Nokia's Present & Future

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...

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


None of you actually looked at the date the article was written, did you?

The article was made as a reaction to the MS+Nokia exclusivity announcement.

BTW, what exclusivity agreement was ever made between HTC (former Qtek IIRC?) and Microsoft?
HTC never stopped making windows devices. It's just that Android sells so much more.
 
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.

Please stop. No - they weren't "failing quite hard", definitely not from a business POV. The last five quarters before the memo in q1 2011 they had increasing YoY revenue each quarter and not a single quarter in losses.
After the memo they hat a 30-50% decrease in YoY revenue EVERY SINGLE QUARTER. And don't even get me started on the losses. _That's_ "failing quite hard".
 
Please stop. No - they weren't "failing quite hard", definitely not from a business POV. The last five quarters before the memo in q1 2011 they had increasing YoY revenue each quarter and not a single quarter in losses.
After the memo they hat a 30-50% decrease in YoY revenue EVERY SINGLE QUARTER. And don't even get me started on the losses. _That's_ "failing quite hard".

I gave up on speaking out those facts because there are 3 or 4 users in this thread who will just repost the "Nokia was already doomed since the iphone" motto again, again and again until someone eventually believes in it.

I'm just warning you not to waste your time and effort as much as I did. It's worthless.
 
I gave up on speaking out those facts because there are 3 or 4 users in this thread who will just repost the "Nokia was already doomed since the iphone" motto again, again and again until someone eventually believes in it.

I'm just warning you not to waste your time and effort as much as I did. It's worthless.

If things were going swimmingly at Nokia .. why did they even bothered bringing Elop onboard ?
 
If things were going swimmingly at Nokia .. why did they even bothered bringing Elop onboard ?

Is there only black or white in this world?

Nokia was making money, increasing amounts of it, until February 2011.
At the same time, Nokia was losing great amounts of marketshare. Not necessarily because Nokia was selling less, but because the smartphone market was rising exponentially and new users seemed to prefer androids and iphones.

So yes, a change had to be made.. at least regarding the internal competition of OS development teams that proved to be poisonous in the mid/long run and the tremendous flaws they had with slipping deadlines consecutively.

But whatever was happening at Nokia was nowhere near the total clusterfuck that was to yell at the world they don't believe in their own product (insulting all their customers and developers at the time), scrap every OS development they had at the moment and become exclusive to a mobile OS that, in February 2011, had already proven to be a commercial flop. All this in exchange for peanuts, compared to the company's revenues at the time.

Of course, this post is going to be quoted by the same people with the same old arguments saying "everything was doomed since the iphone no matter what and microsoft was their best chance because money".
It'll be quoted about 3 times with the same written stuff, making my post seem somehow false.

So as I said, it's worthless.
 
Elop may not have deliberately tried to sabotage Nokia and make its value plummet.

But it's funny that's how it worked out isn't it? Must be a coincidence that MS could buy NOK for much less than they'd have had to pay before Elop.

And Elop may get rewarded as CEO of MSFT. What is that about? He presided over the destruction of a lot of value and he gets rewarded with a cushy gig at MS, even if he isn't installed as CEO?
 
Elop may not have deliberately tried to sabotage Nokia and make its value plummet.

But it's funny that's how it worked out isn't it? Must be a coincidence that MS could buy NOK for much less than they'd have had to pay before Elop.

And Elop may get rewarded as CEO of MSFT. What is that about? He presided over the destruction of a lot of value and he gets rewarded with a cushy gig at MS, even if he isn't installed as CEO?

This is my main point, you sumed it up in less words than I.
Elop presided of a catastrophe, 60% created soley by him, so why then would one of the worlds top companies install him as ceo? (or at least publically endorse the idea)

If you chuck out the microsoft hostile takeover rumours and look at it objectively it makes no sense what so ever.
 
Please stop. No - they weren't "failing quite hard", definitely not from a business POV. The last five quarters before the memo in q1 2011 they had increasing YoY revenue each quarter and not a single quarter in losses.
After the memo they hat a 30-50% decrease in YoY revenue EVERY SINGLE QUARTER. And don't even get me started on the losses. _That's_ "failing quite hard".
Is that true? Perhaps a graph will be nice with a line showing when who joined
 
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?
I think at least Samsung is doing fairly well selling the hardware.

