Nokia CEO: No shift from Windows Phone
Nokia's CEO has insisted the Finnish phone giant's future lies with Windows Phone and no other OS. "In today's war [between] Android, Apple and Windows, we are very clear, we are fighting that with the Windows phone," company chief Stephen Elop told reporters in Oslo. "I don't think about rewinding the clock and thinking about …
This topic is closed for new posts.
So...
... if there is nothing remotely Windowsy about Windows Phone then why did Microsoft call it Windows Phone. Was it purely to cash in on the name?
Given than Windows 8's Metro, er, Modern UI or whatever its called today is supposed to be consistent across platforms then it must be Windowy, mustn't it....
Or am I losing the plot?
@ Tom38
Stop talking shit.
"You take pictures, they are uploaded to Windows Live Skydrive."
My WP handset calls it 'SkyDrive'.
"Want to identify music? Use the Bing Music Search - no Shazaam here"
Yup, I press the magnifying glass icon and then the music note icon. I have never seen any branding called 'Bing Music Search'.
Oh - but just in case the built-in music search fails I DO have the Shazaam app installed too. You know, because I can.
"Want to play some music? Fire up the Zune player."
Not on my WP handset I don't. I touch 'Music & Videos'.
"Want to use an IM? Fire up Windows Live Messenger."
Nah, I don't have anyone on WLM. Does anyone even use that anymore? I use Facebook IM - which is integrated into the messaging application natively, along with Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Or you can not use any of them.
"Personally, I've not tried a WP."
No shit?
"But then I don't need to."
See above
"I've already made my choices about where I'm going to keep my contacts, my photos, my music, my files,..."
I'm pleased for you. My previous handset was a HTC Desire running stock ROM as well as a few custom ones such as Modoco. As such a lot of my contacts are on Facebook and GMail. Thankfully Windows Phone will connect to these address books and copy to the local device and continue to sync from the "cloud" service. The same as Android, and I presume iOS do. Microsoft don't have anything that Google and Facebook don't already have in terms of data. My files aren't kept on Skydrive as I don't want them too. Neither to my photo's. My contacts are kept in GMail including new contacts I create on the phone. Calendar is GMail too.*
*Actually my shit is stored on SkyDrive, although I still have most contacts on Google and Facebook still. But that's because I have made my choice. My choice is that Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple are all fuckers but the convenience of essentially having a backup copy of my data in case I lose or break my phone is worth the trade off. But that's MY choice. Your choice of making statements about a product you clearly know nothing about however is a poor one.
Re: Nokia 701
"Lack of marketing"
F*k me, we got carpet bombed about the Lumia here. I have yet to see even 1 device in the hands of a punter though. The few WP phones I have seen were LGs IIRC.
Re: @ JDX
The Android weirdness with Card vs. internal memory is all about security.. so don't write it off too quickly. SD Cards have FAT32 file formats -- it's part of the standard, and why you can mount your Android device as an SD Drive, if you have such a card. But they don't support Linux-type protection metadata. So when you load up a new application, the secure bits have to stay on internal, ext3/4 filesystem partitions. Only the non-critical stuff (which is often the bulk of the app, anyway) can go on the SD Card.
Re: Oh Nokia
What else would they do instead? Might as well keep going now, things can only get better really when you're starting from 0.
Smack! Crash! Bang!
That's the sound of when Nokia hits the wall (in approx. 18 months time?) when WP8 phones haven't shifted like they wanted, the money is running dry and all that's left are a few decent hardware engineers and a tonne of patents for Microsoft to swallow up to continue their own hardware/software phones.
It's that or they'll be dead meat like Kodak and plenty of other corp's that are just crawling like snails with fingers in their ears.
Re: Smack! Crash! Bang!
Why would they hit the wall - they can just continue downsizing to meet whatever the demand is.
If people are getting a bit tired of the Apple brand - simply because it's not so cool - then maybe a MS brand will have some chance since Android is the no-brand alternative, and lots of people are always going to prefer a brand.
Re: Smack! Crash! Bang!
Their brand is slowly deteriorating by the day. Nothing like the old rigid and reliable candy phones that were once king. If Microsoft ever pulled the plug, the rest of their phone business couldn't ever hold them up in any right. Not even if they made a huge u-turn to adopt Android, it would be too late.
