Interesting.
Nokia was way behind in a market it used to lead. Shaving off the burden of past success thanks to the Microsoft acquisition was the only way for the company to freely pivot into an innovation company again.
Let's see if they'll keep up with the expectations.
Nokia's problem was in large part "boardroom meddling", with a mix of "innovators dilemma" thrown in for good measure.
The company executives were worried about Maemo eating into their fairly steady Symbian earnings, and so where reluctant to commit fully. At the same time they feared going Android would turn them into just another "me to" company (Samsung has done some serious advertisement binging to get their current position).
And just as that seemed to clear up with buying Trolltech for their Qt library, aimed at using it for cross platform app development, the board ousted the CEO and brought in Elop.
But shit didn't really hit the fan with Nokia until Elop's "burning platform" memo. Pretty much overnight retailer dropped outstanding orders etc, and the Nokia brand basically crashed.
Nokia was a hardware company, when the phone market was a battle of hardware Nokia excelled. Then the phone market changed, it became a battle of software. Nokia wasn't a software company, they didn't understand this new market and culturally couldn't deal with the changed market. By the time they realized this they had already lost.
Now its a battle of ecosystems so unless Nokia can pull an entire ecosystem out of its hat then I don't hold out much hope for its future success.
> Then the phone market changed, it became a battle of software. Nokia wasn't a software company, they didn't understand this new market and culturally couldn't deal with the changed market. By the time they realized this they had already lost.
I think that's kinda revisionist history.
Maemo was already developed by the time the phone market turned into the software-driven smartphone market.
Nokia was late to throw Maemo on a phone, true, but they had one ready in 2011. It had hardware that won all sorts of design awards and was cutting edge in both hardware specs and design, with classic Nokia durability and engineering. It ran a wonderfully-slick, open-source friendly, polished OS. It even had a "Retina-level" display before they were common. Nokia still had a major marketshare when it was ready for release and could have used their market presence to ensure a successful launch.
The problem was, Elop was trying desperately to kill it.
He couldn't quite kill it outright, as Nokia had contractual obligations to release it, but he ensured that it got minimal advertising time and prevented it from being distributed in many key markets. Despite that, people loved it. It swept design awards. Some reviewers called it the "best phone Nokia ever made." People in EU countries where it wasn't released were buying it via eBay from the countries that did have it.
Elop's response? No matter how successful the phone was, no matter how much people liked it, Maemo would never be used again.
Naturally, the aggression towards the platform by the CEO coupled with the limited release and minimal marketing did just fine to kill it, and he was free to continue molding Nokia into a target for an MS buyout.
Nokia understood the market just fine. They were just betrayed.
That's not entirely true. The MeeGo org was a mess. Paradoxically, telling them they were no longer the future enabled the team to stop focusing on politics and make one more amazing product. (source: I work at Nokia. Yes, still)
That said I completely agree that the N9 was the best phone Nokia ever made and that Windows Phone was a catastrophic decision that should tarnish the career of every executive at Nokia who supported it and refused to change course when it was obviously failing.
The demise of Nokia devices was entirely avoidable
> That said I completely agree that the N9 was the best phone Nokia ever made and that Windows Phone was a catastrophic decision that should tarnish the career of every executive at Nokia who supported it and refused to change course when it was obviously failing.
I think the Lumia line is the best thing that ever came out of Nokia, after all the home grown crap-OS at Nokia before.
"Symbian ... no, let's do Qt ... actually MeeGo will be great; really! Aww shucks, it sucked, too."
>That's not entirely true. The MeeGo org was a mess.
Obviously you have an inside perspective that I don't, but from the outside it just looked like y'all made an amazing phone. :) I can't say I heard much about internal issues, but I believe it given other things I've heard about Nokia internal management...
The phone was perhaps amazing, but Meego the project was all over the place. Sure, Intel and Nokia was supposed to cooperate. But just as Meego was announced, Intel had moved from Moblin v1 (deb) to Moblin v2 (rpm).
It was indeed amazing in the end. Still the best phone Nokia ever made. Which of course made it all the more tragic when it was killed for the disaster that was Windows Phone.
> The problem was, Elop was trying desperately to kill it.
As someone who had a number of Nokia ix devices this* is a steaming mound of revisionist history. The 770, 800, 810, and smartphone successors were absolutely aweful at basic PIM-type tasks. They failed because their core functionality was dreadful. Want to sync your contacts with Google? Enable redpill mode.
