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The Three Pillars of Nokia's Strategy Have All Failed

101 points by wazoox 14y ago

Metrop0218 14y ago
This article completely ignores the concept of mindshare. Which equates to how many people are thinking about a product, and thus how many people are more likely to buy that product someday. In 2010 Nokia's mindshare was slim to none and slim was heading out of town. He tries to make it sound like Nokia was doing well then but it may have been doing well in the moment, but we all know what the derivative was. My opinion: Nokia is fine. They have a good business strategy in their new smartphone pillar that I strongly believe will work. Why? Because it's a two pronged strategy. They're selling performant inexpensive smartphone like the Lumia 510 in the developing world that will be retailing for $150 (off contract!). While they're doing this to increase their marketshare, they're making high end 'hero' devices like the Lumia 920 that will ship in the developed world and increase mindshare. Its unrealistic to expect a 'breakthrough' in western markets because many customers are entrenched into certain ecosystems and are difficult to move. That said, mindshare is easier to get, and if you can convince people that your stuff is cool, you can start to slowly nibble away at the western markets. Nokia is fine. Elop is fine. I'm tired of all of this doomsday predicting crap.
- turingbook 14y ago
  Now in China, the mainstream mid-end Android phones from local brands price at $150 or so. Less and less people buy Symbian and feature phones. And Windows Phone only has very small market share, maybe 3%. Nokia is dying.
- blinkingled 14y ago
  Selling something for $150 off-contract isn't anything to get excited about when the developing world (India and China mainly) already has huge market penetration from the likes of Samsung, ZTE, SE etc. - they are all selling equally capable phones at similar price point. I.E. the situation is not very different from western markets - Samsung/Sony/ZTE already have a mindshare there at low and high end - even if you forget the low end iPhones. Plus to Nokia's detriment, Samsung can always release their "better" $150 Windows Phone in those markets. Also the app situation isn't changing - at this point they really needed the app development scene nailed - Microsoft hasn't even released the SDK for WP8. Developing world is not somehow going to ignore that and spend $150 buying a dumb phone replacement.
  - ansible 14y ago
    Selling something for $150 off-contract isn't anything to get excited about when the developing world (India and China mainly) already has huge market penetration from the likes of Samsung, ZTE, SE etc. Actually, $150 is waaaay too high for the developing world. You can get a kinda-OK Android phone for half that in places like Brazil.
    - Metrop0218 14y ago
      They're obviously going to keep pushing lower and lower price points. This is just the beginning. But the point is that android phones you get for 150$ or less off contract are rough, very rough. If you can offer someone a phone that's a wee bit more but that is so much more performant, you can sway them over. But that said, this is just the beginning. You'll see Nokia push even lower price points later.
      - css771 14y ago
        Actually, smooth performance is something very few consumers in the developing world actually care about. I bought an android phone for ~$130 in 2010. It ran eclair. Now it runs the latest version of gingerbread. I never really felt it's performance was a deal breaker at any point. And consequently, the galaxy Y duos, a gingerbread phone that retails for ~$160 today, runs pretty smooth. Here's a video of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=qZdAbI0ZMuE http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=qZdAbI0ZMuE It's performance is really good enough and something most consumers would buy.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  From an American persoective, yes. Nokia was a titan everywhere but in American smartphones. They owned the low end, the owned the high end, and they owned everywhere in between. Now they have completely lost the script on smartphones and are losing their grip on the dumb phones that have paid the bills for more than a decade. There is no upside to be seen anywhere.
  - 5teev 14y ago
    It's hard to imagine nowadays, but in the late 1990's, Nokia made cell phones Americans craved. Their blunder in the US market was to think they didn't have to get in bed with specific carriers and make phones exclusive to one or another. A titan the world over, Nokia was surely surprised at how effectively they could be diminished by the business model the US carriers settled on. They never recovered in the US, and I don't think they ever will.
  - Spearchucker 14y ago
    I'm not as close to Nokia as you, so can you explain where Nokia lost the script on smart phones? I ask because I pre-ordered a 920 off-contract on the basis of a number of features unavailable anywhere else - - Offline maps, search and navigation - PureView/OSI camera - Being able to use the phone wearing gloves - Wireless charging There are a number of other reasons I chose to pre-order the 920 without knowing what it'll cost. UEFI. Knowing that the phone won't come with some crazy manufacturer's interpretation of a UI skin. Knowing that no manufacturer or network operator will include bloatware that can't be uninstalled without rooting the phone, or being forced to use iTunes. Would love to know if I made a mistake, and why.
    - jpxxx 14y ago
      I've no doubt it's a great phone, and those are all good features. But it's late, it's not shipping today, it's only on one carrier in the USA (odd considering capturing the American premium smartphone market was the whole rationale for 'Burning Platforms'), it's based on an ecosystem that's still a distant third-to-fifth in many metrics, and it's part of a brand that's struggling mightily to mean anything in the minds of customers. Nokia's late 00's Symbian lineup wasn't necessarily competitive with the premium side of the market, but it was quite competitive in the lower tiers and was still selling like gangbusters in the lower-grade markets. Publicly throwing them all out overnight was an extraordinarily bad move that suffocated Nokia just as they needed cash to compete more than ever before. Their ASPs dropped like a rock, carriers told them to fuck off now that they had a legitimate and thriving alternative (Android 2.x), and the idea of Nokia being a vendor of status phones evaporated overnight. One great phone isn't going to fix their situation.
