Nokia's Present & Future

[Florin]

MS has never lacked in making good tools/APIs. The devs themselves (the ones that really matter to the initial success of a platform, not indies) need to be paid off at first when competitors have >100x the installed userbase.

Almost all of your examples were piss-ant markets at the time, and MS didn't really care if they failed. For the others:
- Zune didn't matter, because phones were getting MP3 playback at that time
- Courier and Kin were just experiments, don't know what SuperPhone is
- If the second gen Surface doesn't sell, then you can call it a failure. It's an idea that always needed Haswell (RT was always a backup plan for MS, and they didn't even bother distributing it widely)
- Metro is a failure? MS is estimated to be the OS for 7.4% of tablet sales after just one quarter


For markets that actually matter, you're judging MS way too soon. You're also forgetting the biggest success MS has had in developing a new platform in the face of a dominant entrenched competitor and courting developers to it: XBox. Not being mobile is irrelevant.

Most dev studios had little reason to port their games to the XBox at first, because PS and PS2 comprised 95%+ of the market. MS had to pump in $4B to get people to buy their hardware and get devs on the platform, and had to execute almost flawlessly. It's very hard to break into a new market that depends on third party software for success.

There's no way Nokia could have pulled that off with Meego. It has orders of magnitude less experience with ISV relations than MS, and there's no hook like MS has with the Win 8 kernel (or PC dev -> XBox).

MS is not going to give on WP8 like it did with past experimental platforms. Well, not until 2016 at least, when MS has another opening through phones that can run fully fledged Windows 8.

Interesting reasoning. The failures don't count because.. they didn't really care? What, they were just going through the motions and weren't actually interested in a piece of the iPhone, iPod, Palm, Blackberry, Nokia or Symbian action at the time?

Ok. So they must not really care about MSN (sorry, Live, no make that Bing), Hotmail (err.. Outlook), Skydrive, Internet Explorer, IIS, SQL Server and HyperV. Perfectly happy to let the competition eat their lunch. When and if they ever get serious about any of these their dominance will surely be inevitable.

Just like the XBox, which IS significant because it was actually successful. They must've just cared enough about that one. Of course, they've yet to break even on that business, and it remains to be seen whether their next generation has what it takes to do one better and beat 3rd place.

WP is sitting at less than 5%. Hmm, that's a tough one. Let's be charitable and say their previous mobile platforms just didn't count. So it's been about 2 years. What do you reckon? Care or not?

 

[Mintmaster]

I wonder if we'll end up seeing this type of super high-res sensor in slim point and shoot cameras before too long?

I was thinking about that, but with the processing needed for downsampling and saving, you couldn't really eliminate any components aside from the baseband/antenna, and you'd probably have to sell it for $500+ to make money, so why bother?

The market for standalone P&S cameras is shrinking, and I think whatever remains needs to have a long zoom or big sensor to adequately differentiate itself from the smartphone camera everyone has.

 

[Mintmaster]

Interesting reasoning. The failures don't count because.. they didn't really care? What, they were just going through the motions and weren't actually interested in a piece of the iPhone, iPod, Palm, Blackberry, Nokia or Symbian action at the time?

You're changing the argument into a circular one now by mentioning things that are being addressed by WP right now. Above you mentioned silly things like Origami and markets that were tiny and never took off. Of course MS doesn't care if they lose in a market with no consumer demand. What possible connection could you be making between things like that and penetrating today's smartphone market?

MS staked their presence in the PDA market in case it grew, and was dominant in high end devices, so I don't see how can call PocketPC a failure. Zune was a last ditch effort in case the standalone MP3 player market kept growing, but it didn't. MS entering that market in late 2006 should be a pretty clear indicator that they didn't care about it.

Everyone knows that the iPhone came along and suddenly exploded in late 2008 to disruptively create the multitouch app marketplace, catching everyone with their pants down. Up to that point, though, how was Windows Mobile a failure? It was neck and neck with Blackberry after Symbian, which hardly qualified as a smartphone OS until 2008. What 'action' was there for MS to take from Symbian? $0 x 100M = $0.

Ok. So they must not really care about MSN (sorry, Live, no make that Bing), Hotmail (err.. Outlook), Skydrive, Internet Explorer, IIS, SQL Server and HyperV.

