[Mize]

Originally Posted by wishiknew

I guess I'm just the opposite in not believing its worth the cost to include T-mobile users especially when they made it known they will refarm from AWS to PCS.

You don't know the cost.

...but you know it's too high. ok

If it's zero (and it may be damn close for the nokia radio) any sales are infinite ROI. And how long before T-mobile goes PCS?

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Mize

You don't know the cost.

...but you know it's too high. ok

If it's zero (and it may be damn close for the nokia radio) any sales are infinite ROI. And how long before T-mobile goes PCS?

It's guaranteed not to be zero: if not because of increased component cost then because of engineering effort. Kinda obvious no?

[wco81]

No, Apple is just going to extort T-Mobile because they've been able to do the same to the other carriers.

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

You're blatantly wrong and yes, Ahonen is right.
Your first mistake is in the "Symbian QT".
It's not "Symbian QT". It's "Symbian+MeeGo+Windows+Android+Linux" QT.
To even think all these won't surpass the amount of iOS developers even now is simply ridiculous.

At the beginning of 2011 Nokia did have a very large and very strong developer mindshare. The world's largest, by far.

By using your kind of reasoning, I'm sure it's fair to say that Elop switched from a relatively marginal group of developers to the largest in the world. ("Developers, developers, developers...")

I've programmed in QT. It's, well, cute. Good enough for multi-platform desktop applications if you don't mind that ever so slight quirks make it fell a bit awkward compared to pure native programs. And the mobile version had the necessary set of basic tools and widgets, but just like early Android, it didn't stand a chance against the slickness, smoothness, uniformity, and high-level powered functionality of UIKit. Developers like to program on a platform they love, despite the fact that there were initially actively shoo'ed away. Nokia never had that appeal.

Yes, fragmentation between S60v3, S60v5 and S^3 was (still is..) a total mess, but it still did lots of money to thousands of developers.

I don't doubt that a couple of them must have been able to make a good living out of it.

You can replay the engadget's/gizmodo's utter lies about Nokia already being in a downward spiral in the Q1 2011.. but it won't make it any truer.

Yet it was true. It just wasn't blatantly obvious. A rising tide lifts all boats, which allowed Nokia hold it things up for a while. But the trend had been there all along.

In Q1 2011 sales weres rising, ASP was rising and profits were hitting records.

You mean their record mobile profits of ~1900M euros of 2008Q1, right? The ones that were at 831M in 2010Q1? And 700M in 2011Q1? (google.com, you should try it sometime.)

What innovation happened in other platforms that didn't happen in Q4 2010 Symbian^3 devices?
Capacitive screens? Check. Touch-friendly interface? Check.
RGB AMOLED screens? Check. Social Integration? Check.
App store? Please.. they had it years before the "app trend".

Carrier billing for app purchases? Even today, only Nokia has that.
A smartphone camera? N8 is pretty much unrivaled even today.
NFC? That's only recently being implemented in Androids, whereas the mid-range C7 launched 2 years ago already had it.

So what exactly is this huge lack of innovation that you mention?

I believe you're talking about feature checklist dysfunction. Doing many things so so instead of doing a few things exceptionally well.

During the early days of the first iPhone (remember: didn't even have an app store), I tried browsing the web on the high-end Nokia of the day. It worked. Sort of. But was it a pleasant experience? Hell no. That was Nokia. By the time they realized checklists were not enough, they had already lost the mindshare.

Again: Nokia's problems were ones of execution. All models were coming out later than predicted and that could be dangerous on the long run. They just needed to reduce the number of decision layers inside the company and churn out new models faster.

Nokia missed the boat. Somebody else came along, showed the world how a user friendly smart phone could really be made. Even the best possible execution won't help you if you're starting way behind.

[Mize]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

It's guaranteed not to be zero: if not because of increased component cost then because of engineering effort. Kinda obvious no?

So you don't think a pentaband radio already exists? Or you think Meizo, Huwei and Nokia designed their own?

Here's one:
http://www.roundsolutions.com/shop/p...GA-Module.html

There goes your NRE.

[Mize]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

Even the best possible execution won't help you if you're starting way behind.

You realize you've contradicted yourself, right? By definition Apple was way behind.