They built tablets and phones that were very interesting for people who want to add Debian repos to their phone. This is not a market niche that will make you billions, no matter how often it blames Big Bad Elop.
2011 was one year after the iPhone 4. The battle of software was over and the ecosystem battle was ramping up. As an N9 owner I agree, it was Nokia's last gleaming but it was simply too little too late.
They couldn't even ship two Series 60 phones back to back with the same J2ME profiles. It was simple mistakes that stopped any kind of platform emerging.
The sad part is that Nokia had all the pieces as early as 2004. But they never grasped the software software side of things (RIM made exactly the same mistake).
Perhaps not everyone knows, but Trolltech had a developer phone in the era (long predating iPhone) where it was obvious that smartphones were the future and it was a software company's game.
Qt could have been a good strategy for Nokia, it provided the most important part of their puzzle, a clear migration path for their valuable customers from Symbian to a new Qt-based platform. Too bad they moved much too slowly to capitalize on that, and probably for many good reasons.
Ah. Nokia used to spend more on R&D than Microsoft and Apple combined, and this was in the iPhone days. I've seen terrific innovations from Nokia that were never monetized and were never implemented in a product, phones created just to experiment or show that you're the first that later went nowhere.
PARC syndrome should definitely be a thing if it isn't already.
That said I think it only covers a subset of what went wrong at Nokia, and that was only the first half, before a whole different set of things went wrong under Elop
Nokia in 2006, near their peak, spent about $5.x billion on R&D per their annual report. The R&D figures are similar for 2005/07/08.
Microsoft spent $6.5 billion on R&D in 2006 (and that was close to their average from 2002-2007). By 2009, Microsoft was spending $9 billion per year (now up to $11+ billion).
Well wasn't Bluetooth LE by Nokia? [1] I still have their treasure tags[2]. Those things are amazing. On a single coin cell battery, those things last for over a year.
It's not a consumer product. It's explicitly for businesses and will cost ten thousand dollars or more. This article completely misses the point and draws invalid conclusions.
VR is such a tiny niche compared to a market they once ruled throughout most of the world (except maybe USA?).
Just like IBM, I guess their demise in consumer products was gradual, but went by a lot quicker than IBMs did.
Some of their assets were pretty valuable (especially patent-wise), so that $7 billion MS write-off may not be completely telling (AFAIK, MS are making a tidy profit from phones running Android, through patent-infringements).
Even in the US, Nokia had a huge portion of the cell phone market. Maybe more than half? The 51xx and 61xx phones were all over the place. Can't find any sources for this, just my recollection.
It appears their peak US share was around 35%. [1] By contrast, that's about what Motorola's peak market share in the US was as well (in the early 1990s). Samsung at times has had 20-30% of the US cellphone market.
I believe Apple likely holds the record for most dominant US market share. They're around 43% of the US smart phone market today (not sure how that would look if you blend in feature phones though).
Great to see Nokia coming out with new products. I think this type of cameras will be commoditised within 1-2 years, I hope they are looking into light field tech.
40 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 77.3 ms ] threadThe company executives were worried about Maemo eating into their fairly steady Symbian earnings, and so where reluctant to commit fully. At the same time they feared going Android would turn them into just another "me to" company (Samsung has done some serious advertisement binging to get their current position).
And just as that seemed to clear up with buying Trolltech for their Qt library, aimed at using it for cross platform app development, the board ousted the CEO and brought in Elop.
But shit didn't really hit the fan with Nokia until Elop's "burning platform" memo. Pretty much overnight retailer dropped outstanding orders etc, and the Nokia brand basically crashed.
Now its a battle of ecosystems so unless Nokia can pull an entire ecosystem out of its hat then I don't hold out much hope for its future success.
I think that's kinda revisionist history.
Maemo was already developed by the time the phone market turned into the software-driven smartphone market.
Nokia was late to throw Maemo on a phone, true, but they had one ready in 2011. It had hardware that won all sorts of design awards and was cutting edge in both hardware specs and design, with classic Nokia durability and engineering. It ran a wonderfully-slick, open-source friendly, polished OS. It even had a "Retina-level" display before they were common. Nokia still had a major marketshare when it was ready for release and could have used their market presence to ensure a successful launch.
The problem was, Elop was trying desperately to kill it.
