7 ms·

Microsoft almost bought Nokia

73 points by twidlit 13y ago

schuke 13y ago
It looks Nokia is in the vantage position now. Nokia can afford walking away from Windows Phone. But Microsoft can't. Nokia accounts for roughly 80%* of all Windows Phones. If Nokia leaves, WP is basically doomed. *http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/05/adduplex-windows-phone-statistics.html http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/05/adduplex-windows-phone-stat...
- josh2600 13y ago
  Correction, windows phone is doomed, irrespective of Nokia or Microsoft's actions. People just hate windows; Microsoft should just change the name and I swear they'd sell like gangbusters. You have to understand, Nokia and Microsoft Both lost position in the market as a result of working together. There's a big portion of the world that would buy a decent nokia phone, just because of the history. Fuck Microsoft, make the world's most badass android phone and they stand a chance. Standing with Microsoft is killing them.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Microsoft should just change the name How about "Portals"?
    - josh2600 13y ago
      Numbers scare people. Windows phone 8 sounds scary. Why not Windows "Portal" or Windows "Air" or simply "Air". Microsoft just sucks at marketing and so does Nokia; which is run by an ex-Microsoft employee. I swear he went to Nokia to ruin them and put them in a position where Microsoft could acquire them.
      - annnnd 13y ago
        Don't account to malice what can be accounted to incompetence. :) If MS acquired Nokia it would sink only lower, and MS knows it, that's why they killed the deal.
        josh2600 13y ago
        I do think you're ignoring the market reality. Before elop, Nokia had a 12-15% global market share and windows had 3. As a consequence of the migration away from Symbian (the infamous burning platform memo) Nokia went from 12-15% to 3.2% in very short order, like 2 years. The lift to Windows phone? .4% market share. In short, Nokia burning 10-12% market share to boost Windows by .4%. It's one of the worst business case studies ever: how to kill a manufacturer. There's no way Nokia would be at 3% market share if they'd gone after the future OS after Symbian. There's no way Nokia would be at 3% if they went with Android. All of the mobile OS geeks knew Windows was doomed because in the 10+ years they've been releasing Mobile OS systems, every single one has been pure crap. Why would WindowsP8 be different? Seriously, Nokia was a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Baller with Elop as high-priest.
        thornkin 13y ago
        Blackberry went with the "future OS" and now has cratering market share (under 3%). HTC went with Android, and had a head start over Nokia, and it too has less than 3% market share. Motorola is owned by Google and has virtually no market share. Everyone seems to assume that Nokia would do well if only it had used another platform. Why? Most of it's competitors haven't.
    - hexasquid 13y ago
      Tiles.
    - nichols 13y ago
      How about Portals? GlaDOS.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    That's what's so incredible. Again and again, Microsoft has persisted in their delusion that the trademark "Windows" somehow holds value in consumer space. The Windows brand has yet to earn them a dime's worth of consumer attention or goodwill, but Ballmer keeps humping the chicken. He just knows that there's a golden egg in there, somewhere amongst all those feathers. The only thing "Windows" means to the consumer is the certainty that, whenever they see the term come up at work, for whatever reason, in whatever context, they are going to have to call the helpdesk. Again.
    - nikster 13y ago
      I agree that the product name Windows Phone is one of the worst ideas ever in business. At a time when clearly the very last thing people want is all the shit that they associate with Windows .... name your new phone OS that. It's scary to think such a big and powerful corporation as Microsoft is so delusional as to think people actually like windows. That they don't see that people buy Windows because they have no choice. MS brilliantly set up this whole quasi monopoly, but somehow they seem to believe their own marketing spin on it...
  - ohwp 13y ago
    Fun fact: I heard of several ex-iPhone owners Nokia with Windows is the perfect phone. But yes, Microsoft still has a bad name. Maybe they should call it NokiaOs
surjithctly 13y ago
Nokia can still control the market by releasing Android phones.
- josh2600 13y ago
  But they suck and they won't do it. I hate to put it that way, but how many years has this bullshit been going on? I loved Nokia. They made amazing phones once upon a time, but it has been a decade of crap. When's it gonna change? What's it gonna take? I thought when marten from Eucalyptus and MySQL joined the board things would change but that hasn't been the case.
  - orenbarzilai 13y ago
    Betting on microsoft wp was a bold move! unfortunately (for them) it didn't pay off so far... They can still change their mind and start producing great android phones improve their revenue and tag behind samsung & htc.
    - nikster 13y ago
      There's a fine line between bold and idiotic. The MS deal was probably one of the worst business deals in recent history. Giving up all your choices for a one time cash payment?! Putting all eggs in one basket, and at that, a basket that never seemed very promising at all? I sure hope Nokia is working on Android phones right now, and please for the love of God kick out this idiot Elop, how much damage is he allowed to do? Microsoft is the Titanic and Nokia has tied itself to it. Cut the ropes before it's too late!
