Nokia's Present & Future

Elop didn't even choose Microsoft, MS was chosen by the board of directors after deciding it would be better option for Nokia than going Android.

The conspiracy theorists are just unbelieveable - no matter which compnays CEO you are, you can't really sink the company - you do your best to guide the company to board of directors vision and if the board isn't satisfied, they will replace you.
 
For this to work, Elop's orders had to have been to deliberately run Nokia into the ground for Microsoft the pick it up on the cheap.

Microsoft is really out for one thing: avoiding irrelevance in the mobile world. It would have been in their best interest for Nokia to do great with Windows Phone right from the start.

That didn't work out, so now they go to plan B.
 
If you knew anything about Blackberry, you wouldn't be making that analogy in the first place... if you don't know about either company, why are you comparing the two? It's not a good habit to just say things for no reason...

Besides the fact that RIM's CEO was too busy trying to buy a hockey team in his last years at the company, and wasn't paying attention to the changing landscape in phones, Blackberry only made smart handsets, notably with keyboards.

Most handsets Nokia sells are not smart phones. How does this purchase acknowledge that? Not at all. Nokia still sells more phones than any other company other than Samsung. Going with Windows Phone exclusively surrendered their high end phone market share.

And it's not a wonder why they only went with Windows Phone. Stephen Elop can answer that question very clearly.

Saying "I think they did OK" doesn't mean anything, when in reality it's just not true. "I think they did OK" sounds more like an apology saying "WP isn't doing that badly" when in fact... it is performing poorly, whether you like the system or not.

Microsoft will continue to license the Nokia name for up to 10 years for use only on featurephones. Also while the Blackberry/RIM comparison while not perfect (and rarely in real life will you see to exact situations) there's a legitimate reason for comparing the two. Both failed to anticipate the change towards touch-friendly smartphones and both suffer for it. For RIM that meant mainly the loss of it's enormous subscription revenues which allowed it to rival and sometimes exceed that of Symbian even though it was dwarfed in market share. For Nokia the Smartphone revolution turned it's once high margin high volume featurephone business became a low margin one.
 
Unless I'm terribly mistaken: it was Nokia who hired Elop. Nobody forced them to do so. The whole idea that this was all orchestrated by Microsoft right from the start is laughable.

Of course it wasn't microsoft or elop alone. This had to be orchestrated with the board of directors and some major shareholders from the start.

We'll see your comments about every suspicion being "laughable" when reports about investigations start appearing in the web.



Mintmaster has gone terribly silent, but it seems some are still convinced this is all a coincidence.
Even with former heads of departments over at Nokia are coming out saying it's now obvious this was all planned from the start.
 
So some former Nokia directors back before Elop was hired, wanted to deliberately destroy the value of their company so that it became cheap enough for MS to buy?

Right.

Why would they want to do that?

(Whatever former department heads say is irrelevant. They are as emotionally invested in this as many of their customers and understandably pissed. That doesn't mean they had full insight into the dealings of the board. Department heads are almost never involved in that kind of level.)
 
Didn't Nokia lose its value because of the stupid and arrogant policy to try to fight in the market with something which consumers don't like? The same shit as what microsft does with win 8... :rolleyes:

Such companies should have only one destiny and it is to fade away :D
 
Biggest reason was underestimating smartphones with touch interface and when finally realizing they need to go there, they went with wrong OS (Symbian)
 
Didn't Nokia lose its value because of the stupid and arrogant policy to try to fight in the market with something which consumers don't like? The same shit as what microsft does with win 8... :rolleyes:

Such companies should have only one destiny and it is to fade away :D

Or every non-Samsung Android phone company.
 
So some former Nokia directors back before Elop was hired, wanted to deliberately destroy the value of their company so that it became cheap enough for MS to buy?

Right.

Why would they want to do that?

You clearly don't know how directors can be rewarded.
The idea that corporate fiduciaries actually uphold their duty to protect investors' wealth first has been laughable for over a decade. Just look at board make-ups and the directors that vote to pay massive bonuses to departing CEOs only to later get their own turn at the same game. Today's board elites are a club that scratches each others' backs at the expense of the shareholders.
 
You clearly don't know how directors can be rewarded.
The idea that corporate fiduciaries actually uphold their duty to protect investors' wealth first has been laughable for over a decade. Just look at board make-ups and the directors that vote to pay massive bonuses to departing CEOs only to later get their own turn at the same game. Today's board elites are a club that scratches each others' backs at the expense of the shareholders.

Well that's not exactly true in all cases, as typically in my experience the board elites are the majority shareholders of the company. So when they vote themselves massive pay-raises or obscene golden parachutes they're doing it for the good of the shareholders (the board). It's at the cost of the minority shareholders.
 
Well that's not exactly true in all cases, as typically in my experience the board elites are the majority shareholders of the company. So when they vote themselves massive pay-raises or obscene golden parachutes they're doing it for the good of the shareholders (the board). It's at the cost of the minority shareholders.

You're, in general, describing privately held or young companies. Most larger, public companies have boards recommended by existing board members to massive numbers of shareholders who simply say ok without knowing anything about the individuals or their connections to exisiting directors.
 