Personally, I'm more than cosy with the Apple brand. My iP4 is working quite swimmingly and having adopted the rest of the family now, it would take a lot for me to come away from that framework. Not because it's cool, but working in IT; I'm fed up with jiving with Windows/Android boxes that need too much of my attention. I've personally always loved Nokia and anything they made on the other hand. However, they just got too slow out of the starting blocks and paid the consequences. Same with RIM. Either of them would have to ditch everything and start from scratch to even get a product anywhere near the hype Apple/Google have at the moment. Rolling out the same thing year after year won't score you points anymore. That's the risk with WP7.5/8. There's no upgrade path and stops any sort of loyality you have when the company/software moves forward.
The phrase
"..one-legged man in an ass kicking competition" springs to mind here.
-an anonymous ex-Nokia user, who would be just as happy with an iPhone as this Galaxy S3, both excellent choices.
Put Android on the Lumia 900
Watch it sell to the mid range market like hot cakes. Well... warm ones... but better than stone cold ones.
Megaphone: The only way they'll hear the voice of reason.
Re: Put Android on the Lumia 900
No reason why they should not try the same hardware with 2 different operating systems... other than pissing off Steve Ballmer. If the Android one does not sell - then Ballmer was right. Chances are that they will sell some of each, but which sells more would be interesting to find out.
Give them different names to avoid confusing the public, but that is about it.
Re: Put Android on the Lumia 900
...they wouldn't do it as it would just show up Windows Phone, just as the N9 did, outselling it despite not being sold through the normal channels in western Europe or the US.
What more ?
I have an iPhone 4S. What on earth "pent up demand" can there be ? Apart from RFID/NFC and phones used as electronic wallets, what on earth else can anyone be anticipating ?
The bubble is going to burst. Once the base feature set is comprehensive, there will be a drive to low cost products.. Android lagginess will be solved with better hardware... the Chinese manufacturers will compete with the Koreans. I'm not sure what Apple will do to be able to maintain their niche position... or what Windows will able to do to differentiate.
Re: What more ?
Before we had smartphones, you could have said the same - they all made calls and did texts. But still we had several companies continuing to get us to upgrade our handsets every year.
Re: What more ?
Better hardware will not be unique to Android, so a WP vs an Android phone with similar specs will mean the WP being faster. It already runs amazingly fast on a single core CPU, faster than the iPhone 4 I used before.
With WP8 allowing native C++ apps it will run even quicker than now. Virtual Machine crap doesn't have any place on a mobile device, code that compiles to ARM machine code will always be faster and use less battery. It's just not as easy to write.
Re: What more ?
I think it'll be the "Keeping up with the Jones'" mentality. Gotta have the latest, shinest toy - even if you don't actually need it. This is especially true in the teenage market where peer-pressure is immense.
Re: What more ?
"a WP vs an Android phone with similar specs will mean the WP being faster. It already runs amazingly fast on a single core CPU"
Its fast if all you do is scroll up and down menus, app loading times are slooooooooooooooooooooooooow
Plus it is also only fast because it doesn't multitask.
Re: What more ?
"Better hardware will not be unique to Android, so a WP vs an Android phone with similar specs will mean the WP being faster."
Of course it will be faster. It can´t do jack shit!
As a matter of fact. Nokia´s own 701 SMOKES ALL the bloody Lumia´s they ever made (even the 900 which is slower then the 800). Which is why you won´t find them in stores. As for my own case. Tried a Lumia broke down twice, I´m so fucked up that I want to throw it to the front door of the Nokia building.
This time next year their gone so who cares. And if not then we´ll maken them gone.
Don't fracture your base
I am a senior Nokia engineer. Personally, I like a lot of things about my Nexus One Android phone better than my Nokia S40 phone, N8 Phone, and new Lumia 900 (Windows) phone. However, I understand perfectly why Elop has settled us on support of the Windows phone OS going forward. Attempting to support multiple operating systems on a suite of mobile devices is divisive (pun intended) to an organization. Can you imagine Apple supporting anything other than iOS, or Google anything other than Android (well - maybe). That sort of effort splits your attention without appreciable benefit, other than to appear to be a follower rather than a leader.
