators have yet to successfully manage into the mainstream consciousness. Too many flaws to stand next to Android and iOS, but not completely down yet. Lets not forget Nokia is still one of the biggest mobile handset companies in the world, they've got a solid brand name appreciation in areas of the world yet to be opened up. Essentially they've still got chips left on the table, it just depends on the next run of cards whether they grow their stack or not. But lets not get in the way of a snappy headline.
- bitwize 14y ago
  I don't think it's necessarily game over for Nokia, but they've got to drastically rethink their game plan. Flash their back catalogue of 800s with stock ICS, call it the Nokia Lumia A, sell them for $200 a pop (sans contract). That'll stem the bleeding and give them time to come up with their real Galaxy-killer.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    I'd imagine they can't, under terms of their agreement with Microsoft, but that might not be forever so maybe they will. But is the market ready for yet another Android handset? It's a thin share of the pie as it is.
mtgx 14y ago
Nokia won't last until 2014. They are declining too fast. They went from 45% market share to 18% in China, one of their strongest and biggest markets, last year alone. This year they will probably fall way below 10%. Nokia will most likely be acquired by the end of this year or in the first half of next year (or go bankrupt otherwise).
- sp332 14y ago
  Who are they losing marketshare to in China?
  - josteink 14y ago
    Cheaper Chinese-made brands?
  - bergie 14y ago
    It seems to domestic Android players like Huawei and ZTE: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-07/22/content_12960107.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-07/22/content_129...
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    Various chinese nonames? Some of those with Android already.
  - muhfuhkuh 14y ago
    Samsung is king, then ZTE, then Huawei, then Apple. But, China is filled with domestic brands that pepper the market with Android phones (Honor, Huawei, Lenovo, Coolpad) that bite at mostly Nokia's well-chewed heels.
- AlexFromBelgium 14y ago
  And bought by Samsung.. That would rock. Make ALL the Android phones!
- Tichy 14y ago
  I wonder if at the same time markets still grow at an enourmous rate, so that even a declining market share could still be a net increase? Apparently it doesn't seem to be the case for Nokia atm, just saying that market share alone is maybe insufficient.
barranger 14y ago
While I certainly wouldn't call Nokia's position anything but worrisome, I think it might be a little early to start planning the funeral. One of the benefits Nokia has by going with Windows Phone is the relationship it now has with Microsoft. I'd be very surprised if Nokia's tablet offering isn't front and center in just about every piece of marketing MS does. The biggest issue that Windows Phone has currently is a lack of third party applications. I really do think that standardizing the platform across Phone/Tablet/PC will help in a big way with this problem (not pushing them to higher numbers than iOS/Android, but much, much closer than they are today).
- jinushaun 14y ago
  For the average non-tech user, is the lack of third party apps really that big of an issue? In all honesty, all they need is Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds and sudoku, which WP7 has. You're really not at a loss for apps when it comes to the popular 1st tier apps. The bigger issue, from my personal experience seeing people pick up and use a WP7 device, is that it's awkward to use compared to the grid of icons in iOS and Android. They're utterly confused and have no idea how to even begin. Metro, as executed by MS, is simply not intuitive. The starkness of the white on black text is cold and unfriendly. Interaction paradigms they learned from iOS and Android are slightly different in WP7, which results in frustration around every corner. The pure icon based menus make it a guessing game on which icon does what. From my personal experience, regular people have a much easier time switching between Android and iOS. WP is just too different.
  - barranger 14y ago
    I've found for the average non-tech user the only app they seem to really care about is the one that their friends are currently gushing about. as an example (yes I read the anecdote article :) ) I spent the weekend with extended family who were going on and on about how great Instagram was and how they couldn't understand why anybody would even think about a phone that didn't have it. I'm sure when I see them again in 6 weeks or so, the argument will be the same, with only the specific app that changes. While MS will have whatever "the" app is at a current moment from time to time, due to it's marketshare, iOS will almost always have it.
jinushaun 14y ago
"If Nokia had gone with Android, the best that it might have achieved was to become an also-ran—another in an endless stream of me-too commodity smartphone makers." No. Nokia could've been Samsung, which has the lion's share of the Android market. And Android Lumia would be the prettiest Android handset on the market.
- bitwize 14y ago
