In the minds of most Finns, Nokia ceased to exist a long time ago.
Not saying that this was not personally significant for sirkneeland, and it's a nicely written piece. For myself, for the past few years, Nokia has ceased to exist a little bit more every day. This is just one more of those days.
Somehow, I feel this is appropriate here:
The computer center is empty,
Silent except for the whine of the cooling fans.
I walk the rows of CPUs,
My skin prickling with magnetic flux.
I open a door, cold and hard,
And watch the lights dancing on the panels.
A machine without soul, men call it,
But its soul is the sweat of my comrades,
Within it lie the years of our lives,
Disappointment, friendship, sadness, joy,
The algorithmic exultations,
The long nights filled with thankless toil,
I hear the echoes of sighs and laughter,
And in the darkened offices
The terminals shine like stars.
Thank you for the kind words. Yes, my Finnish friends (and thanks to Nokia I have many) have expressed similar sentiments about when Nokia "died" to them. But for me it hit me today, when as I walked out the doors of the office I realized that while I would walk out of the same doors ~24 hours later, I would never walk out the doors of Nokia ever again.
Sometimes I think
we could have gone on.
All of us. Trying. Forever.
But they didn't fill
the desert with pyramids.
They just built some. Some.
They're not still out there,
building them now. Everyone,
everywhere, gets up, and goes home.
Yet we must not
diabolize time. Right?
We must not curse the passage of time.
(Jennifer Michael Hecht, "On the Strength of All Conviction and the Stamina of Love")
The Nokia fate will be remembered as hostile takeover. Everything worked out in the favor of Microsoft in the end. Though Windows Phone/Tablet have low market share, a lot lower than expected.
But Nokia was a company that was already starting to falter when Elop came on board. What else could the company have done to survive? Their options seem limited from what we know about the marketplace. They could have release an android phone, but then they just would have been fighting for a piece of the pie that Samsung, Moto, and other phone makers are eating. They could have stayed with their phone OS and probably would have had just about the same fate as picking up Windows Mobile.
Maybe they would have had more sales with an Android phone, but I'm not sure it would have made a bit enough difference to prevent this buyout. Elop set Nokia up to be bought out by being a major windows phone maker. It may have been a better long-term bet than Android.
I'm thinking more "inside job" that ended in a takeover.
Hostile takeovers may be brutal, but at least they are relatively "clean" compared to what Microsoft did. The takeover is not the remarkable part of this story, that was just the endgame.
I'm still surprised this was actually legal. I'm also surprised that the Finnish authorities just let this happen without at least a legal investigation or parliament hearings.
Lower than expected? Whose expectance? Given Microsofts track record in mobile devices I think no one expected Microsoft to really be able to compete. And given Nokia's track record in smart phones, nobody expected Nokia to be able to push Microsoft up either. But as it is now, it seems they've actually been able to. They've managed to punch a small but significant hole in the Android market, against all odds, by building some truly excellent products.
Who'd have thought Microsoft would some day produce an integrated mobile product that you could prefer over an Apple product without being made out a fool?
I figure how Elop pitched himself was "Let's try something crazy, and hey, we always have a plan B, I have an in at Microsoft." CEOs may have significant power, but they can't just sell the company with no buy in from major shareholders.
I live in an area of poor mobile coverage [known as "the UK" ;)] and Nokia phones were amazing at operating reliably in marginal signal conditions.
The last Nokia I had was an N95 which was a pretty good phone. The 6310i was probably the best of them all (up till quite recently there were people in the UK, usually travelling salespeople, who were hoarding these and buying them up on eBay for when theirs broke).
Although the phones I've had since are smarter and shinier, none of them have a radio of quality remotely close to the Nokias. They won't operate in places I know the Nokias worked fine. And they often seem to lose mobile signal completely, requiring a restart (or switch to flight mode and back).
Many things get better over time, and I love the features of my Android phones, but I do miss that quality RF design. RF is hard ... just look how long it took Apple to get it right! [1]
[1] Although that did mean that the first iPhones had amazing engineering debug screens for the mobile network side as a side effect of the problems they had.
Nokia the company still exists. It owns the Nokia brand and has massive mobile patent portfolio (only licensed to Microsoft). Nokia is made of NSN (Nokia Solutions and Networks), maps and The Nokia Research Center.
Nokia is prohibited from using the brand to sell mobile phones for few years (ending 2018). It's completely possible that they come up with new gadgets or even phones with Nokia name.
Nokia is like one of the Japanese/Korean conglomerate where it touches everything[1]. Looking back at its stories, it got involve in power generation, TV manufacture, even forestry. I am sure that this is only part of its evolution.
Nokia has sold many products in it's life including toilet paper. I don't think Nokia as a company is going away soon.
As a former employee at the end of it's heyday it continues to be the best company I have worked for. They paid fairly and treated us fairly when it was time to part ways.
It sucks that the management could never grasp what the Iphone was. There were no shortage people trying to tell them.
