3 ms·

It always surprised me that Nokia made such a public announcement that they would be killing an existing product line that was selling fairly well (at a solid p

by Osiris 14y ago

It always surprised me that Nokia made such a public announcement that they would be killing an existing product line that was selling fairly well (at a solid profit from what I understand). While switching from Symbian to WP7 may have been a good idea, to publicly announce that you're dumping the platform of your best selling phones seems like a pretty big blunder. Yahoo's approach seems better to me. I'm sure that Marissa has a game plan for products that they'll EOL and directions that'll change but they're keeping it close the vest to not shake things up publicly too much.

Zigurd 14y ago
Hernan Cortez didn't burn his ships because it was prudent. He did it to give his crew no choice but to follow him. Had Cortez and his men died in the jungle, that would not have been regarded as a bold act of leadership.
elithrar 14y ago
> While switching from Symbian to WP7 may have been a good idea, to publicly announce that you're dumping the platform of your best selling phones seems like a pretty big blunder. From what I understand, Nokia did this because of the "warring factions" and duplicated effort across the company. Killing it early was likely seen as a strategy for reducing cultural problems later.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I agree this will be studied like the Osborne Executive gets studied in business schools. I've seen these sorts of transitions managed in different ways, they all have their risks. Commodore-64 to Commodore Amiga (unsuccessful), Apple II to Macintosh (successful), Emulex Storage to Networking (not successful), IBM Mainframes to software consulting (successful). It is a tricky tricky thing to do, to take your company's most profitable product and build a replacement inside its market internally.
- ido 14y ago
  Commodore-64 to Commodore Amiga (unsuccessful) Actually the Amiga was a lot more successful than you'd think looking at the American market (it was mostly successful in Europe: http://www.amigau.com/aig/sales.html http://www.amigau.com/aig/sales.html - there is no reliable public data about exact numbers but its somewhere around 4+ million units, most of which in Europe). With the success of the Amiga 500 commodore had a decent chance at staying alive and even prospering, if not for extreme mismanagement & very questionable business decisions (that started before the time of the Amiga).
- josteink 14y ago
  Commodore-64 to Commodore Amiga (unsuccessful) Except every kid I knew when I grew up swapped their Commodore 64 (which they had) for an Amiga 500. The Amiga was widely successful and ahead of everything else at the time, at least within the consumer price-point. What killed Commodore was that they got complacent, lazy and slept on their laurels. When the PC finally overtook the Amiga (much like Nokia, RIM being overtaken now, etc) it took too much time until they realized what was happening, and when they did, it was too late. They had no products to offer which could match the competition, and slowly, but surely they went into bankruptcy.
- silvestrov 14y ago
  Apple II to Macintosh (successful) semi-successful at best. The Mac didn't get the same marketshare in the 80'ies as the Apple II had.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
They were/are being paid very large sums of money to save Windows Phone, hence announcing that Windows Phone now has manufacturer support is part of what they've been paid to do. And they got far more money from that than they would have from selling those symbian phones. edit: after reading the article I see that this is the actual point he's making, though he claims that they could have made an extra 3 Billion from selling the symbian phones if they'd focussed on that, and only got 1 Billion from Microsoft. Except he pads the numbers by assuming they'd have hit their 150 Million sales targets and sold another 50 million devices at an average of $200 (unsubsidized) and got 33% or $66 dollars profit from each one (neatly equalling the subsidy of $68 they get from Microsoft from each WinPhone they sell at current sales rates). Of course, the Microsoft payments continue and were guaranteed, whereas Symbian was a gamble and is, frankly, now dead so the "price" of this choice becomes less with every passing day and depending on which numbers you pick out of the air, they could already be ahead on the deal.
- jsnell 14y ago
  How did you arrive to that conclusion? The article is making exactly the opposite point: the lost profits from the lost sales were much more significant than the support money from MS. And it also shows the (rather reasonable) calculations used for this analysis.
netcan 14y ago
Well... There is something to be said for public statements of intent and focus. There are also the cost savings in not developing Symbian anymore. But I agree that this seemed pretty reckless especially since WP7 was/is still at such an early phase. It basically multiplied the risk that future nokia phones would be crap by the risk that windows would be crap.