How is Hotmail/Outlook a failure? Because GMail has squeaked by in usage, its 30% share is useless and they should throw in the towel? How is Skydrive a failure? How are IIS, SQL, and HyperV related to penetrating the iOS/Android duopoly?

Live/Bing is the only search engine to successfully challenge Google. Maybe if you weren't on such a Microsoft hate rage, you'd see a parallel between that and establishing and growing an alternative among established giants, just like XBox did.

WP is sitting at less than 5%. Hmm, that's a tough one. Let's be charitable and say their previous mobile platforms just didn't count. So it's been about 2 years. What do you reckon? Care or not?

I already told you that a huge part of MS's future depends on it, so yes. The OS on 1 billion units a year is orders of magnitude more important than iPods or PDAs or HyperV. God knows what point you were trying to make with that last one...

 

[nutball]

I was thinking about that, but with the processing needed for downsampling and saving, you couldn't really eliminate any components aside from the baseband/antenna, and you'd probably have to sell it for $500+ to make money, so why bother?

The market for standalone P&S cameras is shrinking, and I think whatever remains needs to have a long zoom or big sensor to adequately differentiate itself from the smartphone camera everyone has.

Yeah, but this camera is supposed to be way beyond the capabilities of other smartphones and most P&S cameras, I thought. If that's true, the market would be people who

a) would like a camera this good, and
b) don't want to buy a Nokia / WP8-based phone (maybe they like apps, for example)

If this level of camera tech comes to Apple/Android phones over the next year to two you are probably right. However if it's going to remain Nokia-only for whatever reason there's maybe a niche.

 

[Mariner]

There's no need. Point and shoot cameras can use larger sensors and optical zoom.

Unless you mean cheap point and shoot cameras, to which I'd say maybe, in a couple of years.

I was thinking specifically about really slim point and shoot cameras at a medium price point. At present, the slimmest cameras have small sensors and therefore pretty poor image quality/low light capability and the compact (and pretty expensive) larger sensor devices tend to be much thicker due to better lenses. I presume here that you're talking about cameras such as the RX100 which is over three times as thick as the Nokia 1020.

I'd have thought a slim camera just a couple of centimetres thick with a super high-res sensor and smaller lens ought to be able to provide very good image quality for the package, not too far behind devices such as the RX100.

As Mint notes, however, perhaps such a device would be expensive enough that it priced itself out of the market. Most people dropping a few hundred quid on a compact camera aren't going to be that concerned if it is 3cm thick instead of 2cm.

 

[Mintmaster]

Yeah, but this camera is supposed to be way beyond the capabilities of other smartphones and most P&S cameras, I thought. If that's true, the market would be people who

a) would like a camera this good, and
b) don't want to buy a Nokia / WP8-based phone (maybe they like apps, for example)

If this level of camera tech comes to Apple/Android phones over the next year to two you are probably right. However if it's going to remain Nokia-only for whatever reason there's maybe a niche.

I'm not sure if made my point clearly, but what I was saying is that if you're making a camera with this sensor and lens, might as well put in $50 more parts and make it a smartphone, be it Android/iOS/whatever.

It's a great sensor, but it's only be "way beyond" the 1/2.3" sensor cameras, only somewhat beyond 1/1.6" sensor cameras, and behind the RX100 for sure. As Mariner pointed out above, if you're going to carry a second camera, a little more thickness isn't going to discourage sales, so you can have optical zoom, and then 41MPix starts having marginal benefits. There are drawbacks to this system as well, as the large photo size results in a few seconds delay from shot to shot (unless you go into burst mode without the full-res image).

It is a sweet camera...would like to see more low light (restaurant at night, etc.) photos...

Forbes took some nice low light photos. Here's one inside a restaurant without using the flash:
https://plus.google.com/photos/1047...5904027613262676738&oid=104786644443032070727

There's significant noise, but it must've been quite dim, as it's ISO2500 and 1/4s exposure. I'm really impressed that the OIS can handle such a long exposure time. An iPhone or Galaxy would probably need ISO800 and 1/20s second to get comparable quality, i.e. they'd need 15x the light.

Check out the rest of the gallery for other night shots.

 

[Mariner]

Forbes took some nice low light photos. Here's one inside a restaurant without using the flash:
https://plus.google.com/photos/1047...5904027613262676738&oid=104786644443032070727

There's significant noise, but it must've been quite dim, as it's ISO2500 and 1/4s exposure. I'm really impressed that the OIS can handle such a long exposure time. An iPhone or Galaxy would probably need ISO800 and 1/20s second to get comparable quality, i.e. they'd need 15x the light.