Man, as someone who loves Windows Phone, I am sad to see this merger go through. I wished if Nokia remained separate from Microsoft. Nokia as a company and culture gave Windows Phone a standing chance where most had already declared the market a duopoly. They had great products, amazing ads, exceptional customer service and most of all, a good sense of future. Heck even when MS failed to deliver decent apps, Nokia stepped in to fill the gap: Nokia Music/Radio, Nokia Maps, City Lens, Transit... all with offline support! If it wasn't for them, I would have never switched to a Windows Phone.
I wonder how its going to play out from here. Given the MS culture, are things going to get slow and bureaucratic?
Whatever happens Nokia is always going to hold a special place in my heart especially the 3310 [1], my first phone. :)
> Given the MS culture, are things going to get slow and bureaucratic?
This is my worry. Nokia moves so quick on everything, and delivers great products. While Microsoft is always slow, and the the products are always missing features.
Hopefully all those Nokia employees will have an effect on Microsoft's culture.
Microsoft makes products I like. Nokia make products I love.
Even Nokia's mobile phones business was on the chopping block for a time. Boston Consulting Group did a thorough assessment of Nokia's business in 1991 and came to the conclusion that the company wouldn't be able to compete with Motorola and the Japanese mobile makers.
> From the cross-linked article, on "what could not be done"
Nobody could have competed with the Japanese manufacturers, if they had only started selling their phones outside of Japan. The BCG guys simply lacked the cultural sensitivity required to understand the extent of Japan's navel-gazing.
Americans often act and think as if the rest of the world don't exist, but the Japanese are far, far worse.
Navel-gazing = size x ethnocentricity. What Japan lacks in size compared to the US, it more than makes up for in ethnocentricity.
I remember seeing an XKCD comic which featured a fact about "there only being [x amount] of [x type] lighthouses in the nation". "In the nation". So typical.
Wow, One of the amazing product (Nokia 1100) I experienced first. Thank you Nokia. You really transformed communication industry for developing countries where most of the people never saw/used apple devices as they saw/used yours.
My relationship with Nokia started with 3310, long live Nokia as we know it.
Can you believe that the mighty was once reached the highest market value of any European company: 203 Billion Euros ($281 Billion as of today's exchange rate)?
I'm sure many have learned more than one lesson already.
This is how things come to an end but they had started slowing down a lot earlier.
For any practical purpose, Nokia was dead around 2005-2006 at the latest and dwindling at least couple of years before that.
Sure they sold lots of phones of good quality even after those years, but they weren't riding the first wave anymore during those years. They were riding on a dead horse, unwilling to notice it's not the 90's anymore.
Can anyone tell me what's happening with the Nokia Berlin mobile/maps group? I had interviewed for a position there and was on the verge of taking it, when something more opportune and local popped up. I'm curious where I would have ended up had I taken that job.
edit: now I have to hop on the poem bandwagon! here's my ode to Nokia:
Star pupil of texts in cyberspace, taking his time, with each
Pound of the keys pushing farther towards hidden powers.
Seven days a week, fascinations with secret menus
Seven times more interesting than COCOTs and DATUs.
Eight friends, huddled around the brightly lit screen,
Zero in on the hidden treasures of information obscured.
Pounded into their brains, codes impregnate future hackers.
One, two, three, four, five digits bring them into an obscure and secret world.
Personally I've been saddened by Nokia's downfall. I still remember the time I wrote Python code for both S60 and N900 series phones, taught a class about this too... Nokia had some really cool funky tools to work with..
Perhaps W8 will do some wonders; I guess its nostalgia :-(
There's some weird fine print in the deal which could mean the revival of the Nokia brand, from an offshoot of the original company, after January 1, 2016:
I like that this person talks about connecting people and people having their lives touched by Nokia. Nowadays we are very distrusting and dismissive of such talk. There is a good reason why of course, but still there is something reductive about the attitude of "it's just a fucking app/website/phone/whatever".
I do remember the small Nokia phones. They enabled to make me custom ringtones from sounds of the keypad. It was great. But everything passes, so did Nokia. It isn't literally ceasing to exist, but close enough. Long live Nokia.
[+] [-] metafunctor|12 years ago|reply
Not saying that this was not personally significant for sirkneeland, and it's a nicely written piece. For myself, for the past few years, Nokia has ceased to exist a little bit more every day. This is just one more of those days.
Somehow, I feel this is appropriate here:
– Geoffrey James, The Zen of Programming (1988)[+] [-] sirkneeland|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saalweachter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frik|12 years ago|reply
* Stephen Elop the former Microsoft employee (head of the Business Division) and later Nokia CEO with his infamous "Burning Platform" memo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#CEO_of_Nokia
* Some former Nokia employees called it "Elop = hostile takeover of a company for a minimum price through CEO infiltration": http://gizmodo.com/how-nokia-employees-are-reacting-to-the-m...
