9 ms·

Nokia also had a ex-Microsoft exec (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop) that had the goal of ensuring Window

by masom 2y ago

Nokia also had a ex-Microsoft exec (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop) that had the goal of ensuring Windows Phone would succeed, and tanked Nokia with it. I was on the DVLUP project where Nokia and Microsoft attempted to inject energy into windows phone app development. We could see the tension between the two companies as we were a 3rd party contracted by Nokia to build the platform. The Nokia exec we were in contact with was fantastic, and really tried to make Windows Phone a success. Unfortunately the Nokia IT teams we worked with were not happy and essentially tried to sabotage through inactions (we just needed OAuth / SSO to link accounts and track app installs, it took over 3 months of email chains within Nokia).

actionfromafar 2y ago
Now I can't find that poem about Elop sinking the Nokia ship or something like that.
- alain94040 2y ago
  This one, the burning platform memo? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32698044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32698044
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    No it was more like a song or poem or Ahab kind of thing.
bombcar 2y ago
Was this around the time Microsoft kept switching what "windows phone" was? I remember that the one friend who got into it loved it, and then they released something completely incompatible and he abandoned the platform.
- masom 2y ago
  Yes... If I remember we were aiming for the newly released "Windows 8"-based Phone OS, and the previous version was fully incompatible with it so all apps had to be redone. Tiles were the new thing to build for.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    Microsoft tried to do the same thing on the Desktop side too, but on the desktop they were forced to keep the backwards compatibility in place so it didn't finish off the platform the way it did on the Phone side. Amusingly Microsoft is still trying to make the walled garden happen. Lots of cheap Windows laptops and Desktops ship in what is called "Windows S" mode where only Microsoft Store apps are allowed to run. But again because PC owners don't abide that kind of bullcrap they also have to supply a way to tear down the walls (it's surprisingly easy, albeit permanent: just download and run a free app from the Windows store) if you want to use the machine in a normal way.
    - inquirerGeneral 2y ago
      [dead]
- jorvi 2y ago
  If memory serves, it was a custom kernel and OS, then a semi-custom kernel with a few OS components shared with Windows 8, and then the Windows 10 'core' kernel (same as on the Xbox One?) with many shared OS components. At each step they left the majority of devices behind. What was equally worse was the triple (quadruple?) switch of app frameworks. If I remember correctly it was a dotnet abomination, then ?? then WPF and finally Xamarin. Good luck convincing your platform 3rd party developers to entirely relearn and rebuild their app four times over in the span of a few years. Interestingly enough, Windows Phone itself was far ahead of it's time. Buttersmooth UI, flat UI, built-in global and app dark modes, all in the early 2010s.
  - 7thaccount 2y ago
Tommix11 2y ago
I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that they had hired Elop and was concentrating on Windows phones. I immediately knew that was the end. Unbelievably incompetent by the board.
- dev_daftly 2y ago
  I think it was actually a good idea. I think they correctly predicted the Android market and saw Windows Phone was a good way to differentiate their phones from everybody else. If you look at the history of Android manufacturers, it was a long slog of brands trading off popularity and hardly making any profit until Samsung eventually became the only mainstream player.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
People blame Stephen Elop. But the person in control of the Nokia board was former CEO Jorma Ollila who headed Nokia through its glory days and had a lot of power. Nothing happened in Nokia without his approval during that period. The board recruited and invited Stephen Elop. Part of his appointment was the board handing over the company on a silver platter to the new CEO. Negotiations for the acquisition started almost right away in secret. And most likely there were high level discussions ongoing with Microsoft and Steve Ballmer before Elop's appointment. Jorma Ollila retired as a CEO around 2006; he wasn't really pushed out and Nokia was still performing well. He handed the keys to the company to a non technical CEO with a financial background (Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, aka, OPK internally). That was the first mistake. OPK was a bit hands off throughout the Iphone and Android rollout. There was no vision, no leadership, just a lot of infighting between heads of various units. The second mistake was selling out to Microsoft and all the share value implosion that came with that. Microsoft bought several companies over the years. Nokia was one of the smaller ones. That's how bad it had gotten. At the peak Nokia was worth 150 billion or so. MS bought the phone unit for 5 billion. The later Linkedin and Github acquisitions were worth more. By the time Stephen Elop was brought in (by the board, headed by Ollila) to fix things, it was too late. There were a lot of internal battles as well between the big business units. A whole string of CTOs with no power whatsoever that were appointed and let go. Including Scott McNealy who never really made any impact and was there only briefly.
- sampo 2y ago
  > Jorma Ollila retired as a CEO around 2006; he wasn't really pushed out and Nokia was still performing well. He handed the keys to the company to a non technical CEO with a financial background I wouldn't say that Ollila had a technical background either. Ollila has 3 MSc degrees, 2 in economics and 1 in engineering. But after graduating for the 2nd time, he worked first in an investment bank (Citibank), then in the finance department in Nokia before rising to the executive level. I would say he has a financial background.
spiralpolitik 2y ago
Nokia was dead company walking before Stephen Elop. Elop saw the writing on the wall and made one of the choices available. A different CEO would have made a different choice but ultimately at that point it would still have been too late to save Nokia. Nokia was a great hardware company that missed the boat when the market changed to be based around software. When the market changed again to be based around ecosystems, Nokia was beyond saving.
- tgma 2y ago
  > made a different choice but ultimately at that point it would still have been too late to save Nokia. You think if they made just a single decision different and bet on Android instead of Windows, they would be in the same spot today? I wouldn't be so sure. Samsung hedged their bets across both and succeeded. Both weren't great at in-house software and Nokia made better hardware.
  - spiralpolitik 2y ago
    I don't think Nokia at that point would have gone with Android with Google services which what the market wanted. They would have gone with Android with their own services (Maps etc) and app store. I don't think that would have succeeded against Samsung and the Nexus phones. But TBH I think going with Android would have a better move than what Elop did.
- mxfh 2y ago
  Was there with the company as intern and junior during Nokia and Microsoft days for Nokia Maps. In my opinion Microsoft fumbled the app store by bloating it with questionable KPIs on number of added apps by anyone able to submit templates apps, while not getting key apps like WhatsApp on board. S\so it was a hard sell to have people's ecosystems. Same syndrome as with Zune, Tablet PC, and Microsoft Store on Windows. Build quality and hardware of the Lumias was second only to iPhones and definitly better experience than Android. The old Nokias had no chance compared to those, and I agree with the assessment that Nokia as Android-Vendor would have made little sense either.
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
Do not let the saboteurs in...
DanielHB 2y ago
I think the critical failure of the windows phone was that app development was not open. You can't compete with established walled gardens by building your own, you can only compete if you make a huge amazing park free to use just outside the walls of the competitors. Translating this to windows phones, it would have only succeeded if it either: 1) Made browser applications first-class and pushed phone-specific APIs (gyro, bluetooth, etc) to be open. Then pick a fight with google and apple about supporting PWAs better. This would probably keep windows phones as a "low cost, crappy feeling" systems forever. 2) Made the windows phone native-apps trivial to port to run on browsers with a convenient and easy way to deploy those apps on ios/android (hopefully without feeling too much not-native on those platforms). Would require a lot more engineering resources and time, so much harder to pull off.
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  Well they did do something like that; Windows Phone apps were written in the same .Net UWP SDK as desktop apps, so the idea was that you could target both platforms at once (and Xbox as well). I think MS overestimated how much people cared about native PC apps by that point (basically not at all). Additionally, snapchat was the hot new app at the time, and there was no first party Snapchat app (and if you used the 3rd party one, you risked being banned from snapchat). The Lumia remains my favorite phone of all time
  - DanielHB 2y ago
    I would argue that windows desktop development using .net is a walled garden in itself as well. They finally realized what I was saying when they acquired Xamarin in 2016. I never used Xamarin myself, but I hear it is not that great and kinda dying. So like I said the native open platform approach was a lot harder to pull off.

