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> 4) The blame for Nokia's current woes does not lie with Elop and his current strategy. It lies with the previous one. wrong. see http://communities-dominate.

> 4) The blame for Nokia's current woes does not lie with Elop and his current strategy. It lies with the previous one. wrong. see http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/12/calculating-the-elop-effect-hes-already-destroyed-a-company-the-size-of-oracle-and-profits-the-size-.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/12/calcula...

taligent 14y ago
Sorry but that is just nonsense. Nokia is not in trouble because of Elop. It is in trouble because of two trends. One is the rise of the middle class in emerging markets who don't want cheap, nasty feature phones. And two is the move from both Apple and Android into lower and lower price points. And the fact is that Meego had nothing going for it. It had no apps and no related ecosystems like Google, Microsoft and Apple have. And as we are seeing with RIM developers simply aren't interested in building 4 versions of their apps. So this idea that Meego was going to save the day is pure delusion.
- luminaobscura 14y ago
  of course the root cause is not Elop. But Elop grossly mishandled the situation and now company is near bankruptcy. If only Elop had been more cautious, nokia would be still profitable and maybe in a position to utilize this great QT technology which they invested a lot. There was no need to declare the death of Symbian and MeeGo so early. There was no reason to jump to Windows Phone bandwagon as their sole hope a year before WP8. And Elop was aware that WP7 devices would not receive update to WP8. What a shame... Aside from timing and suicidal memos, given the obvious incompetency of Elop, I doubt WP was the right decision at all. Of course I do not have all the information that Elop had back then, but I wonder did they consider other options, such as forking android (maybe in cooperation with amazon), seriously. I wonder what role his previous employment played here.
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    >this great QT technology which they invested a lot Sorry but only a few geeks care about QT, and other developers care about the ecosystem and go where the money is. I wrote some QT code about 10 years ago and it was good, but is it so great compared to iOS/ObjC, Android/Java and WinRT/C# that developers would just flock to it blindly? I seriously doubt it.
    - joezydeco 14y ago
      I'm shipping a Qt-based embedded product with >$1MM USD in revenue. If you work for a particular large restaurant chain on planet Earth you may have encountered it. Does that make me a geek, or someone concerned about Qt's roadmap for other reasons?
      - nl 14y ago
        I think the point is that your success with Qt doesn't really have a lot of impact on the possibility of Nokia shipping a successful consumer-mobile phone that happens to have a UI written in Qt.
        joezydeco 14y ago
        No, my point is that Qt is not a project that is only used or cared about by "a few geeks". Many of us use it to build and ship real products, and we could give a rat's ass what Nokia does in the future. But don't dismiss the project as a toy or trivial idea (I can point you to Java Swing if you need that).
        recoiledsnake 14y ago
        When I said that "only a few geeks would care", I meant it as a selling point for consumers or developers. "Hey, this phone uses QT, buy it, develop for it!" I did not mean applications like yours and never implied it was a toy.
        sho_hn 14y ago
curyous 14y ago
At least Nokia now has a chance of survival (even if that means being bought by Microsoft), unlike RIM which going down and nothing can save it (With their current management approach).
- hammersend 14y ago
  So, when Sun got bought by Oracle, did that count as 'surviving'? because what youre saying implies that and it's wrong.
nl 14y ago
Anyone who takes that blog as anything except entertainment needs to take a good look at the realities of the mobile market. Go back and read his blog in 2008-2009 where he conclusively proved every time he wrote that Nokia phones were much better than the iPhone and Android, and that no one really wanted a touchscreen device anyway.
- edderly 14y ago
  It would be a shame to interpret the blog in that way. I believe the author (Tomi Ahonen) gives a window into how most businesses product management and marketing work for good or for bad. Companies start with a technology base for a product and hire pretty smart people to look at the market and identify the features which will sell more units or the segments they need to target. The decisions are usually very fact driven because they have to justify in terms of a business case, and in general I think Ahonen is factually very solid. If you looked at the figures and facts from 2008-09 I don't think you'll find much wrong and public position of Nokia (outside of the US tech community) was pretty strong. However, the fundamental problem about relying solely on this approach is that it is a. very reliant on execution of your engineering org. b. takes no account of the ability of engineering to scale c. remains susceptible to disruptive big-bang technologies. This is why product development organizations need a coherent personality rather than be treated as factories and prescient leadership.
  - nl 14y ago
    I have no argument with the financial conclusions he draws - yes, Nokia has lost vast market share, profit and the value of the company has suffered as a result. What I disagree with is his mindset: it is all Elop's fault, and there is a vast Microsoft conspiracy to destroy Nokia. I don't agree with Elop's decision to go to Windows Phone. But I do agree with Elop's conclusion that the Nokia platform(s) were "burning" and that they should be abandoned. I think he should have gone with Android, but I understand the reasons why he went with WinPhone. Meanwhile, Tomi Ahonen still claims that Meego was the ultimate solution to all of Nokia's problems. Ahonen has never accepted that Meego was 2 years too late for it to be a viable player, and he's never accepted that Nokia isn't a big enough player to build a sustainable ecosystem around an operating system that was so late.