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
mtgx 13y ago
Nokia is doing so badly with WP8 even Microsoft doesn't want them. What does that tell you about their current strategy? I've always believed, and I still think it would be true - if Nokia would adopt Android, they could probably even beat Samsung. It would've certainly been true if they did it 2-3 years ago, before Samsung got a chance to become the king of smartphones, but I think it can still happen if they do it now, and wait 2-3 years for it to happen. Obviously it won't happen overnight, but at least they have a shot at it with Android. They'll never do it with WP8. The math just doesn't add up. They'll always be limited by the WP ecosystem and the WP market share. Samsung has 30% of the smartphone market, which is about 40% of the Android market share. Nokia will have at most 50% of the WP market share. It only has more now because the market is very tiny, but that would change if WP market grew. That means that for Nokia to beat Samsung, WP will need to get to 60% of the smartphone market share, and it means beating Android in market share. WP will never get that much market share, and even the most optimistic (and I believe, unrealistic) predictions by research firms put WP at 20% - 5 years from now. So if Nokia wants to stop being more than a niche smartphone player in the future, they'll have no choice but to at least also adopt Android. It's the right strategy for the Nokia board to pick. They just seem to be very stubborn about it, just like they were too stubborn to fire the Nokia CEO before Elop, for 4 years after the iPhone launched. The Nokia board needs to smarten up if they don't want to make an almost fatal mistake once again. Or the shareholders need to overhaul the board. One of the two needs to happen.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  From what I understand, it's not entirely stubbornness. The exclusivity agreement they made with Microsoft has significant penalties if they pull out - starting with paying back all of Microsoft's "platform support" payments (over USD 1 billion at this point, IIRC), but not ending there, I believe. That was probably the biggest mistake 2 years ago - not just making the wrong choice (which is fixable), but walling off the best alternatives.
  - cmccabe 13y ago
    Yeah. What a ridiculously one-sided deal. Heads I win, tails you lose. If Nokia had done well, Microsoft would have acquired them for an artificially low price. Now that they have crashed, Microsoft is free to walk away. Nokia can't get out of the deal without making ruinous repayments to Microsoft. Meanwhile, MS is developing its own hardware, which will compete directly with Nokia. In the long term, who knows? They might even perhaps to scupper the whole Windows Phone project, like Windows CE before it. As I said at the time, the absolute best case scenario for Nokia under their current course is to become another white-box OEM for Windows, operating on razor-thin profit margins. And we all know how Microsoft treats its OEMs. Probably the best thing they could do now is go declare chapter 11 (or whatever the Finnish equivalent is) and sell the component businesses. NAVTEQ ought to be worth a lot-- after all, TeleAtlas went for several billion a few years ago. Bankruptcy might give them a chance to get out from some of these pound-me-in-the-butt contract terms, too. At this point, the company is probably worth more broken up than whole.
jacquesm 13y ago
As long as Elop (ex Microsoft) is there Nokia will not move to Android. Nokia makes super hardware though, they could still turn the ship around if they wanted to and give Samsung and Apple a run for their money. Microsoft got all the advantages of owning Nokia without having to pay for it, windows phone is so rare I can't even find someone that has one in my circle of friends. The only person that owned a windows phone received it from her employer, promptly bought an android phone and switched the sim over.
- nestlequ1k 13y ago
  Agreed, I'll be instantly interested in buying a Nokia phone once they start shipping the latest version of stock Android (ideally without any bloatware and useless customizations that Samsung / HTC pushes). Elop needs to go now. What an ass clown. It's been a while since we've seen someone with such bad ideas making such horrible decisions, one after another. He reaped what he sowed, and the board can thank him for decimating a once fantastic phone company.
  - jad 13y ago
    > Elop needs to go now. What an ass clown. It's been a while since we've seen someone with such bad ideas making such horrible decisions, one after another. He reaped what he sowed, and the board can thank him for decimating a once fantastic phone company. Shipping phones running Android is far from a guarantee of success. Indeed, only Samsung is doing well with Android right now, and even then only in the last year or so. Every single other Android handset maker is struggling. Android turns your hardware into a commodity, just as Windows turned PC hardware into a commodity. It's very hard to overcome this simple fact, even if you do make great hardware (see the HTC One). Don't take my word for it, ask HTC, ask LG, ask Motorola/Google, and so on. Elop surely doesn't deserve to be dismissed as an "ass clown" for adopting what almost every critic agrees is a first rate phone OS. If Windows Phone had just a tiny bit of momentum, partnering with Microsoft would be a great strategy for establishing differentiation from Apple and the various Android phones.
