7 ms·

Elop explains: why Nokia didn't choose Android to replace Symbian

35 points by AndrewDucker 13y ago

RyanZAG 13y ago
You're still competing with Samsung whether you're on Android or not. So now Nokia is competing with Samsung with both inferior hardware verticals and incompatible software. Obvious bit of common sense that a lot of experts seem to miss. It's like Linux competing with Windows on the desktop. They have a nice camera on the latest phone though - pity it's not Android or it might even be worth trying out. I'm sure if it takes better pictures though, by next year some Android phone will be offering something similar. Open platform and all that.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  Might not even be next year. Even if you don't count the new Galaxy Camera since it is a connected camera, not a phone, Sony is rumored to be pulling technology from their camera division for their next flagship phone, due this fall.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- fpgeek 13y ago
  Also, it's not like Samsung and several other Android OEMs aren't keeping Windows Phone projects going on the side. If Windows Phone does start to get any traction, Nokia will soon see exactly sort of competition they were trying to avoid on the Android side.
  - bsaul 13y ago
    Except the situation would be reversed : they would have more experience and samsung would have to catch up. I think that's actually pretty smart on nokia's part.
    - snom380 13y ago
      ..but play catch up to what? It's not like Nokia has outdone themselves by customizing Windows Phone.
      - throwawaykf02 13y ago
        They did have significant distinguishing features previously, specifically their Nokia-specific apps like Nokia Drive and Nokia Transit. Drive for one, I speculate, drove a lot of adoption for Nokia within the WP market. It has received several favorable mentions even on HN, and personally I find it better than either Google's or Bing's navigation apps. However, that strategy seems to have changed, with Drive being licensed to all Windows Phone devices, regardless of manufacturer. So they do lose a major differentiating feature, but they gain something else: the ability to make money on any WP device sold. I guess they prefer to differentiate on hardware going forward.
    - rst 13y ago
      Catch up with what? One of the differentiators of Windows Phone was originally supposed to be that Microsoft wasn't allowing reskinning at all, and while the "special relationship" with Nokia was rumored to allow them a little more freedom in this regard, they certainly haven't used it much. So long as Samsung and HTC Windows Phones offer the same experience as Nokia, they've caught up already. In fact, they'd "caught up" before Nokia even shipped! So, who's playing catch-up here anyway?
      - bsaul 13y ago
        I can think of a few things: - custom apps ( even if it's not on the phones by default) - marketing. once you've got your phones so much associated with and OS, it takes some time to convince your existing users that they'll need to change
- imaadrashied 13y ago
  I think this was/is a smart move for Nokia. They were right to predict Samsung would be the major Android player. Instead of competing against a company that already had a major lead and essentially becoming one of the smaller fish in a larger Android pond, it's taking a bet on becoming a large fish in a smaller pond that has very real upside potential. I stress potential because we've all been a little disappointed with Microsoft's latest maneuvers, but there's still a chance for the company to turn it around. At the end of the day I respect such a great risk being taken at a massive firm (you don't see a lot of that these days). Nokia still believe a third ecosystem can be a very real option for smartphone consumers and they want to be that third option. Takes guts. I'm all for a little more competition.
  - product50 13y ago
    It has been 2 years since that decision was made. Where is the "very real" upside potential you are talking about. Windows Phone has been an underdog since 2010! Claim your argument based on facts and what is going on - rather than what you feel like.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    I don't understand your point. Nokia competes with Samsung regardless of OS choice. Not using Android does not mean Nokia gets out of competing with Android or Samsung. There is no big pond and little pond here. They are all in the same ocean.
    - throwawaykf02 13y ago
      But how would they differentiate from Samsung? Replacing stock Android UI with a custom skin, a practice that everybody seems to hate? Installing specific apps, which too, are often derided? The one Nokia app that is significant is Drive, but they could not leverage that because Google does not allow their own location-based apps to be replaced on their "open" platform. (See Skyhook lawsuit.) Their investment in Navteq would be a complete write-off. That leaves the hardware arena, where, by my reading between the lines, Nokia felt it would not be able to compete effectively enough given Samsung's "vertical integration", not to mention, their "resources" (read: marketing budget).
- barista 13y ago
  Open platform? BS! Google has milked the term to its benefit. There have been many discussions here that question the openness of android.
  - nileshtrivedi 13y ago
    Which other major mobile OS has the equivalent of Cyanogenmod?
    - throwawaykf02 13y ago
      Not comparable to Cyanogenmod, but Microsoft at one point officially supported the WP jailbreak tool and its developers, Chevron. The logic was, of course, to get more apps developed for WP. Unfortunately, after a while, they found out nobody jailbroke their phones to develop apps, so both parties agreed to stop supporting it, and later updates revoked the jailbreaks.