taligent 14y ago

Sorry but that is just nonsense. Nokia is not in trouble because of Elop. It is in trouble because of two trends. One is the rise of the middle class in emerging markets who don't want cheap, nasty feature phones. And two is the move from both Apple and Android into lower and lower price points. And the fact is that Meego had nothing going for it. It had no apps and no related ecosystems like Google, Microsoft and Apple have. And as we are seeing with RIM developers simply aren't interested in building 4 versions of their apps. So this idea that Meego was going to save the day is pure delusion.

luminaobscura 14y ago
of course the root cause is not Elop. But Elop grossly mishandled the situation and now company is near bankruptcy. If only Elop had been more cautious, nokia would be still profitable and maybe in a position to utilize this great QT technology which they invested a lot. There was no need to declare the death of Symbian and MeeGo so early. There was no reason to jump to Windows Phone bandwagon as their sole hope a year before WP8. And Elop was aware that WP7 devices would not receive update to WP8. What a shame... Aside from timing and suicidal memos, given the obvious incompetency of Elop, I doubt WP was the right decision at all. Of course I do not have all the information that Elop had back then, but I wonder did they consider other options, such as forking android (maybe in cooperation with amazon), seriously. I wonder what role his previous employment played here.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  >this great QT technology which they invested a lot Sorry but only a few geeks care about QT, and other developers care about the ecosystem and go where the money is. I wrote some QT code about 10 years ago and it was good, but is it so great compared to iOS/ObjC, Android/Java and WinRT/C# that developers would just flock to it blindly? I seriously doubt it.
  - joezydeco 14y ago
    I'm shipping a Qt-based embedded product with >$1MM USD in revenue. If you work for a particular large restaurant chain on planet Earth you may have encountered it. Does that make me a geek, or someone concerned about Qt's roadmap for other reasons?
    - nl 14y ago
      I think the point is that your success with Qt doesn't really have a lot of impact on the possibility of Nokia shipping a successful consumer-mobile phone that happens to have a UI written in Qt.
      - joezydeco 14y ago
        No, my point is that Qt is not a project that is only used or cared about by "a few geeks". Many of us use it to build and ship real products, and we could give a rat's ass what Nokia does in the future. But don't dismiss the project as a toy or trivial idea (I can point you to Java Swing if you need that).
        recoiledsnake 14y ago
        When I said that "only a few geeks would care", I meant it as a selling point for consumers or developers. "Hey, this phone uses QT, buy it, develop for it!" I did not mean applications like yours and never implied it was a toy.
        sho_hn 14y ago

curyous 14y ago

At least Nokia now has a chance of survival (even if that means being bought by Microsoft), unlike RIM which going down and nothing can save it (With their current management approach).

hammersend 14y ago
So, when Sun got bought by Oracle, did that count as 'surviving'? because what youre saying implies that and it's wrong.

nl 14y ago

Anyone who takes that blog as anything except entertainment needs to take a good look at the realities of the mobile market. Go back and read his blog in 2008-2009 where he conclusively proved every time he wrote that Nokia phones were much better than the iPhone and Android, and that no one really wanted a touchscreen device anyway.

edderly 14y ago
It would be a shame to interpret the blog in that way. I believe the author (Tomi Ahonen) gives a window into how most businesses product management and marketing work for good or for bad. Companies start with a technology base for a product and hire pretty smart people to look at the market and identify the features which will sell more units or the segments they need to target. The decisions are usually very fact driven because they have to justify in terms of a business case, and in general I think Ahonen is factually very solid. If you looked at the figures and facts from 2008-09 I don't think you'll find much wrong and public position of Nokia (outside of the US tech community) was pretty strong. However, the fundamental problem about relying solely on this approach is that it is a. very reliant on execution of your engineering org. b. takes no account of the ability of engineering to scale c. remains susceptible to disruptive big-bang technologies. This is why product development organizations need a coherent personality rather than be treated as factories and prescient leadership.
- nl 14y ago
  I have no argument with the financial conclusions he draws - yes, Nokia has lost vast market share, profit and the value of the company has suffered as a result. What I disagree with is his mindset: it is all Elop's fault, and there is a vast Microsoft conspiracy to destroy Nokia. I don't agree with Elop's decision to go to Windows Phone. But I do agree with Elop's conclusion that the Nokia platform(s) were "burning" and that they should be abandoned. I think he should have gone with Android, but I understand the reasons why he went with WinPhone. Meanwhile, Tomi Ahonen still claims that Meego was the ultimate solution to all of Nokia's problems. Ahonen has never accepted that Meego was 2 years too late for it to be a viable player, and he's never accepted that Nokia isn't a big enough player to build a sustainable ecosystem around an operating system that was so late.