This is not correct. Trademarks expire if you do not protect them, patents do not.
Nokia's Present & Future
- Thread starter Arun
- Start date
This is not correct. Trademarks expire if you do not protect them, patents do not.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Well what gives basically is that while many of you guys like to think that everything was fine before Elop took over and that profits were "at a all time high"
This is the last 5 years for you:
Things weren't fine, they were already done, no matter what you feel about Symbian or Meego. Android or WP were the only options that ever had a chance to make them big again. The true mistakes were done waaay before Elop took over, now we'll just have to see whether they can still make it back up from the deep hole they are in. 12 months from now is imo the time we'll have that answer. I believe they can still make it, but situation is critical.
I know plenty of people who work for Nokia, many of them don't share your view of the situation. My own income (and some other close person's) is somewhat tied to Nokia doing better (no stocks), I've already took a significant hit this year do to their problems so I definitely want them to do better, I just don't think their previous strategy that already took them down was better as it would have killed them. Now I believe there is a chance.
french toast
Veteran
Well I hope your right....Nokia better pull a rabbit out of a hat with the wp8 products...I feel we may see something rather special from them.Well what gives basically is that while many of you guys like to think that everything was fine before Elop took over and that profits were "at a all time high"
This is the last 5 years for you:
Things weren't fine, they were already done, no matter what you feel about Symbian or Meego. Android or WP were the only options that ever had a chance to make them big again. The true mistakes were done waaay before Elop took over, now we'll just have to see whether they can still make it back up from the deep hole they are in. 12 months from now is imo the time we'll have that answer. I believe they can still make it, but situation is critical.
I know plenty of people who work for Nokia, many of them don't share your view of the situation. My own income (and some other close person's) is somewhat tied to Nokia doing better (no stocks), I've already took a significant hit this year do to their problems so I definitely want them to do better, I just don't think their previous strategy that already took them down was better as it would have killed them. Now I believe there is a chance.
french toast
Veteran
You can clearly see the differing patent strategys of apple and Microsoft....apple does not have to license if they don't want to...but in a perfect world they would have to.
Microsoft will happily sell you a patent deal...apple tries to stop its competitors from competing via the court's..Microsoft works with them for profit..that's the difference.
The problem is that Nokia was investing heavily in a comeback akin to Google/Apple and Elop killed it (all that money = 0) and started anew with a huge investment in something where Nokia wouldn't have an advantaged position. It was long-shot of big success mitigated by backup plans to, well, only backup plans.
Nokia (NOK) was up big pre-market because their cash position was better than expected, but during the trading day much of these initial gains did not stick. At the end of the day, investors are still wary for a variety of reasons. The quarterly net loss was far larger than expected. The shareholder dividend payout may be reduced or even eliminated at some point. The net loss for the upcoming quarter will be massive. The next three months will be a real struggle for Nokia, and the only one to blame is themselves for being in this predicament. Nokia has had all the opportunity in the world to turn things around over the last few years, but they have squandered it due to lack of focus on market trends and lack of any sense of urgency from upper management.
Just to further illustrate the point about opportunities lost, Nokia had developed touchscreen smartphone and tablet prototypes more than 10 years ago, but the designs went nowhere. These guys were years ahead of Apple and most other companies: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304388004577531002591315494.html
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I don't view Elop's burning platform note as a catalyst to the nosedive, but more like an analysis on what had taken and was taking place. Regardless of what he said, their line up phones would have been massacred out there. Nokia's unattractive Symbian phones against the likes of iphone 4 and Galaxy S2 etc. wouldn't have been pretty in any scenario.
Something like Meego should have come out years ago for it to have a proper fighting chance imo. Now that Android and iOS are so huge, Nokia needs the help of MS to stay relevant.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
So basically looking at their stock performance, they, as a company fell off a cliff just prior to Maemo. In other words, Nokia was a burning ship 2.5 years before Elop took over.
Amazing that he still gets the credit for something that happened so long before he took over.
Regards,
SB
Uh...no, they didn't. HTC didn't. Samsung didn't. And what's more, Nokia went, as I've noted over and over, with unilateral MS exclusivity. Sure if it were bilateral with Nokia being the only source for WP7/8 (for, say 2-3 years) or if Nokia had simultaneously licensed Android or something. But Nokia in no way "needed" or "needs" to have a single OS platform.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I'm not sure HTC is a good example to use here as they were sinking rather quickly as well last time I looked. They started out well, but have since plummeted rather drastically.
As far as I know of the premium Android phone makers, only Samsung is still growing. It's possible that Nokia could have had success similar to Samsung or that it could be failing as badly as HTC is now.
Regards,
SB
As far as I know of the premium Android phone makers, only Samsung is still growing. It's possible that Nokia could have had success similar to Samsung or that it could be failing as badly as HTC is now.
Regards,
SB
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Basically I meant that they need outside help for creating a competitive software ecosystem for their products and now it's MS, Android could have been a good solution. Hard to say how it would have worked for them. The purchase of Navteq might have been problematic for Google integration.