Check out the rest of the gallery for other night shots.

Funny how these camera reviews so often seem to have pictures of pretty girls, isn't it?

As you note, that one is pretty noisy but the quality of most of the other night shots is actually excellent. Just a pity I'm such a cheapskate and wouldn't be looking to drop that much money on a phone!

 

[tuna]

What purpose would such an announcement serve? Neither MS nor Nokia have any plans to build a Tegra based phone.

Then why would nVidia write the drivers?

 

[tuna]

Why don't you tell me what choice they are lacking from the broad Qualcomm SoC lineup? What other SoC is better for Nokia in any way?

They can't say to Qualcomm "Give us a better deal or we will go somewhere else!". Every other manufacturer has that choice.

 

[Florin]

You're changing the argument into a circular one now by mentioning things that are being addressed by WP right now. Above you mentioned silly things like Origami and markets that were tiny and never took off. Of course MS doesn't care if they lose in a market with no consumer demand. What possible connection could you be making between things like that and penetrating today's smartphone market?

Circular reasoning is a pretty good description for your argument. All of the times that Microsoft fails outright or does not displace or make significant inroads against other larger players are just signs that it must not have cared. The rare occasions where they happen to have a hit product are proof that they can accomplish whatever they want.

Everyone knows that the iPhone came along and suddenly exploded in late 2008 to disruptively create the multitouch app marketplace, catching everyone with their pants down. Up to that point, though, how was Windows Mobile a failure? It was neck and neck with Blackberry after Symbian, which hardly qualified as a smartphone OS until 2008. What 'action' was there for MS to take from Symbian? $0 x 100M = $0.

Nokia was once a $25B/year profit business. Music players and PDAs were once booming business, just like phones and tablets are now. Even if it can not invent successful new product categories of its own, Microsoft most certainly wants in on all of the big trends. Their many attempts prove that they don't fail just for lack of trying.

Which is why your premise that all of this was Nokia only real option is so flawed. Nokia could've grabbed a large slice of the winning team. Instead they chose to become king of the hill with the perennial also ran, while Samsung and Apple continue to chip away at their unit sales, and profitability remains in the toilet.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Circular reasoning is a pretty good description for your argument. All of the times that Microsoft fails outright or does not displace or make significant inroads against other larger players are just signs that it must not have cared. The rare occasions where they happen to have a hit product are proof that they can accomplish whatever they want.



Nokia was once a $25B/year profit business. Music players and PDAs were once booming business, just like phones and tablets are now. Even if it can not invent successful new product categories of its own, Microsoft most certainly wants in on all of the big trends. Their many attempts prove that they don't fail just for lack of trying.

Which is why your premise that all of this was Nokia only real option is so flawed. Nokia could've grabbed a large slice of the winning team. Instead they chose to become king of the hill with the perennial also ran, while Samsung and Apple continue to chip away at their unit sales, and profitability remains in the toilet.

Ah, I see, so you seem to think that anything that isn't the dominant #1 player in a market is a failure.

Hence, Apple must now be failing with their iPhone. Huawei, LG, and Sony are failing horribly with their Android efforts.

I mean you certainly consider Outlook.com/Hotmail.com as failures by your post despite them being basically neck and neck with Gmail. Windows Mobile was a failure despite having more of the previous phone market than Huawei, LG, and Sony have of the current phone market? And Microsoft's PDA achievements were also a failure despite being better positioned against Palm PDAs than Huawei and LG are compared to Samsung?

And of course, the fact that Microsoft couldn't muster more than 5% market share with Xbox in the first 5 years of their console commitment means their console efforts should have been dropped as it was obviously going to be a failure?

Does that also meant that Google Chrome and Firefox are also failures since they were so far behind IE for so many years?

Apples Mac business must be a dismal failure as well then as it is doing significantly worse than Windows Mobile did, which you consider a failure. That means that the only successful product line that Apple had was the iPad. And the iPhone was only successful for a few years.

My my. Well at least we now know that the only products you consider a success are those that hold the #1 spot. Everything else is a failure.

Regards,
SB

 

[wco81]

Is the sensor proprietary tech?