But what do you count as platform profit? I guess Google earns some money on Play licensing and sales as well as increased ad revenue. Amazon expands their reach with Kindle tablets but what part of content sales can be attributed to those devices alone? The same has to be asked for iTunes, while Apple's App Store profit is fairly small compared to device profit IIRC.

In my opinion Microsoft will have to invest a lot before they can either sell high margin phones in huge numbers or attract the kind of user that's willing to spend a lot on content. It's possible they'll rake in a lot of money eventually, I just wouldn't bet on it.
 
BTW, what exclusivity agreement was ever made between HTC (former Qtek IIRC?) and Microsoft?
HTC never stopped making windows devices. It's just that Android sells so much more.

Eh? What exclusivity deal was ever made between MS and LG? None. LG was already making Android phones when they started to make WP devices.

Palm and MS? None. See above.

Nortel and MS? None.

So what does that have to do with leaving out one of the most successful WinMo companies ever? A company that had incredible growth as a company due entirely to Microsoft and WinMo?

Oh wait, because that would taint the whole point of that article which is to imply that all Microsoft mobile phone partners failed because of Microsoft, which isn't true at all.

And totally neglected to mention that Nortel and Palm didn't fail due to any partnership with Microsoft.

You could argue that Microsoft should have been better prepared for iOS smartphones, but the only company that could respond in time was a company that had NO mobile phone OS on the market at the time the iPhone hit the market. Which means out of all the companies they could actually respond relatively quickly as they could change the direction of their OS before it hit the market. And even then Android just barely managed to hang on long enough to get enough carriers pushing them, and a good enough OS revision to finally compete with iOS on even footing.

Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia, etc. had a much harder time responding due to having entrenched mobile phone OS's.

Imagine if Apple had allowed other hardware makers to license iOS? iOS would be the Windows of the mobile phone world. And Android at best would be the Mac or Linux of the mobile phone world.

Regards,
SB
 
And Elop may get rewarded as CEO of MSFT. What is that about? He presided over the destruction of a lot of value and he gets rewarded with a cushy gig at MS, even if he isn't installed as CEO?

I get the feeling that you guys are blowing Elop's chances of becoming MSFT's CEO a little out of proportion. Yes, Ballmer admitted that Elop was one of the candidates to become CEO. We don't have any idea how many other candidates there are. A handful? Dozens? They never said anything about Elop's chances of becoming CEO.
 
I get the feeling that you guys are blowing Elop's chances of becoming MSFT's CEO a little out of proportion. Yes, Ballmer admitted that Elop was one of the candidates to become CEO. We don't have any idea how many other candidates there are. A handful? Dozens? They never said anything about Elop's chances of becoming CEO.

Even being installed in charge of the Devices devision seems a step up.

His compensation could be much higher at MS than at NOK.
 
Nokia was making money, increasing amounts of it, until February 2011.
Yeah, going down a dead end path that most other manufacturers were bailing on because it had no future. You call it a cash cow but it was no more of one than the SUV craze was for GM. They went after it that lucrative market with more commitment than any other automaker until it died and left the rest of their product line in shambles.

I suppose you want to blame Elop's memo for the fall of RIM as well?
chart-of-the-day-blackberry-vs-iphone-shipments-september-2011.jpg


How about WinMo too?

What do you think was more likely? Elop's memo being wholly responsible for Nokia's downfall and BlackBerry/WinMo coincidentally falling at the same time? Or late 2010/early 2011 simply being the turning point for all traditional OSes to become obsolete in the face of iOS and Android?

But whatever was happening at Nokia was nowhere near the total clusterfuck that was to yell at the world they don't believe in their own product (insulting all their customers and developers at the time), scrap every OS development they had at the moment and become exclusive to a mobile OS that, in February 2011, had already proven to be a commercial flop. All this in exchange for peanuts, compared to the company's revenues at the time.
Even if they went with Android, every dollar and man hour invested in their new OS developments was a lost cause. Continuing the GM analogy, the OS development they had was like GM's Saturn line. It had to stop, as it had no future. Don't mention Tizen or WP by Samsung, because they are insignificant to Samsung's success and are side projects from a company swimming in profits. So stop bringing up the diversification point. It does more harm than good.

