Nokia’s road to Feb.11th – the last 18 months. Part 2

Staska  By on 25 Oct 11

This is part 2 of my look into the situation at Nokia during the last 18 months before February 11th 2011, when it made the dramatic strategy shift, abandoning Symbian and Meego platforms in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

In the first part I talked about how the top managers saw the company situation in  September 2009, during its annual Nokia World conference, when they proudly announced a fresh offensive in the smartphone market. And how that offensive fizzled out in the next 6 months.

Today I take a closer look at what happened during the next year and what forced Nokia to abandon the strategy it has been pursuing before, drop its own smart device platforms, and switch to the unproven Windows Phone OS in February 2011.

If you are interested in the longer term view, check out my posts “How Nokia was disrupted“.

February – September 2010. When Symbian/Meego/Qt became not good enough

During Q1 2010 earnings report in April, Nokia managers were forced to admit that they were not able to execute on the strategy outlined in September and December of 2009, and that they are delaying the release of the next generation Symbian OS and new devices,  by months. Few weeks later, Nokia issued a profit warning and lowered profit expectations for the rest of the year.

By that time OPK’s fate as Nokia CEO was, most likely, already decided. Nokia’s board saw the precarious situation 4 years of OPK’s leadership brought the company to, and understood that a major change of direction is necessary.

In May 2010 Nokia announced another of its restructurings, and brought Anssi Vanjoki back to the spotlight from the exile in Nokia’s marketing arm, where he was banished after losing a fight for CEO spot back in 2006. Nokia’s Board put Anssi in charge of the most important smartphone division, with a task of reforming Nokia ways and possible promise of the top position. The new CEO search started at about the same time, with Anssi Vanjoki as an obvious front runner. He had to come up with a viable plan for Nokia’s turnaround, sell it to the board, and convince them that he can execute it.

As soon as Anssi started in his new job in July, he issued a very inspiring rallying cry “The fightback starts now”. And got to work on changing things. From what we know now – those changes included:

(Most of those changes were announced/came out when Stephen Elop was already in charge, but that was too soon for a man only 3 weeks into the new job, for it to have been purely his decision. After all – Elop himself said that he would spend his first month (October) listening, learning things from Nokia employees.)

Despite the big internal changes, Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia man to its core, was adamant that he will be able to turn Nokia around relying solely on Symbian/Meego/Qt trifecta. And refused to even consider external platform alternatives. Unfortunately, he failed to convince Nokia board to trust him on this.

We’ll never know whether Anssi was right or wrong, or how Nokia boardroom politics played out, but we know the end result of it. Few weeks into the Anssi’s new job as head of smartphone division, Nokia Board made a decision that his plan is not enough.

According to Board’s thinking, Nokia may not be able to survive on its own, the viability of Symbian and current Nokia transition strategy would have to be evaluated afresh, and possibilities of joining other mobile platforms – either Android or Windows Phone – seriously looked into. And Anssi was not the man to do it – they started looking for an external CEO with strong software background  to implement the changes.

And they found one in Stephen Elop in early September 2010.

September 2010 – February 2011. The end of Nokia as we know it and a fresh start

Nokia has announced that it has hired Stephen Elop as new CEO on Sept. 10th. His vision and Nokia turn-around plan so obviously rejected, Anssi Vanjoki announced his resignation from Nokia 3 days later. On Sept. 21st Elop started his new job.

The end of Q3 2010 was a very turbulent time at Nokia. The changes Anssi Vanjoki initiated in the smartphone division were starting to take shape. Meego team began working on the new Swipe interface, Nokia N8 – the first Symbian^3 device was about to ship and the plans to streamline Symbian development were in place. On the other hand, market realities were catching up and Nokia’s smartphone market share started dropping too fast – it declined 6% in just one quarter.