This is just sad, Nokia makes some of the best mobile phone hardware in the biz and IMO they really could have owned the Android space due to their superior camera and build quality alone. Not to mention they could have diversified the risk of being commoditized by continuing to work on Meego/maemo but ever since their deal with MS its been downhill. Their windows phone are nice but if you don't want that operating system you are out of luck. Elop - what a train wreck......
 
This is just sad, Nokia makes some of the best mobile phone hardware in the biz and IMO they really could have owned the Android space due to their superior camera and build quality alone. Not to mention they could have diversified the risk of being commoditized by continuing to work on Meego/maemo but ever since their deal with MS its been downhill. Their windows phone are nice but if you don't want that operating system you are out of luck. Elop - what a train wreck......

When Stephen Elop took over Nokia it was 8 months before the release of the Galaxy S2 which effectively cemented Samsung hold on the Android handset market and basically knocking off HTC and Motorola from they're once dominating perch. There weren't any easy answer then and that's why they took the step of hiring an outsider as CEO. Going with Windows Phone was for the chunk of cash, and the hope that they could piggypack over the large Windows Phone marketing campaign and becoming a big fish in a small pond. It didn't work out but it's a reasonable strategy.
 
Mintmaster has gone terribly silent, but it seems some are still convinced this is all a coincidence.
Even with former heads of departments over at Nokia are coming out saying it's now obvious this was all planned from the start.
I've gone silent about what, exactly? The start of Nokia's decline was well before WP8. It was with their complacency in the era of multitouch (hell, even single touch).

Whether this was the plan all along when the board hired Elop is irrelevant and does nothing to disprove anything I've ever said. It wasn't sabotage, it was making the best of a bad situation. The board's goal is to maximize the value of the company. If they felt the best way to do that was entering a crowded Android market incredibly late while also turning down a couple billion in MS platform support payments, they would have done so. Even as late as a few weeks before Elop took over, the previous CEO said using Android was like "peeing in your pants for warmth".
 
If they felt the best way to do that was entering a crowded Android market incredibly late while also turning down a couple billion in MS platform support payments, they would have done so. Even as late as a few weeks before Elop took over, the previous CEO said using Android was like "peeing in your pants for warmth"http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/21/ce-oh-no-he-didnt-anssi-vanjoki-says-using-android-is-like-pe/.

Regardless this position was wrong for those who could execute, Android has been very good for Samsung for example. FWIW Nokia could have released a device with simply a better camera (very easy for them) and taken market share.
 
When Stephen Elop took over Nokia it was 8 months before the release of the Galaxy S2 which effectively cemented Samsung hold on the Android handset market and basically knocking off HTC and Motorola from they're once dominating perch. There weren't any easy answer then and that's why they took the step of hiring an outsider as CEO. Going with Windows Phone was for the chunk of cash, and the hope that they could piggypack over the large Windows Phone marketing campaign and becoming a big fish in a small pond. It didn't work out but it's a reasonable strategy.

8 months is an eternity in the mobile phone business, new phones come out every 12 months with more memory, larger displays, faster processors and better battery life. I understand why they did what they did but as many people at the time pointed out the deal would benefit MS far more than it would benefit Nokia and much of the fears/criticism at the time has played out exactly as expected. I am not saying Elop was planted there or anything like that but the strategy placed all their eggs in one basket. And at the time Nokia was just releasing new phones like the N9 for a dead OS so they could have made a N8 based Android phone for example with best in class camera among other features or simply put out a version of the N9 with Android on it for not much more than they already invested in either platform.
 
Regardless this position was wrong for those who could execute, Android has been very good for Samsung for example. FWIW Nokia could have released a device with simply a better camera (very easy for them) and taken market share.

Very good for Samsung, not so good for a lot of other players. HTC started off strong, and is now fading. Motorola started off strong, and is now fading. Sony started strong, then declined, and now they are back on solid footing. LG is slowly declining. ZTE shot up fast, due to the Chinese market, and is now declining.

Basically if you aren't Samsung then you're going to have a tough time of it outside of China with an Android phone. And even in China, Samsung is now starting to take away marketshare from the Chinese companies.

Considering the headstart that Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony, Motorola, etc. had over Nokia, what makes you think Nokia would be better off than they are now? If they were lucky, they might be in a similar position to HTC, who was once the darling of the Android makers. Only without HTC's strong Android start, they likely would have been even farther behind by now. IMO, Nokia would likely be bankrupt and sold off piecemeal for a much smaller amount had they gone with Android.

IMO, I don't like Microsoft buying Nokia's devices division, but I'm not sure Microsoft had a choice if they wanted Nokia to have a shot at being a premium smartphone manufacturer.

It's just a shame that Nokia couldn't have stuck around for another year or two. Their low end WP phones are finally starting to pay off with the Nokia 520 being very popular in Africa and India from what I've read. It certainly doesn't hurt that it is the best performing smartphone in the 150 USD (unsubsidized) price bracket.

Regards,
SB
 
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