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It could "hardly be argued" that it'd be a difficult task to compete with Samsung? No, that could definitely be argued. I'm not exactly a gigantic Elop fan but

by abalone 13y ago

It could "hardly be argued" that it'd be a difficult task to compete with Samsung? No, that could definitely be argued. I'm not exactly a gigantic Elop fan but Nokia was in trouble long before he came on board. Consider this headline from his hiring in 2010: "Nokia Hires Microsoft's Elop as CEO to Reverse Losses to Apple". A top Nokia shareholder said, "Earlier management grossly underestimated the challenges related to moving from a hardware-driven business model to software." And Elop: "My job is to take the organization through a period of disruption..." [1] That's what's at the core of this, a kind of denial about Nokia's condition pre-Elop. Fans want to pretend everything was hunky-dorey and make the hatchet man the scapegoat. But really, Nokia fumbled their chance to build a smartphone platform several years ago. And one could definitely argue that Elop's bet on Microsoft's platform was a better shot at a profitable strategy than competing with Samsung in the Android space. (Have you considered that's why the board brought him on in the first place?) Didn't work out so well but probably neither would have becoming yet another Android player. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-10/nokia-hires-microsoft-s-elop-as-chief-executive-to-reverse-losses-to-apple.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-10/nokia-hires-microso...

Shamanmuni 13y ago
I didn't say that, I said it could hardly be argued that they couldn't have easily entered the Android ecosystem. We are talking about smartphones, they were (and are) competing with Samsung anyway, Windows or Android. So, what you say doesn't make much sense to me. I acknowledge Nokia's situation in 2010, but I think you are taking the other extreme of considering Nokia already doomed by that time. By the time Elop entered Nokia it still was the largest mobile phone maker in unit sales and Samsung had just entered the smartphone sector a year before. And though a promising entrant, Samsung wasn't that big of a threat until much later. Look at the article you linked, or Elop's memo, they don't even mention Samsung or Galaxy phones (just Android in general terms). At that time Android was low-hanging fruit to be put on their phones and leverage their market leadership. The first Galaxy phones weren't exactly a paramount of excellence. I don't think it's very unrealistic to think that they could have competed with Samsung in more or less equal terms for Android dominance. And I'm telling this without being exactly an Android fan, but at that time it was the most sensible course of action (IMHO). They could have even tried both Android and Windows Phone (something Samsung did) and see what sticked. Instead, they chose to stop Symbian and Meego and took the strange decision of betting the future of the company on the all new Windows Phone 7, something which can only be described as an enormous gamble. Those first phones couldn't even be upgraded to Windows Phone 8 when it came out afterwards, and I'm not even mentioning the incompatibilities between those two. Talk about a burning platform.
- abalone 13y ago
  You claimed more than that. You said it would be easy to enter "and differentiate themselves like Samsung has" (emphasis mine). That most certainly is not easy. There are multiple big players that have tried that exact strategy and failed or been reduced to marginless commodities. Just found this money quote from Elop: For Elop, it was all about standing out from the crowd, and he admitted that Nokia couldn't do that with Android. "The single most important word is 'differentiation,' " he said. "Entering the [Android] environment late, we knew we would have a hard time differentiating." Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57559620-94/nokia-on-the-edge-inside-an-icons-fight-for-survival/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57559620-94/nokia-on-the-ed...
  - Shamanmuni 13y ago
    Of course, I'm sure it could never be an automatic winning strategy, but I think it could have given them a fair chance at market dominance. Instead of the popular and proven OS with many apps they chose the unpopular and unknown one with just a few. And in the end, what's the advantage of the Windows-only strategy when Microsoft gives licenses to Samsung and HTC to produce phones with the exact same OS? They haven't differentiate themselves at all from the competition, just cornered themselves.
    - abalone 13y ago
      So you're saying they shouldn't have gone with an OS that is licensed to Samsung and HTC because they can't "differentiate themselves at all from the competition," and instead they should go with an OS that is licensed to Samsung and HTC because "it could hardly be argued that it was difficult to differentiate themselves." I sense a possible flaw in that logic.
      - elbear 13y ago
        Well, it was Nokia the ones who said that they wanted to differentiate themselves, which they clearly didn't since they chose an OS used by other manufacturers as well. What he's saying is that Nokia could have at least chosen the more popular OS, which would have offered them a higher market share.

by abalone 13y ago

Shamanmuni 13y ago

I didn't say that, I said it could hardly be argued that they couldn't have easily entered the Android ecosystem. We are talking about smartphones, they were (and are) competing with Samsung anyway, Windows or Android. So, what you say doesn't make much sense to me. I acknowledge Nokia's situation in 2010, but I think you are taking the other extreme of considering Nokia already doomed by that time. By the time Elop entered Nokia it still was the largest mobile phone maker in unit sales and Samsung had just entered the smartphone sector a year before. And though a promising entrant, Samsung wasn't that big of a threat until much later. Look at the article you linked, or Elop's memo, they don't even mention Samsung or Galaxy phones (just Android in general terms). At that time Android was low-hanging fruit to be put on their phones and leverage their market leadership. The first Galaxy phones weren't exactly a paramount of excellence. I don't think it's very unrealistic to think that they could have competed with Samsung in more or less equal terms for Android dominance. And I'm telling this without being exactly an Android fan, but at that time it was the most sensible course of action (IMHO). They could have even tried both Android and Windows Phone (something Samsung did) and see what sticked. Instead, they chose to stop Symbian and Meego and took the strange decision of betting the future of the company on the all new Windows Phone 7, something which can only be described as an enormous gamble. Those first phones couldn't even be upgraded to Windows Phone 8 when it came out afterwards, and I'm not even mentioning the incompatibilities between those two. Talk about a burning platform.

abalone 13y ago
You claimed more than that. You said it would be easy to enter "and differentiate themselves like Samsung has" (emphasis mine). That most certainly is not easy. There are multiple big players that have tried that exact strategy and failed or been reduced to marginless commodities. Just found this money quote from Elop: For Elop, it was all about standing out from the crowd, and he admitted that Nokia couldn't do that with Android. "The single most important word is 'differentiation,' " he said. "Entering the [Android] environment late, we knew we would have a hard time differentiating." Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57559620-94/nokia-on-the-edge-inside-an-icons-fight-for-survival/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57559620-94/nokia-on-the-ed...
- Shamanmuni 13y ago
  Of course, I'm sure it could never be an automatic winning strategy, but I think it could have given them a fair chance at market dominance. Instead of the popular and proven OS with many apps they chose the unpopular and unknown one with just a few. And in the end, what's the advantage of the Windows-only strategy when Microsoft gives licenses to Samsung and HTC to produce phones with the exact same OS? They haven't differentiate themselves at all from the competition, just cornered themselves.
  - abalone 13y ago
    So you're saying they shouldn't have gone with an OS that is licensed to Samsung and HTC because they can't "differentiate themselves at all from the competition," and instead they should go with an OS that is licensed to Samsung and HTC because "it could hardly be argued that it was difficult to differentiate themselves." I sense a possible flaw in that logic.
    - elbear 13y ago
      Well, it was Nokia the ones who said that they wanted to differentiate themselves, which they clearly didn't since they chose an OS used by other manufacturers as well. What he's saying is that Nokia could have at least chosen the more popular OS, which would have offered them a higher market share.