The end of the year was even worse. Symbian^1 sales have collapsed. In Q4 2010, during the Holiday Shopping Season, Nokia sold 3.2 million less of its Symbian^1 handsets, then it was able to sell just 3 months ago. Due to previous delays and pent up demand, Nokia’s formidable sales organization was able to push 5 million next generation Symbian^3 devices to operators and wholesale partners. S^3 helped to show a some quarterly growth, and even increased average device price and overall Nokia profitability, but those gains were largely an illusion. Compared to available Android 2.2 devices, the new Symbian phones were uncompetitive and the end consumer demand was pretty low. Failing to sell the devices they already had, Nokia partners started slashing the orders for the next year. For more detailed analysis of Nokia Q4 2010 check here.

The fate of Symbian has already been decided during spring/summer 2010. Looking at an amount of time, efforts and resources S^3 update required, Nokia’s management and the board have already made up their minds about the gradual phase out, in favor of Meego. But the rapid collapse of S^1 sales and a tepid Symbian^3 uptake must have caught them by surprise.

Since mid November 2010 Stephen Elop and Nokia management team were already talking to Google and Microsoft about adding their mobile OSes to Nokia’s offerings. But as 2011 rolled in and Nokia saw the actual sales numbers and projections, the situation became much more urgent.

At  the time, Nokia was less then 4 months into the development of the new Swipe interface for Meego, and no guaranties that they will be able to ship it by next September. Furthermore, according to Business Week, in early January 2011 management realized that at the current pace  they will only be able to launch 3 Meego devices before 2014. This one device a year release cycle for Meego phones was the part of the original Nokia strategy/roadmap. And Meego team was following this roadmap even after the changes initiated by Anssi Vanjoki during the summer of 2010.

And it might have been a good plan – to have one top of the line champion device a year, to put all of Nokia’s marketing strength behind. If Nokia had a refreshed and moderately competitive Symbian OS, to fill the portfolio beneath it. Alas, with Symbian sales collapsing, instead of orderly transition to Meego via Qt, Nokia was now facing a rapid collapse of its main smartphone platform with nothing to replace it for the next 10-20 months.

To make matters worse, they now had a hard deadline when the new Nokia strategy had to be unveiled to the world. The date for this – Nokia Capital Market days on February 11th, was already set and announced.

Coming to the realization that the platform you have been betting your future survival on is not ready to compete, and may not be ready for years, must have been a pretty big shock to Nokia team. In late 2010, Android or Windows Phone was just an attractive option to broaden Nokia product portfolio, help with U.S. market and smoothen the transition. So after first introductory meetings between CEOs, high level management teams were mostly looking into technological feasibility and negotiating technical details during the meetings in New York and Reykjavik. But in January of 2011 this suddenly became a huge “bet the whole future of the company” decision for Nokia.

Google, riding high on Android success, wasn’t much interested in giving Nokia much leeway, or possibilities to customize the OS to Nokia’s liking. To them Nokia was just another handset maker which will have to adhere to Android Compatibility Guidelines like the rest. And the way Google treated Samsung- stopping already shipping Galaxy S sales over the Skyhook matter last summer, shows what would have happened to Nokia, if it fully committed to Android.

That left only Microsoft’s Windows Phone as a viable platform for Nokia. Using possible Android switch as a club, Elop was able to get the permission to modify Windows Phone OS to Nokia needs, got the commitment of huge marketing support payments from Redmond, made Navteq/Nokia maps the default in Microsoft ecosystem, and negotiated revenue share from the location based services built on Navteq technology. The deal was hammered out during Ballmer’s visit to Helsinki and Jan. 16th Microsoft/Nokia management meeting in London, and finalized on February 10th by the approval of Nokia’s Board. The rest, as they say, is history.

Will Nokia’s bet on Windows Phone be able to turn the company around? We  simply do not know yet. We’ll see the first tangible results tomorrow, at Nokia World. But  will probably have to wait until next summer to see if the strategy really works.

Wouldn’t Nokia have been better off,  if it had doubled down on Meego and made it work? We will never know. But a thing to remember here – is that this decision was not made just by Trojan Horse Elop secretly under Ballmer’s command. Most of the top Nokia management, and Nokia’s Board – with a much better insights into the real state of Meego and Nokia’s business situation at the time, approved and fully supported Windows Phone switch.