He couldn't quite kill it outright, as Nokia had contractual obligations to release it, but he ensured that it got minimal advertising time and prevented it from being distributed in many key markets. Despite that, people loved it. It swept design awards. Some reviewers called it the "best phone Nokia ever made." People in EU countries where it wasn't released were buying it via eBay from the countries that did have it.
Elop's response? No matter how successful the phone was, no matter how much people liked it, Maemo would never be used again.
Naturally, the aggression towards the platform by the CEO coupled with the limited release and minimal marketing did just fine to kill it, and he was free to continue molding Nokia into a target for an MS buyout.
Nokia understood the market just fine. They were just betrayed.
That said I completely agree that the N9 was the best phone Nokia ever made and that Windows Phone was a catastrophic decision that should tarnish the career of every executive at Nokia who supported it and refused to change course when it was obviously failing.
The demise of Nokia devices was entirely avoidable
I think the Lumia line is the best thing that ever came out of Nokia, after all the home grown crap-OS at Nokia before.
"Symbian ... no, let's do Qt ... actually MeeGo will be great; really! Aww shucks, it sucked, too."
Please don't blame your downfall on Microsoft.
Stephen Elop was working for Microsoft's interests long before he ever joined the organization.
Nokia was the best steward of Qt, and I'm glad MS didn't get their hands on it when they had the chance.
Obviously you have an inside perspective that I don't, but from the outside it just looked like y'all made an amazing phone. :) I can't say I heard much about internal issues, but I believe it given other things I've heard about Nokia internal management...
As someone who had a number of Nokia ix devices this* is a steaming mound of revisionist history. The 770, 800, 810, and smartphone successors were absolutely aweful at basic PIM-type tasks. They failed because their core functionality was dreadful. Want to sync your contacts with Google? Enable redpill mode.
They built tablets and phones that were very interesting for people who want to add Debian repos to their phone. This is not a market niche that will make you billions, no matter how often it blames Big Bad Elop.
Did you ever use an N9? It was nothing like that.
The 770 tablet, and such, sure. But the N9 was quite far removed from the geek toy tablets.
They couldn't even ship two Series 60 phones back to back with the same J2ME profiles. It was simple mistakes that stopped any kind of platform emerging.
The sad part is that Nokia had all the pieces as early as 2004. But they never grasped the software software side of things (RIM made exactly the same mistake).
Qt could have been a good strategy for Nokia, it provided the most important part of their puzzle, a clear migration path for their valuable customers from Symbian to a new Qt-based platform. Too bad they moved much too slowly to capitalize on that, and probably for many good reasons.
It was very sad to see Nokia fail.
That said I think it only covers a subset of what went wrong at Nokia, and that was only the first half, before a whole different set of things went wrong under Elop
For one, Xerox PARC innovations DID change the world, even if they didn't appear in Xerox products.
Second, I think the parent is much overstating the "innovations" that Nokia did. Nothing like Xerox PARC at all...
Nokia in 2006, near their peak, spent about $5.x billion on R&D per their annual report. The R&D figures are similar for 2005/07/08.
Microsoft spent $6.5 billion on R&D in 2006 (and that was close to their average from 2002-2007). By 2009, Microsoft was spending $9 billion per year (now up to $11+ billion).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy
[2] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mobile/accessory/ws-2/
> And not exactly life changing...
Ya Good luck designing a ultra low power multi use protocol that runs on a single coin cell over an entire year, as your next weekend hack. /s
Do you have any examples? I can't remember having ever heard anything innovative from Nokia, and I'm interested what this might be.
http://gizmodo.com/319318/nokias-haptikos-technology-makes-p...
It's not a consumer product. It's explicitly for businesses and will cost ten thousand dollars or more. This article completely misses the point and draws invalid conclusions.
Just like IBM, I guess their demise in consumer products was gradual, but went by a lot quicker than IBMs did.
Some of their assets were pretty valuable (especially patent-wise), so that $7 billion MS write-off may not be completely telling (AFAIK, MS are making a tidy profit from phones running Android, through patent-infringements).
Even in the US, Nokia had a huge portion of the cell phone market. Maybe more than half? The 51xx and 61xx phones were all over the place. Can't find any sources for this, just my recollection.
I believe Apple likely holds the record for most dominant US market share. They're around 43% of the US smart phone market today (not sure how that would look if you blend in feature phones though).
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/technology/companies/19nok...
http://allthingsd.com/20130904/from-can-we-talk-to-a-coffee-...
...and in danger of stalling: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=oculus%20rift
BTW - any sample footage available from this?