Nokia's Present & Future

[Kaotik]

Lmao.

Let me clarify. The CEO can't do anything the board doesn't approve without getting thrown out ASAP.

 

[wco81]

Ballmer contacted the chairman of Nokias board, not Elop, to make this deal. Chairman has only been on the job for a few months?

 

[Kaotik]

Ballmer contacted the chairman of Nokias board, not Elop, to make this deal. Chairman has only been on the job for a few months?

Chairman of the Board is Risto Siilasmaa, has been in the Board of Directors since 2008 and chairman since 2012.
edit:
Only one member in the Board of Directors joined the board during 2013

 

[Mize]

Let me clarify. The CEO can't do anything the board doesn't approve without getting thrown out ASAP.

What are you talking about? CEOs make most decisions without board approval. Only large impact, strategic decisions usually involve board oversight.

 

[Kaotik]

What are you talking about? CEOs make most decisions without board approval. Only large impact, strategic decisions usually involve board oversight.

And "The reason Microsoft is giving him a golden parachute is proof that bringing Nokia to its knees and selling it for cheap to Microsoft was the main agenda from the start." isn't a "large impact, strategic decision"?

Thought it was clear that in this threads context the talk is about such decision, not if you're ordering one or another brand of coffee

 

[Mize]

And "The reason Microsoft is giving him a golden parachute is proof that bringing Nokia to its knees and selling it for cheap to Microsoft was the main agenda from the start." isn't a "large impact, strategic decision"?

Thought it was clear that in this threads context the talk is about such decision, not if you're ordering one or another brand of coffee

Oh, sorry, I was reading what you wrote, not what you were thinking. My bad. Indeed "CEOs can't do anything without the board's approval" must mean CEOs can do almost anything without approval except this this I'm discussing. Got it. I must've had a bad English teacher.

 

[Kaotik]

Oh, sorry, I was reading what you wrote, not what you were thinking. My bad. Indeed "CEOs can't do anything without the board's approval" must mean CEOs can do almost anything without approval except this this I'm discussing. Got it. I must've had a bad English teacher.

Well, I'm not native in English, but at least here in Finland we usually look at the context too, not just the exact words, regardless of language used

 

[Mintmaster]

What should I think of this paragraph when already your first claim has been completely wrong for the last few years - where the total smartphone market only knew one direction: UP.

From Q4 to Q1, you will often see a decline in total sales, even with smartphones. Even if it's flat, multiply it by Nokia's declining share and you have a much different effect on the graph than Q3->Q4.

It's a strawman in that no one was arguing that Nokia was losing (unit) market share, but that at least Nokia was healthy from a business POV before (profitable, at least slightly increasing revenue, enough cash reserves) and that this shows that such a radical and immediate break wasn't neccessary and did more harm than good.

Wrong. It shows no such thing. Nokia was "healthy" in a sub-market that was about to die: mediocre smartphones with a laggard OS/ecosystem.

Nokia's profits in 2010 do NOT show they'll continue in 2011 if they stick to their doomed course, do NOT show that promoting those doomed lines at the expense of your forward platform (marketing money and shelf space doesn't grow on trees - whatever you put towards one can't be used on the other) would have been a better idea.

1Q10-1Q11: 38,8%->23.8% = -38,6% market share loss
1Q11-1Q12: 23,8%->7,8% = -67,2%
1Q12-1Q13: 7,8% -> 2,8% = -64,2%
Is nearly doubling the market share loss enough for you?

You are assuming that product lines are supposed to fall out of favor with exponential decay, e.g. 39->24->15->9. That is a shit assumption with zero basis. We didn't see it with WinMo (even years before MS dropped support), we didn't see it with PalmOS/WebOS, and we didn't even see it with Nokia pre-Elop (love how you cut out everything before 2010 in your figures here), so what is your reference case of what it should look like?

Exactly. Everyone does that. Your point being...?

They don't do it uniformly. Sold volumes are a better metric of consumer preference than manufacturer shipped figures.

ASP per Unit rose ~15%. And that makes? Tadaa: 22%.

How on earth is Elop supposed to maintain that kind of ASP growth? It was an anomaly. Go plot a chart of Nokia's smartphone ASP if you want me to believe that Nokia was on an upwards trajectory before Elop arrived.

It's not your assumption, but the foregone conclusion you drew: Not going immediately to WP or Android -> definite obsolescence.

I know you have real problems with context, but I got the impression from Xmas that he wasn't disagreeing with that, and had a different option in mind. I was right. So what's your problem?

If you call that a foregone conclusion, then what should I think of your baseless conclusion that Nokia could have ridden Symbian to a more graceful decline? Nobody was able to do that with Symbian or any other obsolete OS: Not MS, RIM, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, LG...

 

[Mize]

Well, I'm not native in English, but at least here in Finland we usually look at the context too, not just the exact words, regardless of language used

Even in context, a CEO can do things like axe MeeGo and go MS exclusive without board oversight. Yes, selling a chunk of the business would require board approval, but boards seldom get involved in managing r&d or product lines.

