Nokia - A Sinking Ship?

[StylinRed]

So Major News in the Phone World Surrounding Nokia

Recently in RSChat and even in some threads here i've been arguing with people about how awesome Symbian is and I've heard a lot of comments about how people think Nokia should kill off Symbian.

Quite frankly I don't agree with this whatsoever; I believe where Nokia fails isn't in its hardware or software rather it's fault lies in it's Administration.

Nokia announces great products, great updates, makes a lot of promises in terms of release dates, yet when the time comes all we get is a Postponement of release; along with failures in advertising (there are none in North America) and a perceived/legitimate view that Nokia ignores North America (services, advertising, etc that doesn't arrive on our shores) has led to Nokias constant decline of Market share.

Sure Nokias still the top phone seller in the world, and only recently lost its top spot in smartphone sales to the Android Conglomerate (htc, google, samsung, etc; individually Nokia still reigns supreme) not even I can deny where Nokia is headed, if they weren't so large they may have already taken the Palm/WebOS route.

Nokia has only recently really fought back against their fall:
+They've restructured their executive list, got rid of their CEO and some lead VPs/Presidents and they looked outside for replacements (Stephen Elop being the most prominent change)

+Nokia has been releasing great in-house Apps/Features (Big Screen, Bubbles, Music WithMe, Conversations, Google Email Sync, Firmware updates, etc);

+A Viable Ovi Store (30,000+ apps, 7mil/day dls within a few months);

+Their QT SDK that allows cross-platforming for Application/services development between Symbian/MeeGo (which programmers have been flocking to)

Great steps have finally been taken but some of that 'Snails Pace' that Nokia is known for is rearing its ugly head again (the E7 was delayed and the N9 hasn't been revealed yet) and people are saying "Too Late Nokia"


Well it looks like Nokias new, Canadian, CEO (former Microsoft Office Head) Stephen Elop feels the same way. He's been speaking recently about Nokia needing to either "catalyse" or "join" an "ecosystem" people felt this means Elop wants to jump on board WP7 (since he's from Microsoft)

There's also been a rumor filled announcement of a big Speech that Elop will be holding this Friday, Feb 11 about Nokias approach for the coming years.

And now there's this Memo apparently from Mr. Elop to Nokia staffers that was leaked out (found on Engadget first who is confirming its real from their "sources")

And in it Elop equates Nokia to being on a 'Burning oil Platform' and it either allows the flames to engulf it or jump into the frigid waters below and hope that they'll survive.

Here it is:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/n...honest-burnin/

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.
How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

Nokia's response to this leak?
“We do not comment on our internal communications, memos or documents, or their legitimacy (or lack thereof). For clarity on the current view of our CEO of Nokia, we suggest reviewing the transcript of our call about fourth-quarter results: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2490...cusses-q4-2010 -results-earnings-call-transcript “

However even The BBC have said they've confirmed the authenticity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12403466


So where is Nokia headed? we'll find out Friday but for those who are crying "ANDROID", Know that all of Europes telecommunication companies are demanding that Nokia DO NOT Adopt Android; They don't want a Duopoly. Read that story here: http://www.businessinsider.com/telec...android-2011-2 (there are many more)


So what do you guys think?



For the TLDR guys:
I started by listing Nokias strides in revival (which i feel are great steps but slow)
And Sounds like Nokias new CEO is going to shift it's business because they feel/know they're sinking (what that "shift" is isn't known)
Rumors say he's going to eliminate MeeGO (WHICH IS WTF??? It's taking off and has great praise; they're just slow to bring it to market)

February 11 (this Friday) we'll hear from Stephen Elop on Nokias future

[Vansterdam]

isnt nokia still number 1 mobile brand in asia lol

[Berzerker]

I have an N82 and I really don't use it to it's full potential. I really have no idea what it is actually capable of or apps that are available to me. It's just not as easy as smartphones. Perhaps I'm just lazy.

Berz out.

[StylinRed]

Originally Posted by Vansterdam

isnt nokia still number 1 mobile brand in asia lol

well its still the #1 phone maker period. they sold like 500million phones for 2010; 100million smartphones

But they've been losing their market share in the smart phone department quarter after quarter (even though the # of phones they're selling is going Up)

Mainly due to more and more Americans buying smartphones (but not buying a Nokia) so the numbers get pushed more away from their favour


But its got every Nokia fan on Edge and its got every Nokia Hater laughing and its got Everyone inbetween Hoping Android gets picked up overall its got everyone wanting to know what's going to happen on Friday (and maybe that was the point of the "Leak")

[TOS'd]

I knew you were a nokia fanboy.

[StylinRed]

i never denied it rofl i even said i was

[illicitstylz]

nothing beats nokia physical build quality imo. after holding a nokia, every other phone feels like a toy.

