11 ms·

Why would it be sad to say goodbye to Nokia? Companies come and go and all of Nokia's problems today are of their own making. Sure they made some nice phones 6+

by ditoa 14y ago

Why would it be sad to say goodbye to Nokia? Companies come and go and all of Nokia's problems today are of their own making. Sure they made some nice phones 6+ years ago but they could have easily of competed with Apple, hell Google managed to do it without even having a damn phone they just made the Android platform and worked with other companies to make the devices. Nokia should have embraced Android from day zero, if they had they would most likely be the number one Android phone supplier instead of Samsung.

rryan 14y ago
Well, I'll miss Qt. Or at least the corporate muscle that used to fund it.
- duaneb 14y ago
  Did nokia absorb troll tech outright or are they an owning company?
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Qt will remain. Nokia don't want much to do with it now. That project might be better off without Nokia!
wkaluss 14y ago
Well, Google was better prepared to do it since their main source of income is not product sales but advertising. They can give Android away in order to lure eyeballs to the ads they serve. To do the same Nokia should have changed their whole strategy, focus and expertise in less than 5 years, simply impossible for a company that size. Also worth noting, Google bought Android. It was not "complete" at time of acquisition but it wasn't a "lets begin from scratch" kind of project. The problem with Nokia and Android is that Samsung will always, in every single case, have cheaper and more powerful devices. Maybe Nokia could've keep themselves in the game with a lot of marketing and a bit of luck, but eventually, down the road, Samsung would take over. On top of that add that Google is getting in the hardware game and arguably the best Android devices will come from them. Even for Samsung the Android strategy might prove to be a bad idea in a couple of years.
- ak217 14y ago
  > changed their whole strategy, focus and expertise in less than 5 years, simply impossible for a company that size Microsoft was bigger than Nokia when, between 1993-2000, they executed several changes of greater magnitude in less than 5 years each (Windows 3, the response to Netscape, Windows NT). > The problem with Nokia and Android is that Samsung will always, in every single case, have cheaper and more powerful devices. Maybe Nokia could've keep themselves in the game with a lot of marketing and a bit of luck, but eventually, down the road, Samsung would take over Why? Samsung has only this year started showing small signs of becoming something more than a "fast follower". Nokia used to know how to lead the market... if they still did, they would have no trouble innovating to stay on top of Samsung.
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    Not to mention that, until things began to fall apart, Nokia sold plenty more phones than Samsung and had their own economies of scale to build on.
napillo 14y ago
Nokia fragmented their own phone market with Meego and Maemo and S60/Symbian. If they went with Android, at the time they did - they would have been behind, because for a while Google didn't open the source to 2.x until they had their "Nexus" device out for a while. Android 1.x was not any better than Maemo or Symbian at that time, so it would have been a lot of work for nothing. Not to mention that they would have further fragmented their market. Android 1.x was seen as slow and ugly, and it's future was far from clear. Maemo could run a lot of Linux software with just a recompile, so that was seen as a good thing instead of writing all new software. Nokia just didn't have enough programmers to write it all by themselves, and they released software once maybe twice a year if you were lucky. Nokia was a market leader for a long time with their candybar style phones that you could put different "skins" on. They always seemed to have great hardware, and decent software. However, they were late to the game with flip phones and lost market share to Motorola and RIM. Since then they were always trying to play catch-up but never succeeding.
marshray 14y ago
> Why would it be sad to say goodbye to Nokia? Companies come and go and all of Nokia's problems today are of their own making. Well there are a lot of smart developers in Finland with a good design sense and the executive screwup at Nokia was no fault of theirs. It's not clear to me that there will be a big enough tech market to absorb them all. So there would probably be a net contraction of smart people doing cool stuff. To me, that's bad. Also, more competition is always a good thing for the market.

by ditoa 14y ago

rryan 14y ago

Well, I'll miss Qt. Or at least the corporate muscle that used to fund it.

duaneb 14y ago
Did nokia absorb troll tech outright or are they an owning company?
chris_wot 14y ago
Qt will remain. Nokia don't want much to do with it now. That project might be better off without Nokia!

wkaluss 14y ago

Well, Google was better prepared to do it since their main source of income is not product sales but advertising. They can give Android away in order to lure eyeballs to the ads they serve. To do the same Nokia should have changed their whole strategy, focus and expertise in less than 5 years, simply impossible for a company that size. Also worth noting, Google bought Android. It was not "complete" at time of acquisition but it wasn't a "lets begin from scratch" kind of project. The problem with Nokia and Android is that Samsung will always, in every single case, have cheaper and more powerful devices. Maybe Nokia could've keep themselves in the game with a lot of marketing and a bit of luck, but eventually, down the road, Samsung would take over. On top of that add that Google is getting in the hardware game and arguably the best Android devices will come from them. Even for Samsung the Android strategy might prove to be a bad idea in a couple of years.

ak217 14y ago
> changed their whole strategy, focus and expertise in less than 5 years, simply impossible for a company that size Microsoft was bigger than Nokia when, between 1993-2000, they executed several changes of greater magnitude in less than 5 years each (Windows 3, the response to Netscape, Windows NT). > The problem with Nokia and Android is that Samsung will always, in every single case, have cheaper and more powerful devices. Maybe Nokia could've keep themselves in the game with a lot of marketing and a bit of luck, but eventually, down the road, Samsung would take over Why? Samsung has only this year started showing small signs of becoming something more than a "fast follower". Nokia used to know how to lead the market... if they still did, they would have no trouble innovating to stay on top of Samsung.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  Not to mention that, until things began to fall apart, Nokia sold plenty more phones than Samsung and had their own economies of scale to build on.

napillo 14y ago

Nokia fragmented their own phone market with Meego and Maemo and S60/Symbian. If they went with Android, at the time they did - they would have been behind, because for a while Google didn't open the source to 2.x until they had their "Nexus" device out for a while. Android 1.x was not any better than Maemo or Symbian at that time, so it would have been a lot of work for nothing. Not to mention that they would have further fragmented their market. Android 1.x was seen as slow and ugly, and it's future was far from clear. Maemo could run a lot of Linux software with just a recompile, so that was seen as a good thing instead of writing all new software. Nokia just didn't have enough programmers to write it all by themselves, and they released software once maybe twice a year if you were lucky. Nokia was a market leader for a long time with their candybar style phones that you could put different "skins" on. They always seemed to have great hardware, and decent software. However, they were late to the game with flip phones and lost market share to Motorola and RIM. Since then they were always trying to play catch-up but never succeeding.

marshray 14y ago

> Why would it be sad to say goodbye to Nokia? Companies come and go and all of Nokia's problems today are of their own making. Well there are a lot of smart developers in Finland with a good design sense and the executive screwup at Nokia was no fault of theirs. It's not clear to me that there will be a big enough tech market to absorb them all. So there would probably be a net contraction of smart people doing cool stuff. To me, that's bad. Also, more competition is always a good thing for the market.