Nokia's Present & Future

You can't be serious. I've been surfing the web and handling email and even editing word/excel documents since 2002. You seem to have forgotten Palm/Treo and every other incarnation of smart phones from pre-Apple iphone.

Me too. That's not the point. You may have known what a smartphone was since 2002, I may have known what a smartphone was since 2002, as far as world + dog are concerned the iphone was the first smartphone worth bothering with.
 
It doesnt matter it means the same thing

No, it doesn't mean the same thing. Tablets were done long before the ipad too, but the ipad transformed the market.

-it was very limited...but excelled in the few things it did..that doesn't make it the first smartphone or create a new market for them.

No it wasn't the first smartphone, I don't think anyone is saying that it was. Point is that the iphone allowed normal, non-techy people (ie. people who aren't like the people here) to access the functionality of a smartphone. That is the market that it created - the market for selling smartphones to non-computer-literate people (of whom there are orders of magnitude more than there are computer-literate people).
 
Im not dismissing it, I wouldnt have mentioned it if I was, for user experience is was something new....partly down to multi touch...a simple easy to use UI, and some extremely clever marketing which has been copied but never bettered since.
-it was very limited...but excelled in the few things it did..that doesn't make it the first smartphone or create a new market for them.

Of course it did. Everything changed after iPhone came out and by that I mean just about every damn phone company out there changed their physical design and user interaction to match that of iPhone.

It clearly redefined what a smart phone is supposed to look like and how it is supposed to work.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/silentmouth/7854314498/lightbox/
 
Before the iPhone, all other smartphones (except PalmOS) started out as feature phones and then they started piling on stuff, hoping that it would somehow work nicely together. It worked, sort of, but it was also kind of crap.

You could surf the web in an N95, but you rather did not. Same for maps, email, and later, App Store.

The iPhone started with a clean slate, reduced a very powerful existing OS to something that would fit and tacked on a UI framework that was unlike any other in terms of consistency, being built for touch etc.

And then they added a browser that actually worked.

It was not the first smartphone by any stretch but it was the first one that had a foundation that was built only for handheld computing. Except for Android, where Google, to its credit, had the insight and agility to make an immediate 180 degree turn and rework it as quickly as possible, nobody else had a chance.

Especially Nokia and RIM, not surprisingly 2 companies with lots of old school reliable engineering, where decisions are made after long technical evaluations and committee meetings. It's an asset if you need to convince telecom companies with similar old school concerns about reliability and 5 feet drop tests, but it makes it very hard to adapt to a disruptor.
 
Personally I think that MS's next acquisition target should be RIM, and that they should go after the business smartphone market big time. Leave the consumer/giggly-teens market to Apple/Samsung and focus on people who will pay for back-end services that will integrate with all the other enterprise stuff MS still does decently well. MS will never be kid-cool, it needs to stop trying to be that.
 
It was not the first smartphone by any stretch but it was the first one that had a foundation that was built only for handheld computing. Except for Android, where Google, to its credit, had the insight and agility to make an immediate 180 degree turn and rework it as quickly as possible, nobody else ....

Having Eric Schmidt on Apples board helped quite a bit with that.
 
Personally I think that MS's next acquisition target should be RIM, and that they should go after the business smartphone market big time. Leave the consumer/giggly-teens market to Apple/Samsung and focus on people who will pay for back-end services that will integrate with all the other enterprise stuff MS still does decently well. MS will never be kid-cool, it needs to stop trying to be that.
My company used to be exclusively Blackberry for company phones. Then they allowed the giggly teen stuff. I haven't seen a Blackberry in a long, long time. Same thing at my wife's company.

I can see how some law firms want the alleged safety of a Blackberry back-end server, but for many multi-nationals that's just overkill. Remote wipe support goes a long way.

Additional bonus for the company: the employees now pay for the devices themselves. How cool is that?
 
My company used to be exclusively Blackberry for company phones. Then they allowed the giggly teen stuff. I haven't seen a Blackberry in a long, long time. Same thing at my wife's company.

I can see how some law firms want the alleged safety of a Blackberry back-end server, but for many multi-nationals that's just overkill. Remote wipe support goes a long way.

Additional bonus for the company: the employees now pay for the devices themselves. How cool is that?

I wasn't really meaning that they'd buy BB to get the supposed security, merely that they'd remove them as a competitor from the market.

Do you honestly think that large companies are really comfortable with arbitrary BYOD, and that there's no room for a company like MS to tout full and secure integration of company smartphones with the desktop and server office stuff they already sell in large volumes?
 
I wasn't really meaning that they'd buy BB to get the supposed security, merely that they'd remove them as a competitor from the market.

Do you honestly think that large companies are really comfortable with arbitrary BYOD, and that there's no room for a company like MS to tout full and secure integration of company smartphones with the desktop and server office stuff they already sell in large volumes?

I think it's relatively safe to say that Blackberry will be gone from the market in a few years time regardless of whether someone buys them out or not.

Their current plan is to attempt to be a niche player, but that niche is getting smaller and smaller as other devices get more and more capable of fulfilling the niche that Blackberry wants to service.

Regards,
SB
 
I think it's relatively safe to say that Blackberry will be gone from the market in a few years time regardless of whether someone buys them out or not.

Their current plan is to attempt to be a niche player, but that niche is getting smaller and smaller as other devices get more and more capable of fulfilling the niche that Blackberry wants to service.