    - vetinari 13y ago
wwweston 13y ago
An MS buyout is exactly the end of the Nokia story I'd anticipated once they set the Windows Phone course, so I guess the only thing I'm surprised about was that it somehow fell apart. Looking back, maybe I overestimated the value of Nokia's patents and distribution reach -- maybe the patent war flamed up/out too fast, maybe competition already made the distribution moot. Or maybe it's hard to convince MS that Nokia really has much value to offer them after they were essentially able to get Nokia to yield significant control to them for almost nothing.
rurounijones 13y ago
Nokia hardware is pretty legendary. I echo other comments that Nokia hardware combined with Android would give Samsung a good run for its money. Still annoyed about the N900 and Maemo/Meego/whatever it is called now.
- kryten 13y ago
  This. I'm writing this on a 2 year old Lumia 710. This replaced a 6303i. The thing has had the crap bashed out of it but it has never faltered, not once. In that time it has never crashed as well. To be honest, the only bit I don't like about this as a Windows Phone is Microsoft. If someone else came up with it, I'd be happy.
  - tomflack 13y ago
    What's the value of your anecdotal experience? I can add my own - my 6 month old Lumia 920 has been back to Nokia for repair. Twice. Nokia hardware may have been legendary, but it certainly isn't any more. Some of the fit-and-finish on their stuff is weak now (sim tray on 920, dust getting in the front facing camera on the 920) and the rest of the industry has moved on. The 710 isn't even two years old. It's at most, 19 months.
    - iamshs 13y ago
      What's the value of your anecdotal experience?
      - tomflack 13y ago
        Exactly the same as the comments that I was replying to: zero. I posted it to illustrate this, since they are exact opposite experiences and now we have two statistically insignificant data points contradicting each other.
    - woe 13y ago
      I bicycled over a large bump, my Lumia 920 jumped out of my shirt pocket and fell onto asphalt from a height of about four feet at a speed of about 25 mph. It bounced a few times and then slid several feet. The damage: a few dented corners and a single light 3mm scratch on the glass. No complaints about build quality here.
mhomde 13y ago
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." The common perception seems to be that WP & Nokia is failing but I actually think they've managed to turn things around, there's a little inertia but they're getting there 1) Major players has started developing and supporting windows phone apps. Twitter, Tumblr,Facebook, WhatsApp, Foursquare all have quality apps. Maybe they're not updated with the frenzy of the pace-leader Apple but what do people expect when they're coming from behind. Compare that to blackberry which is a true wasteland 2) Nokia has been stellar in its support of its Windows Phone users, pushing out excellent updates, services and apps. Perhaps its partly because they're fighting for their life but I'd argue that Nokia is one of the best phone manufacturers there is right now from the users point of view. 3) Nokia/Microsoft is between update cycles. Nokia won't and can't push out a major flagship phone before Microsoft has the next major version of its OS ready. A major complaint of Nokia phones has been hardware specs (which I think its a little retarted since WP performs as well or better than many android phones on "less" specs), with the next update MS will probably up the support for newer hardware and resolutions 4) Microsoft and Nokia has a very compelling ecosystem together, something that even Samsung is hard to match. MS has Office/Yammer/Sharepoint/XBOX and Windows. Nokia has a range of quality services within mapping, music, local transit. While most are not pack leader they're certainly not that far from it. 5) If anyone thinks Microsoft going to stop pouring money at the problem and/or adapting & improving they're crazy, and their coffers are huge. Tablets and Windows Phones are too important a segment for MS to ignore so they will continue to claw themselves to the top until they're at least firmly top 3. 6) Windows Phone at its core is one of the most recent & modern OS's there is. Android & IPhone have been around longer and has more bagage. 7) Windows Phone leads in user satisfaction so clearly they're doing something right. The only thing that's holding them back is "lack of apps". But I think what Windows Phone lacks is not quantity of apps, but what they need is a few unique "flagship" apps to show its a contender and they will start to change the impression of the platform around. Also I think at its core WP is the only phone that has a UI paradigm that will work in the long run. Its flabbergasting that people can spend so much time arguing how the icons look in ios7 looks like and not that its an outdated limited paradigm. The future belongs with more glanceable / dashboard-oriented UI's Microsoft have however dropped the ball a little, they should have been doing as good a job as Nokia: pushing out apps, updates and features more quickly. But we'll see, WP8 was the first version using the new kernel so there probably was some housekeeping to be done, once the behemoth gets rolling we'll see what happens. I think Nokia made a good bet although its hard to say. Look at the trouble HTC is in now. Sure Samsung is up right now but all manufacturers are only one missed cycle from being screwed. Android is so commoditized that's its hard to differentiate. Meanwhile Nokia is owning a whole powerful ecosystem on its own. In the end however I think any company that doesn't have an app store is pretty much screwed so that leaves Google, Apple, Microsoft and possibly Amazon