So, is there room for 3 major phone environments? I think so, and I think Stephen made the correct choice in wanting to be a leader rather than a follower. Did we want to be just another Android vendor? There are a gazillion Android phone manufacturers out there now. iOS is out of the question - Apple would never license it. Microsoft needs a big adopter in order to move its phone OS into the mainstream, and decided Nokia was it. This does not reduce our challenge in getting back into contender/leader status in the mobile phone market place, but I think we can do it.
FWIW, there is a lot to like about the Lumia phones, and the price is "right" (for the consumer at least). Only time will tell if we have made the right choice, but don't count us out of the race just yet!
Re: Don't fracture your base
"I think Stephen made the correct choice in wanting to be a leader rather than a follower"
"Microsoft needs a big adopter in order to move its phone OS into the mainstream, and decided Nokia was it"
Sorry, who was the leader again??
Re: Don't fracture your base
Attempting to support multiple operating systems on a suite of mobile devices is divisive (pun intended) to an organization. Can you imagine Apple supporting anything other than iOS, or Google anything other than Android
Apple - iOS & OSX; Google - Android & Chrome.
Your point?
Did we want to be just another Android vendor?
So you'd rather be just another Windows Phone vendor, competing neck and neck with Bada for market share?
This does not reduce our challenge in getting back into contender/leader status in the mobile phone market place, but I think we can do it.
When hell freezes over - sorry, but Nokia as a leader in any shape or form, now that it's divested itself of all R&D capability, is about as likely as HTC becoming the dominant global smartphone supplier.
Nokia is just an OEM for Microsoft now, you'll do what you're told by Redmond and that's it.
Are you really a Nokia employee, or a shill posing as one? I've been a loyal Nokia customer throughout the last 15 years but given the destruction of Nokia under Elop there is now no Nokia in my future. And I'd hazard a guess that if you really are a Nokia engineer, the same will likely apply to you within the next 12 months.
Re: Don't fracture your base
' ... Windows phone OS going forward.'
Using corporate-speak like that, no wonder it feels like Nokia are going backward
Re: Don't fracture your base
Yeah, Nokia is now just an OEM bitch for Microsoft now. If/when Microsoft loses interest and stops throwing money at Nokia, the Finnish company will collapse overnight.
At least if you're Google's OEM bitch, there's still quite a fair bit of autonomy given to you.
Mr Elop still does not get it: many Nokia loyalists had already moved on to iPhones and Android phones. They were loyal to Nokia precisely because its phones were NOT loaded with Windows. Even during the Windows Mobile 6.5 era, Nokia held firm and went along with Symbian. It was going rather well until Elop and the 'burning platform' memo arrived.
Re: Don't fracture your base
Take out redundancy insurance mate, you're going to need it.
Re: Don't fracture your base
> ...wanting to be a leader rather than a follower
You stopped being a leader when you got rid of the R&D people. You are now, and from hence forth always will be, a follower. Another HTC. Or LG. Or whatever knock of Chinese brand. Just with an OS that's a bit more shitty and a lot less open to Nokia customisations - even if you had the people left to do that.
Welcome to the low/no margin world of the grey box shifter, following the tune played in Redmond.
Re: Don't fracture your base
"Microsoft needs a big adopter in order to move its phone OS into the mainstream, and decided Nokia was it."
This is the big take-away from what you have written. To summarise, you are saying Nokia is a completely gutless company who bent over and took it from MS. I'm bloody glad I'm not a Nokia shareholder
Shame - once upon a time I used to only recommend Nokia to my friends and family. Nowadays I recommend anything BUT Nokia.
Re: Don't fracture your base
Re: Don't fracture your base
> and the price is "right" (for the consumer at least).
WP7 is now a dead-end. Completely different new models for WP8 will be announced in a month or two and there is no overlap between the two products. While Q2 shipments appear to have risen it is likely that vendors will not be reordering any for Q3 and the new models will probably not ramp up until 2013Q1. This will likely leave a gap of two quarters with almost no shipments.
Meanwhile WP7 phones will be discounted to get rid of stock. Adverts here last week had Lumia 610 at 45% off for PAYG, which may indicate that end-user sales have plummeted since MS announced the end of WP7.