A good read:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/noki...?tag=mncol;txt

Nokia had no doubt floundered, but they had good stuff in the works. Elop then destroyed the company in a matter of weeks by killing their cash cow and abandoning their internal work that might well have made them more than another HTC with only one OS.

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Mize

You realize you've contradicted yourself, right? By definition Apple was way behind.

Apple was behind in selling phones. But anyone can build one: just slap a couple of Mediatek chips on a PCB and design a piece of plastic around it. Hundreds of Chinese companies were already doing it. Apple was way ahead in having the components to build a user friendly computer. And even when they released it, most competitors initially didn't realize it. It was only half RDF when Jobs claimed, in 2007, that they were 5 years ahead of everybody else. Google was the first to realize the problem and redesigned major parts of their work in progress, with the benefit of having the DNA of a fast moving Silicon Valley company. Nokia was not so lucky and had the additional burden of having to manage transitioning away from an existing product line.

Elop accelerated the demise of Nokia, but there is little doubt in my mind that it would have happened anyway. RIM did not dramatically dump their aging OS, yet they are collapsing just the same.

[dagamer]

Originally Posted by wco81

No, Apple is just going to extort T-Mobile because they've been able to do the same to the other carriers.

Honestly, it has nothing to do with extortion, since other smaller regional CDMA carriers have gotten the iPhone. Apple does not want to build a special phone for only 33 million potential subscribers. And for people who think that the "Verizon" iPhone was special, Apple has offered it to several regional carriers in the US, and it's hugely important in China where there are over 600 million wireless subscribers. That's double the number of iPhone sold since 2007.

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Mize

So you don't think a pentaband radio already exists? Or you think Meizo, Huwei and Nokia designed their own?

Here's one:
http://www.roundsolutions.com/shop/p...GA-Module.html

There goes your NRE.

Of course they don't design their own. But if you put it on your PCB you still need to test and qualify it. That's the NRE.

[Mize]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

Of course they don't design their own. But if you put it on your PCB you still need to test and qualify it. That's the NRE.

Alright fine, f*ck it and the 34 million handsets/year you might sell to T-mobile or EUers who travel to the US.

So why aren't there more quad-band UMTS phones?

[Mize]

You know, you guys are a LOT smarter than HTC, Samsung & LG. All of them are stupid enough to make UMTS 1700 phones and they're even releasing *new* phones like the HTC One S or Sammy Galaxy S Blaze for 1700 UMTS. They should read this thread so they don't make such dumb mistakes!

[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

By using your kind of reasoning, I'm sure it's fair to say that Elop switched from a relatively marginal group of developers to the largest in the world. ("Developers, developers, developers...")

No, it's the other way around.
(I didn't get the joke, honestly..)

Originally Posted by silent_guy

I've programmed in QT. It's, well, cute. Good enough for multi-platform desktop applications if you don't mind that ever so slight quirks make it fell a bit awkward compared to pure native programs. And the mobile version had the necessary set of basic tools and widgets, but just like early Android, it didn't stand a chance against the slickness, smoothness, uniformity, and high-level powered functionality of UIKit. Developers like to program on a platform they love, despite the fact that there were initially actively shoo'ed away. Nokia never had that appeal.

You mean it's easier to program using a SDK that's designed for 2 hardware variations per year than one designed for millions of hardware variations?


And what's the point with the iOS comparison? iOS is a closed platform. Again: whatever strategy/implementation works for apple's products will work with apple. Most of the stupidest decisions that have been made in the mobile world were exactly the ones that tried to copy apple's methods in an ecossystem where it obviously wouldn't work.

Not to mention that programming native for mobiles in mid/long-term during an era where marketshare and installed user bases take drastic disruptions every 2 years is pretty much cancerogenous IMO, but that's a whole other story.

Originally Posted by silent_guy

I don't doubt that a couple of them must have been able to make a good living out of it.

Haha, a couple..


This is during the transition from own website distribution to OVI Store distribution, so don't forget that during this time many developers were still doing money out of their own distribution channels.

Originally Posted by silent_guy

Yet it was true. It just wasn't blatantly obvious. A rising tide lifts all boats, which allowed Nokia hold it things up for a while. But the trend had been there all along.

Trend?
Nokia delayed the launch of Symbian^3 models with updated hardware, features and UI for a whole damn year and you'd need an article to tell you why the sales fell before the launch of S^3 models?
That's not analyst material, that's it's so obvious because it's stamped in his face material..