And those $250M/quarter "peanuts" were more than several Android makers were getting.

Of course, this post is going to be quoted by the same people with the same old arguments saying "everything was doomed since the iphone no matter what and microsoft was their best chance because money".
Have you even considered that maybe there's some truth to that when it's abundantly clear that going all in with either WP or Android were the only two options with any realistic chance of success?

And that the middling fate of so many Android OEMs - all of whom had a huge headstart on Nokia - made that choice unappealing to them?

No? The conspiracy theory makes more sense to you than that? Fine, believe what you want.
 
I think at least Samsung is doing fairly well selling the hardware.
And they seem to be the only ones. ;)

Apple's App Store profit is fairly small compared to device profit IIRC
The more crowded market gets, the lower their margins on HW are going to be. Their safest bet is app store and 30:70 split they have, IMO.

In my opinion Microsoft will have to invest a lot before they can either sell high margin phones in huge numbers or attract the kind of user that's willing to spend a lot on content. It's possible they'll rake in a lot of money eventually, I just wouldn't bet on it.
I think they'll get there - they're serious about staying in the game. But sure, it will take time and monies to become profitable.
 
Imagine if Apple had allowed other hardware makers to license iOS? iOS would be the Windows of the mobile phone world. And Android at best would be the Mac or Linux of the mobile phone world.

No, everything would be exactly like the Windows Phone eco system, meaning that the device manufacturers would not be able to innovate.
 
Have you even considered that maybe there's some truth to that when it's abundantly clear that going all in with either WP or Android were the only two options with any realistic chance of success?
The chance of success was slim either way. But there was a third option: do neither. Basically they could have chosen the situation they're in now, except earlier, with more negotiating power and money.


The more crowded market gets, the lower their margins on HW are going to be. Their safest bet is app store and 30:70 split they have, IMO.
App Store revenue is slim compared to device revenue. People don't spend anywhere near as much on software as they do on hardware. HW margins don't need to be particularly large to exceed 30% of that.
 
Is that true? Perhaps a graph will be nice with a line showing when who joined

Elop joined as CEO in Sep. 2010, the burning platforms memo was in Feb. 2011.

http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/investors/financials/reports/results---reports/
Not a nice graph, but everything's in there.

And for a rough overview:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...Umsatz-weg-Lumias-ein-Lichtblick-1919818.html

In german, but the numbers should be clear (revenue left, profits right). (Oh, and FYI the single quarter with a loss before Q2/2011 had nothing to do with the handset business, but was due to huge write-offs regarding the Network division).
 
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I suppose you want to blame Elop's memo for the fall of RIM as well?
(chart)
How about WinMo too?
What do you think was more likely? Elop's memo being wholly responsible for Nokia's downfall and BlackBerry/WinMo coincidentally falling at the same time? Or late 2010/early 2011 simply being the turning point for all traditional OSes to become obsolete in the face of iOS and Android?

Regarding the charts:
The WinMo is disingenuous at best...it only shows a steady YoY decline from the start.
So we have a single datapoint. With a company whose primary markets are(were) completely complemetary. (RIM: Traditionally strong in NA, Nokia: market leader everywhere else). Where both companies faced different epic blunders of their own.
So...no, I don't see any argument here that it was simply a sharp turning point to sudden obsolescence that no one could have averted at least for, say 1 or 2 years while executing a transition strategy, however that may look like.

Even if they went with Android, every dollar and man hour invested in their new OS developments was a lost cause. Continuing the GM analogy, the OS development they had was like GM's Saturn line.
That car analogy...AARGH. If you want it to be an analogy that at least somewhat fits, it would have to look like this: GM announces the Saturn line (without having a single car design ready to show) and at the same time announces that their other lines are "burning platforms" and they are going to discontinue all of them in the near future. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

No? The conspiracy theory makes more sense to you than that? Fine, believe what you want.
Have you ever considered that this doesn't have to be a conspiracy?
Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
 
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