Given the cards he was dealt, the Meego and Symbian situation at the time, Stephen Elop played the best game he could. Now we have to wait and see if that was enough.

Hat tip to AllAboutWindowsPhone’s Rafe for help with some of the Meego stuff in this post

 

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  • Anonymous

    Great pair of articles – it is indeed going to be an interesting 9 months. Whatever the future is and it still may including Microsoft sucking the life out of Nokia or just outright taking it over; Nokia will never be the same again either in profitability or influence and I don’t personally believe that after more than 12 months they will ever be able to divorce Microsoft so inextricably linked (owing to “special” relationship, stores etc) into Microsoft services they will have become. They are the new Dell

  • http://www.pricemo.com Maxtor

    This explains why Nokia decided to do Symbian and use Windows Phone.  It doesn’t, however, explain why the plans to not continue the Qt/Linux based platform of their own on the side.  Unless Meltemi is just a continuation of Maemo under a new name since the joint project with Intel turned out to be a mistake.  Or maybe they think the Qt/Linux platform will suffer from  a lack of QT apps that would be  developed if Symbian was being continued as well.

  • http://www.staska.net Staska

    Yep, might be one of the reasons you mention, it also might have been the price Nokia had to pay to get the deal it got from Microsoft. 

    Might be all the reasons above and a few more. Maybe we’ll see some hints tomorrow. 

    Frankly, I’m much more interested in what Nokia has to say about their Next Billion part of the strategy, QT and Meltemi at Nokia World, then in Windows Phone launches. 

    Most NWPs have been leaked and we more or less know what they are about. Also it’s clear that there won’t be much differentiation in this round. The only big/interesting question that remains- is Nokia NWP pricing strategy. 

    Now “the next billion” – that is a total mystery for now. Besides hinting that Qt is going to next generation S40, Nokia didn’t say anything about it since launch. All we have are rumors and speculations  

  • http://www.staska.net Staska

    The argument about Nokia losing its own platforms platforms, becoming Dell and Microsoft bitch, is missing one thing.

    Samsung and HTC are not competing on platforms.They are competing on hardware innovation and scale. And they are doing pretty well, aren’t they? But at both things they are doing so great on now (HW and scale), Nokia is better then either HTC or Samsung.

    As soon as/if Windows Phone gets good enough, it’s again Nokia’s game where they’ve been winning and leaving competitors in the dust for more then a decade. And with preferences Nokia’s got from MSFT- they might be in even better position then before. 

    One can argue that Nokia’s problem since the competition moved to mobile computing platforms – was they didn’t have a platform to compete on before. Symbian was old, expensive and uncompetitive crap and Meego was not ready. Now that the game becomes about hardware again-they have a great chance to succeed. 

    Of course – before that happens – Windows Phone has to become good enough to stand up to Android in the market. This is what Elop means when he says that he is more worried about the whole WP ecosystem today, then about Nokia’s place in it. He knows that if they are able to propel WP ecosystem and make it worthy competitor to Android – Nokia has everything it needs to win afterwards

  • http://twitter.com/rodrigottr Rodrigo Arantes

    I must admit you evolved a lot your arguments about Nokia’s decision, Staska. But there are still many blank parts you are fulfilling with your own assumptions and opinions when most of them are weak.

    1 – “Compared to available Android 2.2 devices, the new Symbian phones were uncompetitive and the end consumer demand was pretty low.”

    The judgment about a product quality must not be done by you, but by the consumer, Staska. As for me having a resistant,  long lasting battery, and easy to manage files is the most important thing on a phone neither the iPhone or Android phones where competitive against the N8 on 2010. That is why I bought it. You might argue that most care about software but even if they do you must admit that the N8 had differentiation, and because of that, was competitive for some consumers. And that was confirmed by the fact that the N8 was a record selling device. That couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t competitive. And the N8 still is since still is the best cameraphone in the market.

    2 – “Wouldn’t Nokia have been better off,  if it had doubled down on Meego and made it work? We will never know.”