Regards,
SB

Sure, BB is roadkill regardless. The reason I suggested MS buy them is branding and buying the customer base and not much else. Obviously the customer base that remains is the last loyal hold-out bit, which might continue to pay.

What I'm really getting at is whether MS think there's a viable sell of a wholly integrated stack of software and services to the people who used to buy in the BB model. They can play silly buggers with compatibility with other smartphone platforms, as they have in the past.
 
look we can dissagree on that all we like, however you cant deny the burning platform memo was a complete reckless disaster, if you are going to change, do it gradually or at the very least dont publicly slate your current and immediate future products.

Nokia and Symbian were already a burning platform long before Elop came on board. That was the whole reason he was hired. He just happened to be outspoken enough to voice the reality that the board of directors knew about long before Elop was even considered a candidate for the job.

The memo may or may not have accelerated that, but the reality was that Symbian was already failing quite hard by the time he came on board. And Meego certainly wasn't going to turn that around.

Without Microsoft coming around in an attempting to keep the company solvent (like they did with Apple when they invested heavily in Apple), Nokia would be dead by now, either dissolved or bought out by one of the other players (like Samsung, LG, or a Chinese firm).

It was going to have to go up against and entrenched iPhone with a large app ecosystem with a LOT of people buying apps (something Nokia has never had) along with an incredibly user friendly interface.

Android only managed to be successful because Android devices were all sold to carriers at generally 1/2 the price or less of the iPhone. It wasn't until years later that Samsung would be able to sell an Android phone to a carrier for a price that was even within sniffing distance of what Apple was charging for the iPhone. That combined with the popularity of Google at least gave them a chance. How much of the world at the time didn't use Google search? Oh and getting started early enough and as someone else mentioned doing a complete 180 and changing Android to be more similar to iOS than what they had originally planned.

Their only chance at staying relevant in the mobile phone market was to either go Android (and go after the peanuts left over from Samsung) or bet the bank on Microsoft and potentially be the largest Windows Phone player.

Android meant they would be guaranteed to always be a marginal player if they managed to stay in business (HTC is struggling to do that even with starting from a dominant Android position and making a lot of critically acclaimed phones). Windows Phone means taking a huge risk where you'll either still be a marginal player or go out of business; but with a potential upside of becoming a whole lot more profitable if WP takes off. That isn't going to happen if you go the Android route. That isn't going to happen if you go with another phone OS (Firefox, Tizen, Meego, Blackberry, whatever...) without billions and billions of cash to throw at app. developers.

Any new player is going to require billions of USD in order to even crack the market. And billions more to have a hope of getting even 10-15%.

Regards,
SB
 
Sure, BB is roadkill regardless. The reason I suggested MS buy them is branding and buying the customer base and not much else. Obviously the customer base that remains is the last loyal hold-out bit, which might continue to pay.

What I'm really getting at is whether MS think there's a viable sell of a wholly integrated stack of software and services to the people who used to buy in the BB model. They can play silly buggers with compatibility with other smartphone platforms, as they have in the past.

The only benefit I could see is grabbing whatever IP stack BB has. And I'm not sure that whatever IP they have is terribly valuable, otherwise one of the mobile phone makers would have made a play for the company by now. They haven't been in a very solid position for quite a few years now.

Regards,
SB
 
Do you honestly think that large companies are really comfortable with arbitrary BYOD, and that there's no room for a company like MS to tout full and secure integration of company smartphones with the desktop and server office stuff they already sell in large volumes?
Yes, I think so. Not necessary 'arbitrary' but iOS is already there.

Microsoft Exchange is already considered pretty secure anyway and what company doesn't allow bringing laptops home/in the field?

I don't think phones are much different than laptops from a security point of view. Both can be hacked. Laptops can have viruses and phishing attacks etc.

My company isn't very obsessed about security, but my wife's company is: USB lockdown on laptops, strict document control on PDFs with phone-home-on-open etc. But as long as you have a lock screen password on an iPhone they're fine with it connecting to their MS Exchange server. (They don't allow Android.)

MS already claims that their current backend is secure enough. I don't think there's much to be gained on this front.
 
Iphone made smartphones desirable and not for the geeks, lets remember the original iphone didnt have 3g, copy and paste, multitasking of any kind, camera? Poor battery life, and many many other features smartphone users have enjoyed for years.

Jobs brought non tecky people into the fold with its simplicity, slick operation and style...you could say It opened up a new market yes...but it didnt create the smatphones market. .it was already there..it redifined it.
 
It's also amusing that they neglected to mention HTC, who succeeded and grew purely based on Windows Mobile (starting in 2002). And moved to Android when the writing was on the wall that a revolution in smartphones was coming.

Yup write an article about Microsoft's strategic partners, and then conviently not mention one of the strongest ones prior to the introduction of the iPhone. Absolutely biased reporting.

Regards,
SB
 
I wouldn't rule out 15%. I wouldn't rule out 30% or 5% for that matter. But even if they achieve that (which I wouldn't bet on) market share isn't the same as profit share.
Sure but I'd argue that for those on top profit comes from platform. Apple is probably the only company to have substantial margins on the HW itself, no?
 
Not too sure I'd pay that much attention to an article whose author apparently fails to note that Motorola is now actually owned by Google...
That would have been quite a spectacular feat, given that the article was written half a year before said acquisition!
 
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