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.
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.
This is exactly the same thing that everyone was saying about Apple in 1996. Apple's board had to decide between several OS alternatives to replace the failed homegrown Copland project. There were BeOS and NextStep that could be bought outright, and they also considered licensing Solaris or Windows NT.
A lot of observers were saying:
"Microsoft has won. If Apple wants to be in the computer business, they have to adopt Windows. It's the right strategy for the Apple board to pick."
Would Apple be around today if they had decided on Windows NT instead of NextStep? Not likely. The obvious popular choice is often not the right one -- it's "skating to where the puck was".
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.
You are always on a MS bashing diatribe. Interesting thing I noticed.
Well if they go Android, they have to include Google Maps to make their phone a viable contender to Galaxy series. And that directly undermines their HERE maps business, and navteq data source.
Besides, How do you explain HTC's slide, Sony's non existence, LG's mere presence among Android vendors?
While that might be good for Nokia (I am not personally convinced), it brings nothing to the consumers except another shiny vehicle for Google's OS.
Even with being open-source Android is almost impossible to use securely and privately. From Google to every minor app developer everyone is trying to syphon data.
One can install CM, but the permission system is still broken and the moment you install gapps over it one cannot even save contacts locally any more. I could go on, but my conclusion was that it's not worth the bother to try and get Android to be more respectful of one's information, it is designed to do the opposite.
So, no thanks from me. The market needs fresh ideas, not the same semi-open OS with a nicer Nokia camera.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also agreed. Microsoft doesn't need to throw money down a hole when Nokia is already doing Microsoft a favor for free.
Microsoft doesn't need to buy a huge company like Nokia that makes phones that nobody wants. Microsoft can make their own phones that nobody wants for much cheaper.
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.
Nokia reduced to competing on distribution, marketing, and hardware alone? Why that's what they've always done, and they owned 30% of the market by doing that extremely well.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
"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
On #1, half or more of these players have been directly paid by Microsoft to develop for WP, and many other popular app makers are being courted if they haven't said yes yet.
Microsoft is refusing to buy Nokia, their largest asset in the WP market. That tells you they don't want to spend an unlimited amount of money to save WP.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pavlov|12 years ago|reply
This is exactly the same thing that everyone was saying about Apple in 1996. Apple's board had to decide between several OS alternatives to replace the failed homegrown Copland project. There were BeOS and NextStep that could be bought outright, and they also considered licensing Solaris or Windows NT.
A lot of observers were saying:
"Microsoft has won. If Apple wants to be in the computer business, they have to adopt Windows. It's the right strategy for the Apple board to pick."
Would Apple be around today if they had decided on Windows NT instead of NextStep? Not likely. The obvious popular choice is often not the right one -- it's "skating to where the puck was".
[+] [-] fpgeek|12 years ago|reply
That was probably the biggest mistake 2 years ago - not just making the wrong choice (which is fixable), but walling off the best alternatives.
[+] [-] iamshs|12 years ago|reply
Well if they go Android, they have to include Google Maps to make their phone a viable contender to Galaxy series. And that directly undermines their HERE maps business, and navteq data source.
Besides, How do you explain HTC's slide, Sony's non existence, LG's mere presence among Android vendors?
[+] [-] yread|12 years ago|reply
It currently has 83.3%
http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/06/adduplex-windows-phone-stat...
[+] [-] EdiX|12 years ago|reply
2-3 years ago definitely, now: not a chance. They fired all their linux talent and burned their brand.
[+] [-] blub|12 years ago|reply
Even with being open-source Android is almost impossible to use securely and privately. From Google to every minor app developer everyone is trying to syphon data. One can install CM, but the permission system is still broken and the moment you install gapps over it one cannot even save contacts locally any more. I could go on, but my conclusion was that it's not worth the bother to try and get Android to be more respectful of one's information, it is designed to do the opposite.
So, no thanks from me. The market needs fresh ideas, not the same semi-open OS with a nicer Nokia camera.
[+] [-] _pmf_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dolphenstein|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skc|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tkorri|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dottrap|12 years ago|reply
Microsoft doesn't need to buy a huge company like Nokia that makes phones that nobody wants. Microsoft can make their own phones that nobody wants for much cheaper.
[+] [-] rurounijones|12 years ago|reply
Still annoyed about the N900 and Maemo/Meego/whatever it is called now.
[+] [-] kryten|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nikster|12 years ago|reply
Nokia reduced to competing on distribution, marketing, and hardware alone? Why that's what they've always done, and they owned 30% of the market by doing that extremely well.
[+] [-] schuke|12 years ago|reply
*http://blog.adduplex.com/2013/05/adduplex-windows-phone-stat...
[+] [-] josh2600|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bojan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] camus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhomde|12 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] mahyarm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikster|12 years ago|reply
It's a very strange kind of success.
[+] [-] wwweston|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] v0lta|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] surjithctly|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josh2600|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Ygg2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamshs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _quasimodo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wedesoft|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harrietlucia|12 years ago|reply
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