      - fpgeek 13y ago
        Not comparable to Cyanogenmod is an understatement. According to their own site, Chevron is just a third-party implementation of the Android's "Unknown Sources" (i.e. sideloading) checkbox: http://chevronwp7.tumblr.com/post/1679668269/windows-phone-7-unlocker-released http://chevronwp7.tumblr.com/post/1679668269/windows-phone-7... Good for Microsoft for supporting for a while (and boo for changing their minds), but either way this doesn't get Windows Phone any brownie points vs Android.
    - fpgeek 13y ago
      Not to mention Firefox OS and Ubuntu Touch (both made possible by re-using low-level parts of the Android stack).
- miguelrochefort 13y ago
  The only reason Windows Phone is not the dominant mobile OS is because of the social stigma around Windows. For most people, Windows Phone is a MUCH better experience than Android. The problem is that no one gives Windows Phone a chance. I don't know many people that used Windows Phone and switched back to Android/iPhone. Beside the app factor (which is much less of an issue than what people think), Windows Phone is an excellent mobile OS.
  - bhughes 13y ago
    The reason why people don't use Windows Phone is because they don't want to. It's easy to say in a place like HN that there is a "social stigma" around using Windows, but for the average consumer this is clearly not the case. For a lot of typical desktop users, Windows is the computer ("reboot your Windows", "start up Windows", etc). Microsoft simply couldn't find a way to leverage that in the mobile space.
  - cheery 13y ago
    Shut up Microsoft shill. Most people do not even have a clue about which operating system their phone has. And they do not care. Just like they do not do with PC either. If Windows Phone doesn't interest anyone. It is because they were unable to fit a niche. It is because their phone is a disaster. The operating system is irrelevant for most of phone users.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      See, that's the problem. Someone says something nice about Windows and suddenly they're being told (in an incredibly fucking rude fashion) that they must be working for Microsoft because Microsoft is the devil. You just proved his point that no one talks about Microsoft because of the social stigma attached to it. You just proved that if you say something nice about Microsoft, your peers will make you an outcast.
      - mst 13y ago
        Looking at cheery's comments, it seems that he's that negative about pretty much everything.
- cdooh 13y ago
  The Maemo platform had so much promise, and it was open source too!! The original Iphone and the N900 were on par. I'd know, I'm using the N900 now
  - toyg 13y ago
    > The original Iphone and the N900 were on par. I wish. I own an N900: it's twice as big (and twice as heavy) as the original iPhone, with a very unsexy industrial design, and the OS is a hodgepodge of toolkits and hacks, deprecated the minute it came out. It was incredibly hackable and customizable, but nowhere as robust and coherent as an iPhone. I loved the concept and would have loved to see it become a platform for commercial Python/PySide mobile apps, but it was nowhere near the iPhone when it came out. Its successor, the N9, was on par with the iPhone, but never got a chance, commercially, thanks to one Stephen Elop.
    - cdooh 13y ago
      Your definition of sexy is not the same as mine.:) But we can both agree there was serious potential
snom380 13y ago
I find it interesting that Maemo/Meego was not mentioned as an option. Nokia had a platform they could have built off if they could have settled the internal politics, and they could even have made a compatibility layer to submit Android Apps to their store if they wanted to. I think this, along with failing to see the threat from iPhone/Android will go down in history as one of the biggest business mistakes.
- tkorri 13y ago
  Maemo/Meego wasn't really an option. It wasn't ready back then and it doesn't seem to be ready now either, since rumours say that Samsung has axed Tizen development. I think the only company currently developing Maemo/Meego succesor is Jolla with their Sailfish OS. Although they've also missed deadlines they've given themselves, so their product is starting slip more and more into to the vaporware category.
  - ac 13y ago
    > Maemo/Meego wasn't really an option. Now, why wasn't it? It was a solid OS, and there were two great products running it (N900 and N9).
    - zem 13y ago
      yes, if nokia had only kept up with bugfixes i might still be using my n900. the underlying OS worked wonderfully.
    - sirkneeland 13y ago
      The N9 was the only truly great product (as in a regular consumer would have found the UX appealing). And that didn't really together until AFTER Elop told them that they were all doomed. Only then did they stop playing politics long enough to build and ship something amazing (Harmattan on the N9). Kind of like how at the end of the world, everyone seems to get along better because there is no upside to triumphing politically.
    - rodgerd 13y ago
alipang 13y ago
So, now that we now Samsung is somewhat dominant in the Android space we get an explanation that the reason Nokia went with WP was that Samsung would be a dominant player in the Android space. I guess I would have been kinda impressed if they actually gave this as the reason two years ago.
- barista 13y ago
  It was quite obvious even a couple of years ago that Samsung will basically dominate Android to the extent that android == Samsung given the market share. The whole open platform is a façade that Google has created.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- Zigurd 13y ago
  This is the second time this particular excuse has been trotted out. It didn't work the first time, either.
protomyth 13y ago