  With Nokia on Android, we could have had top-rung Android phones with iPhone appearance and build quality, and greater-than-iPhone ruggedness.
  - josteink 14y ago
    Keep telling yourself that. When was the last time you used a Nokia phone? When was the last time you saw a Nokia UI? The one thing which made the iPhone great was that it finally broke the streak of smart-phones all cloning the horrible, messy and unintuitive Nokia-model which had plagued the industry since the mid 90s. Take my words for it: Nokia would have fucked up Android just as much as it messed up Symbian. Nothing pretty would have come out of this.
    - bitwize 14y ago
      Keep telling yourself that. When was the last time you used a Nokia phone? When was the last time you saw a Nokia UI? I have an N810 Internet Tablet and the UI is beautiful and easy to use, despite the hardware having drawbacks. (Resistive touchscreen, CPU a bit too slow.) The N900 and later N9, based on the same Maemo codebase, fixed these problems and reportedly have beautiful, easy, fast UIs. So no I won't "take your word for it" when the data suggest otherwise. Symbian was fucked to begin with. If it's a pain in the ass to develop for, nobody but NOBODY is going to put in the requisite UI polish.
- huggyface 14y ago
  It's a bit of a bizarre claim to begin with given that there are a number of manufacturers pitching Windows Phone devices to very limited success. So instead of being a possible also-ran me-too in a large, successful market, they're an also-ran me-too in a small, uncertain market. I'm not buying the logic. If they used the Android bit to explain a wholesale adoption of Meego or Tizen or something then sure. But going to WP...that just doesn't make sense.
ernesth 14y ago
Is this a serious piece of writing or just trolling? > 2003-2008 = back when euro was worth real money. 1 euro was worth between 1.1 and 1.5$. Now, it is worth 1.25$... > Rather than spend its resources on building an OS that depended on novel interfaces and sensors, Like the first (and best) GPS phones? > that allowed for outside development Like symbian and the nokia owned qt creator. > If Nokia had gone with Android[...] Windows Phone, on the other hand [...] Aren't you forgetting the numerous other hands that are symbian and its successors: tizen, meego and meltemi? > Elop [...] clear-eyed Humm. Choosing to ditch their own system to use another one may have been a bold and smart move, but still developping 2 or 3 different systems while trying to integrate an external new (and unproven) one seems to me like increasing the problem rather than solving it.
- krakensden 14y ago
  > Is this a serious piece of writing or just trolling? Note the author. All his articles are like this.
suprgeek 14y ago
(One person's anecdotes do not a trend make - I know) I can offer an Indian perspective - When I was first shopping for a good phone in India in 2008 or so, every single person (techie) said "Nokia" without hesitation. From the savviest Tecno-geek to the manual laborer at a construction site -everyone had a Nokia. Fast forward to 2011 late/early 2012; virtually NONE of the techies I interact with recommended a Nokia. Infact, I haven't heard even one of my friends/acquaintances purchase a new Nokia; it is always Samsung/HTC/iPhones or rarely Blackberry. On the lower end, the flood of cheap Chinese phones in the Indian market means no cheap Nokia's. Nokia was a name many people swore by in India, now not so much...I am afraid the end is near for them.
xxiao 14y ago
Elop killed this company basically. He should be fired by the board today, though it's probably too late already. Should Android have been chosen, which is unlikely by someone just came out form Microsoft, Nokia might have tens of also-run products now, but at least Nokia will not die, or not die that fast.
deepGem 14y ago
I met a Nokia developer evangelist at one of the events and asked him about some of the map features. The dude told me that he would get back but never bothered to. I'm not judging a company by one individual's behavior, but it surely gave me a negative impression about their developer evangelism.
itsbits 14y ago
Windows 8 preview is good..may be not windows7 killer with PCs..but surely can compete with Android OS in mobile devices....only problem with Windows 8 is free development tools..hope MS looks into it..else it may loose the race before it starts.... and saying 'RIP Nokia' is very bad...i feel Nokia is still the best with its hardware and looks..i like Nokia 900 looks n hardware rather S3.... Android would have been better option...but they can switch to ANdroid as well when Windows 8 is not helping..there should be no worries about that...
greyerzer 14y ago
If Nokia actually dies, Microsoft will pretty much have to buy them in order to ensure that they don't lose their (rather shaky) grasp on the mobile market (more of a foot in the door really...) That would make Microsoft the third company producing an entire mobile ecosystem of its own after Apple and Google. It's interesting to observe that the technological trend towards ecosystems is also happenning in the business sphere, albeit with some delay. Also, I would be sad to see Nokia go - I always liked their well-built (dumb) phones.

