Nokia's Present & Future

[Arun]

Not impressed by the details. Only 150M more Symbian phones? That's barely more than 1 year at the current rate, probably about 2 at a lower rate. WP7 can't grow fast enough to compensate that, and if WP7.5 and WP8 don't deliver then 2011 and 2012 won't be "transition years" - they'll be the last years with Nokia in the Top5.

The current strategy was risky, but given the dubious implementation details, so is this. A shame - adding WP7 to the portfolio could have been a good thing if done differently. At least there is a TTM advantage to it as Tchock said.

Anyway, today's real loser besides the Nokia employees getting laid off? ST-Ericsson. Their only path to break-even this generation were their U8500 design wins at Nokia, and I can't imagine the majority of those surviving this.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-notifies-developers-that-qt-is-out-for-windows-phone-devel/

Are they deliberately trying to commit suicide by having two completely different OS'es with incompatible tools, api and toolkits? At least with symbian/maemo/meego your QT apps would work on everything with minimal to no modifications.

Yap, QT for Symbian+Meego was excelent. They threw that away too.
And MeeGo is dead anyways.
He said specifically that the MeeGo handheld (still without a name, release date, specs, nothing) would be a device that would serve only to "experiment" some stuff so that it can be sent to WP7.






Here's Nokia's statement to developers about QT:

Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same. With 200 million users worldwide and Nokia planning to sell around 150 million more Symbian devices, Symbian still offers unparalleled geographical scale for developers.

Extending the scope of Qt further will be our first MeeGo-related open source device, which we plan to ship later this year. Though our plans for MeeGo have been adapted in light of our planned partnership with Microsoft, that device will be compatible with applications developed within the Qt framework and so give Qt developers a further device to target.

LOL yeah right.
I must say this: these guys must be pretty stupid.

You don't announce the end of a platform, publicly state that your software engineers of that diyng platform are now working on another platform and then state that you're expecting to ship 150 million handsets of that same platform.
I'm vexed, really. How stupid can they be?

 

[rpg.314]

TTM!

I am pretty sure google also does reference devices.

With WP7, you are selling little more than reference devices.

 

[tangey]

No word on what'll become of OVI Store (second largest mobile app store in the world?), OVI Services and others, but I guess we'll know all that in a couple of hours.

"Nokia's "applications and content store" (Ovi) will be integrated into Microsoft Marketplace"

(engadget)

 

[Ailuros]

WP7, WP7, WP7.
No more QT efforts, Symbian will fade away, MeeGo will be pushed aside for niche markets (like Maemo was before it).

Nokia is going for WP7 exclusively, WP7 is not exclusive to Nokia. Nokia is now officially another of Microsoft's bitches, and the plumetting stocks from this morning are just another proof of it.

I say only this:
- Symbian^3 was launched in Q4'10, along with 3 devices from one handset maker. 5 million handsets were sold.
- WP7 was launched in the same Q4'10, along with 10 devices from 4 handset makers. 1.5 million handsets were sold.

How in hell does someone reach the conclusion that WP7 will be any better?

Let some time pass. I'm myself not very fond of WP7 but before I pass judgment about any device I'd like to see it first in real time.

Oh well, better sell off this dreaded N8 fast because there'll be no more product support and firmware updates. They just said publicly that all Symbian engineers are now working on some unexisting\far-from-being-on-sale WP7 devices.

It's a sad day for the open source community.
Damn, how could everything turn out so wrong?

It's a sad day for many and not just the open source community. Things turned out that wrong because NOKIA didn't act way earlier. When it's nearly too late companies don't have a magic wand to create miracles.

Oh and if I may, friendly advice: keep the N8. Support won't stop over night.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

"Nokia's "applications and content store" (Ovi) will be integrated into Microsoft Marketplace"

(engadget)

Yes, for people who buy future Nokia WP7 devices.

What is to become people who own Symbian^1\3 devices right now?
Is there a free unnanounced upgrade to WP7 for current S3 users? Not going to happen, of course.

What incentive can a Symbian^3 buyer possibly have, now that they announced the death of the platform, Ovi store, ovi services, etc?



I just realized.. Nokia announced the death of all the platforms they have in the market at the moment and had announced for a short future.
What are they going to sell until the coming of their WP7 devices? Peanuts?

 

[fehu]

I must be a minorty, but i brought only nokia because of the software and the pc/ovi suite (now an e52)
symbian offered a perfect balance and the device where perfect phones with evolved characteristics, now what's next for me?
a samsung feature phone? another nokia incompatible with all the good things that keept me with nokia?

waste money on random symbian development, then concentrate on qt and meego, and then waste all the money and years, shrink the dipendent and become another of that wp7 makers

 

[rpg.314]

Let some time pass. I'm myself not very fond of WP7 but before I pass judgment about any device I'd like to see it first in real time.