    Another opinion. Based on the fact that there are already selling thousands of MeeGo devices and thousands of Belle devices, even if in that mid time (11 feb til now) Nokia creation teams had to perform two works (over WP and over Symbian/Meego) while none Windows Phone ready for USA in Christmas is right to say that if Nokia had focused only on Symbian/MeeGo/Qt strategy they could have much more things to offer, and/or offer them sooner then they are offering now. Plus that, Belle, MeeGo and Qt are great and surprised me (and most of analysts) about quality, stability and design compared to what was expected from them. The recent reviews about the N9, all together, cry the abandon of MeeGo and some of them state they prefer MeeGo against Mango, like Engadget’s And we all know Engadget was always very harsh on Nokia. What reforces how good was the MeeGo/Qt/Symbian plan that even after many resignations and working on parallel tasks working under WP and Symbian/MeeGo Symbian/MeeGo already showed better results then WP. And could have show even better if they had focused on only on that.

    3 – “But a thing to remember here – is that this decision was not made just by Trojan Horse Elop secretly under Ballmer’s command.”

    That is a true statement but doesn’t contemplate the whole truth. Even if the decision to drop Symbian/MeeGo plan was made by the entire board, and we don’t know the political forces under this board as you said, the leaking of the Burning Platforms Memo, the disastrous way of announcing Nokia/MSFT partnership on 11 february, the  the leaking of Nokia Sea Ray (ridiculously made by the CEO itself) to stop the N9 buzz, the decision to not selling the N9 on strategic markets even when running on red, and public declarations that even if the N9 is successful Nokia won’t step back are all decisions and actions related ONLY and exclusively to ELOP. 

    The fact that Microsoft’s path to mobile computing was in danger and the fact that Elop is an Ex Microsoft, which are facts left out from your analysis, together make the hypothesis of Elop being a Trojan feasible since all his actions collaborated to weaken MeeGo/Qt/Symbian (which as I said has already shown more results then WP strategy) ecosystem and make Nokia dependable of Microsoft and unable to give a step back if necessary.

    As I don’t believe on coincidences, in my opinion, it can only be explained if Elop is a Trojan. But this is my opinion. What I wrote before are all facts known by everybody.

  • http://twitter.com/rodrigottr Rodrigo Arantes

    I must admit you evolved a lot your arguments about Nokia’s decision, Staska. But there are still many blank parts you are fulfilling with your own assumptions and opinions when most of them are weak.

    1 – “Compared to available Android 2.2 devices, the new Symbian phones were uncompetitive and the end consumer demand was pretty low.”

    The judgment about a product quality must not be done by you, but by the consumer, Staska. As for me having a resistant,  long lasting battery, and easy to manage files is the most important thing on a phone neither the iPhone or Android phones where competitive against the N8 on 2010. That is why I bought it. You might argue that most care about software but even if they do you must admit that the N8 had differentiation, and because of that, was competitive for some consumers. And that was confirmed by the fact that the N8 was a record selling device. That couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t competitive. And the N8 still is since still is the best cameraphone in the market.

    2 – “Wouldn’t Nokia have been better off,  if it had doubled down on Meego and made it work? We will never know.”

    Another opinion. Based on the fact that there are already selling thousands of MeeGo devices and thousands of Belle devices, even if in that mid time (11 feb til now) Nokia creation teams had to perform two works (over WP and over Symbian/Meego) while none Windows Phone ready for USA in Christmas is right to say that if Nokia had focused only on Symbian/MeeGo/Qt strategy they could have much more things to offer, and/or offer them sooner then they are offering now. Plus that, Belle, MeeGo and Qt are great and surprised me (and most of analysts) about quality, stability and design compared to what was expected from them. The recent reviews about the N9, all together, cry the abandon of MeeGo and some of them state they prefer MeeGo against Mango, like Engadget’s And we all know Engadget was always very harsh on Nokia. What reforces how good was the MeeGo/Qt/Symbian plan that even after many resignations and working on parallel tasks working under WP and Symbian/MeeGo Symbian/MeeGo already showed better results then WP. And could have show even better if they had focused on only on that.

    3 – “But a thing to remember here – is that this decision was not made just by Trojan Horse Elop secretly under Ballmer’s command.”