[threezero]

I have never met any smartphone user than went back to symbian after having experience the other os out there. Me included. I love nokia hardware but the clunkiness of the Ui and the frustrating experience of finding and installing an app just make me lost interest in it after a week. Symbian just look basically unchanged to me since like 7 years ago.

Nokia still get my vote for non smartphone ie dumb phones though.

Ovi app store is a joke. I dint see a good way out of this for nokia besides adopting android. With there track record meego is going to flop too
Posted via RS Mobile

[threezero]

Originally Posted by illicitstylz

nothing beats nokia physical build quality imo. after holding a nokia, every other phone feels like a toy.

Depends on which nokia are talking about. My n95 feels like a squeaky toy =\
Posted via RS Mobile

[carsncars]

Yeah, with the exception of my 6300, many of my Nokias has been reduced to a creaking plastic mess in months (mind you, solid, working creaking messes!). They did look cool though, and Nokia has never been afraid of trying UNIQUE form factors, which I love about them. (I seriously wanted an N92 for the longest time...)

Nokia phones used to be the ones to have--just a few years ago, the N95 8 GB was definitely one of the top phones to have (remember when the original N95 came out and they were going for $1100 on RS classifieds?). Where Nokia first messed up is when the first iPhone came out, and when Android came out. Sure, those first iterations were flawed, and they weren't adopted in large enough numbers to threaten Nokia, but they should've seen what was coming.

Series 60, as powerful at it was, didn't offer the polish that iOS did. Compared to Android, it lacked the openness and flexibility to draw developers in. Then when Nokia finally figured out that they needed something to compete, what'd they do? They released phones with craptastic resistive touch displays and slightly warmed-over versions of S40/S60 OSes.

While I think Nokia is still in a position where it could, technically, survive with their own OS, I don't think they have the resources to do it. HP can stick by WebOS because they have gobs of cash to pour into R&D (three new devices launched today), along with an existing line of products they can stick WebOS on--Nokia doesn't have that luxury.

It saddens me to say it, but I think the best thing Nokia could do now is adopt Android (or perhaps WP7?). I say Android because Nokia produces great, unique hardware and software; WP7 doesn't give them much software flexibility, but with Android they could customize it fairly deeply (a la Sony Ericsson's Xperia).

I want to see some awesome handsets out of Nokia ASAP! The N8 feels amazing and has a great camera. Toss a more modern OS with a good developer community on it, give the screen a boost in resolution, get broader carrier support, all while retaining some of that Nokia uniqueness in industrial design and software (not another generic Android phone thing, please), and then we'll see.

[StylinRed]

Originally Posted by carsncars

Yeah, with the exception of my 6300, many of my Nokias has been reduced to a creaking plastic mess in months (mind you, solid, working creaking messes!). They did look cool though, and Nokia has never been afraid of trying UNIQUE form factors, which I love about them. (I seriously wanted an N92 for the longest time...)

you have to compare those phones with the phones that were available at that time and in comparison nokia was solid

Nokia phones used to be the ones to have--just a few years ago, the N95 8 GB was definitely one of the top phones to have (remember when the original N95 came out and they were going for $1100 on RS classifieds?). Where Nokia first messed up is when the first iPhone came out, and when Android came out. Sure, those first iterations were flawed, and they weren't adopted in large enough numbers to threaten Nokia, but they should've seen what was coming.

The N95 came out a few months after the 1st Apple Iphone

Series 60, as powerful at it was, didn't offer the polish that iOS did. Compared to Android, it lacked the openness and flexibility to draw developers in. Then when Nokia finally figured out that they needed something to compete, what'd they do? They released phones with craptastic resistive touch displays and slightly warmed-over versions of S40/S60 OSes.

agreed with most of that

While I think Nokia is still in a position where it could, technically, survive with their own OS, I don't think they have the resources to do it. HP can stick by WebOS because they have gobs of cash to pour into R&D (three new devices launched today), along with an existing line of products they can stick WebOS on--Nokia doesn't have that luxury.

Nokia has more than enough resources its R&D budget is like two-three times more than the other companies (granted much of that goes into areas other than their smart phones)

It saddens me to say it, but I think the best thing Nokia could do now is adopt Android (or perhaps WP7?). I say Android because Nokia produces great, unique hardware and software; WP7 doesn't give them much software flexibility, but with Android they could customize it fairly deeply (a la Sony Ericsson's Xperia).

Symbian and Meego offers more than Android, symbian/meego actually does and offers more where Android is currently limited; that with the addition of the fact that Telecom companies of Europe Don't want Nokia to adopt Android (when an Industry cries 'No you don't' you should listen)

I want to see some awesome handsets out of Nokia ASAP! The N8 feels amazing and has a great camera. Toss a more modern OS with a good developer community on it, give the screen a boost in resolution, get broader carrier support, all while retaining some of that Nokia uniqueness in industrial design and software (not another generic Android phone thing, please), and then we'll see.

i think what you're saying with Modern OS must be the UI?? and Nokias coming out with an entirely refreshed UI for Firmware 2.0 which was slated for the End of February but it sounds like it may be pushed back to March (sigh)

as for a boost in resolution i'll quote from some1 else

Go read up on Pentile vs regular RGB display resolutions.