OTOH recently the Asha range is being advertised much more than Lumia ever was. Odd, though, the photos show an AZERTY keyboard. Perhaps they have been shipped from India ?
Re: Don't fracture your base
Two questions :- How long have you worked for Nokia? And what did you think of the Windows phone before you joined?
Re: Don't fracture your base
I don't think your even in the same city the race is happening, and you should learn to read balance sheets.
Don't get me wrong, I have owned several Nokia phones, and the N9 I have is a great device. Luckily I travel enough to have been able to get one quite cheaply, since Elop dumped them in strange places to hide them from view, and probably melted down most of them for all I know. I secretly think the 200m+ write down of parts was N9s, but I cannot really prove it.
I even think that WP is an interesting and new take on the smartphone interface. Not my cup of tea, but I don't hate it or anything.
However, declaring instantaneously that everything Nokia ever did was shit and that stupid "boy stood on the burning deck" metaphor has essentially drained Nokia of its capital and destroyed its income base. These facts are undeniable and Nokia WILL run out of money. Nokia is junk status and deservedly so, because it is run by a moron who actually thinks he knows something. Elop pissing off the carriers hasn't helped either, and since the carriers are averse to Skype (aka. MS) for obvious reasons, the carriers are going to be reticent about selling WP devices. Surprise surprise. Elop is a moron, sorry to be the one to say it.
By the way, my Nokia engineering friends are all unemployed these days, and you can expect to be soon as well, because the burn rate at Nokia shows no signs of slowing, the market has fled Symbian since Elop killed it, and the punters (and carriers) have shown no signs of liking WP. I have an N9 as I said and it is great, too bad I had to make such an effort to buy it!
Re: Don't fracture your base
"many Nokia loyalists had already moved on to iPhones and Android phones."
No most Nokia loyalist kept using their symbian devices. Only the ones that are vulnerable to propaganda have moved to iPhone and androids. And found them too light; No 2-way call recording, crippled multitasking, crippled bluetooth transfers, no local USB-BT syncing, worse reception, bad call quality, cheap crappy build quality etc...
Then there´s the matter of getting your phone rooted/jailbroken to "sideload" stuff or "patch" features. Which is far easier on Symbian then on e.g. iPhones or WP-devices.
The problem is that some Androids have comparable features. E.G some devices CAN indeed record calls (fyi LG 4x hd) but this is kept under the radar so Symbian users (or other) will never get those devices (or discover this through sheer luck).
Luck is not a good motivator to buy an expensive smartphone.
Oh yeah right
I bet somewhere in Nokia, someone is running a Lumia 1000 on Android 'just for testing until Windows 8 is ready'.
Whether Elop knows about it is another question. And whether it's good enough to ship quickly when he gets fired is another too
WP7 offers some good ideas, and some neat features. And a huge, huge pile of cash from Microsoft which must have been incredibly hard to turn down. But my worry about Nokia is that they haven't stood up to Microsoft and insisted that they hurry out bug fixes, a version that runs on dual-core processors, or some bugfixes for Internet Explorer. That makes me think they've lost it.
My big concern is that with all the models released this past year, none really seemed to have gained any traction. Not to mention they'll all be left in the dust with WinPho8 already on the horizon. It was enough to steer me away from Nokia when I had to replace my S2.
Or you can believe the shills
"The Lumia phones are selling really, super well!"
"Windows phones have SMOKED the competition!"
"Windows Phone 8 will be a game changer!" (They said the same for WP7.5 Mango).
Microsoft PR department = Comical Ali of Saddam's Iraq.
"In today's war [between] Android, Apple and Windows, we are very clear, we are fighting that with the Windows phone,"
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Without a doubt, one of the funniest things I ever read. At least Elop has a future as a comedian when he's finished driving Nokia in to the ground.
Poor little Belgium
In WW2 [between] Germany, Russia, the United States, and Belgium, we are very clear, we were fighting with Belgium.
AFAIK WP is still the no 5 smartphone OS, having just pipped Bada but not overtaken Blackberry or Symbian.
Elop can talk all he wants
He's assuming that he'll still keep his job at Nokia.