    That is a true statement but doesn’t contemplate the whole truth. Even if the decision to drop Symbian/MeeGo plan was made by the entire board, and we don’t know the political forces under this board as you said, the leaking of the Burning Platforms Memo, the disastrous way of announcing Nokia/MSFT partnership on 11 february, the  the leaking of Nokia Sea Ray (ridiculously made by the CEO itself) to stop the N9 buzz, the decision to not selling the N9 on strategic markets even when running on red, and public declarations that even if the N9 is successful Nokia won’t step back are all decisions and actions related ONLY and exclusively to ELOP. 

    The fact that Microsoft’s path to mobile computing was in danger and the fact that Elop is an Ex Microsoft, which are facts left out from your analysis, together make the hypothesis of Elop being a Trojan feasible since all his actions collaborated to weaken MeeGo/Qt/Symbian (which as I said has already shown more results then WP strategy) ecosystem and make Nokia dependable of Microsoft and unable to give a step back if necessary.

    As I don’t believe on coincidences, in my opinion, it can only be explained if Elop is a Trojan. But this is my opinion. What I wrote before are all facts known by everybody.

  • http://twitter.com/rodrigottr Rodrigo Arantes

    Assuming that the possibility to take a step back is something suitable for Nokia interests but completely not suitable for Microsoft’s interests. And this possibility was closed by someone who should be pursuing Nokia’s interests, not Microsoft’s.

  • http://twitter.com/rodrigottr Rodrigo Arantes

    Assuming that the possibility to take a step back is something suitable for Nokia interests but completely not suitable for Microsoft’s interests. And this possibility was closed by someone who should be pursuing Nokia’s interests, not Microsoft’s.

  • Bob2466

    Staska:

    Good analysis.  A smartphone unlike a PC is more of a hardware game.  The importance of size, weight, battery life etc. for smartphones makes it more of a hardware game.  Once the OS WP becomes equivalent to iOS and Android in terms of user experience, the game is going to decisively shift towards hardware, manufacturing and distribution.  All three areas where Nokia has good strength.

  • http://www.staska.net Staska

    Ok. Sorry it took so long to reply – I’m at Nokia World and have been pretty busy. 

    Re: N8 sales. There is no evidence whatsoever that N8 was bestselling device to consumer. The only numbers Nokia or some analysts reported – where N8 and S^3 sales into the channel. Which means shipments to operators, wholesalers and retail chains. No the end customers. For all we know – a lot of these phones just sat on their shelves. And the sharp drop in Symbian, and especially S^3 sales into that same channel in Q1 2011 – the quarter in which most of the contracts to ship Nokia devices were finalized, and accounted for before Feb.11th. 

    I did a detailed analysis of what happened in Q4 2010/Q1 2011 here: http://www.staska.net/2011/07/25/symbian3-resurgence-myth-how-nokia-q4-2010-results-show-smartphone-sales-collapse-well-in-progress/

    Regarding great, better then Windows Phone, Symbian/Meego performance. 

    How long did it take to get from Symbian^1/S60.5 to Symbian^3? 2 years. How long did it take to get from S^3 to Belle? Another year to a new product, more then a year to upgrade current products. How long did it take to get from Maemo 5/N900 to N9? Almost 2 years as well. How long it would have taken to release another generation of Meego device? Based on BW/Bloomberg article – at least another 14 months. And both were platforms that Nokia had been working on for years and had tons of experienced developers to do the work. 

    And how long did it take for Nokia to ship the first product on Windows Phone? Starting from zero, with zero experience and very few developers who had any WP experience? 9 months. How long will it take for them to ship the next generation of Windows Phones (Apollo/Windows 8)? Another 9 months.

    What Symbian/Meego performance advantage are you talking about?

    “selling thousands of MeeGo devices and thousands of Belle devices”

    The key word here is “thousands” – which is a ridiculously low number in mobile. Regarding the “whole truth thing” – your argument only makes sense if you accept Elop’s Trojan Horse working for Microsoft theory as a starting point, without any proof, and then try to fit things to suit that theory.