Was Symbian so far gone that it couldn't compete? They bought Qt and it seemed like they could make a go out it.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  As someone who gave Symbian coding a chance, Symbian was the most terribly badly designed platform I've ever seen. The distribution restrictions made it even worse. The core UI platform was truly awful. The Nokia engineers on the N8 did an incredible job getting it to where it was - semi usable - but it simply couldn't compete with Linux/Android/iOS.
Ologn 13y ago
You can tell what Elop is saying is nonsense just from the article title. Specifically the word "choose". Choose? Why did Elop have to "choose" Windows? Did Samsung have to choose between Android or Windows? Did HTC have to choose between Android or Windows? They did not. Samsung sells both Windows and Android smartphones. The Android phones have sold spectacularly, the Windows phones have not. HTC sells both Android and Windows phones. HTC's Windows phones do not sell. HTC's Android phones sell well enough to keep them in the game - their profits are not spectacular, but they're doing better than RIM and other companies. I'm happy with my HTC One. I go into a Sprint or AT&T or T-mobile or Verizon mobile store, and up front I see the featured phones - an iPhone, a Samsung S4, and an HTC one. Way in the back is a Blackberry kiosk. Next to it is a Windows kiosk with the HTC Windows phone, the Samsung Windows phone, and - depending on the carrier - the Nokia Windows phone. This is what Nokia is crowing about? Maybe this type of talk might fool non-technical stock buyers who do not know any better. All of us know that Nokia could have made both Android and Windows phones, just as Samsung and HTC (and other companies) do. So we realize that his invention of the idea that they were forced to choose one or the other is nonsense. It's too late for Nokia to come in and be a big player in the Android market now, but it was not when way back when he sent his "burning platform" memo out. Of course, some with perhaps more knowledge than me might say that Nokia was in bad financial shape and needed Microsoft to bail them out financially or they'd go under, and they were forced to go Windows only in that sense. That may also be true, but again, it has no relation to the bogus reasons he says he had to make a "choice" in the article. He seems to be in the only company that had to make a choice.
- throwawaykf02 13y ago
  To me, choosing one and focusing on it seems the only rational choice, rather than making two halfhearted forays. Say Nokia did choose both. They'd have invested a huge amount of money and resources (comparable to what they invested for on WP), and most likely they'd just be down there with HTC (despite the One), Sony and LG, who are all struggling in the smartphone market. How is that better? Samsung can afford to make that investment, of course, as well as experiment with alternatives like Bada. They have a huge amount of resources at their disposal. Nokia saw the coming adversity and realized they had to choose. There were many reasons affecting that choice, of course... such as Google's insistence that the Android trademark only comes with the full host of Google apps, including their navigation app, which directly undercuts Nokia's Navteq investment. Or Microsoft's willingness to pump billions into joint marketing efforts. Even HTC realizes that heavy marketing is needed to compete with Samsung.
JanneVee 13y ago
Abandoning Maemo/Meego made me sad. I'm not going to second guess the decision. But when that decision was made they lost me as a customer forever. My last Nokia was the N900. I loved that phone.
speeder 13y ago
I still think Nokia did a major shit. First, they did not needed to replace Symbian in first place, for example here in Brazil 60% of the mobile market was Symbian, until Nokia decided to kill it (in two years almost all Symbians are gone). Think about it, Nokia was selling in Brazil alone more than 100 million phones. People were perfectly happy with Symbian, people here LIKED Symbian, we had huge internet forums for Symbian fans, we had Symbian software developers, and so on... Nokia announcement that they would not use Symbian anymore killed all that overnight. And then, they choose Windows, and went for the high-end... They basically dumped their old market, and tried to pursue what then was Apple and Blackberry markets, they basically threw out all their loyal costumers. I for one got really disappointed, I loved Nokias, I had a couple of Nokia phones, a developer account, I made even J2ME stuff for non-Symbian Nokia, and all of that, started because OTHER PEOPLE made me like it, because Nokia was wildly popular (mostly because of its crazy resilience and quality engineering, something more prized in a developing country than flashy features). And they threw it all out in one shot. Most people I know still feel that noone has risen to substitute Nokia, some people think Nokia is 100% dead (along with Blackberry), but are unhappy with Samsung... I personally saw so far a single android phone that impressed me (that is the Xperia Play, that I own), and was quite disappointed with Sony abandoning it too. I am yet to see a phone that make me want to buy it to substitute my old Xperia Play
- igravious 13y ago
  Does not sound like the actions of a rational company.
- toyg 13y ago
  To be fair, in developed markets Symbian was crashing well before the "burning platform" memo came out. The disappearance of Symbian in developing markets has a lot to do with Android-induced price drops, which would have happened anyway. But yeah, they had a Qt-based transition roadmap that could have saved their ecosystem, and Elop threw all that out of the window. The rational move would have been to make Qt run on WP and salvage at least some of their developer partners.
  - 13y ago