tkorri 13y ago
The whole news about Microsoft buying Nokia is just a rumor. It's probably something that might happen but it's still a rumor that has been circulating since they announced their alliance in 2011. So I think writing "And it explains so much about the disastrous strategic choices Nokia made for its mobile phones division over the past year." is pretty far fetched stuff. The author also added "citations" from WSJ that don't appear in the original article (for example "... in part because of the price and Nokia’s own strategic predicament"). So I wouldn't give much weight on what this guy is writing.
bojan 13y ago
I think most of the commenters in this thread are overestimating Nokia's capability to beat Samsung were it to switch to Android. Samsung's marketing budget is so huge that I don't see how Nokia could ever compete, unless they would release a phone that is so much better than anything Samsung can come up with that it compensates for marketing. And that is much easier said than done.
- camus 13y ago
  it is not about switching 100% to Android. It is about, like Samsung or HTC diversification. What the h... were they thinking when they signed that agreement with MS , short term profit ?
  - bojan 13y ago
    They were thinking about survival maybe? I am not sure how much money they immediately received from MS for the deal, if any? But even if they diverse, what would be their Android marketshare? Would they have resources do build properly for both Android and WP? Lumias are made for WP, even their design shows that, would that same design work for Android phone?
Ygg2 13y ago
I have to wonder, why Android? Why not other alternatives? Like FxOS? Or both?
- _quasimodo 13y ago
  Sailfish!
- mtgx 13y ago
  Because those are just like WP8, strategy wise, but worse (even smaller ecosystems). They need Android to truly succeed.
  - iamshs 13y ago
    https://twitter.com/asymco/status/309407743150784513 https://twitter.com/asymco/status/309407743150784513 Ok.
    - vetinari 13y ago
      And it went back up in the May, when they started to sell the HTC One.
  - claudius 13y ago
    SailfishOS (your newest vaporware on the block) can apparently run Android APKs. And if it’s remotely similar to Meego Harmattan, I am more than sold. Didn’t Lenovo want to start a phone business?
- iamshs 13y ago
  Exactly. I would want FxOS on it. But the truth is, apps will still be a major problem, the one which plagues it right now.
skc 13y ago
I'm pretty surprised by the fact that almost everybody in here is of the opinion that Nokias Windows Phone strategy is not working. Last I checked, selling more and more smartphones per quarter while slowly growing marketshare, especially in Europe, is not the sign of a bad strategy. It's amusing to me that people consider success to mean 50% marketshare overnight. It's equally amusing to me that people fail to see that Android is absolutley no guarantee of success either, see HTC for example. Nokia made a bold bet, but because they chose a MS platform it's not surprising that the HN crowd see this as failure. I mean we have people in here saying they should even have gone with FireFox OS! Wow. My opinion, this is a slog, and Nokia is at least making a game of it and walking in the right direction.
- nikster 13y ago
  There are no slogs in business. Nokia is on the brink of death. The problem with the WP strategy is and always has been the exclusivity. From Nokia's perspective, why in the world would I want to exclusively sell WP devices, and not _also_ Android devices? Note that that's what the others do. They're selling WP. Should it become a huge hit, Samsung and LG already have WP devices. Should it fail - well, obviously they've got tons of Android devices / experience. Why would you want to tie yourself to a single technological choice like that? The answer is you don't want to, you never should, and Nokia is suffering because of this decision. I know they got cash for it - it was a very bad deal. This bold bet idea - where did this come from? What's bold about limiting your own choices? That's not bold, that's stupid.
  - Spearchucker 13y ago
    There are no slogs in business. Careful. That's a view that can burn badly. A slog is nothing more than a strategy, which consists of many discrete tactical steps [1]. Dig into Microsoft's acquisition history - they never acquire market leaders. And the world is surprised when, 5 years later, that non-market-leading acquisition is behind a market-leading Microsoft product. Not all work out that way for sure, but those that do, do so spectacularly. Microsoft's relationship with Nokia is not an acquisition but shows signs of a similar strategy, nonetheless. mhomde's points above [2] are pretty accurate. Microsoft are masters of the long game. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Chapter_summary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Chapter_summary [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5910708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5910708
harrietlucia 13y ago
not at all possible
v0lta 13y ago
A point that a lot of people don't see with WP8 is that it runs great (compared to Android) on low-end devices. You can get a Lumia 520 for ~150€ where I live and it offers (theoretically) pretty much everything a Lumia 820 or 920 does, except Games.
wedesoft 13y ago
Maybe Nokia should consider Firefox OS.

