Nokia's Present & Future

MS were up to nearly 10% of handset sales in some European markets with Lumia. That's huge. Then they stopped releasing phones, and stopped updating WP8, and started waiting for the WP10 that (for many handsets) would never come.

I don't really know what MS were expecting to happen in 2015.

 

There was nothing there to be lost - this was a dying Dinosaur type of company that completely failed to adapt and thus was terminated - it happens all the time.

 

But I think they only got volumes on cheap models, below $200 in some of the poorer countries like Italy.

Probably was taking losses on those units to gain share.

Then they rebooted WP a couple of times too.

 

That's just silly. The research division alone didn't spend countless billions for nothing, while the actual phone business was launching a new development ecosystem with new OS that could have leveraged existing customer base a hundred times larger than WP. The execution of all that was clearly subpar, but saying that nothing was lost is extremely naive.

 

Lol dying dinossaur. Did Engadget or Gizmodo convince you of that?
Nokia had been posting increasing profits for 3 quarters in a row when the windows phone nonsense was announced.

 

Yes, and the sale happened because everything was cool and dandy and Nokia and investors were just looking for a fun adventure...

You are invested emotionally in that crap - there is no point discussing it with you.

 

Windows phone is too radically different to Symbian.

If Nokia used android, the user experience difference will be less shocking than with Windows phone.

Android: icons, launcher, app store, apps from .apk.

Symbian : icons, launcher, app store, apps from .sys.

 

They were mostly shifting high volumes of cheap models it's true, but they did have some high end successes like the Lumia 920 (which is still a great phone IMO). They kind of went silent on the high end front for a long time, which didn't help.

The frequent reboots were a mistake IMO. I bought a WP7 and then got burned. MS promised that they wouldn't do that again, and assured continual upgrade paths for all future phones. So I got a WP8. After a year of WP10 technical previews they silently dropped my phone from the upgrade party.

I decided that I'd hang on to my 920 for as long as possible (I love it) but after that I was done with MS in phone-land forever. Turns out I needn't have made that decision, as they were in the process of a year long burning of their brand new phone business.

 

Well rumors of a Surface phone next year.

Continuum is their big thing. UWP apps for different devices from one code base and then connect the WP 10 device to external display at home or office so you can live and work on one device.

Even if that sells more WP10 devices, does that mean fewer W10 desktops or laptops down the line because they encouraged people to use their one WP 10 device? How would that be a positive for the company as a whole?

 

Microsoft probably make more overall margin on a WP10 phone with continuum than they do selling a Windows 10 license to run on some PC hardware they had nothing to do with.

 

I won a Lumia 650. Excellent phone, but nobody would want to use it because they want to snapchat a Pokemon go

 

Maybe you can install Android on it?

 

Myself I would not mind as I only use browser, email, calendar and IM on a phone, but it's an interesting point as MS at one point wanted to run Android apps on W10 phones. it was possible last year at least:

 

Boy i wish i had some spare cash to buy nokia a couple of years ago.
Anyway looks like they are going about android skinning the right way, ie by not having much of one
Now imagine what would have happened if nokia had switched to android after the burning memo?
The king will soon return

 

In case you haven't been following the news for the past 5 years: Android is only profitable for Samsung and Huawei. All other brands either lose a lot of money or (barely) break even. I don't know why it would have been different for Nokia. I hope they can rebuild their handset market though.