    If you look at it as a business decision which Elop and Nokia board made in January, based on the data they had at the time – collapsing Symbian sales, Meego not ready as a replacement, most of Elop’s actions make perfect sense. 

    If the decision -by Elop, with full Nokia board support-back then, was along the lines of:

    “We know Symbian is a dead end, we do not trust Meego migration path anymore, WP is the best choice for us to survive in a smartphone market. We must get the best deal we can from MSFT, commit 100% and do the best we can to succeed with Windows Phone”   

    Most of the next steps are pretty logical. 

    Symbian sales were already collapsing anyway, the decision to let go of thousands of Symbian developers was already made, and Nokia as a public company could not hide such a decision from shareholders. Plus there was a need to shake a complacent Nokia into action. Hence “Burning platforms” and Feb. 11th announcement of Symbian EoL. 

    In light of the decision to go 100% Windows Phone, the biggest mistake Nokia made since then was the launch of N9. Maybe it was a contractual obligation to Intel or smth, I don’t know.  But it is a dead end product which makes absolutely no sense. And it hurt the launch of Nokia 800 significantly. From business POV, the first time we saw the new form factor/unibody design should have been yesterday. Thank god Nokia had enough sense not to allow N9 into most of Lumia 800 markets. The confusion/media fatigue N9 created for 800 is enough, without adding consumer confusion when choosing 2 different products that look the same. 

    And about those “Microsoft interests”. From the moment Nokia’s board made a decision and approved the deal, Nokia’s and Microsoft interests in smartphones are fully aligned. To do whatever it takes to make Windows Phone sicced  

  • http://twitter.com/rodrigottr Rodrigo Arantes

    Again Staska

    1 – You always show answers to my point from the irrelevant side. My intent on the item 1 was to attack your’s speech’s prepotency on judging the N8 is a not competitive product when that judgment shouldn’t come from you. I said the N8 has a better construction, battery life and camera most Android phones from this year still don’t have. That means the N8 is a competitive product for consumers like me. And of course I’m not the only consumer with these demands over a product, even if consumers like me aren’t the majority. The judgment that the N8 is not competitive is your own opinion who should not be expressed in a text that should describe impartially the 18 months before 11 feb. And that is even more surprising because in your own text you points good sales from S^3 devices and then comes denying it. Unbelievable and irrelevant since no matter how many N8 where sold since it doesn’t change the fact that your opinion shouldn’t be there. Or maybe you could point that is your opinion that the N8 isn’t competitive.

    “5 million next generation Symbian^3 devices to operators and wholesale partners. S^3 helped to show a some quarterly growth, and even increased average device price and overall Nokia profitability”

    2 – Ok. If you are saying that it took them 9 months to come with a windows phone product you must be kidding me. The Lumia 800 is the N9 presented months before with a different OS, developed outside of Nokia. They didn’t even changed the colours for matchign the colors of the phone  with the colors of the WP branding. Making that disgusting visual shock between blue with cyan or magenta and blue. Totally horrible. They didn’t found a solution for putting a front camera who was left out. When most Nokia phones since 2004 come with a front camera. Meaning that for skype calls the “first true WP” can’t provide one of MSFT services that iPhone and Android already can! My point is: the Lumia 800 is not an evidence of performance of the windows strategy. That phone was clearly made by hurry. Is unfinished and not truly made for being a WP. Was made to be a MeeGo phone and the Lumia just used all the design work for the MeeGo strategy with poor adaptation. The only phone really designed for Windows was the Lumia 710.

    3 – Another irrelevant point. Selling millions or hundreds of MeeGo or Symbian phones doesn’t matter because the sales where already impacted by 11 feb. There is no *keyword* here. What is relevant was that Nokia did delivered the product on time, faster then most people expected. Proving the strategy of MeeGo/Qt/Symbian from september 2010 was good and abandoned in the middle.