This screen is better than the Nexus One's 480x800 pixels in size (252 pixels per inch) because the Nexus One's actual effective screen resolution is substantially less than that. The science is in how you count the pixels.
The PenTile subpixel layout on the Nexus One screen shows each pixel consists of a double-width blue or red subpixel element and a green subpixel element. The actual hardware resolution of the N1's display gives the illusion of 480x800, but no pixel contains all three colors.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/...-and-hacks.ars

[threezero]

The whole point isn't that s60 isn't powerful. It's because it's Ui is dated and frustrating to use.
Posted via RS Mobile

[illicitstylz]

Originally Posted by threezero

Depends on which nokia are talking about. My n95 feels like a squeaky toy =\
Posted via RS Mobile

sorry should have specified, E71

[palepilsenpin0y]

I've been a loyal Nokia user since day 1 (Started off with a Nokia 3210 more than a decade ago and now currently sporting the N86 8MP. Combined with a jailbroken iTouch, it's pretty much a complete & perfect combo).

I actually kinda agree that Nokia can be considered a sinking ship. With the Andoid, iPhone, Xperia Play, Windows 7 Phone, and hell even the goddamn Blackberry, it's hard for them to compete. They're still doing very well (particularly in Asia), but I can picture them going obsolete over time (in North America, at least). Which is a shame because they make highly decent phones (with AMAZING cameras I might add). It's a tough market after all.

[Senna4ever]

Originally Posted by illicitstylz

nothing beats nokia physical build quality imo. after holding a nokia, every other phone feels like a toy.

I'm willing to bet Motorola's iDEN (Telus MIKE) phones are tougher.

[StylinRed]

IF anyone's interested in the Elop speech it's tonight @ 2:00am here LiveCast maybe for the Insomniacs like moi

[TheNewGirl]

Symbian is still the number one most used mobile OS world wide. They just have 0 share of the north american market.

[StylinRed]

Well looks like those early reports of Android being on Top of worldwide marketshare are False




http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/10/g...mbian-in-q4-2/



look @ how many more phones nokia sold compared to 2009

Sure the American smartphone market grew, which accounts for their boost in sales but overall Nokias still top dog by far they just need a piece of North America

[TheNewGirl]

They really don't need a piece of the north american market at all. The NA market is crowded, already populated and likely to cost them more than their return. They're better off leaving staying in the markets they dominate.

Android is still though, hands down the fastest GROWING mobile OS on the market. Mostly because it's not tied to specific hardware like the others.

[6793026]

the iphone is growing in china and even though China has a lot of teens using iphones, there are still a mass of people still using nokia phone. they are simple and it just works. China, India and maybe Russia? still have a lot of people with min. computer usage so iphone, and crackberry aren't that huge.

Iphone is great don't get me wrong, but nokia is probably the only company that makes cell phones. iphone came out with 3,4 and soon 5 in the summer? How much more will it change? I'm assuming it'll have a bigger screen, faster OS, and larger storage.

What has iphone really done that was epic or cell phone worthy. I know facetime is great but it's a dying app that no one ever uses.

give it a few yrs, nokia will bounce back again and apple needs some new ideas for phones.

[raygunpk]

Did you shed tears while writing this up?

[StylinRed]

oh shit it was a stab at me but i still cracked up

[threezero]

I have a feeling nokia is going to make annoucement to jump on the windows 7 phone os
Posted via RS Mobile

[StylinRed]

Sounds more like a software partnership as in Silverlight, Xbox Live, Office (which is already there), Zune (nokias music store is non-existent in North America)

[Culverin]

Originally Posted by StylinRed

Symbian and Meego offers more than Android, symbian/meego actually does and offers more where Android is currently limited; that with the addition of the fact that Telecom companies of Europe Don't want Nokia to adopt Android (when an Industry cries 'No you don't' you should listen)

I think that's flawed logic there.
Just because the industry (telecom companies) don't want it, doesn't mean it's good for us, the consumer.
However, they have been in the game longer, and can better predict the damage a duopoly would do.

When a company gains too much power, they start locking things down trying to make the consumer play their game and do things their way.
It's very much how Apple and Sony behave.
By the very same logic, I believe that's why so many of us like the PC platform.
We don't have to conform to how companies want us to use the hardware they sell us.

Having more options on the table would allow us to keep supporting open systems, consider it a check against a closed system.

The more more choices, we the consumer have, the better off we are in the long run.
But consumers are too short sighted.

Shining Example?
Just because I like what the mobile phone market would look like with a strong Nokia, doesn't mean I'm going to sacrifice owning a better smart phone for the next 3 years.

That is called fan boyism.