by Osiris 14y ago

Zigurd 14y ago

Hernan Cortez didn't burn his ships because it was prudent. He did it to give his crew no choice but to follow him. Had Cortez and his men died in the jungle, that would not have been regarded as a bold act of leadership.

elithrar 14y ago

> While switching from Symbian to WP7 may have been a good idea, to publicly announce that you're dumping the platform of your best selling phones seems like a pretty big blunder. From what I understand, Nokia did this because of the "warring factions" and duplicated effort across the company. Killing it early was likely seen as a strategy for reducing cultural problems later.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I agree this will be studied like the Osborne Executive gets studied in business schools. I've seen these sorts of transitions managed in different ways, they all have their risks. Commodore-64 to Commodore Amiga (unsuccessful), Apple II to Macintosh (successful), Emulex Storage to Networking (not successful), IBM Mainframes to software consulting (successful). It is a tricky tricky thing to do, to take your company's most profitable product and build a replacement inside its market internally.

ido 14y ago
Commodore-64 to Commodore Amiga (unsuccessful) Actually the Amiga was a lot more successful than you'd think looking at the American market (it was mostly successful in Europe: http://www.amigau.com/aig/sales.html http://www.amigau.com/aig/sales.html - there is no reliable public data about exact numbers but its somewhere around 4+ million units, most of which in Europe). With the success of the Amiga 500 commodore had a decent chance at staying alive and even prospering, if not for extreme mismanagement & very questionable business decisions (that started before the time of the Amiga).
josteink 14y ago
Commodore-64 to Commodore Amiga (unsuccessful) Except every kid I knew when I grew up swapped their Commodore 64 (which they had) for an Amiga 500. The Amiga was widely successful and ahead of everything else at the time, at least within the consumer price-point. What killed Commodore was that they got complacent, lazy and slept on their laurels. When the PC finally overtook the Amiga (much like Nokia, RIM being overtaken now, etc) it took too much time until they realized what was happening, and when they did, it was too late. They had no products to offer which could match the competition, and slowly, but surely they went into bankruptcy.
silvestrov 14y ago
Apple II to Macintosh (successful) semi-successful at best. The Mac didn't get the same marketshare in the 80'ies as the Apple II had.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago

They were/are being paid very large sums of money to save Windows Phone, hence announcing that Windows Phone now has manufacturer support is part of what they've been paid to do. And they got far more money from that than they would have from selling those symbian phones. edit: after reading the article I see that this is the actual point he's making, though he claims that they could have made an extra 3 Billion from selling the symbian phones if they'd focussed on that, and only got 1 Billion from Microsoft. Except he pads the numbers by assuming they'd have hit their 150 Million sales targets and sold another 50 million devices at an average of $200 (unsubsidized) and got 33% or $66 dollars profit from each one (neatly equalling the subsidy of $68 they get from Microsoft from each WinPhone they sell at current sales rates). Of course, the Microsoft payments continue and were guaranteed, whereas Symbian was a gamble and is, frankly, now dead so the "price" of this choice becomes less with every passing day and depending on which numbers you pick out of the air, they could already be ahead on the deal.

jsnell 14y ago
How did you arrive to that conclusion? The article is making exactly the opposite point: the lost profits from the lost sales were much more significant than the support money from MS. And it also shows the (rather reasonable) calculations used for this analysis.

netcan 14y ago

Well... There is something to be said for public statements of intent and focus. There are also the cost savings in not developing Symbian anymore. But I agree that this seemed pretty reckless especially since WP7 was/is still at such an early phase. It basically multiplied the risk that future nokia phones would be crap by the risk that windows would be crap.