- cmccabe 14y ago
  Nokia's sales have collapsed. It's not "doomsaying" at this point-- more like "doom observing." The only real assets they have left are their patents and their NAVTEQ division (whatever they're calling it now). Now would be a good time for them to break up the company, sell those assets, and maybe manage to return something back to the shareholders. On the other hand, if you still think it's "fine," then you should buy some Nokia stock.
aristidb 14y ago
It is really hard to take seriously an article with section titles like "SYMBIAN WAS WINNING".
- lopatin 14y ago
  Globally in 2010
  - glesica 14y ago
    If you take a very naive view of what it means to be "winning", then sure. But I don't think such a view is ever warranted in business (heck, or even sports). A team that is up by a few points heading into the final period, but has been thoroughly out-played and out-scored in the preceding period is not "winning" in the same way as a team that has been dominating for the entire game. For a company (or team) to be truly "winning", they must be on a trajectory that will lead to long-term sustainability and growth. Nokia (their smartphone business, anyway) was on a downward trajectory, just like RIM (which, up until just a few years ago had a commanding lead over iOS and Android). I could buy the idea that Nokia should have stuck with Meego, or even Maemo and pushed harder to make one of those platforms a commercial success. But the idea that Symbian was winning, under a non-naive definition of the term, is more or less a joke.
  - toyg 14y ago
    They were pushing the N97 back then. A lot of them. Unfortunately, it was the most overhyped "flagship" piece of crap they've ever produced. All those contract-bound customers who were sold an N97 between 2009 and 2011, betting on the "anti-iPhone", ran like hell as soon as their contracts expired.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  And it is easy to show the fallacy of that. RIM/BlackBerry was winning too at the time. The thing he missed is that the profits are a lagging indicator - they are the results of what you did in the past, not about the future. The companies in The Innovator's Dilemma had exactly the same profile - they had worked out how to be profitable and serve their customers well, right up to the point both fell off a cliff because what customers valued had changed.
jpxxx 14y ago
It's prett easy to hate on this analyst and his strident, obsessive tone, but he's right on the money. Nokias financials have gone from fine to apocalyptic in short order and they are now burning cash at a crazy clip with no evidence of any competitive products in the pipeline. They have months left, not years, and no amount of 'mindshare' is going to pay their bills in the new era.
- megaman821 14y ago
  This just seem like blind hate. I don't know if the 920 will do well but how is it not competitive? Nokia's mistake was a year or so ago in picking Windows Phone over Android, it was five years ago just sitting on their lead and not coming out with innovative products.
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Its not hate. I've used Lumias and they're just fine. The design is certainly a wonderful breath of fresh air. But their new flagship is still two months out, its not even priced yet, has poor carrier support (domestic AND global), a fourth(?) place app market, and fourth place consumer mindshare. It also represents a partial reboot of the Windows Mobile 7 platform, with all that entails. There are so many more things that need to go right just beyond the handset for it to be a competitor, and they're not going right.
- thirdsun 14y ago
  Regardless of anyone's opinion on Windows Phone, the Lumia 920 should be a pretty competitive phone. Furthermore I always had the impression that owners of Lumia 800 & 900 devices were very happy with. It remains to be seen how successful the 920 will be but saying Nokia hasn't anything in the pipeline seems far from accurate.
  - empire29 14y ago
    In this day and age it seems like the phone's ecosystem is even a stronger driving force than the quality of the phone itself. While the Lumia 8xx and 9xx are very nice devices (and I even think Win Phone 7/8 is a very nice OS), I wouldn't purchase a Lumia solely on what I perceived to be a young and unproven ecosystem around the OS. All I hear is Win Phone 7/8 (3rd party) apps are limited in variety and and quality. Its a very hard sell when iOS and Android have such an expansive catalog of (quality) apps. Phones these days are about the software -- good HW is table stakes.
anjc 14y ago
This seems to be micro-analysing graphs and completely ignoring the prevailing public mood, and even the products. Anybody any idea of how the Lumia 920 is likely to go? It seems like their marketing division (apart from the fake pictures) and hardware division etc are all on their game, and i can't imagine the phone being a flop.
- mongol 14y ago
  I agree quite a lot with this but I think the main point is that he analyzes financial graphs. I am sure the graphs that bothered Elop were ones that said how many applications were developed for each platform and so on. Nokia had not been doing well in this department, and a smartphone without apps is not an interesting proposition.
patrickaljord 14y ago
I think Nokia's strategy is to bet everything on windows 8 on both phones and tablets but also to offer better hardware (such as the camera), if this strategy fails then I would agree to call Nokia's strategy a failure. It's too soon to tell for now, the only sure thing is that Nokia's strategy so far in the smartphone market has been a succession of failure and bad decisions. Let's see how it turns out this time. There's also the conspiracy theory that Microsoft may buy them and that they're failing on purpose to lower their value...
- Zigurd 14y ago