35 points by AndrewDucker 13y ago

You're still competing with Samsung whether you're on Android or not. So now Nokia is competing with Samsung with both inferior hardware verticals and incompatible software. Obvious bit of common sense that a lot of experts seem to miss. It's like Linux competing with Windows on the desktop. They have a nice camera on the latest phone though - pity it's not Android or it might even be worth trying out. I'm sure if it takes better pictures though, by next year some Android phone will be offering something similar. Open platform and all that.

fpgeek 13y ago
Might not even be next year. Even if you don't count the new Galaxy Camera since it is a connected camera, not a phone, Sony is rumored to be pulling technology from their camera division for their next flagship phone, due this fall.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
fpgeek 13y ago
Also, it's not like Samsung and several other Android OEMs aren't keeping Windows Phone projects going on the side. If Windows Phone does start to get any traction, Nokia will soon see exactly sort of competition they were trying to avoid on the Android side.
- bsaul 13y ago
  Except the situation would be reversed : they would have more experience and samsung would have to catch up. I think that's actually pretty smart on nokia's part.
  - snom380 13y ago
    ..but play catch up to what? It's not like Nokia has outdone themselves by customizing Windows Phone.
    - throwawaykf02 13y ago
      They did have significant distinguishing features previously, specifically their Nokia-specific apps like Nokia Drive and Nokia Transit. Drive for one, I speculate, drove a lot of adoption for Nokia within the WP market. It has received several favorable mentions even on HN, and personally I find it better than either Google's or Bing's navigation apps. However, that strategy seems to have changed, with Drive being licensed to all Windows Phone devices, regardless of manufacturer. So they do lose a major differentiating feature, but they gain something else: the ability to make money on any WP device sold. I guess they prefer to differentiate on hardware going forward.
  - rst 13y ago
    Catch up with what? One of the differentiators of Windows Phone was originally supposed to be that Microsoft wasn't allowing reskinning at all, and while the "special relationship" with Nokia was rumored to allow them a little more freedom in this regard, they certainly haven't used it much. So long as Samsung and HTC Windows Phones offer the same experience as Nokia, they've caught up already. In fact, they'd "caught up" before Nokia even shipped! So, who's playing catch-up here anyway?
    - bsaul 13y ago
      I can think of a few things: - custom apps ( even if it's not on the phones by default) - marketing. once you've got your phones so much associated with and OS, it takes some time to convince your existing users that they'll need to change
imaadrashied 13y ago
I think this was/is a smart move for Nokia. They were right to predict Samsung would be the major Android player. Instead of competing against a company that already had a major lead and essentially becoming one of the smaller fish in a larger Android pond, it's taking a bet on becoming a large fish in a smaller pond that has very real upside potential. I stress potential because we've all been a little disappointed with Microsoft's latest maneuvers, but there's still a chance for the company to turn it around. At the end of the day I respect such a great risk being taken at a massive firm (you don't see a lot of that these days). Nokia still believe a third ecosystem can be a very real option for smartphone consumers and they want to be that third option. Takes guts. I'm all for a little more competition.
- product50 13y ago
  It has been 2 years since that decision was made. Where is the "very real" upside potential you are talking about. Windows Phone has been an underdog since 2010! Claim your argument based on facts and what is going on - rather than what you feel like.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  I don't understand your point. Nokia competes with Samsung regardless of OS choice. Not using Android does not mean Nokia gets out of competing with Android or Samsung. There is no big pond and little pond here. They are all in the same ocean.
  - throwawaykf02 13y ago