Originally Posted by silent_guy

You mean their record mobile profits of ~1900M euros of 2008Q1, right? The ones that were at 831M in 2010Q1? And 700M in 2011Q1? (google.com, you should try it sometime.)

Yes, and we can also see from your post that google can be pretty much useless if you don't know what you're looking for.
The discussion has always been about the symbian+meego -> WP7 transition (you don't even need google to verify that, you only need to take a few pages back in this very same thread). We were talking about smartphones:


The smartphone division (S60 and up) was doing record profits in the Q4 2010. The record profits of 2008 were due to the feature/dumb phones.

I mean, you could argue that if Nokia was doing most of their money out of feature phones in 2008, they should've kept doing those and never enter the smartphone business, but then most people would laugh at you. So please, don't...

Originally Posted by silent_guy

I believe you're talking about feature checklist dysfunction. Doing many things so so instead of doing a few things exceptionally well.

Oh look, yet another i-love-my-iphone-so-much-i-should-just-marry-it blog entry.
Wow, this 2-year-old ultra-biased opinion is so relevant and important for this discussion.
Not.

Nonetheless, why won't you tell me which of the items in the "feature checklist" worked "so so" in Symbian^3 devices back in Q4 2010?
I'd like to know more about all that experience you've had with a S^3/Anna/Belle device in order to form that opinion.
Only because what it seems is that you've had none...

Originally Posted by silent_guy

During the early days of the first iPhone (remember: didn't even have an app store), I tried browsing the web on the high-end Nokia of the day. It worked. Sort of. But was it a pleasant experience? Hell no. That was Nokia. By the time they realized checklists were not enough, they had already lost the mindshare.

Yeah Nokia was already doomed in 2011 because you didn't like the browsing experience in a S60v5 device back in 2007.
Spectacular reasoning.

Originally Posted by silent_guy

Nokia missed the boat. Somebody else came along, showed the world how a user friendly smart phone could really be made. Even the best possible execution won't help you if you're starting way behind.

Starting way behind in what?
Installed user base? Nope.
Marketshare? Nope.
Mindshare? Oh please, american tech-news mindshare isn't global mindshare. Symbian owned Japan's mindshare way more than iOS for many years after the iphone's release, for example.
User experience? Not from what I saw in the N9 reviews, or even the more recent Belle reviews.



As far as I can tell, you're simply repeating the gizmodo theories about how all Nokia devices were crap because they weren't an almighty iphone, nor trying to copy one.

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Mize

You know, you guys are a LOT smarter than HTC, Samsung & LG. All of them are stupid enough to make UMTS 1700 phones and they're even releasing *new* phones like the HTC One S or Sammy Galaxy S Blaze for 1700 UMTS. They should read this thread so they don't make such dumb mistakes!

Huh? All I said was that adding a feature has a cost. That's all. And why add it if there's no immediate need. LG and HTC need whatever small competitive benefit they can get so it makes sense for them.

But it's less of an issue if you already have a hard time supplying your existing markets.

[babybumb]

Originally Posted by Mize

A good read:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/noki...?tag=mncol;txt

Nokia had no doubt floundered, but they had good stuff in the works. Elop then destroyed the company in a matter of weeks by killing their cash cow and abandoning their internal work that might well have made them more than another HTC with only one OS.

A good read? LOL yeah. The fact that they were thinking Symbian as a cashcow that couldnt be derailed by something better was the problem. He seems actually proud about shipping shit products that just sold because no competition.

So armchair analysis is just great to hear from the guy actually was responsible for shipping the great N97. These ex-Nokia execs seem just terrible every time on media.

[Mize]

Originally Posted by babybumb

A good read? LOL yeah. The fact that they were thinking Symbian as a cashcow that couldnt be derailed by something better was the problem. He seems actually proud about shipping shit products that just sold because no competition.

So armchair analysis is just great to hear from the guy actually was responsible for shipping the great N97. These ex-Nokia execs seem just terrible every time on media.

You clearly don't run a business. I have owned and run businesses for 14 years and the term "cash cow" is often used for a dead product that is generating cash because it is entrenched. You milk it until it dies or until you've used that cash to invest in and launch your next successful product.