  The market for mobile Windows 8 is embryonic, and will remain so for longer than is relevant to a Nokia turnaround. Windows 8 is for high-spec phones, and will take several years to move down-market. It isn't the high-end phones that drive a million Android activations per day. Windows 8 tablets are even less able to turn Nokia around. The game therefore has already been won or lost. This was foreseeable. Windows CE Core was never competitive with Linux. Killing Meego looks like a career-management move. It could have been a bridge, at the cost of casting some doubt on Windows as a strategy. Nokia could still buy Jolla, but that would be a hell of a climbdown.
  - zmmmmm 14y ago
    > The market for mobile Windows 8 is embryonic, and will remain so for longer than is relevant to a Nokia turnaround This is the key problem. Even if Windows 8 is a wild success on phones we're probably talking 15% market share over the next 12 - 24 months. And that will be split between multiple OEMs. Nokia in its current form is just not sustainable long term on 5% market share, or even 10%. What they need to happen is so unlikely (say 30% market share of Windows 8 phones in 12 months) that it's truly insanity to bank the future of your company on it.
chipotle_coyote 14y ago
Ahonen is a smart cookie in a lot of respects, but he can't let go of the idea that Symbian and MeeGo were the future for Nokia. While I think in retrospect Elop made a few bad calls, when he got there MeeGo was not in production-quality shape. Nokia's own assessment was that they would have one MeeGo unit ready for shipping in 2011, and that particular unit--what eventually came out quietly as the N9--was an intriguing but crashably unusable demo unit even in late 2010. This isn't speculation on my part, either: I was at Nokia in 2010 and used one of them briefly. Or tried to. There was a lot of stuff that just didn't work. In November 2010. On the only device that was far enough along to have hardware that could be shown to other groups. And Symbian? Jesus. To implement a "search as you go" feature for Symbian^3, something that would narrow down search results both on the phone and off as you typed (like iOS and Android devices do, so this was just achieving parity), we had to write our own keyboard because the Symbian keyboard took over the whole screen. You selected a text field and got the keyboard, then hit the keyboard dismiss button to see the screen again. But look on the bright side: in addition to the "Universal Search" team in San Francisco working on that, there were four other groups around Nokia, both employees and contractors, working on what was, essentially, the exact. Same. Product. And this was de rigueur for Nokia. This was the problem that Elop had to fix beyond anything technical: massive duplicated effort on what, at any other company, were already solved problems, because Nokia had become a bunch of fiefdoms all fiercely protecting their own turf. I'm pretty sure this is why Symbian stuck around in essentially the same form for so long. I'm sure Tomi Ahonen loved it as a user, but the number of engineers working on Symbian who liked working on it that I talked to was, to the best of my recollection, zero. (Just getting the developer toolchain running on my machine made me feel like I'd time traveled back to the days of SLS Linux.) If I ran the zoo, I'd have probably gone with Android rather than Windows Phone; Elop went the other way not because of his past connections with Microsoft, but because he wanted to keep using lucrative Nokia services (rather than Google counterparts, most notably Maps) and be allowed to use the Android branding, and Google said no. I wouldn't have cared about the Android branding--instead I'd have cared about porting Qt to Android and not burning bridges with Nokia's existing development community. They'd just spent a lot of time, money and effort convincing everyone that Qt was the Way Of The Future: instead of writing to Symbian or MeeGo APIs, you'd write to Qt APIs, and then porting would be simple. Losing that was a bad call. But I'd say the most serious mistake Elop made had nothing to do with technology. Love Apple or hate them, one of the things they're really good at is not talking about products before they're ready. The rumor mill may be in high gear for months, sure, but when Apple makes their official announcement, it is nearly always in the form of "Here is our new Superlative Magical Thing. Here is a video of Jony Ive talking earnestly about it. It will be available for this price (two weeks from now|tomorrow|as soon as the band stops playing)." If Elop had been running Apple during the PowerPC-Intel CPU switch, he'd have leaked an internal memo describing the PowerPC in some colorful apocalypse-invoking metaphor, then three months later announce the switch, then six months after that introduce one laptop with an Intel chip that wasn't the most current generation and say they'd have more coming next year. The lesson to draw from Nokia under Elop isn't that they should have stuck with MeeGo; it's that they should have kept their mouth shut, kept shipping Symbian phones through 2011, and started 2012 with their new devices ready to ship when they announced them. I wouldn't be surprised if Ahonen gets his wish within a year and Elop is canned by Nokia's board -- but I'd be very surprised if doing so improves their situation.
shill 14y ago
I cringe when I read "the textbook definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over again expecting different results". This is obviously not the definition in any legitimate textbook or dictionary. When will smart people stop using this stupid cliche?
- antidoh 14y ago
  When they stop making the bumper stickers.
- marshray 14y ago
  Rather than a textbook, I usually see that quote attributed to Albert Einstein or the ancient Chinese.
paulbz 14y ago