    But how would they differentiate from Samsung? Replacing stock Android UI with a custom skin, a practice that everybody seems to hate? Installing specific apps, which too, are often derided? The one Nokia app that is significant is Drive, but they could not leverage that because Google does not allow their own location-based apps to be replaced on their "open" platform. (See Skyhook lawsuit.) Their investment in Navteq would be a complete write-off. That leaves the hardware arena, where, by my reading between the lines, Nokia felt it would not be able to compete effectively enough given Samsung's "vertical integration", not to mention, their "resources" (read: marketing budget).
barista 13y ago
Open platform? BS! Google has milked the term to its benefit. There have been many discussions here that question the openness of android.
- nileshtrivedi 13y ago
  Which other major mobile OS has the equivalent of Cyanogenmod?
  - throwawaykf02 13y ago
    Not comparable to Cyanogenmod, but Microsoft at one point officially supported the WP jailbreak tool and its developers, Chevron. The logic was, of course, to get more apps developed for WP. Unfortunately, after a while, they found out nobody jailbroke their phones to develop apps, so both parties agreed to stop supporting it, and later updates revoked the jailbreaks.
    - fpgeek 13y ago
      Not comparable to Cyanogenmod is an understatement. According to their own site, Chevron is just a third-party implementation of the Android's "Unknown Sources" (i.e. sideloading) checkbox: http://chevronwp7.tumblr.com/post/1679668269/windows-phone-7-unlocker-released http://chevronwp7.tumblr.com/post/1679668269/windows-phone-7... Good for Microsoft for supporting for a while (and boo for changing their minds), but either way this doesn't get Windows Phone any brownie points vs Android.
  - fpgeek 13y ago
    Not to mention Firefox OS and Ubuntu Touch (both made possible by re-using low-level parts of the Android stack).
miguelrochefort 13y ago
The only reason Windows Phone is not the dominant mobile OS is because of the social stigma around Windows. For most people, Windows Phone is a MUCH better experience than Android. The problem is that no one gives Windows Phone a chance. I don't know many people that used Windows Phone and switched back to Android/iPhone. Beside the app factor (which is much less of an issue than what people think), Windows Phone is an excellent mobile OS.
- bhughes 13y ago
  The reason why people don't use Windows Phone is because they don't want to. It's easy to say in a place like HN that there is a "social stigma" around using Windows, but for the average consumer this is clearly not the case. For a lot of typical desktop users, Windows is the computer ("reboot your Windows", "start up Windows", etc). Microsoft simply couldn't find a way to leverage that in the mobile space.
- cheery 13y ago
  Shut up Microsoft shill. Most people do not even have a clue about which operating system their phone has. And they do not care. Just like they do not do with PC either. If Windows Phone doesn't interest anyone. It is because they were unable to fit a niche. It is because their phone is a disaster. The operating system is irrelevant for most of phone users.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    See, that's the problem. Someone says something nice about Windows and suddenly they're being told (in an incredibly fucking rude fashion) that they must be working for Microsoft because Microsoft is the devil. You just proved his point that no one talks about Microsoft because of the social stigma attached to it. You just proved that if you say something nice about Microsoft, your peers will make you an outcast.
    - mst 13y ago
      Looking at cheery's comments, it seems that he's that negative about pretty much everything.
cdooh 13y ago
The Maemo platform had so much promise, and it was open source too!! The original Iphone and the N900 were on par. I'd know, I'm using the N900 now
- toyg 13y ago
  > The original Iphone and the N900 were on par. I wish. I own an N900: it's twice as big (and twice as heavy) as the original iPhone, with a very unsexy industrial design, and the OS is a hodgepodge of toolkits and hacks, deprecated the minute it came out. It was incredibly hackable and customizable, but nowhere as robust and coherent as an iPhone. I loved the concept and would have loved to see it become a platform for commercial Python/PySide mobile apps, but it was nowhere near the iPhone when it came out. Its successor, the N9, was on par with the iPhone, but never got a chance, commercially, thanks to one Stephen Elop.
  - cdooh 13y ago
    Your definition of sexy is not the same as mine.:) But we can both agree there was serious potential