If it was really popular, I'm sure other phone vendors will develop their own.

As it is, it's not clear that the best image quality camera drives purchasing decisions of phones.

What will likely happen is that other manufacturers will continue to incrementally improve their phones and it'll be "good enough" for most people, because most people don't expect that the phone will take as good pictures as dedicated cameras.

 

[tuna]

My my. Well at least we now know that the only products you consider a success are those that hold the #1 spot. Everything else is a failure.

Regards,
SB

That was not in any way what Florin claimed. You should respond to the statements he made, not stuff you make up in your head.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Ah, I see, so you seem to think that anything that isn't the dominant #1 player in a market is a failure.

Hence, Apple must now be failing with their iPhone. Huawei, LG, and Sony are failing horribly with their Android efforts.

I mean you certainly consider Outlook.com/Hotmail.com as failures by your post despite them being basically neck and neck with Gmail. Windows Mobile was a failure despite having more of the previous phone market than Huawei, LG, and Sony have of the current phone market? And Microsoft's PDA achievements were also a failure despite being better positioned against Palm PDAs than Huawei and LG are compared to Samsung?

And of course, the fact that Microsoft couldn't muster more than 5% market share with Xbox in the first 5 years of their console commitment means their console efforts should have been dropped as it was obviously going to be a failure?

Does that also meant that Google Chrome and Firefox are also failures since they were so far behind IE for so many years?

Apples Mac business must be a dismal failure as well then as it is doing significantly worse than Windows Mobile did, which you consider a failure. That means that the only successful product line that Apple had was the iPad. And the iPhone was only successful for a few years.

My my. Well at least we now know that the only products you consider a success are those that hold the #1 spot. Everything else is a failure.

Regards,
SB

Wow.. It's like he said "I'm going to water a plant" and you're accusing him of predicting a deluge.
Florin enumerated a good bunch of failed Microsoft ventures, none of them being profitable so far (except maybe for WinCE and PocketPC). And he didn't mention xbox.



Mintmaster just chose the easy (non-)argument: that every Microsoft fail was either irrelevant on the long run or poorly invested.. which is something anyone could say about 99% of all industry fails in all markets.

BTW the Surface RT was by no means just an experiment and it was sold in all major markets, unlike Surface Pro. Microsoft already lost $900 million on that flop alone.

 

[Mintmaster]

Circular reasoning is a pretty good description for your argument.

No, it's you pointing out that the product MS was releasing for multitouch smartphones won't succeed because they haven't taken any of the multitouch market.

All of the times that Microsoft fails outright or does not displace or make significant inroads against other larger players are just signs that it must not have cared. The rare occasions where they happen to have a hit product are proof that they can accomplish whatever they want.

That's not my argument at all, but if it makes you feel better, go ahead and believe it.

This is the challenge: Sell a product with an operating system that runs third party software, but do from scratch in the face of direct competitors that has an install base of tens of millions of users. The chicken and egg problem is the obvious hurdle, i.e. nobody makes software without a userbase, and the userbase can't grow without software.

Most of the things you mentioned are very different from this challenge. HyperV, Origami, Zune...

How many companies have achieved that goal? On desktops/notebooks, Apple could only get a few percent in the face of Windows, and it didn't start from scratch. Google is carving a niche with ChromeOS, but it's pretty small, and the same is true for Linux. Sony was able to do it against Nintendo and Sega way back. They were also moderately successful in the handheld space, while Game Gear and Lynx failed to get any significant traction. Google attacked and succeeded in the multitouch smartphone space, but that was early on in the market's exponential expansion.

Successes of this nature are few and far between. Now, you point out PocketPC as a failure, and I didn't bother digging into marketshare once I saw the low unit numbers, but MS entered the PDA market against a dominant Palm and eventually surpassed it. How is that a failure? MS also took on an extremely powerful PS brand with XBox and is now pretty much a market leader. They've increased their revenue share of servers, too, but they've had a strong presence there for decades so I won't count that.

So the two times it took on an entrenched OS, it succeeded.

Nokia was once a $25B/year profit business.

And 0% of that would go to MS if they chose to make a competing OS for those types of phones. MP3 players are a hardware business, not an OS.

Nokia could've grabbed a large slice of the winning team.

You're now changing topics. Your whole rant on MS's unrelated failures began in reply to me saying, "MS developing the third ecosystem from scratch has a good chance of succeeding. Nokia doing so does not." I was talking about WP8 vs Meego, obviously.