73 points by twidlit 13y ago

It looks Nokia is in the vantage position now. Nokia can afford walking away from Windows Phone. But Microsoft can't. Nokia accounts for roughly 80%* of all Windows Phones. If Nokia leaves, WP is basically doomed. *http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/05/adduplex-windows-phone-statistics.html http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/05/adduplex-windows-phone-stat...

josh2600 13y ago
Correction, windows phone is doomed, irrespective of Nokia or Microsoft's actions. People just hate windows; Microsoft should just change the name and I swear they'd sell like gangbusters. You have to understand, Nokia and Microsoft Both lost position in the market as a result of working together. There's a big portion of the world that would buy a decent nokia phone, just because of the history. Fuck Microsoft, make the world's most badass android phone and they stand a chance. Standing with Microsoft is killing them.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Microsoft should just change the name How about "Portals"?
  - josh2600 13y ago
    Numbers scare people. Windows phone 8 sounds scary. Why not Windows "Portal" or Windows "Air" or simply "Air". Microsoft just sucks at marketing and so does Nokia; which is run by an ex-Microsoft employee. I swear he went to Nokia to ruin them and put them in a position where Microsoft could acquire them.
    - annnnd 13y ago
      Don't account to malice what can be accounted to incompetence. :) If MS acquired Nokia it would sink only lower, and MS knows it, that's why they killed the deal.
      - josh2600 13y ago
        I do think you're ignoring the market reality. Before elop, Nokia had a 12-15% global market share and windows had 3. As a consequence of the migration away from Symbian (the infamous burning platform memo) Nokia went from 12-15% to 3.2% in very short order, like 2 years. The lift to Windows phone? .4% market share. In short, Nokia burning 10-12% market share to boost Windows by .4%. It's one of the worst business case studies ever: how to kill a manufacturer. There's no way Nokia would be at 3% market share if they'd gone after the future OS after Symbian. There's no way Nokia would be at 3% if they went with Android. All of the mobile OS geeks knew Windows was doomed because in the 10+ years they've been releasing Mobile OS systems, every single one has been pure crap. Why would WindowsP8 be different? Seriously, Nokia was a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Baller with Elop as high-priest.
        thornkin 13y ago
        Blackberry went with the "future OS" and now has cratering market share (under 3%). HTC went with Android, and had a head start over Nokia, and it too has less than 3% market share. Motorola is owned by Google and has virtually no market share. Everyone seems to assume that Nokia would do well if only it had used another platform. Why? Most of it's competitors haven't.
  - hexasquid 13y ago
    Tiles.
  - nichols 13y ago
    How about Portals? GlaDOS.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  That's what's so incredible. Again and again, Microsoft has persisted in their delusion that the trademark "Windows" somehow holds value in consumer space. The Windows brand has yet to earn them a dime's worth of consumer attention or goodwill, but Ballmer keeps humping the chicken. He just knows that there's a golden egg in there, somewhere amongst all those feathers. The only thing "Windows" means to the consumer is the certainty that, whenever they see the term come up at work, for whatever reason, in whatever context, they are going to have to call the helpdesk. Again.
  - nikster 13y ago
    I agree that the product name Windows Phone is one of the worst ideas ever in business. At a time when clearly the very last thing people want is all the shit that they associate with Windows .... name your new phone OS that. It's scary to think such a big and powerful corporation as Microsoft is so delusional as to think people actually like windows. That they don't see that people buy Windows because they have no choice. MS brilliantly set up this whole quasi monopoly, but somehow they seem to believe their own marketing spin on it...
- ohwp 13y ago
  Fun fact: I heard of several ex-iPhone owners Nokia with Windows is the perfect phone. But yes, Microsoft still has a bad name. Maybe they should call it NokiaOs

surjithctly 13y ago

Nokia can still control the market by releasing Android phones.

josh2600 13y ago
But they suck and they won't do it. I hate to put it that way, but how many years has this bullshit been going on? I loved Nokia. They made amazing phones once upon a time, but it has been a decade of crap. When's it gonna change? What's it gonna take? I thought when marten from Eucalyptus and MySQL joined the board things would change but that hasn't been the case.
- orenbarzilai 13y ago
  Betting on microsoft wp was a bold move! unfortunately (for them) it didn't pay off so far... They can still change their mind and start producing great android phones improve their revenue and tag behind samsung & htc.
  - nikster 13y ago
    There's a fine line between bold and idiotic. The MS deal was probably one of the worst business deals in recent history. Giving up all your choices for a one time cash payment?! Putting all eggs in one basket, and at that, a basket that never seemed very promising at all? I sure hope Nokia is working on Android phones right now, and please for the love of God kick out this idiot Elop, how much damage is he allowed to do? Microsoft is the Titanic and Nokia has tied itself to it. Cut the ropes before it's too late!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