Yeah. That's not news. 2007-2009 were a massacre, a long string of stupid decisions and bad execution. (They still managed not to make losses in all those years!) Now look at the last three years.
No. They weren't done. Not by a long shot. They were consistently profitable, they were still market leader ("big again"?! Seriously?), they had huge cash reserves, they had splendid carrier relations around the world (except US), they had (as the stable stock price from 2009 - Feb 2011 reflects) something resembling a sensible transition strategy for the first time in years.
They were still a bloated moloch with too much middle management infighting and the lot. And THIS was something for Elop to change - which he did, and which is a good thing! For Nokias reaction times, for their execution, for the working climate in the company.
But his strategy decisions are what hurt Nokia more than everything else the years before. His strategy decisions alone are responsible for the brutal losses (something which never occured before, not even in the worst times!) in the previous few quarters. And he has burned a lot of bridges with his WP exclusive + osborning Sym/Mee/Qt strategy (esp. with carriers) in markets where nokia was firmly entrenched before.
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french toast
Veteran
Thanks for that..a brilliant insight into the convoluted and bloated managerial mess that Nokia had become...and how so far ahead of there time Nokia were developing touch screen phones with a single button that could use the internet and play music and racing games an astonishing 9 years before apple.
40 billion $ in r&d wasted....the company needed a complete restructuring from top to bottom....I still think the burning platform memo was a disaster which ever way you spin it...it didn't have to swap so fast.
french toast
Veteran
Here is a good overview of the situation Nokia finds its self in
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/20/nokia_q2_analysis/
The losses seem. Be slowing down..but they need a sales hit..soon.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/20/nokia_q2_analysis/
The losses seem. Be slowing down..but they need a sales hit..soon.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Woah, you're actually convinced that things were already done with Nokia having growing profits from the smartphone division for two quarters in a row and most of the smartphone marketshare until the "elopcalypse" in February 2011?!
Talk about not being able to handle temporary defeats! That´s like quitting a Street Fighter IV match while throwing the gamepad at the TV, kicking and screaming just because the adversary got to throw two punches despite having half of your HP.
No, things weren't fine. Nokia had severe problems with execution, everyone knows that.
Symbian wasn't a future-proof solution, everyone knows that too. Nokia said so, publicly, more than a year before the elopcalypse. But Nokia had determined an upgrade path for that ecossystem, which has been proving absolutely crucial for carrier and customer relationships.
And despite all the hatred you seem to feel towards Symbian/MeeGo it doesn't make none of them such a bad platform as you make it believe.
The N9 was absolutely adored by every single reviewer, won several awards for UI and design, it actually sold better than the Lumias during a quarter despite its stupidly high price and scarce availability.
It had no Microsoft behind it, no marketing money, no developer support, Elop said it wouldn't get any sequels despite its success... and it sold almost as much as all the Lumias combined for two quarters.
This isn't "my opinion", these are facts. "Things were already done"? The goddam phone hadn't come out yet in February 2011. Elop didn't even bother to give it a chance, such was the "rush" to feed Microsoft some cookies.
I understand Android, but tell me one - just one - intelligent reason to assume that Windows Phone 7, in February 2011, was "a chance to make them big again".
- The OS? It was tanking hard for almost two quarters before February 2011. No one was buying it, people were complaining about not being able to do the most basic things like synchronizing with Outlook 2010 or downloading an e-mail attachment. In February 2011, despite some average reviews on the UI, the WP7 was crappier than Bada (which until a couple of months ago it was still selling more than WP7.5, btw).
- Microsoft's expertize? What success was Microsoft having in anything mobile? Zune? Failure. Kin? Failure. WP7? Failure.
- Money from Microsoft? Bah, Nokia was having growing profits until February 2011. And it had something like $10B in cash. Money wasn't an issue.
So tell me: why are people assuming - besides Elop's own and apparently very successful Reality Distortion Field - that Windows Phone 7 was, in February 2011, an intelligent decision for mobile O.S.?
Which makes this whole situation a lot weirder, really. How did you and all the people you mention get so pessimistic over Nokia's developments?!
Was it only the stock prices? Everyone shit their pants so much with the iphone's success that they forgot they already had a very profitable business and a established, coherent and fairly competitive ecossystem, and throw themselves into the much more obvious failure that WP7 was?
Oh please, it's useless to defend Elop even with the burning memo. The guy himself admitted the memo was destructive for the sales!
You don't view it as a catalyst?!
So the CEO of a company:
1- tells the world + dog their products are shit
2 - announces the company will crap on the products and everyone who bought/develop for them
3 - offers no alternative for the products he said were shit for 8 months
And you think it wasn't a catalyst for the sales plummeting, it was just "an analysis on what had taken and was taking place"?!
What. The. F"#$%?
Analysis would have been "The competitors are offering a better smartphone experience than us, at the moment".