snom380 13y ago

I find it interesting that Maemo/Meego was not mentioned as an option. Nokia had a platform they could have built off if they could have settled the internal politics, and they could even have made a compatibility layer to submit Android Apps to their store if they wanted to. I think this, along with failing to see the threat from iPhone/Android will go down in history as one of the biggest business mistakes.

tkorri 13y ago
Maemo/Meego wasn't really an option. It wasn't ready back then and it doesn't seem to be ready now either, since rumours say that Samsung has axed Tizen development. I think the only company currently developing Maemo/Meego succesor is Jolla with their Sailfish OS. Although they've also missed deadlines they've given themselves, so their product is starting slip more and more into to the vaporware category.
- ac 13y ago
  > Maemo/Meego wasn't really an option. Now, why wasn't it? It was a solid OS, and there were two great products running it (N900 and N9).
  - zem 13y ago
    yes, if nokia had only kept up with bugfixes i might still be using my n900. the underlying OS worked wonderfully.
  - sirkneeland 13y ago
    The N9 was the only truly great product (as in a regular consumer would have found the UX appealing). And that didn't really together until AFTER Elop told them that they were all doomed. Only then did they stop playing politics long enough to build and ship something amazing (Harmattan on the N9). Kind of like how at the end of the world, everyone seems to get along better because there is no upside to triumphing politically.
  - rodgerd 13y ago

alipang 13y ago

So, now that we now Samsung is somewhat dominant in the Android space we get an explanation that the reason Nokia went with WP was that Samsung would be a dominant player in the Android space. I guess I would have been kinda impressed if they actually gave this as the reason two years ago.

barista 13y ago
It was quite obvious even a couple of years ago that Samsung will basically dominate Android to the extent that android == Samsung given the market share. The whole open platform is a façade that Google has created.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Zigurd 13y ago
This is the second time this particular excuse has been trotted out. It didn't work the first time, either.

protomyth 13y ago

Was Symbian so far gone that it couldn't compete? They bought Qt and it seemed like they could make a go out it.

RyanZAG 13y ago
As someone who gave Symbian coding a chance, Symbian was the most terribly badly designed platform I've ever seen. The distribution restrictions made it even worse. The core UI platform was truly awful. The Nokia engineers on the N8 did an incredible job getting it to where it was - semi usable - but it simply couldn't compete with Linux/Android/iOS.