by masom 2y ago

actionfromafar 2y ago

Now I can't find that poem about Elop sinking the Nokia ship or something like that.

alain94040 2y ago
This one, the burning platform memo? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32698044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32698044
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  No it was more like a song or poem or Ahab kind of thing.

bombcar 2y ago

Was this around the time Microsoft kept switching what "windows phone" was? I remember that the one friend who got into it loved it, and then they released something completely incompatible and he abandoned the platform.

masom 2y ago
Yes... If I remember we were aiming for the newly released "Windows 8"-based Phone OS, and the previous version was fully incompatible with it so all apps had to be redone. Tiles were the new thing to build for.
- jandrese 2y ago
  Microsoft tried to do the same thing on the Desktop side too, but on the desktop they were forced to keep the backwards compatibility in place so it didn't finish off the platform the way it did on the Phone side. Amusingly Microsoft is still trying to make the walled garden happen. Lots of cheap Windows laptops and Desktops ship in what is called "Windows S" mode where only Microsoft Store apps are allowed to run. But again because PC owners don't abide that kind of bullcrap they also have to supply a way to tear down the walls (it's surprisingly easy, albeit permanent: just download and run a free app from the Windows store) if you want to use the machine in a normal way.
  - inquirerGeneral 2y ago
    [dead]
jorvi 2y ago
If memory serves, it was a custom kernel and OS, then a semi-custom kernel with a few OS components shared with Windows 8, and then the Windows 10 'core' kernel (same as on the Xbox One?) with many shared OS components. At each step they left the majority of devices behind. What was equally worse was the triple (quadruple?) switch of app frameworks. If I remember correctly it was a dotnet abomination, then ?? then WPF and finally Xamarin. Good luck convincing your platform 3rd party developers to entirely relearn and rebuild their app four times over in the span of a few years. Interestingly enough, Windows Phone itself was far ahead of it's time. Buttersmooth UI, flat UI, built-in global and app dark modes, all in the early 2010s.
- 7thaccount 2y ago

Tommix11 2y ago

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that they had hired Elop and was concentrating on Windows phones. I immediately knew that was the end. Unbelievably incompetent by the board.