Analysis would have been "we're going to need to try harder on aspects A and B if we want to stay competitive".
Analysis is not, by any rational means ever, "OMG this is a burning platform! This company is doomed! Everything you've been working on for the last 5 years is complete shit! I'm gonna fire you all you bastards!
Signed, Your Boss
And now I'm gonna send this memo to everyone in the company to make sure it's on the news tomorrow morning."
I mean, how is this even defendable?! How is this even slightly rational?! How is this coming from a guy that's the head of one of the largest European companies that ever existed?!
That's an overly simplistic way to look at things, and it's how Elop wants everyone to look too. I'm dumbfounded on how successful he's been!
The truth is that Nokia's shares were overly inflated in 2007. The mobile businesses were starting to show incredible prosperity and pretty much everyone who was betting on mobile, was betting on Nokia.
The iphone comes, and many of those betting on mobile start betting on Apple instead. Android blossoms and even more investors sell their Nokia stock to bet on Google.
But the stock market is still a game of guess. That graph doesn't show sales, profits or even marketshare.
Sure, Nokia was dropping in value, it wasn't doing well. But it wasn't dead. It wasn't "done", it was further from "done" than any company will ever be.
Just look at some sales and profits numbers:
Fact 1: Ever since they entered the mobile market, Nokia didn't post losses even once until the elopcalypse in February 2011.
Fact 2: The burning memo came after two quarters of growing profits from the smartphone division. This alone is reason enough to laugh at the idea of canning everything you've got (Symbian/MeeGo) in order to throw into a proven failure (WP7).
Fact 3: Nokia wasn't firing people in the tens of thousands before the elopcalypse.
Fact 4: Nokia wasn't shutting down European factories before the elopcalypse
Fact 5: Nokia wasn't closing down European research centers before the elopcalypse
Fact 6: Nokia wasn't in need for cash, despite all the bad management, they had profits and they had $10B of cash. All the decisions on firing people, closing down factories and research centers come from the fact that they suddenly stopped selling and stopped their revenue.
OPK was bad. But he was just "poor decisions" bad. The results of his bad management had already taken their hits with the Symbian^3 series delay. After their release, things were actually going rather smooth.
Elop is bad too, but he's "destructive bad". From telling everyone in the company how bad their work is, firing people, shutting down factories, shutting down research centers, canning tens of billions worth of R&D projects, refusing to sell critically acclaimed devices on key markets, etc. he's beating the company to a pulp.
This is purely destructive. There's no other way to put it.
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DuckThor Evil
Legend
Some poisons take time to kill you, but you are already done when it enters your circulation. That's how Nokia was done before it really showed in their financial numbers. The poison made them unable to react to the challenges presented to them by Apple and Android.
Huge market share, mind share, manufacturing advantages etc. carried Nokia far, further than their line up would have otherwise warranted.
I know how much Florin likes this, but WP7 really was just a stop gap solution at this point. Obviously Elop and Nokia had and has more information on where the WP platform is going and they certainly didn't make the jump just due to WP7. WP8 is the one that decides everything. I don't know how convincing case I can make against Android, because that could have worked. The risk there would have been going head to head against Samsung and lose that battle. Being the big fish in WP gives them some advantages if WP grows.
I saw how the competition just flew past Nokia. Over here everyone used to have Nokia phones, I mean every single one. Year by year things changed. Others evolved while Nokia didn't, soon people were buying different phones and many said things like "I'll never buy Nokia again", because the new experience was so much better. In few years Nokia went from a "no brainer" to something like "yuck hell no". It was pretty clear to me that Symbian was done, even if the latest iteration is really not THAT bad.
If they lost so much ground here, things would not be great in less Nokia friendly countries.
The world already knew that the products were not competitive or at least found out quickly by the time Galaxy S2 and others came out. iPhone had gained huge mind share at this point also. Imo it's more of a coincidence that Elop happened to point out some awful truths about the situation at the same time the competition was on the verge of delivering some critical blows to Nokia.
It's a pity that the transition takes a long time and the future is in danger. I just don't think that the memo was very important piece in all this. Imo Nokia's sales dropped about the amount I think their unattractive line up warranted at that time. The competition, their phones and ecosystems just flat out were much better. A trend that finally caught a company that was standing still.
Imo your graphs and interpretations are more of an over simplification and cherry picked view of the situation. The Q4 2010 results and numbers in reality weren't very good. Yes they shipped 28 million smart devices, but most of those devices were lower cost older models. While it's true that the ASP rose due to the launch of higher end Symbian^3 devices, the Symbian^3 models were already getting owned badly by the Apple and Android models. Nokia's market share numbers were bad against the growing market.
Fast forward few months and Samsung really drove it home with the Galaxy S2 and Apple getting continuously stronger, yet it was only Elop's memo that caused all the problems... No the Memo was not their problem. Things were falling apart and the memo just said what was in plain sight anyway.