Ologn 13y ago

You can tell what Elop is saying is nonsense just from the article title. Specifically the word "choose". Choose? Why did Elop have to "choose" Windows? Did Samsung have to choose between Android or Windows? Did HTC have to choose between Android or Windows? They did not. Samsung sells both Windows and Android smartphones. The Android phones have sold spectacularly, the Windows phones have not. HTC sells both Android and Windows phones. HTC's Windows phones do not sell. HTC's Android phones sell well enough to keep them in the game - their profits are not spectacular, but they're doing better than RIM and other companies. I'm happy with my HTC One. I go into a Sprint or AT&T or T-mobile or Verizon mobile store, and up front I see the featured phones - an iPhone, a Samsung S4, and an HTC one. Way in the back is a Blackberry kiosk. Next to it is a Windows kiosk with the HTC Windows phone, the Samsung Windows phone, and - depending on the carrier - the Nokia Windows phone. This is what Nokia is crowing about? Maybe this type of talk might fool non-technical stock buyers who do not know any better. All of us know that Nokia could have made both Android and Windows phones, just as Samsung and HTC (and other companies) do. So we realize that his invention of the idea that they were forced to choose one or the other is nonsense. It's too late for Nokia to come in and be a big player in the Android market now, but it was not when way back when he sent his "burning platform" memo out. Of course, some with perhaps more knowledge than me might say that Nokia was in bad financial shape and needed Microsoft to bail them out financially or they'd go under, and they were forced to go Windows only in that sense. That may also be true, but again, it has no relation to the bogus reasons he says he had to make a "choice" in the article. He seems to be in the only company that had to make a choice.

throwawaykf02 13y ago
To me, choosing one and focusing on it seems the only rational choice, rather than making two halfhearted forays. Say Nokia did choose both. They'd have invested a huge amount of money and resources (comparable to what they invested for on WP), and most likely they'd just be down there with HTC (despite the One), Sony and LG, who are all struggling in the smartphone market. How is that better? Samsung can afford to make that investment, of course, as well as experiment with alternatives like Bada. They have a huge amount of resources at their disposal. Nokia saw the coming adversity and realized they had to choose. There were many reasons affecting that choice, of course... such as Google's insistence that the Android trademark only comes with the full host of Google apps, including their navigation app, which directly undercuts Nokia's Navteq investment. Or Microsoft's willingness to pump billions into joint marketing efforts. Even HTC realizes that heavy marketing is needed to compete with Samsung.

JanneVee 13y ago

Abandoning Maemo/Meego made me sad. I'm not going to second guess the decision. But when that decision was made they lost me as a customer forever. My last Nokia was the N900. I loved that phone.

speeder 13y ago

I still think Nokia did a major shit. First, they did not needed to replace Symbian in first place, for example here in Brazil 60% of the mobile market was Symbian, until Nokia decided to kill it (in two years almost all Symbians are gone). Think about it, Nokia was selling in Brazil alone more than 100 million phones. People were perfectly happy with Symbian, people here LIKED Symbian, we had huge internet forums for Symbian fans, we had Symbian software developers, and so on... Nokia announcement that they would not use Symbian anymore killed all that overnight. And then, they choose Windows, and went for the high-end... They basically dumped their old market, and tried to pursue what then was Apple and Blackberry markets, they basically threw out all their loyal costumers. I for one got really disappointed, I loved Nokias, I had a couple of Nokia phones, a developer account, I made even J2ME stuff for non-Symbian Nokia, and all of that, started because OTHER PEOPLE made me like it, because Nokia was wildly popular (mostly because of its crazy resilience and quality engineering, something more prized in a developing country than flashy features). And they threw it all out in one shot. Most people I know still feel that noone has risen to substitute Nokia, some people think Nokia is 100% dead (along with Blackberry), but are unhappy with Samsung... I personally saw so far a single android phone that impressed me (that is the Xperia Play, that I own), and was quite disappointed with Sony abandoning it too. I am yet to see a phone that make me want to buy it to substitute my old Xperia Play

igravious 13y ago
Does not sound like the actions of a rational company.
toyg 13y ago
To be fair, in developed markets Symbian was crashing well before the "burning platform" memo came out. The disappearance of Symbian in developing markets has a lot to do with Android-induced price drops, which would have happened anyway. But yeah, they had a Qt-based transition roadmap that could have saved their ecosystem, and Elop threw all that out of the window. The rational move would have been to make Qt run on WP and salvage at least some of their developer partners.
- 13y ago