I used to work directly for Elop and thought he was/is an amazing leader. So while I'm biased, it's only because I know and have deep insight on him - I have nothing to gain. This feels ironically similar to saying Obama failed because he didn't fix Bush's mess fast enough. Nokia was heading for a slow decline. Elop's strategy accelerated that decline short term in hopes they could turn around. It's a risk he and the board fully knew existed. It hasn't gone the way they want fast enough, which sucks, but they had the guts to give it a shot. Android would have been the safe bet. I don't think any can argue that Nokia would be a much more valuable company today if they took on Samsung for Android leadership instead of going down an empty road with Windows Phone. Instead, they swung for the fences with WP7. They missed. But, they have a few more chances to try to make it happen, and they're now effectively bankrolled by a company with much deeper pockets and motivation to win then if they stuck with Meego or Symbian. I can't say I'm confident, but I am optimistic. I wouldn't count them out yet.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  ...they're now effectively bankrolled by a company with much deeper pockets and motivation to win then if they stuck with Meego or Symbian. I think this is a good point that's completely overlooked by the other doomsayers in this thread. Nokia : Microsoft :: General Motors : the US government. Having alienated every other hardware OEM of note, Ballmer can't afford to let Nokia fail. Their relationship is strategic, not tactical. This wouldn't have escaped Elop's attention when he had to decide between betting the house on Android versus Windows Phone.
  - cmccabe 14y ago
    Microsoft can easily let Nokia fail. Microsoft is already considering making its own phone, just like they've made their own tablets and game consoles: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57458288-75/microsoft-weighing-its-own-windows-phones-analyst-says/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57458288-75/microsoft-weig... Every few years Microsoft gives another lesson about why you should never partner with Microsoft. People have very short memories, apparently.
aik 14y ago
"CAN WINDOWS PHONE 8 SAVE NOKIA? No." He goes through a lot of interesting analysis of the past, then asks THE KEY question about the future, and just dismisses it with a negative answer without any analysis and calls Elop clinically insane. Instead of a personal attack on Elop, I'd like to see more about why the strategy will fail going forward. Being that these are now occurring: 1. WP marketshare is increasing very very steadily. 2. WP reviews are great and user satisfaction is great. 3. WP8 and Windows 8 are both about to come out in a few weeks, and although Microsoft has taken some risks, there is massive potential. 4. Nokia's new phones look great, have several impressive unique points of differentiation, and in some ways are clearly superior to any other phone on the market (e.g. Pureview). 5. The news about positive WP phone sales in China and India. Taking into consideration the fact that they have great phones at several price points. 6. The existing reports of the new feature phone line are promising (Asha).
- azakai 14y ago
  > 1. WP marketshare is increasing very very steadily Source? I seem to recall it decreasing in some quarters.
- jpatokal 14y ago
  5. Would you happen to be referring to this report about positive sales in China? http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/05/paging-truth-police-no-windows-phone-and-nokia-lumia-are-not-outselling-iphone-in-china-utter-bs-sto.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/05/paging-...
hristov 14y ago
Nokia has to quickly post haste load android on all their smartphones. They will probably have to kick out Elop first, but that won't hurt at all. So (1) kick out Elop, (2) load Android. It is fricking amazing how a board of presumably tech savvy businesspeople cannot understand the network effect. So let me put it simply -- it is over there are no more smartphone operating systems in the present smartphone segment. Google barely got in with android and the door slammed behind them. Meego was too late and Windows Phone was far too late. It does not matter how good Windows phone is, their DOA based on the network effect. There are so many apps made already, there is so much investment in app production for both iOS and Android, that any new OS in the same space has unsurmountable obstacles to overcome. There is actually an opportunity to make a new breakthrough in mobile devices, but one has to reinvent the market, like Apple did. The opportunity is for cheaper phones in the third world. Right now everyone wants a smart phone but most people in the world cannot afford the 600-700 prices (and no they cannot afford the higher subsidized monthly fees either). If someone comes up with a lightweight OS, that has similar features to modern smartphones, but perhaps with worse performance, worse screen, etc., that will be succesful. It will be succesful mostly because it will appeal to people that are outside of the network effects of Android and iOS. But that is not Windows.
- wallflower 14y ago
  > Google barely got in with android and the door slammed behind them. Meego was too late and Windows Phone was far too late. It does not matter how good Windows phone is, their DOA based on the network effect. This. If you draw a Venn diagram of competent iOS developers, Android developers, and Windows Phone developers - there is very little intersection in my experience. An individual developer's bandwidth is limited - they can't simultaneously easily grasp the intricacies of UITableView and ListView. It's like the old cliche about multi-tasking - it simply does not work in practice. I have met a few who claim to do both iOS and Android well but in practice they are sacrificing depth for breadth. Windows Phone is DOA for the reasons you stated and the fact that if there is a small consultancy or product shop that does iOS and Android - it is likely two different people. If you add Windows Phone, it will likely be a third person. From what I've heard from reading MSDN-type magazines about Windows Phone, those third persons are griping about how Microsoft keeps on changing the technology stack (e.g. WP7 is not compatible with WP8, Silverlight's evolution, etc.). Also, I have yet to see a Windows Phone in the wild in the hands of the coveted 18-39 Female demographic. That is dominated by iOS with some Android and Blackberry exceptions.
SparrowOS 14y ago
Look Mr. India-nigger, I'm in jail. You are in denial on God, stupid fuck.
melbourne_mat 14y ago
You've all completely missed the point: anyone who knows technology thinks that Nokia phones are junk (myself included). But the clear message from the article is that the developing world still thought Nokia was awesome! Elop destroyed the brand. It's very clear from the timing of his burning platform communication to the destruction of sales. The game is over for Nokia. Pretty soon they'll be worth the collective value of their patent portfolio, and that's it.