Already, the 'no Microsoft' Plan B is set in motion by influential folks at Nokia. A trigger (e.g. poor sales of Lumia W8 phones) will see that plan come into fruition, and Mr Elop packing his bags.
Re: Elop can talk all he wants
By then his real task will be complete, the eradication of one of Microsoft's competitors. maybe with an MS buyout on the cheap for patents, and/or Nokia becoming a de facto hardwaer division of MS. This is a hostile takeover to all intents and purposes.
Re: Elop can talk all he wants
Nokia is selling its patents to patent-holding companies at an alarming rate, and in each case MS has in interest in the patent-holding companies.
As there is no trojan horse icon I'm going for the burning platform icon.
Re: Elop can talk all he wants
A filing cabinet full of patents in a Redmond basement does not require a CEO to manage it. That can be done by a couple paralegals and a secretary..
"...lies with Windows Phone and no other OS."
So how come Nokia bought SmarterPhone last year?
Re: "...lies with Windows Phone and no other OS."
Old habits die hard? No surprise they still don't know their arse from their elbow.
Nokia always had internal OS competition, it was mostly a strength but when it came time to fight, the internal squabbles and divisions prevented them rallying the most powerful force of mobile developers on the planet and seeing off the challenge of iOS and Android.
The war is over Mr Elop, Nokia lost, now time for you to retreat into your bunker and do the right thing :(
Re: "...lies with Windows Phone and no other OS."
So how come Nokia bought SmarterPhone last year?
Nokia buying SmarterPhone and then shutting it down wouldn't draw much attention but eliminates yet more WP competition from the market place... that seems to be Nokia's current MO, shut down as many operating systems that could possibly compete with Windows Phone. I wonder who is driving this policy? If Microsoft were to acquire another mobile OS company it would raise questions, but it's nothing for Nokia to do the same (then quietly shut it down).
Don't like Elop?
Fine, but he ended up in charge of Nokia because of the total brand destruction that occurred between the years 2008 and 2010. Nokia, with their mismanaged Smartphones division, was dying. Nokia could have gone Android in 2009 and got a head start on HTC and Samsung - but they didn't. Or they could have got MeeGo up to speed by 2010 and started getting great devices out - but they didn't. That left Microsoft, who were desperate to get a manufacturer to actually make an effort with Windows Phone.
Re: Don't like Elop?
Sad but true
Nokia is at the bottom of a very deep pit, but it is a pit it dug itself. The N9 was a very nice if late to market bit of kit (I've actually used one for a prolonged period of time) but the Lumia series? Reasonable mid range handsets with a now orphaned OS but nothing more and certainly no challenge to the iPhone, Galaxy SIII, One X etc etc etc etc.
Re: Don't like Elop?
They didn't get MeeGo phones out there because Flop killed the platform and phone stone dead soon after his arrival, prompting the resignation of the head of the MeeGo project.
Re: Don't like Elop?
a) Learn to read a balance sheet
b) Read Nokia's, up til about 6mth after Elop arrived
You will find you statements to be false. Nokia (Symbian) smartphones were fare and away the global leader, and the smartphone division turned the biggest profit EVER for a Nokia division. Nokia made so much money they took a 1.5 billion dollar write down because they had so much income to offset.
Really, this Nokia was dying crap is not evident in the balance sheet until after Elop "got going"
Amazing the share price has crawled over 2.6, up from 1.7 a short time ago, but that has nothing to do with Nokia's knock out sales success with WP or the expectation that WP8 will turn Nokia's fortunes around.
Nokia will run out of money around Q1 next year. Full time hooter.
Re: Don't like Elop?
"Or they could have got MeeGo up to speed by 2010 and started getting great devices out - but they didn't."
I´ll correct that for you: " - but they couldn't." They released their flagship Meego device in 2011. By then the majority of the "techno press" declared it too late.
"That left Microsoft, who were desperate to get a manufacturer to actually make an effort with Windows Phone."
Actually it was Nokia who where desperate. After their CEO prematurely destroyed sales of Symbian devices (whom where still selling a lot back then) without ANY other device in shops to replace them.
As for that question. NO! I don´t like Elop.
This topic is closed for new posts.