    4 – No. What you say about after deciding to go 100% with WP and then attacking publicly your own products doesn’t makes sense at all. Since WP was a phone with an irrelevant ecosystem by that time (which still is now), and having no new products for substituting them until the end of the year, doesn’t make sense at all by Nokia’s point of view. What you are saying is absurd. It is like proposing to burn your home now since your new home will be delivered in 9 months. Any other company would keep Symbian and MeeGo as plan B. AT LEAST for some time. Not attacking them. That doesn’t makes sense, is the weakest point from all your speech and is also the point that was more severely punished by the market with -42,5% of slash on Nokia’s share prices. Which is REALLY A LOT.

    By the way, have you noticed Nokia’s shares had not raised after the Nokia Wold? That means the market still skeptic and is punishing the entire WP strategy, not only the Elop effect since they have now those better products for substituting the “bad” ones.

    Please, Staska.Try to come with better explanations or be humble and admit the hypothesis of Elop being a Trojan is feasible. Your reputation is being exposed here on your blog. Do something for it.   

  • http://www.staska.net Staska

    So, my opinion that Nokia N8 and other S^3 products were not competitive is irrelevant, and your’s that N8 is competitive – is undeniably true and relevant? Hmm, ok.. But mine is at least backed by facts. Miles long feature list and spec sheet is not a proof of product competitiveness. The only proof that matters to show how competitive device is – are device sales to the end customers. And the fact is – the only time N8 had moderately good sales numbers – was Q4 2010/ And those numbers were not to the end customers, but to wholesale partners/operators.  

    And the bit that I can not have an opinion in an op-ed article. That’s just weird. 

    And your argument about how Nokia just took an OS made by others and slapped on their Meego hardware and it doesn’t matter just shows how completely you do not get what the Nokia strategy is about. The whole point of going with WP was to get out of the business of mobile computing platform making, where they’ve sunk billions of $$ and thousands of man years of effort and could not make it work, and focus on the parts that Nokia does really well. Which is hardware innovation, scale and pieces of software/services where they actually learned how to compete – Maps/Navigation.  

    They probably haven’t given up on on platform business completely, we’ll see about that when they unveil what they are doing with Meltemi/Qt next year. But that is a very different business then competing with Android and iOS in the upper to mid  tiers of the market. 

    Yes 800 is a rushed device – Nokia execs themselves freely admit it. They also admit that its almost pure Mango, and that we’ll see what Nokia can really do with WP only next summer in Apollo. But that makes their achievement of 9 months to market from zero – no less impressive. And is a good early indication that their WP strategy may be working. Another, stronger, indication (one way or the other) will be when Nokia reports their WP sales numbers in January. For now we are just guessing, in January we would be able to talk some real numbers whether the strategy shift is panning out. 

    Symbian Belle and Meego delivered much earlier then anyone expected? You must be kidding here. 

    And if we are talking about home, building metaphors, sometimes, when the foundations/structure of your home  are severely damaged, e.g. in an earthquake, it is faster and safer to just bring the whole house down and build a new one, and live in a shack until the house gets built, then  try to repair the old house by filling cracks in the wall. And that is exactly what happened to Symbian/Meego foundation previous Nokia strategy has been built on- their were irreparably damanged by tectonic shifts of Android and iOS. 

    And your and Tomi’s fixation on short term Nokia stock market is just funny. These short term ups and downs do not matter. But if you want to talk the stock price, let’s do it. It is 40%+ down from February, but it is within shouting distance from where it was in July 2010 and even September of 2010,  when Elop came along. And, save for a major market crash, will probably be above that level in a month or two. And Nokia stock price is 46% up from July of 2011, when everyone was proclaiming that Nokia is going out of business. Also please do check your sources when making claims. Nokia stock is up almost 7% from this Tuesday – which is huge for 3 day period. 

    And thank for caring so much about my reputation, will keep that in mind. So, as per your advice, I am now humbly admitting that Elop as a Trojan Horse hypothesis is feasible. Just as feasible as the theories that CIA killed Kennedy and perpetrated the Sept. 11th…  

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    I guess all the smart phone makers share a same goal: let human rely heavily on the small gadget and stop using their real brains.

  • http://www.imigyled.com/product/mian LED Ceiling Light

    I guess all the smart phone makers share a same goal: let human rely heavily on the small gadget and stop using their real brains.

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