101 points by wazoox 14y ago

This article completely ignores the concept of mindshare. Which equates to how many people are thinking about a product, and thus how many people are more likely to buy that product someday. In 2010 Nokia's mindshare was slim to none and slim was heading out of town. He tries to make it sound like Nokia was doing well then but it may have been doing well in the moment, but we all know what the derivative was. My opinion: Nokia is fine. They have a good business strategy in their new smartphone pillar that I strongly believe will work. Why? Because it's a two pronged strategy. They're selling performant inexpensive smartphone like the Lumia 510 in the developing world that will be retailing for $150 (off contract!). While they're doing this to increase their marketshare, they're making high end 'hero' devices like the Lumia 920 that will ship in the developed world and increase mindshare. Its unrealistic to expect a 'breakthrough' in western markets because many customers are entrenched into certain ecosystems and are difficult to move. That said, mindshare is easier to get, and if you can convince people that your stuff is cool, you can start to slowly nibble away at the western markets. Nokia is fine. Elop is fine. I'm tired of all of this doomsday predicting crap.

turingbook 14y ago
Now in China, the mainstream mid-end Android phones from local brands price at $150 or so. Less and less people buy Symbian and feature phones. And Windows Phone only has very small market share, maybe 3%. Nokia is dying.
blinkingled 14y ago
Selling something for $150 off-contract isn't anything to get excited about when the developing world (India and China mainly) already has huge market penetration from the likes of Samsung, ZTE, SE etc. - they are all selling equally capable phones at similar price point. I.E. the situation is not very different from western markets - Samsung/Sony/ZTE already have a mindshare there at low and high end - even if you forget the low end iPhones. Plus to Nokia's detriment, Samsung can always release their "better" $150 Windows Phone in those markets. Also the app situation isn't changing - at this point they really needed the app development scene nailed - Microsoft hasn't even released the SDK for WP8. Developing world is not somehow going to ignore that and spend $150 buying a dumb phone replacement.
- ansible 14y ago
  Selling something for $150 off-contract isn't anything to get excited about when the developing world (India and China mainly) already has huge market penetration from the likes of Samsung, ZTE, SE etc. Actually, $150 is waaaay too high for the developing world. You can get a kinda-OK Android phone for half that in places like Brazil.
  - Metrop0218 14y ago
    They're obviously going to keep pushing lower and lower price points. This is just the beginning. But the point is that android phones you get for 150$ or less off contract are rough, very rough. If you can offer someone a phone that's a wee bit more but that is so much more performant, you can sway them over. But that said, this is just the beginning. You'll see Nokia push even lower price points later.
    - css771 14y ago
      Actually, smooth performance is something very few consumers in the developing world actually care about. I bought an android phone for ~$130 in 2010. It ran eclair. Now it runs the latest version of gingerbread. I never really felt it's performance was a deal breaker at any point. And consequently, the galaxy Y duos, a gingerbread phone that retails for ~$160 today, runs pretty smooth. Here's a video of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=qZdAbI0ZMuE http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=qZdAbI0ZMuE It's performance is really good enough and something most consumers would buy.
jpxxx 14y ago
From an American persoective, yes. Nokia was a titan everywhere but in American smartphones. They owned the low end, the owned the high end, and they owned everywhere in between. Now they have completely lost the script on smartphones and are losing their grip on the dumb phones that have paid the bills for more than a decade. There is no upside to be seen anywhere.
- 5teev 14y ago
  It's hard to imagine nowadays, but in the late 1990's, Nokia made cell phones Americans craved. Their blunder in the US market was to think they didn't have to get in bed with specific carriers and make phones exclusive to one or another. A titan the world over, Nokia was surely surprised at how effectively they could be diminished by the business model the US carriers settled on. They never recovered in the US, and I don't think they ever will.
- Spearchucker 14y ago
  I'm not as close to Nokia as you, so can you explain where Nokia lost the script on smart phones? I ask because I pre-ordered a 920 off-contract on the basis of a number of features unavailable anywhere else - - Offline maps, search and navigation - PureView/OSI camera - Being able to use the phone wearing gloves - Wireless charging There are a number of other reasons I chose to pre-order the 920 without knowing what it'll cost. UEFI. Knowing that the phone won't come with some crazy manufacturer's interpretation of a UI skin. Knowing that no manufacturer or network operator will include bloatware that can't be uninstalled without rooting the phone, or being forced to use iTunes. Would love to know if I made a mistake, and why.
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    I've no doubt it's a great phone, and those are all good features. But it's late, it's not shipping today, it's only on one carrier in the USA (odd considering capturing the American premium smartphone market was the whole rationale for 'Burning Platforms'), it's based on an ecosystem that's still a distant third-to-fifth in many metrics, and it's part of a brand that's struggling mightily to mean anything in the minds of customers. Nokia's late 00's Symbian lineup wasn't necessarily competitive with the premium side of the market, but it was quite competitive in the lower tiers and was still selling like gangbusters in the lower-grade markets. Publicly throwing them all out overnight was an extraordinarily bad move that suffocated Nokia just as they needed cash to compete more than ever before. Their ASPs dropped like a rock, carriers told them to fuck off now that they had a legitimate and thriving alternative (Android 2.x), and the idea of Nokia being a vendor of status phones evaporated overnight. One great phone isn't going to fix their situation.
cmccabe 14y ago
Nokia's sales have collapsed. It's not "doomsaying" at this point-- more like "doom observing." The only real assets they have left are their patents and their NAVTEQ division (whatever they're calling it now). Now would be a good time for them to break up the company, sell those assets, and maybe manage to return something back to the shareholders. On the other hand, if you still think it's "fine," then you should buy some Nokia stock.