Android is in the "agree to disagree" category, remember?

 

[Mintmaster]

Mintmaster just chose the easy (non-)argument: that every Microsoft fail was either irrelevant on the long run or poorly invested.. which is something anyone could say about 99% of all industry fails in all markets.

They're stupid examples that have nothing to do with OS development and penetration. Nokia doesn't care if MS loses money getting traction with WP8. All it wants is MS to get apps made on it.

Calling PocketPC, Surface, Metro, and even Windows Mobile failures is utter nonsense. PocketPC took half of PalmOS's marketshare. Surface and Metro are just getting started. WinMo matched Blackberry until multitouch took off in 2008, at which point almost no Symbian phones had even a resistive touchscreen. WinMo didn't fail to Symbian, it just ignored that worthless half of the market.

And RT? That's there for only one reason: keep pressure on Intel by having a way to use ARM if necessary. Hedging always costs money.

 

[Florin]

No, it's you pointing out that the product MS was releasing for multitouch smartphones won't succeed because they haven't taken any of the multitouch market.

Actually, it's me contesting what has been your basic premise since the 3rd of July:

It's freaking MS, and they were commiting to this kernel across the entire windows market.

..which history has shown is by no means a guarantee for success.

You're now changing topics. Your whole rant on MS's unrelated failures began in reply to me saying, "MS developing the third ecosystem from scratch has a good chance of succeeding. Nokia doing so does not." I was talking about WP8 vs Meego, obviously.

I haven't talked about Meego at all. You brought up Android back on the 20th:

A week old, but I'll post it anyway:

Elop explains: why Nokia didn't choose Android to replace Symbian

Who is changing topics here?

 

[Mintmaster]

Florin, the part of the conversation chain you got all riled up about MS was this:

Instead of marking the beginning of a strong Nokia ecosystem, the WP7 fiasco was entirely avoidable detour that cost the company dearly in inventory write downs.

Please, the "strong Nokia ecosystem" is a complete mirage.

What does that mean? Is building a third ecosystem outside of Android useful or not? Which one is it?

A big chunk of Microsoft's long term future depends on the success of the Windows Store, and they've always been well over 10x as big a company as Nokia. Their influence on software development is probably two orders of magnitude larger than Nokia's.

MS developing the third ecosystem from scratch has a good chance of succeeding. Nokia doing so does not.

Mint, agree to disagree on the most points, but I just can not see how anyone would still hold that opinion.

Microsoft is the company that brought us...

You are clearly debating with me about "the third ecosystem outside of Android" (those are your words), which I brought up because AT&T's CEO brought it up, according to Elop.

I haven't talked about Meego at all.

When you say "strong Nokia ecosystem", and then confirm that we are not talking about Android, what was I supposed to think?

Actually, it's me contesting what has been your basic premise since the 3rd of July:

..which history has shown is by no means a guarantee for success.

I said good chance, not guarantee, and I've made my case: It's a matter of fact that MS took on the PalmOS and PlayStation dominance from scratch and persisted until their marketshare exceeded Palm's and Sony's, despite the chicken and egg hurdle.

Of course there's some risk in trusting MS, but trying to overcome that hurdle themselves would likely doom them to the same fate as OS/2, Atari Lynx & Jaguar, NEC Turbografx-16, Sega Game Gear, BeOS, Linux, WebOS, etc. Nokia's own failed N-Gage effort shows how ill-equipped they were at getting devs on board for a new platform.

Only tech giants have shown the ability to pull off the feat of taking on an established player and introduce a new ecosystem: MS, Google, and mid-90's Sony. The statement I bolded above that you vehemently objected to is pretty sound.

 

[Mintmaster]

Then why would nVidia write the drivers?

Because they've already done so for the Win8 kernel on ARM, and they're trying to get WP design wins for T4i.

They can't say to Qualcomm "Give us a better deal or we will go somewhere else!". Every other manufacturer has that choice.

Lack of drivers isn't going to stop Nokia from shopping around for a good supply contract. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

[Laurent06]

Lack of drivers isn't going to stop Nokia from shopping around for a good supply contract. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

But wouldn't the lack of support from MS be an issue? MS seems to heavily control various parts of WP hardware. And as far as I know it's Qualcomm only and not even quad core yet.