mtgx 13y ago

Nokia is doing so badly with WP8 even Microsoft doesn't want them. What does that tell you about their current strategy? I've always believed, and I still think it would be true - if Nokia would adopt Android, they could probably even beat Samsung. It would've certainly been true if they did it 2-3 years ago, before Samsung got a chance to become the king of smartphones, but I think it can still happen if they do it now, and wait 2-3 years for it to happen. Obviously it won't happen overnight, but at least they have a shot at it with Android. They'll never do it with WP8. The math just doesn't add up. They'll always be limited by the WP ecosystem and the WP market share. Samsung has 30% of the smartphone market, which is about 40% of the Android market share. Nokia will have at most 50% of the WP market share. It only has more now because the market is very tiny, but that would change if WP market grew. That means that for Nokia to beat Samsung, WP will need to get to 60% of the smartphone market share, and it means beating Android in market share. WP will never get that much market share, and even the most optimistic (and I believe, unrealistic) predictions by research firms put WP at 20% - 5 years from now. So if Nokia wants to stop being more than a niche smartphone player in the future, they'll have no choice but to at least also adopt Android. It's the right strategy for the Nokia board to pick. They just seem to be very stubborn about it, just like they were too stubborn to fire the Nokia CEO before Elop, for 4 years after the iPhone launched. The Nokia board needs to smarten up if they don't want to make an almost fatal mistake once again. Or the shareholders need to overhaul the board. One of the two needs to happen.

fpgeek 13y ago
From what I understand, it's not entirely stubbornness. The exclusivity agreement they made with Microsoft has significant penalties if they pull out - starting with paying back all of Microsoft's "platform support" payments (over USD 1 billion at this point, IIRC), but not ending there, I believe. That was probably the biggest mistake 2 years ago - not just making the wrong choice (which is fixable), but walling off the best alternatives.
- cmccabe 13y ago
  Yeah. What a ridiculously one-sided deal. Heads I win, tails you lose. If Nokia had done well, Microsoft would have acquired them for an artificially low price. Now that they have crashed, Microsoft is free to walk away. Nokia can't get out of the deal without making ruinous repayments to Microsoft. Meanwhile, MS is developing its own hardware, which will compete directly with Nokia. In the long term, who knows? They might even perhaps to scupper the whole Windows Phone project, like Windows CE before it. As I said at the time, the absolute best case scenario for Nokia under their current course is to become another white-box OEM for Windows, operating on razor-thin profit margins. And we all know how Microsoft treats its OEMs. Probably the best thing they could do now is go declare chapter 11 (or whatever the Finnish equivalent is) and sell the component businesses. NAVTEQ ought to be worth a lot-- after all, TeleAtlas went for several billion a few years ago. Bankruptcy might give them a chance to get out from some of these pound-me-in-the-butt contract terms, too. At this point, the company is probably worth more broken up than whole.

jacquesm 13y ago

As long as Elop (ex Microsoft) is there Nokia will not move to Android. Nokia makes super hardware though, they could still turn the ship around if they wanted to and give Samsung and Apple a run for their money. Microsoft got all the advantages of owning Nokia without having to pay for it, windows phone is so rare I can't even find someone that has one in my circle of friends. The only person that owned a windows phone received it from her employer, promptly bought an android phone and switched the sim over.

nestlequ1k 13y ago
Agreed, I'll be instantly interested in buying a Nokia phone once they start shipping the latest version of stock Android (ideally without any bloatware and useless customizations that Samsung / HTC pushes). Elop needs to go now. What an ass clown. It's been a while since we've seen someone with such bad ideas making such horrible decisions, one after another. He reaped what he sowed, and the board can thank him for decimating a once fantastic phone company.
- jad 13y ago
  > Elop needs to go now. What an ass clown. It's been a while since we've seen someone with such bad ideas making such horrible decisions, one after another. He reaped what he sowed, and the board can thank him for decimating a once fantastic phone company. Shipping phones running Android is far from a guarantee of success. Indeed, only Samsung is doing well with Android right now, and even then only in the last year or so. Every single other Android handset maker is struggling. Android turns your hardware into a commodity, just as Windows turned PC hardware into a commodity. It's very hard to overcome this simple fact, even if you do make great hardware (see the HTC One). Don't take my word for it, ask HTC, ask LG, ask Motorola/Google, and so on. Elop surely doesn't deserve to be dismissed as an "ass clown" for adopting what almost every critic agrees is a first rate phone OS. If Windows Phone had just a tiny bit of momentum, partnering with Microsoft would be a great strategy for establishing differentiation from Apple and the various Android phones.
  - vetinari 13y ago

wwweston 13y ago

An MS buyout is exactly the end of the Nokia story I'd anticipated once they set the Windows Phone course, so I guess the only thing I'm surprised about was that it somehow fell apart. Looking back, maybe I overestimated the value of Nokia's patents and distribution reach -- maybe the patent war flamed up/out too fast, maybe competition already made the distribution moot. Or maybe it's hard to convince MS that Nokia really has much value to offer them after they were essentially able to get Nokia to yield significant control to them for almost nothing.