aristidb 14y ago

It is really hard to take seriously an article with section titles like "SYMBIAN WAS WINNING".

lopatin 14y ago
Globally in 2010
- glesica 14y ago
  If you take a very naive view of what it means to be "winning", then sure. But I don't think such a view is ever warranted in business (heck, or even sports). A team that is up by a few points heading into the final period, but has been thoroughly out-played and out-scored in the preceding period is not "winning" in the same way as a team that has been dominating for the entire game. For a company (or team) to be truly "winning", they must be on a trajectory that will lead to long-term sustainability and growth. Nokia (their smartphone business, anyway) was on a downward trajectory, just like RIM (which, up until just a few years ago had a commanding lead over iOS and Android). I could buy the idea that Nokia should have stuck with Meego, or even Maemo and pushed harder to make one of those platforms a commercial success. But the idea that Symbian was winning, under a non-naive definition of the term, is more or less a joke.
- toyg 14y ago
  They were pushing the N97 back then. A lot of them. Unfortunately, it was the most overhyped "flagship" piece of crap they've ever produced. All those contract-bound customers who were sold an N97 between 2009 and 2011, betting on the "anti-iPhone", ran like hell as soon as their contracts expired.
rogerbinns 14y ago
And it is easy to show the fallacy of that. RIM/BlackBerry was winning too at the time. The thing he missed is that the profits are a lagging indicator - they are the results of what you did in the past, not about the future. The companies in The Innovator's Dilemma had exactly the same profile - they had worked out how to be profitable and serve their customers well, right up to the point both fell off a cliff because what customers valued had changed.

jpxxx 14y ago

It's prett easy to hate on this analyst and his strident, obsessive tone, but he's right on the money. Nokias financials have gone from fine to apocalyptic in short order and they are now burning cash at a crazy clip with no evidence of any competitive products in the pipeline. They have months left, not years, and no amount of 'mindshare' is going to pay their bills in the new era.

megaman821 14y ago
This just seem like blind hate. I don't know if the 920 will do well but how is it not competitive? Nokia's mistake was a year or so ago in picking Windows Phone over Android, it was five years ago just sitting on their lead and not coming out with innovative products.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Its not hate. I've used Lumias and they're just fine. The design is certainly a wonderful breath of fresh air. But their new flagship is still two months out, its not even priced yet, has poor carrier support (domestic AND global), a fourth(?) place app market, and fourth place consumer mindshare. It also represents a partial reboot of the Windows Mobile 7 platform, with all that entails. There are so many more things that need to go right just beyond the handset for it to be a competitor, and they're not going right.
thirdsun 14y ago
Regardless of anyone's opinion on Windows Phone, the Lumia 920 should be a pretty competitive phone. Furthermore I always had the impression that owners of Lumia 800 & 900 devices were very happy with. It remains to be seen how successful the 920 will be but saying Nokia hasn't anything in the pipeline seems far from accurate.
- empire29 14y ago
  In this day and age it seems like the phone's ecosystem is even a stronger driving force than the quality of the phone itself. While the Lumia 8xx and 9xx are very nice devices (and I even think Win Phone 7/8 is a very nice OS), I wouldn't purchase a Lumia solely on what I perceived to be a young and unproven ecosystem around the OS. All I hear is Win Phone 7/8 (3rd party) apps are limited in variety and and quality. Its a very hard sell when iOS and Android have such an expansive catalog of (quality) apps. Phones these days are about the software -- good HW is table stakes.

anjc 14y ago

This seems to be micro-analysing graphs and completely ignoring the prevailing public mood, and even the products. Anybody any idea of how the Lumia 920 is likely to go? It seems like their marketing division (apart from the fake pictures) and hardware division etc are all on their game, and i can't imagine the phone being a flop.

mongol 14y ago
I agree quite a lot with this but I think the main point is that he analyzes financial graphs. I am sure the graphs that bothered Elop were ones that said how many applications were developed for each platform and so on. Nokia had not been doing well in this department, and a smartphone without apps is not an interesting proposition.

patrickaljord 14y ago

I think Nokia's strategy is to bet everything on windows 8 on both phones and tablets but also to offer better hardware (such as the camera), if this strategy fails then I would agree to call Nokia's strategy a failure. It's too soon to tell for now, the only sure thing is that Nokia's strategy so far in the smartphone market has been a succession of failure and bad decisions. Let's see how it turns out this time. There's also the conspiracy theory that Microsoft may buy them and that they're failing on purpose to lower their value...