fidz 14y ago

Nokia get rid this problem by doing some encouragement to develop in their old J2ME/Symbian platform in such country that still have good market share like Indonesia. In Indonesia, Nokia encourage developer to develop games in their platform in a contest named "Developer War", and now it has 4 episode/chapter.

mtts 14y ago
I hear Blackberry is still going strong in Indonesia as well. Still, worldwide, they're doomed.
- joeguilmette 14y ago
  Anectodally I saw 1 person in Indonesia with a Blackberry - and she hated it. I saw hundreds of (local) iPhone users.
obiterdictum 14y ago
old J2ME/Symbian platform No. Just... no. I'm really pleased that Symbian is dead (or on life support). It is, so far, the worst platform I have ever had to deal with. Eclipse-based IDE for €300-1300, partner-only premium APIs, completely unusable multi-gigabyte emulator (if you needed to run two instances, you had to install... two copies in different directories!), awful documentation, terrible system libraries, and quirky Symbian C++ dialect... it was quite an experience, but I will never miss it. Anything we have today is better than Symbian.
- icebraining 14y ago
  For an hobbyist like myself, PyS60 was nice, though. Easy to install and really fast to code something up. Is there anything like that for Android?

nicholassmith 14y ago

I don't think it's necessarily game over for Nokia, but they've got to drastically rethink their game plan. They burned through cash getting the Lumia phones ready, gorgeous as they are, which is a gamble not yet to pay off. They're using the third horse in the race, a platform which it's creators have yet to successfully manage into the mainstream consciousness. Too many flaws to stand next to Android and iOS, but not completely down yet. Lets not forget Nokia is still one of the biggest mobile handset companies in the world, they've got a solid brand name appreciation in areas of the world yet to be opened up. Essentially they've still got chips left on the table, it just depends on the next run of cards whether they grow their stack or not. But lets not get in the way of a snappy headline.

bitwize 14y ago
I don't think it's necessarily game over for Nokia, but they've got to drastically rethink their game plan. Flash their back catalogue of 800s with stock ICS, call it the Nokia Lumia A, sell them for $200 a pop (sans contract). That'll stem the bleeding and give them time to come up with their real Galaxy-killer.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I'd imagine they can't, under terms of their agreement with Microsoft, but that might not be forever so maybe they will. But is the market ready for yet another Android handset? It's a thin share of the pie as it is.

mtgx 14y ago

Nokia won't last until 2014. They are declining too fast. They went from 45% market share to 18% in China, one of their strongest and biggest markets, last year alone. This year they will probably fall way below 10%. Nokia will most likely be acquired by the end of this year or in the first half of next year (or go bankrupt otherwise).

sp332 14y ago
Who are they losing marketshare to in China?
- josteink 14y ago
  Cheaper Chinese-made brands?
- bergie 14y ago
  It seems to domestic Android players like Huawei and ZTE: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-07/22/content_12960107.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-07/22/content_129...
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Various chinese nonames? Some of those with Android already.
- muhfuhkuh 14y ago
  Samsung is king, then ZTE, then Huawei, then Apple. But, China is filled with domestic brands that pepper the market with Android phones (Honor, Huawei, Lenovo, Coolpad) that bite at mostly Nokia's well-chewed heels.
AlexFromBelgium 14y ago
And bought by Samsung.. That would rock. Make ALL the Android phones!
Tichy 14y ago
I wonder if at the same time markets still grow at an enourmous rate, so that even a declining market share could still be a net increase? Apparently it doesn't seem to be the case for Nokia atm, just saying that market share alone is maybe insufficient.

barranger 14y ago

While I certainly wouldn't call Nokia's position anything but worrisome, I think it might be a little early to start planning the funeral. One of the benefits Nokia has by going with Windows Phone is the relationship it now has with Microsoft. I'd be very surprised if Nokia's tablet offering isn't front and center in just about every piece of marketing MS does. The biggest issue that Windows Phone has currently is a lack of third party applications. I really do think that standardizing the platform across Phone/Tablet/PC will help in a big way with this problem (not pushing them to higher numbers than iOS/Android, but much, much closer than they are today).

jinushaun 14y ago
For the average non-tech user, is the lack of third party apps really that big of an issue? In all honesty, all they need is Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds and sudoku, which WP7 has. You're really not at a loss for apps when it comes to the popular 1st tier apps. The bigger issue, from my personal experience seeing people pick up and use a WP7 device, is that it's awkward to use compared to the grid of icons in iOS and Android. They're utterly confused and have no idea how to even begin. Metro, as executed by MS, is simply not intuitive. The starkness of the white on black text is cold and unfriendly. Interaction paradigms they learned from iOS and Android are slightly different in WP7, which results in frustration around every corner. The pure icon based menus make it a guessing game on which icon does what. From my personal experience, regular people have a much easier time switching between Android and iOS. WP is just too different.
- barranger 14y ago
  I've found for the average non-tech user the only app they seem to really care about is the one that their friends are currently gushing about. as an example (yes I read the anecdote article :) ) I spent the weekend with extended family who were going on and on about how great Instagram was and how they couldn't understand why anybody would even think about a phone that didn't have it. I'm sure when I see them again in 6 weeks or so, the argument will be the same, with only the specific app that changes. While MS will have whatever "the" app is at a current moment from time to time, due to it's marketshare, iOS will almost always have it.