rurounijones 13y ago

Nokia hardware is pretty legendary. I echo other comments that Nokia hardware combined with Android would give Samsung a good run for its money. Still annoyed about the N900 and Maemo/Meego/whatever it is called now.

kryten 13y ago
This. I'm writing this on a 2 year old Lumia 710. This replaced a 6303i. The thing has had the crap bashed out of it but it has never faltered, not once. In that time it has never crashed as well. To be honest, the only bit I don't like about this as a Windows Phone is Microsoft. If someone else came up with it, I'd be happy.
- tomflack 13y ago
  What's the value of your anecdotal experience? I can add my own - my 6 month old Lumia 920 has been back to Nokia for repair. Twice. Nokia hardware may have been legendary, but it certainly isn't any more. Some of the fit-and-finish on their stuff is weak now (sim tray on 920, dust getting in the front facing camera on the 920) and the rest of the industry has moved on. The 710 isn't even two years old. It's at most, 19 months.
  - iamshs 13y ago
    What's the value of your anecdotal experience?
    - tomflack 13y ago
      Exactly the same as the comments that I was replying to: zero. I posted it to illustrate this, since they are exact opposite experiences and now we have two statistically insignificant data points contradicting each other.
  - woe 13y ago
    I bicycled over a large bump, my Lumia 920 jumped out of my shirt pocket and fell onto asphalt from a height of about four feet at a speed of about 25 mph. It bounced a few times and then slid several feet. The damage: a few dented corners and a single light 3mm scratch on the glass. No complaints about build quality here.

mhomde 13y ago

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." The common perception seems to be that WP & Nokia is failing but I actually think they've managed to turn things around, there's a little inertia but they're getting there 1) Major players has started developing and supporting windows phone apps. Twitter, Tumblr,Facebook, WhatsApp, Foursquare all have quality apps. Maybe they're not updated with the frenzy of the pace-leader Apple but what do people expect when they're coming from behind. Compare that to blackberry which is a true wasteland 2) Nokia has been stellar in its support of its Windows Phone users, pushing out excellent updates, services and apps. Perhaps its partly because they're fighting for their life but I'd argue that Nokia is one of the best phone manufacturers there is right now from the users point of view. 3) Nokia/Microsoft is between update cycles. Nokia won't and can't push out a major flagship phone before Microsoft has the next major version of its OS ready. A major complaint of Nokia phones has been hardware specs (which I think its a little retarted since WP performs as well or better than many android phones on "less" specs), with the next update MS will probably up the support for newer hardware and resolutions 4) Microsoft and Nokia has a very compelling ecosystem together, something that even Samsung is hard to match. MS has Office/Yammer/Sharepoint/XBOX and Windows. Nokia has a range of quality services within mapping, music, local transit. While most are not pack leader they're certainly not that far from it. 5) If anyone thinks Microsoft going to stop pouring money at the problem and/or adapting & improving they're crazy, and their coffers are huge. Tablets and Windows Phones are too important a segment for MS to ignore so they will continue to claw themselves to the top until they're at least firmly top 3. 6) Windows Phone at its core is one of the most recent & modern OS's there is. Android & IPhone have been around longer and has more bagage. 7) Windows Phone leads in user satisfaction so clearly they're doing something right. The only thing that's holding them back is "lack of apps". But I think what Windows Phone lacks is not quantity of apps, but what they need is a few unique "flagship" apps to show its a contender and they will start to change the impression of the platform around. Also I think at its core WP is the only phone that has a UI paradigm that will work in the long run. Its flabbergasting that people can spend so much time arguing how the icons look in ios7 looks like and not that its an outdated limited paradigm. The future belongs with more glanceable / dashboard-oriented UI's Microsoft have however dropped the ball a little, they should have been doing as good a job as Nokia: pushing out apps, updates and features more quickly. But we'll see, WP8 was the first version using the new kernel so there probably was some housekeeping to be done, once the behemoth gets rolling we'll see what happens. I think Nokia made a good bet although its hard to say. Look at the trouble HTC is in now. Sure Samsung is up right now but all manufacturers are only one missed cycle from being screwed. Android is so commoditized that's its hard to differentiate. Meanwhile Nokia is owning a whole powerful ecosystem on its own. In the end however I think any company that doesn't have an app store is pretty much screwed so that leaves Google, Apple, Microsoft and possibly Amazon

tkorri 13y ago

The whole news about Microsoft buying Nokia is just a rumor. It's probably something that might happen but it's still a rumor that has been circulating since they announced their alliance in 2011. So I think writing "And it explains so much about the disastrous strategic choices Nokia made for its mobile phones division over the past year." is pretty far fetched stuff. The author also added "citations" from WSJ that don't appear in the original article (for example "... in part because of the price and Nokia’s own strategic predicament"). So I wouldn't give much weight on what this guy is writing.