 

[wco81]

I wonder if MS and Nokia had talked about WP and the payments MS would make before Elop took over.

Nokia had shipped Windows Mobile phones in the past, after initially rejecting MS overtures, affirming their plan to push Symbian. Of course iPhone changed their plans.

 

[zed]

So who else did nokia offer themselves to before MS brought themselves out for Xbillion?
Perhaps apple/google etc would of been willing to pay a higher price

 

[silent_guy]

So who else did nokia offer themselves to before MS brought themselves out for Xbillion?
Perhaps apple/google etc would of been willing to pay a higher price

Because Apple has a history of buying large failing companies and Google didn't already have a cell phone maker in its stable?

 

[zed]

@silent_guy thats not answering the question, perhaps this is clearer

So who else did nokia offer themselves to as well as MS?

Like selling a house/car whatever you typically want a few people bidding over it, instead of going for the first offer

 

[silent_guy]

Like selling a house/car whatever you typically want a few people bidding over it, instead of going for the first offer

Of course, you want that. But how many companies who are willing to pay $7B for damaged goods?
Microsoft was the only one with enough money who did not have the logistics in place to mass produce phones.

 

[eastmen]

Of course, you want that. But how many companies who are willing to pay $7B for damaged goods?
Microsoft was the only one with enough money who did not have the logistics in place to mass produce phones.

I'm sure Apple or Google would have loved those patents. Google paid out the ass for Motorola which is/ was just as damaged as nokia

 

[silent_guy]

I'm sure Apple or Google would have loved those patents. Google paid out the ass for Motorola which is/ was just as damaged as nokia

Google severely overpaid for a patent portfolio that turned out to be much weaker than initially thought, as again proven just last week. Do you think it realistic they'd make the same mistake again?

Apple has bought some patents from Kodak (together with Google and Microsoft), but that wasn't with a 32000 mostly useless (for them) employees attached. Besides, Apple already settled its patent disputes with Nokia 2 years ago.

 

[Laurent06]

Anyway Microsoft only licensed Nokia patents, they didn't buy them. This non-exclusive licensing will last for 10 years.

 

[Snyder]

You are assuming that product lines are supposed to fall out of favor with exponential decay

I'm assuming nothing of the sort. You said there was no anomaly, I showed you otherwise. Now you're shifting targets.

They don't do it uniformly. Sold volumes are a better metric of consumer preference than manufacturer shipped figures.

Ok, then show me a single statistic that's based on sold volumes, or at least one that shows nokia skewed those in relation to other participants on the market.

How on earth is Elop supposed to maintain that kind of ASP growth?

It was _your_ argument that Nokias numbers were shady because you conflated unit sales with revenue, I simply refuted it. You're shifting targets, again.

If you call that a foregone conclusion, then what should I think of your baseless conclusion that Nokia could have ridden Symbian to a more graceful decline? Nobody was able to do that with Symbian or any other obsolete OS: Not MS, RIM, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, LG...

I do not use the claim "Nokia would have done better." as a base for the argument "Would Nokia have done better?", which is exactly what you did there.

Oh well.
You seem to ignore anything posted that counters these claims and anything that doesn't fit with your view. You are shifting your targets around as you wish. You throw around claims as fact without sources but expect detailed refutations yourself. By a rough estimate, you have worked off the majority of Schopenhauers stratagems by now. This simply gets too tedious - I just feel confirmed in my suspicion that no one will change your opinion - or even acknowledge a different possibility. Have a nice day.

 

[Kaotik]

Even in context, a CEO can do things like axe MeeGo and go MS exclusive without board oversight. Yes, selling a chunk of the business would require board approval, but boards seldom get involved in managing r&d or product lines.

You seriously think axing MeeGo and going MS only was Elops doing?

edit:
- Some words from ex-Nokia people, sources are in Finnish and links can be found here: http://taskumuro.com/ex-nokialaiset...et-pain-helvettia-taydellinen-epaonnistuminen
Ex-CEO Kallasvuo says that going Microsoft was carefully thought out plan, not Elops doing or any such thing
- Ex-communication-person-thingy Lemmetyinen says that she was ashamed of sending Symbian phones out to the market, they were doing so bad. According to her, Elop was hired to clean up the mess left by Kallasvuo.
- Vanjoki who was one of the candinates for CEO would have wanted to go for MeeGo, but Nokia had been way, way too slow with it for years. He says what happened with Elop in charge was "... Shameful, but unavoidable. This is a complete failure of chosen strategy and its implementation. Nokia was not able to make it work. For Finland's sake I hope Microsoft will."

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Nokia's upcoming Windows RT tablet...

http://www.dailytech.com/Quick+Note+Nokias+10+Windows+RT+Tablet+Pictured/article33370.htm

Looks nice, but doomed to failure due to using Windows RT, IMO.

Regards,
SB