jinushaun 14y ago

"If Nokia had gone with Android, the best that it might have achieved was to become an also-ran—another in an endless stream of me-too commodity smartphone makers." No. Nokia could've been Samsung, which has the lion's share of the Android market. And Android Lumia would be the prettiest Android handset on the market.

bitwize 14y ago
With Nokia on Android, we could have had top-rung Android phones with iPhone appearance and build quality, and greater-than-iPhone ruggedness.
- josteink 14y ago
  Keep telling yourself that. When was the last time you used a Nokia phone? When was the last time you saw a Nokia UI? The one thing which made the iPhone great was that it finally broke the streak of smart-phones all cloning the horrible, messy and unintuitive Nokia-model which had plagued the industry since the mid 90s. Take my words for it: Nokia would have fucked up Android just as much as it messed up Symbian. Nothing pretty would have come out of this.
  - bitwize 14y ago
    Keep telling yourself that. When was the last time you used a Nokia phone? When was the last time you saw a Nokia UI? I have an N810 Internet Tablet and the UI is beautiful and easy to use, despite the hardware having drawbacks. (Resistive touchscreen, CPU a bit too slow.) The N900 and later N9, based on the same Maemo codebase, fixed these problems and reportedly have beautiful, easy, fast UIs. So no I won't "take your word for it" when the data suggest otherwise. Symbian was fucked to begin with. If it's a pain in the ass to develop for, nobody but NOBODY is going to put in the requisite UI polish.
huggyface 14y ago
It's a bit of a bizarre claim to begin with given that there are a number of manufacturers pitching Windows Phone devices to very limited success. So instead of being a possible also-ran me-too in a large, successful market, they're an also-ran me-too in a small, uncertain market. I'm not buying the logic. If they used the Android bit to explain a wholesale adoption of Meego or Tizen or something then sure. But going to WP...that just doesn't make sense.

ernesth 14y ago

Is this a serious piece of writing or just trolling? > 2003-2008 = back when euro was worth real money. 1 euro was worth between 1.1 and 1.5$. Now, it is worth 1.25$... > Rather than spend its resources on building an OS that depended on novel interfaces and sensors, Like the first (and best) GPS phones? > that allowed for outside development Like symbian and the nokia owned qt creator. > If Nokia had gone with Android[...] Windows Phone, on the other hand [...] Aren't you forgetting the numerous other hands that are symbian and its successors: tizen, meego and meltemi? > Elop [...] clear-eyed Humm. Choosing to ditch their own system to use another one may have been a bold and smart move, but still developping 2 or 3 different systems while trying to integrate an external new (and unproven) one seems to me like increasing the problem rather than solving it.

krakensden 14y ago
> Is this a serious piece of writing or just trolling? Note the author. All his articles are like this.

suprgeek 14y ago

(One person's anecdotes do not a trend make - I know) I can offer an Indian perspective - When I was first shopping for a good phone in India in 2008 or so, every single person (techie) said "Nokia" without hesitation. From the savviest Tecno-geek to the manual laborer at a construction site -everyone had a Nokia. Fast forward to 2011 late/early 2012; virtually NONE of the techies I interact with recommended a Nokia. Infact, I haven't heard even one of my friends/acquaintances purchase a new Nokia; it is always Samsung/HTC/iPhones or rarely Blackberry. On the lower end, the flood of cheap Chinese phones in the Indian market means no cheap Nokia's. Nokia was a name many people swore by in India, now not so much...I am afraid the end is near for them.

xxiao 14y ago

Elop killed this company basically. He should be fired by the board today, though it's probably too late already. Should Android have been chosen, which is unlikely by someone just came out form Microsoft, Nokia might have tens of also-run products now, but at least Nokia will not die, or not die that fast.

deepGem 14y ago

I met a Nokia developer evangelist at one of the events and asked him about some of the map features. The dude told me that he would get back but never bothered to. I'm not judging a company by one individual's behavior, but it surely gave me a negative impression about their developer evangelism.

itsbits 14y ago

Windows 8 preview is good..may be not windows7 killer with PCs..but surely can compete with Android OS in mobile devices....only problem with Windows 8 is free development tools..hope MS looks into it..else it may loose the race before it starts.... and saying 'RIP Nokia' is very bad...i feel Nokia is still the best with its hardware and looks..i like Nokia 900 looks n hardware rather S3.... Android would have been better option...but they can switch to ANdroid as well when Windows 8 is not helping..there should be no worries about that...

greyerzer 14y ago

If Nokia actually dies, Microsoft will pretty much have to buy them in order to ensure that they don't lose their (rather shaky) grasp on the mobile market (more of a foot in the door really...) That would make Microsoft the third company producing an entire mobile ecosystem of its own after Apple and Google. It's interesting to observe that the technological trend towards ecosystems is also happenning in the business sphere, albeit with some delay. Also, I would be sad to see Nokia go - I always liked their well-built (dumb) phones.