bojan 13y ago

I think most of the commenters in this thread are overestimating Nokia's capability to beat Samsung were it to switch to Android. Samsung's marketing budget is so huge that I don't see how Nokia could ever compete, unless they would release a phone that is so much better than anything Samsung can come up with that it compensates for marketing. And that is much easier said than done.

camus 13y ago
it is not about switching 100% to Android. It is about, like Samsung or HTC diversification. What the h... were they thinking when they signed that agreement with MS , short term profit ?
- bojan 13y ago
  They were thinking about survival maybe? I am not sure how much money they immediately received from MS for the deal, if any? But even if they diverse, what would be their Android marketshare? Would they have resources do build properly for both Android and WP? Lumias are made for WP, even their design shows that, would that same design work for Android phone?

Ygg2 13y ago

I have to wonder, why Android? Why not other alternatives? Like FxOS? Or both?

_quasimodo 13y ago
Sailfish!
mtgx 13y ago
Because those are just like WP8, strategy wise, but worse (even smaller ecosystems). They need Android to truly succeed.
- iamshs 13y ago
  https://twitter.com/asymco/status/309407743150784513 https://twitter.com/asymco/status/309407743150784513 Ok.
  - vetinari 13y ago
    And it went back up in the May, when they started to sell the HTC One.
- claudius 13y ago
  SailfishOS (your newest vaporware on the block) can apparently run Android APKs. And if it’s remotely similar to Meego Harmattan, I am more than sold. Didn’t Lenovo want to start a phone business?
iamshs 13y ago
Exactly. I would want FxOS on it. But the truth is, apps will still be a major problem, the one which plagues it right now.

skc 13y ago

I'm pretty surprised by the fact that almost everybody in here is of the opinion that Nokias Windows Phone strategy is not working. Last I checked, selling more and more smartphones per quarter while slowly growing marketshare, especially in Europe, is not the sign of a bad strategy. It's amusing to me that people consider success to mean 50% marketshare overnight. It's equally amusing to me that people fail to see that Android is absolutley no guarantee of success either, see HTC for example. Nokia made a bold bet, but because they chose a MS platform it's not surprising that the HN crowd see this as failure. I mean we have people in here saying they should even have gone with FireFox OS! Wow. My opinion, this is a slog, and Nokia is at least making a game of it and walking in the right direction.

nikster 13y ago
There are no slogs in business. Nokia is on the brink of death. The problem with the WP strategy is and always has been the exclusivity. From Nokia's perspective, why in the world would I want to exclusively sell WP devices, and not _also_ Android devices? Note that that's what the others do. They're selling WP. Should it become a huge hit, Samsung and LG already have WP devices. Should it fail - well, obviously they've got tons of Android devices / experience. Why would you want to tie yourself to a single technological choice like that? The answer is you don't want to, you never should, and Nokia is suffering because of this decision. I know they got cash for it - it was a very bad deal. This bold bet idea - where did this come from? What's bold about limiting your own choices? That's not bold, that's stupid.
- Spearchucker 13y ago
  There are no slogs in business. Careful. That's a view that can burn badly. A slog is nothing more than a strategy, which consists of many discrete tactical steps [1]. Dig into Microsoft's acquisition history - they never acquire market leaders. And the world is surprised when, 5 years later, that non-market-leading acquisition is behind a market-leading Microsoft product. Not all work out that way for sure, but those that do, do so spectacularly. Microsoft's relationship with Nokia is not an acquisition but shows signs of a similar strategy, nonetheless. mhomde's points above [2] are pretty accurate. Microsoft are masters of the long game. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Chapter_summary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Chapter_summary [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5910708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5910708

harrietlucia 13y ago

not at all possible

v0lta 13y ago

A point that a lot of people don't see with WP8 is that it runs great (compared to Android) on low-end devices. You can get a Lumia 520 for ~150€ where I live and it offers (theoretically) pretty much everything a Lumia 820 or 920 does, except Games.

wedesoft 13y ago

Maybe Nokia should consider Firefox OS.