Zigurd 14y ago
The market for mobile Windows 8 is embryonic, and will remain so for longer than is relevant to a Nokia turnaround. Windows 8 is for high-spec phones, and will take several years to move down-market. It isn't the high-end phones that drive a million Android activations per day. Windows 8 tablets are even less able to turn Nokia around. The game therefore has already been won or lost. This was foreseeable. Windows CE Core was never competitive with Linux. Killing Meego looks like a career-management move. It could have been a bridge, at the cost of casting some doubt on Windows as a strategy. Nokia could still buy Jolla, but that would be a hell of a climbdown.
- zmmmmm 14y ago
  > The market for mobile Windows 8 is embryonic, and will remain so for longer than is relevant to a Nokia turnaround This is the key problem. Even if Windows 8 is a wild success on phones we're probably talking 15% market share over the next 12 - 24 months. And that will be split between multiple OEMs. Nokia in its current form is just not sustainable long term on 5% market share, or even 10%. What they need to happen is so unlikely (say 30% market share of Windows 8 phones in 12 months) that it's truly insanity to bank the future of your company on it.

chipotle_coyote 14y ago

Ahonen is a smart cookie in a lot of respects, but he can't let go of the idea that Symbian and MeeGo were the future for Nokia. While I think in retrospect Elop made a few bad calls, when he got there MeeGo was not in production-quality shape. Nokia's own assessment was that they would have one MeeGo unit ready for shipping in 2011, and that particular unit--what eventually came out quietly as the N9--was an intriguing but crashably unusable demo unit even in late 2010. This isn't speculation on my part, either: I was at Nokia in 2010 and used one of them briefly. Or tried to. There was a lot of stuff that just didn't work. In November 2010. On the only device that was far enough along to have hardware that could be shown to other groups. And Symbian? Jesus. To implement a "search as you go" feature for Symbian^3, something that would narrow down search results both on the phone and off as you typed (like iOS and Android devices do, so this was just achieving parity), we had to write our own keyboard because the Symbian keyboard took over the whole screen. You selected a text field and got the keyboard, then hit the keyboard dismiss button to see the screen again. But look on the bright side: in addition to the "Universal Search" team in San Francisco working on that, there were four other groups around Nokia, both employees and contractors, working on what was, essentially, the exact. Same. Product. And this was de rigueur for Nokia. This was the problem that Elop had to fix beyond anything technical: massive duplicated effort on what, at any other company, were already solved problems, because Nokia had become a bunch of fiefdoms all fiercely protecting their own turf. I'm pretty sure this is why Symbian stuck around in essentially the same form for so long. I'm sure Tomi Ahonen loved it as a user, but the number of engineers working on Symbian who liked working on it that I talked to was, to the best of my recollection, zero. (Just getting the developer toolchain running on my machine made me feel like I'd time traveled back to the days of SLS Linux.) If I ran the zoo, I'd have probably gone with Android rather than Windows Phone; Elop went the other way not because of his past connections with Microsoft, but because he wanted to keep using lucrative Nokia services (rather than Google counterparts, most notably Maps) and be allowed to use the Android branding, and Google said no. I wouldn't have cared about the Android branding--instead I'd have cared about porting Qt to Android and not burning bridges with Nokia's existing development community. They'd just spent a lot of time, money and effort convincing everyone that Qt was the Way Of The Future: instead of writing to Symbian or MeeGo APIs, you'd write to Qt APIs, and then porting would be simple. Losing that was a bad call. But I'd say the most serious mistake Elop made had nothing to do with technology. Love Apple or hate them, one of the things they're really good at is not talking about products before they're ready. The rumor mill may be in high gear for months, sure, but when Apple makes their official announcement, it is nearly always in the form of "Here is our new Superlative Magical Thing. Here is a video of Jony Ive talking earnestly about it. It will be available for this price (two weeks from now|tomorrow|as soon as the band stops playing)." If Elop had been running Apple during the PowerPC-Intel CPU switch, he'd have leaked an internal memo describing the PowerPC in some colorful apocalypse-invoking metaphor, then three months later announce the switch, then six months after that introduce one laptop with an Intel chip that wasn't the most current generation and say they'd have more coming next year. The lesson to draw from Nokia under Elop isn't that they should have stuck with MeeGo; it's that they should have kept their mouth shut, kept shipping Symbian phones through 2011, and started 2012 with their new devices ready to ship when they announced them. I wouldn't be surprised if Ahonen gets his wish within a year and Elop is canned by Nokia's board -- but I'd be very surprised if doing so improves their situation.

shill 14y ago

I cringe when I read "the textbook definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over again expecting different results". This is obviously not the definition in any legitimate textbook or dictionary. When will smart people stop using this stupid cliche?

antidoh 14y ago
When they stop making the bumper stickers.
marshray 14y ago
Rather than a textbook, I usually see that quote attributed to Albert Einstein or the ancient Chinese.

paulbz 14y ago

I used to work directly for Elop and thought he was/is an amazing leader. So while I'm biased, it's only because I know and have deep insight on him - I have nothing to gain. This feels ironically similar to saying Obama failed because he didn't fix Bush's mess fast enough. Nokia was heading for a slow decline. Elop's strategy accelerated that decline short term in hopes they could turn around. It's a risk he and the board fully knew existed. It hasn't gone the way they want fast enough, which sucks, but they had the guts to give it a shot. Android would have been the safe bet. I don't think any can argue that Nokia would be a much more valuable company today if they took on Samsung for Android leadership instead of going down an empty road with Windows Phone. Instead, they swung for the fences with WP7. They missed. But, they have a few more chances to try to make it happen, and they're now effectively bankrolled by a company with much deeper pockets and motivation to win then if they stuck with Meego or Symbian. I can't say I'm confident, but I am optimistic. I wouldn't count them out yet.