dev_daftly 2y ago
I think it was actually a good idea. I think they correctly predicted the Android market and saw Windows Phone was a good way to differentiate their phones from everybody else. If you look at the history of Android manufacturers, it was a long slog of brands trading off popularity and hardly making any profit until Samsung eventually became the only mainstream player.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

People blame Stephen Elop. But the person in control of the Nokia board was former CEO Jorma Ollila who headed Nokia through its glory days and had a lot of power. Nothing happened in Nokia without his approval during that period. The board recruited and invited Stephen Elop. Part of his appointment was the board handing over the company on a silver platter to the new CEO. Negotiations for the acquisition started almost right away in secret. And most likely there were high level discussions ongoing with Microsoft and Steve Ballmer before Elop's appointment. Jorma Ollila retired as a CEO around 2006; he wasn't really pushed out and Nokia was still performing well. He handed the keys to the company to a non technical CEO with a financial background (Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, aka, OPK internally). That was the first mistake. OPK was a bit hands off throughout the Iphone and Android rollout. There was no vision, no leadership, just a lot of infighting between heads of various units. The second mistake was selling out to Microsoft and all the share value implosion that came with that. Microsoft bought several companies over the years. Nokia was one of the smaller ones. That's how bad it had gotten. At the peak Nokia was worth 150 billion or so. MS bought the phone unit for 5 billion. The later Linkedin and Github acquisitions were worth more. By the time Stephen Elop was brought in (by the board, headed by Ollila) to fix things, it was too late. There were a lot of internal battles as well between the big business units. A whole string of CTOs with no power whatsoever that were appointed and let go. Including Scott McNealy who never really made any impact and was there only briefly.

sampo 2y ago
> Jorma Ollila retired as a CEO around 2006; he wasn't really pushed out and Nokia was still performing well. He handed the keys to the company to a non technical CEO with a financial background I wouldn't say that Ollila had a technical background either. Ollila has 3 MSc degrees, 2 in economics and 1 in engineering. But after graduating for the 2nd time, he worked first in an investment bank (Citibank), then in the finance department in Nokia before rising to the executive level. I would say he has a financial background.

spiralpolitik 2y ago

Nokia was dead company walking before Stephen Elop. Elop saw the writing on the wall and made one of the choices available. A different CEO would have made a different choice but ultimately at that point it would still have been too late to save Nokia. Nokia was a great hardware company that missed the boat when the market changed to be based around software. When the market changed again to be based around ecosystems, Nokia was beyond saving.

tgma 2y ago
> made a different choice but ultimately at that point it would still have been too late to save Nokia. You think if they made just a single decision different and bet on Android instead of Windows, they would be in the same spot today? I wouldn't be so sure. Samsung hedged their bets across both and succeeded. Both weren't great at in-house software and Nokia made better hardware.
- spiralpolitik 2y ago
  I don't think Nokia at that point would have gone with Android with Google services which what the market wanted. They would have gone with Android with their own services (Maps etc) and app store. I don't think that would have succeeded against Samsung and the Nexus phones. But TBH I think going with Android would have a better move than what Elop did.
mxfh 2y ago
Was there with the company as intern and junior during Nokia and Microsoft days for Nokia Maps. In my opinion Microsoft fumbled the app store by bloating it with questionable KPIs on number of added apps by anyone able to submit templates apps, while not getting key apps like WhatsApp on board. S\so it was a hard sell to have people's ecosystems. Same syndrome as with Zune, Tablet PC, and Microsoft Store on Windows. Build quality and hardware of the Lumias was second only to iPhones and definitly better experience than Android. The old Nokias had no chance compared to those, and I agree with the assessment that Nokia as Android-Vendor would have made little sense either.

lofaszvanitt 2y ago

Do not let the saboteurs in...

DanielHB 2y ago

I think the critical failure of the windows phone was that app development was not open. You can't compete with established walled gardens by building your own, you can only compete if you make a huge amazing park free to use just outside the walls of the competitors. Translating this to windows phones, it would have only succeeded if it either: 1) Made browser applications first-class and pushed phone-specific APIs (gyro, bluetooth, etc) to be open. Then pick a fight with google and apple about supporting PWAs better. This would probably keep windows phones as a "low cost, crappy feeling" systems forever. 2) Made the windows phone native-apps trivial to port to run on browsers with a convenient and easy way to deploy those apps on ios/android (hopefully without feeling too much not-native on those platforms). Would require a lot more engineering resources and time, so much harder to pull off.

shortrounddev2 2y ago
Well they did do something like that; Windows Phone apps were written in the same .Net UWP SDK as desktop apps, so the idea was that you could target both platforms at once (and Xbox as well). I think MS overestimated how much people cared about native PC apps by that point (basically not at all). Additionally, snapchat was the hot new app at the time, and there was no first party Snapchat app (and if you used the 3rd party one, you risked being banned from snapchat). The Lumia remains my favorite phone of all time
- DanielHB 2y ago
  I would argue that windows desktop development using .net is a walled garden in itself as well. They finally realized what I was saying when they acquired Xamarin in 2016. I never used Xamarin myself, but I hear it is not that great and kinda dying. So like I said the native open platform approach was a lot harder to pull off.