May be they are trying to differentiate their products by selling an OS not many people are fond of?

At any rate, a massive win for Microsoft. They must have negotiated with Google as well, but I can't figure out why they went with WP7. It's not like they do not want add value themselves.

 

[rpg.314]

I must be a minorty, but i brought only nokia because of the software and the pc/ovi suite (now an e52)
symbian offered a perfect balance and the device where perfect phones with evolved characteristics, now what's next for me?
a samsung feature phone? another nokia incompatible with all the good things that keept me with nokia?

waste money on random symbian development, then concentrate on qt and meego, and then waste all the money and years, shrink the dipendent and become another of that wp7 makers

I suppose you could stick to iOS or Android if you are chasing stability.

 

[Ailuros]

May be they are trying to differentiate their products by selling an OS not many people are fond of?

At any rate, a massive win for Microsoft. They must have negotiated with Google as well, but I can't figure out why they went with WP7. It's not like they do not want add value themselves.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/...ore-symbian-and-meego-details-android-explor/

It could confirm how right Tchock and Arun were in their posts above.

A few highlights out of the highlights of that link:

Nokia will "substantially reduce" R&D expenditures while increasing R&D productivity moving forward.

Nokia did talk with Google about adopting Android but decided that it "would have difficulty differentiating within that ecosystem" and the "commoditization risk was very high -- prices, profits, everything being pushed down, value being moved out to Google which was concerning to us." Microsoft presented the best option for Nokia to resume the fight in the high end smarpthone segment.

 

[rpg.314]

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/...ore-symbian-and-meego-details-android-explor/

It could confirm how right Tchock and Arun were in their posts above.

A few highlights out of the highlights of that link:

Off hand, it's hard for me to see how Android would lead to commoditization but WP7 won't. It does say nokia would be allowed to do some unique things, I guess it will all turn on that.

 

[rpg.314]

I guess lots of champagne would be flowing right now inside Qualcomm HQ.

 

[loekf]

I guess lots of champagne would be flowing right now inside Qualcomm HQ.

And poorly brewed coffee inside Intel ?

Qualcomm will sell even more devices. Broadcom and ST-Ericsson will suffer from this.

Looks like even Apple will switch to Qualcomm basebands this year. Intel bought Infineon's handset business, but i think it's a dead-duck. Specially in the low-end Mediatek is making inroads.

 

[JohnH]

I'd have thought the main issue with Android is hardware fragmentation, there are/will be too many performance points to be able to write for anything other than the lowest common denominator. Commoditization only makes this worse as margins narrow.

This isn't an issue with WP7, at least currently.

 

[Arun]

To summarise my main problem with this strategy: yes, it *might* let them 'resume the fight in the high-end smaryphone segment', but it weakens them both short-term and long-term in the mid-range and especially the low-end smartphone segments.

Something similar to my previously proposed option (e.g. Symbian for low-end/WP7 for high-end/both in mid-range) would have been a lot less risky, and it's not like WP7 could scale as low in BOM cost as Symbian today so they had little to lose. And of course what they said about MeeGo looks like it's a complete waste of engineering resources and won't alleviate developer fears in the slightest. Oh well.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Nokia shares are getting CRUSHED after big Microsoft announcement.

Right now they're still plummeting, and the fall currently excedes the 12%.
No wonder


EDIT: still plummetting: 13%.


Wouldn't be surprised to see public protests over at Finland and the Finnish government+E.U. trying to old this somehow..
"Elopcalipse", engadget's term sounds really accurate.

 

[metafor]

Should've short Nokia

 

[Ike Turner]

Boo Hoo I remember the same outcry when nVidia bought 3dfx's assets (not on the same scale obviously). Lots of FUD, fanboys, are crap for a few days then everything will settledown...

 

[warmi]

It's a sad day for the open source community.
Damn, how could everything turn out so wrong?

Well, they had their chance, didn't they ... Nokia with their huge R&D muscle should have been able to make MeeGo into something shippable by now ...

Personally, I think this was inevitable - Nokia cannot afford to wait any longer and from what I see, WM 7 is a capable OS.

 

[hoho]

Well, they had their chance, didn't they ... Nokia with their huge R&D muscle should have been able to make MeeGo into something shippable by now ...

Yes but instead they spent about 3x the amount of money on polishing Symbian last year while it was pretty clear long ago it's a dying platform.