You really don't seem to understand that Nokia was making huge sales and generating good cashflow no matter how shitty Symbian was. So if you came in and wanted to move wholesale to WP7 the common sense business move is to develop WP7 product whilst still milking your cash cow. Elop didn't do that. He announced to the world that the company's current products - and a whole bunch that were to launch in the months ahead - were dead. By doing that he essentially shot his cash cow in the head with no other source of milk until he could develop, launch and succeed with his new plan.

This has nothing to do with whether or not Symbian was good - it has to do with a remarkably bad business decision.

[wishiknew]

N97 for sure counts as flipping the switch and selling millions of bad product that no one stopped from shipping.

[Mize]

Originally Posted by wishiknew

N97 for sure counts as flipping the switch and selling millions of bad product that no one stopped from shipping.

And a perfect example of how Elop could have generated cash while he transitioned the company to WP7 (although I would argue he should have transitioned to WP7 + Android + MeeGo as a long-shot).

Elop totally outdid the Osborne Effect. I was actually one of the people who wanted and Osborn but held back for the new, up-and-coming, so much better product that killed the company because of idiocy like Elop.

[wco81]

I see a new verb to use in the future.

The CEO E-lopped the profitable business line by announcing the new product months before it was ready.

[tangey]

Nokia's most lucrative products last quarter were iphones ? (and possibly is still the case)

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._phone_7_.html

Article suggest it might point to a long term direction for Nokia.

[Snyder]

Originally Posted by Mize

And a perfect example of how Elop could have generated cash while he transitioned the company to WP7 (although I would argue he should have transitioned to WP7 + Android + MeeGo as a long-shot).

It astonishing that they had that transition strategy already laid out.
They had enough devices and OS upgrades in the works that were a far cry from the n97 disaster, they had the Symbian Foundation mess sorted out and so on. They could have adapted at least something from that strategy to incorporate WP7 as the new goal platform without breaking so much stuff.

It's baffling that there are still people out there that find the new transition strategy, the burning platforms and so on a good and/or neccessary thing. (Usually with vacuous arguments like "the market needed a strong signal" and similar BS.)

[Mize]

Originally Posted by tangey

Nokia's most lucrative products last quarter were iphones ? (and possibly is still the case)

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._phone_7_.html

Article suggest it might point to a long term direction for Nokia.

They made more money from their Ovistore than from phones. That Elop still has a job is mind-boggling.

[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by Mize

They made more money from their Ovistore than from phones. That Elop still has a job is mind-boggling.

Whatever he's doing, he's doing it very well.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be the 7th highest paid executive in wireless businesses, and with a $600k bonus, just to let things clear that they think he's doing a great job.

Word on the street is that by now it's pretty obvious he's a Microsoft trojan, as well as the rest of the BoD over at Nokia.
The thing is, many of Nokia's major stock holders are also Microsoft's major stock holders. And for them, it's a lot more profitable to see Microsoft's stock rising to a new golden age at the cost of Nokia going down the toilet than to see Nokia standing their ground.
For that reason, they'll never stop Elop from being CEO and doing his "madness". He has the support from both the BoD and the stock holders.

[Mize]

Technically that type of collusion would be illegal - if you could prove it.
Damn shame.

[warmi]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

Whatever he's doing, he's doing it very well.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be the 7th highest paid executive in wireless businesses, and with a $600k bonus, just to let things clear that they think he's doing a great job.

Word on the street is that by now it's pretty obvious he's a Microsoft trojan, as well as the rest of the BoD over at Nokia.
The thing is, many of Nokia's major stock holders are also Microsoft's major stock holders. And for them, it's a lot more profitable to see Microsoft's stock rising to a new golden age at the cost of Nokia going down the toilet than to see Nokia standing their ground.
For that reason, they'll never stop Elop from being CEO and doing his "madness". He has the support from both the BoD and the stock holders.

How is Nokia going out of business of any value to Microsoft if they are counting on Nokia being the vehicle for introducing their mobile OS to the masses ?

You seem to have a very conspiratorial take on everything not to mention your strange preoccupation with US vs EU theme and I think it is clouding your judgement.

[Mize]

warmi: not saying there's any truth to it, but their are those who speculate that Elop and the BoD are trying to kill Nokia's value for a MS buyout. Sounds crazy to me.