[+] [-] kyrra|12 years ago|reply
Maybe they would have had more sales with an Android phone, but I'm not sure it would have made a bit enough difference to prevent this buyout. Elop set Nokia up to be bought out by being a major windows phone maker. It may have been a better long-term bet than Android.
[+] [-] bowlofpetunias|12 years ago|reply
Hostile takeovers may be brutal, but at least they are relatively "clean" compared to what Microsoft did. The takeover is not the remarkable part of this story, that was just the endgame.
I'm still surprised this was actually legal. I'm also surprised that the Finnish authorities just let this happen without at least a legal investigation or parliament hearings.
[+] [-] tinco|12 years ago|reply
Who'd have thought Microsoft would some day produce an integrated mobile product that you could prefer over an Apple product without being made out a fool?
[+] [-] Hominem|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yhippa|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VSpike|12 years ago|reply
I live in an area of poor mobile coverage [known as "the UK" ;)] and Nokia phones were amazing at operating reliably in marginal signal conditions.
The last Nokia I had was an N95 which was a pretty good phone. The 6310i was probably the best of them all (up till quite recently there were people in the UK, usually travelling salespeople, who were hoarding these and buying them up on eBay for when theirs broke).
Although the phones I've had since are smarter and shinier, none of them have a radio of quality remotely close to the Nokias. They won't operate in places I know the Nokias worked fine. And they often seem to lose mobile signal completely, requiring a restart (or switch to flight mode and back).
Many things get better over time, and I love the features of my Android phones, but I do miss that quality RF design. RF is hard ... just look how long it took Apple to get it right! [1]
[1] Although that did mean that the first iPhones had amazing engineering debug screens for the mobile network side as a side effect of the problems they had.
[+] [-] nabla9|12 years ago|reply
Nokia the company still exists. It owns the Nokia brand and has massive mobile patent portfolio (only licensed to Microsoft). Nokia is made of NSN (Nokia Solutions and Networks), maps and The Nokia Research Center.
Nokia is prohibited from using the brand to sell mobile phones for few years (ending 2018). It's completely possible that they come up with new gadgets or even phones with Nokia name.
[+] [-] yitchelle|12 years ago|reply
[1] - http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/about-us/the-nokia-s...
[+] [-] Nux|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xaviorm|12 years ago|reply
As a former employee at the end of it's heyday it continues to be the best company I have worked for. They paid fairly and treated us fairly when it was time to part ways.
It sucks that the management could never grasp what the Iphone was. There were no shortage people trying to tell them.
[+] [-] whizzkid|12 years ago|reply
It is really surprising, and awesome to see that they built their products to last, not for a year like most companies today.
[+] [-] edgarvm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nivla|12 years ago|reply
I wonder how its going to play out from here. Given the MS culture, are things going to get slow and bureaucratic?
Whatever happens Nokia is always going to hold a special place in my heart especially the 3310 [1], my first phone. :)
[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Nokia_331...
[+] [-] HenryMc|12 years ago|reply
This is my worry. Nokia moves so quick on everything, and delivers great products. While Microsoft is always slow, and the the products are always missing features.
Hopefully all those Nokia employees will have an effect on Microsoft's culture.
Microsoft makes products I like. Nokia make products I love.
[+] [-] 001sky|12 years ago|reply
> From the cross-linked article, on "what could not be done"
Amazing...
[+] [-] tormeh|12 years ago|reply
Americans often act and think as if the rest of the world don't exist, but the Japanese are far, far worse. Navel-gazing = size x ethnocentricity. What Japan lacks in size compared to the US, it more than makes up for in ethnocentricity.
I remember seeing an XKCD comic which featured a fact about "there only being [x amount] of [x type] lighthouses in the nation". "In the nation". So typical.
[+] [-] woogle|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pradeep89|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reactor|12 years ago|reply
Can you believe that the mighty was once reached the highest market value of any European company: 203 Billion Euros ($281 Billion as of today's exchange rate)?
I'm sure many have learned more than one lesson already.
[+] [-] yason|12 years ago|reply
For any practical purpose, Nokia was dead around 2005-2006 at the latest and dwindling at least couple of years before that.
Sure they sold lots of phones of good quality even after those years, but they weren't riding the first wave anymore during those years. They were riding on a dead horse, unwilling to notice it's not the 90's anymore.
[+] [-] peterwwillis|12 years ago|reply
edit: now I have to hop on the poem bandwagon! here's my ode to Nokia:
[+] [-] tellarin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kisitu|12 years ago|reply
Perhaps W8 will do some wonders; I guess its nostalgia :-(
[+] [-] davidgerard|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gojomo|12 years ago|reply
http://followingjolla.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-small-print-t...
I wonder if that could work out like the weird 'sold Skype but not the key technology' clause of the Skype-eBay deal...
[+] [-] general_failure|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badman_ting|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] croisillon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tellarin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidcool|12 years ago|reply