CamperBob2 14y ago
...they're now effectively bankrolled by a company with much deeper pockets and motivation to win then if they stuck with Meego or Symbian. I think this is a good point that's completely overlooked by the other doomsayers in this thread. Nokia : Microsoft :: General Motors : the US government. Having alienated every other hardware OEM of note, Ballmer can't afford to let Nokia fail. Their relationship is strategic, not tactical. This wouldn't have escaped Elop's attention when he had to decide between betting the house on Android versus Windows Phone.
- cmccabe 14y ago
  Microsoft can easily let Nokia fail. Microsoft is already considering making its own phone, just like they've made their own tablets and game consoles: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57458288-75/microsoft-weighing-its-own-windows-phones-analyst-says/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57458288-75/microsoft-weig... Every few years Microsoft gives another lesson about why you should never partner with Microsoft. People have very short memories, apparently.

aik 14y ago

"CAN WINDOWS PHONE 8 SAVE NOKIA? No." He goes through a lot of interesting analysis of the past, then asks THE KEY question about the future, and just dismisses it with a negative answer without any analysis and calls Elop clinically insane. Instead of a personal attack on Elop, I'd like to see more about why the strategy will fail going forward. Being that these are now occurring: 1. WP marketshare is increasing very very steadily. 2. WP reviews are great and user satisfaction is great. 3. WP8 and Windows 8 are both about to come out in a few weeks, and although Microsoft has taken some risks, there is massive potential. 4. Nokia's new phones look great, have several impressive unique points of differentiation, and in some ways are clearly superior to any other phone on the market (e.g. Pureview). 5. The news about positive WP phone sales in China and India. Taking into consideration the fact that they have great phones at several price points. 6. The existing reports of the new feature phone line are promising (Asha).

azakai 14y ago
> 1. WP marketshare is increasing very very steadily Source? I seem to recall it decreasing in some quarters.
jpatokal 14y ago
5. Would you happen to be referring to this report about positive sales in China? http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/05/paging-truth-police-no-windows-phone-and-nokia-lumia-are-not-outselling-iphone-in-china-utter-bs-sto.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/05/paging-...

hristov 14y ago

Nokia has to quickly post haste load android on all their smartphones. They will probably have to kick out Elop first, but that won't hurt at all. So (1) kick out Elop, (2) load Android. It is fricking amazing how a board of presumably tech savvy businesspeople cannot understand the network effect. So let me put it simply -- it is over there are no more smartphone operating systems in the present smartphone segment. Google barely got in with android and the door slammed behind them. Meego was too late and Windows Phone was far too late. It does not matter how good Windows phone is, their DOA based on the network effect. There are so many apps made already, there is so much investment in app production for both iOS and Android, that any new OS in the same space has unsurmountable obstacles to overcome. There is actually an opportunity to make a new breakthrough in mobile devices, but one has to reinvent the market, like Apple did. The opportunity is for cheaper phones in the third world. Right now everyone wants a smart phone but most people in the world cannot afford the 600-700 prices (and no they cannot afford the higher subsidized monthly fees either). If someone comes up with a lightweight OS, that has similar features to modern smartphones, but perhaps with worse performance, worse screen, etc., that will be succesful. It will be succesful mostly because it will appeal to people that are outside of the network effects of Android and iOS. But that is not Windows.

wallflower 14y ago
> Google barely got in with android and the door slammed behind them. Meego was too late and Windows Phone was far too late. It does not matter how good Windows phone is, their DOA based on the network effect. This. If you draw a Venn diagram of competent iOS developers, Android developers, and Windows Phone developers - there is very little intersection in my experience. An individual developer's bandwidth is limited - they can't simultaneously easily grasp the intricacies of UITableView and ListView. It's like the old cliche about multi-tasking - it simply does not work in practice. I have met a few who claim to do both iOS and Android well but in practice they are sacrificing depth for breadth. Windows Phone is DOA for the reasons you stated and the fact that if there is a small consultancy or product shop that does iOS and Android - it is likely two different people. If you add Windows Phone, it will likely be a third person. From what I've heard from reading MSDN-type magazines about Windows Phone, those third persons are griping about how Microsoft keeps on changing the technology stack (e.g. WP7 is not compatible with WP8, Silverlight's evolution, etc.). Also, I have yet to see a Windows Phone in the wild in the hands of the coveted 18-39 Female demographic. That is dominated by iOS with some Android and Blackberry exceptions.

SparrowOS 14y ago

Look Mr. India-nigger, I'm in jail. You are in denial on God, stupid fuck.

melbourne_mat 14y ago

You've all completely missed the point: anyone who knows technology thinks that Nokia phones are junk (myself included). But the clear message from the article is that the developing world still thought Nokia was awesome! Elop destroyed the brand. It's very clear from the timing of his burning platform communication to the destruction of sales. The game is over for Nokia. Pretty soon they'll be worth the collective value of their patent portfolio, and that's it.