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back to article What sealed Nokia's fate?

"Nokia and Symbian was the last of the European software business, it's gone overnight. That's depressing," an industry veteran told me on Friday afternoon. As I wrote several years ago, Nokia was a company that could set global standards for consumer electronics, and do so from a cold and remote corner of Europe, using its …

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  1. ob1

    Go chop wood.

    This is merely symptomatic of a much deeper decline ... Nokia has abysmal hardware quality assurance. My last 4 nokia candybar phones each had varying degrees of hardware failing just weeks after purchase. Keyboards. Power buttons. Speakers. My latest x3-o2 can no longer sense a headset attachment. The timber co needs to go back and chop wood 2c the trees again.

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  2. gnufreex

    What sealed Nokia's fate?

    Microsoft mole Elop.

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  3. Mark .
    Thumb Down

    Nokia's fate? Eh?

    "Nokia and Symbian was the last of the European software business, it's gone overnight. That's depressing,"

    Nokia != Symbian. Yes, Symbian is gone, and yes it's perhaps sad that as far as OSs is gone, there's no longer anything from Europe.

    But Nokia are still around. The fact that they change a technology they use is no different to when Apple or Microsoft or anyone who else do this.

    "For me, the most remarkable part of Nokia's decline"

    Okay, I stopped reading there. Nokia are still the number one phone and smartphone company. (Even with Android making number one in one quarter, that's split across several companies - Nokia are still number one.)

    There has also been no decline - their sales have rocketed. Yes, market share has fallen, but this is playing games with statistics - the market has massively increased, and more companies have entered the market. Would you rather be 60% in a tiny market, or 30% in a massive market?

    If company A sells 1 million gadgets, company B sells 1000 gadgets. Then the next year, company A sells 10 million gadgets, company B sells 100000 gadgets, company C sells 100000 gadgets.

    Company's A market share has fallen from 99.9% to 98%.

    The next year, company A sells 20 million gadgets, companies B and C sell 1 million each. Company's A market share has fallen to 91%. A shocking decline! Yet, company A is not only number one, it is increasing it's sales - with sales increasing higher than B and C.

    I'm sure that Apple's market share in tablets will decline, but will we hear doom and gloom about Apple? No, people will realise there it's inevitable as the market grows, and more competitors enter the market.

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  4. Mark .

    Correcting a few myths

    "IMHO, the point at which it all went irretrievably to the dogs was the point twelve months ago where they effectively killed Maemo and the N900 successor to tit around with Intel on MeeGo which produced exactly nothing. You can't spend a year doing nothing in this business."

    Eh? Nokia have produced plenty of smartphones in the meantime. Not running Maemo or MeeGo, no, but so? It is a shame they never produced a successor to the N900, but it is false to say that Nokia haven't been doing anything.

    "Now nobody is going to invest in Qt development - so Symbian is finished."

    Was PPC finishing the moment Apple announced x86? Or when they went from classic Mac OS to OS X? Was XP abandoned when Vista was announced?

    Let's drop this myth. History shows us that development not only postdates the announcement of new technology, but even continues after the release, due to the installed userbase.

    "What kind of an idiot kills off his existing platform while he's still a year away from having a successor?"

    So every other company that announces new technology in advance are "idiots"? And I guess Apple must be prize idiots then, by this logic, as we're always getting news about Ipad 2 and Iphone 5, or whatever the next one might be.

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  5. D. M
    FAIL

    wrong number

    Look at the money.

    Company A sells 100 million phones, but only make couple of billion dollars before tax.

    Company B sells 2 million phones, but makes 20 billion dollars after tax.

    Which company you'd rather be? I know which one I'd choose.

    Don't get me wrong, in no way I'd buy anything Apple, or recommend Apple to anyone I know. But even monkey living under rock knows Apple absolutely dominate smartphone + tablet market.

    Nokia's fate is sealed because it went WP7 exclusive as its primary smartphone OS.

    In the past, Nokia had a very long time to get things right, but amazingly nothing good ever came out. Nokia always has too many "different" phones, each may have a thing or two good, but there has never been a single phone that has all the good.

    And everytime they have a half decent phone, they will throw it out of line, start over and release something worse. Just what the fuck they were thinking?

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    WP7 may be nice...

    But as a business we're not going to touch it until it gets SQL Server CE.

    WM 5 and 6.x have it, why not WP7?

    All our in-house developed business apps require SQL Server CE, and until WP7 gets it we're looking towards Android instead.

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  7. Giles Jones Gold badge

    Nokia had no vision

    Nokia failed to grasp the emerging market of touch screen phones.

    Nokia's iPhone killer should have been out in 2008. It should have been 3G, high res modern touch screen OS and 5MP camera.

    Instead they released the N96 with 320x240 screen, non-touch screen, 5MP camera. Basically a N95 mk2.

    Sure, at that time there will still many people not buying or using touch screen phones, but it was obviously where smartphones were going since mobile web browsing is incredibly unusable without a touch screen.

    R&D departments are supposed to be developing and seeing what the consumer will want in 12 months or more time. You can even get away with seeing what they are buying now and make a better/cheaper version of it if your name is Microsoft.

    Once touch screen Nokia phones started to arrive they were comparable to Windows Mobile and its stop gap GUI hacks.

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  8. Mage Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Win CE

    It's not true that WInCE was bad. It was a quite good "cut down" NT concept with little DOS/Win3.1/Win95 junk. The stupidity was trying to make it have the same Branding and especially GUI as Desktop Windows.

    Zune was then the first decent GUI on Win CE for small graphical devices.

    After the Communicator N9200 it seemed downhill for Nokia. They should have turned Maemo into Consumer Phone in 9 months. Instead they choked it and then nearly killed it merging with Intel's Moblin to give Meego. The QT debacle also was poor as the article points out. Another good idea strangled. They'd have done better simply outsourcing to Trolltech.

    The open sourcing of Symbian was another great idea gone bad.

    So the choice for Nokia was continue as is and asphyxiate or adopt the now "nearly good enough" WP7 and hope for W8 x86/ARM for Tablets.

    It's probably too late. Unless there is a radical change in the way MS partnerships, maybe Nokia is doomed in 5 years as the Chinese eat the basic & Feature phone market and Android, RIM, HP and Apple eat the Smart phone/Tablet market.

    MS too needs major change or the next version of Windows Phone could be the last.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    We cheated on users

    I worked in a "mobile software development" company from 2003 - 2005. I can tell you all the company did was selling payable SMS subscriptions for users to download wallpapers and ringtones. It was very close to being a scam, users would pay around £10 a month, and 98% of them wouldn't download anything because they didn't even know they were subscribed.

    Worst of all - telcos would get immediate 50% cut, for doing practically nothing. We would operate on thin margins, and original content developers would get 10% of the market price. That's 10% only to the ringtone creator, artist or a J2ME developer.

    Further, any REAL app or game was impossible because Nokia and other OEM's were not giving anything useful, extremely difficult and fragmented development, so all you needed was remake same old games with slightly different skin, advertise it as something new and lure users into monthly subscription.

    Then iPhone came along and I purchased a Guitar Tuner app with cord library for £3, no monthly subscription and the developer got 70%.

    Nuff said.

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  10. Richard Jukes

    RE Asdf

    Ig Index - sign up for them, its not really share trading - is is spread betting, but it is tax free. Nokia are already in my 'to watch' portfolio. As are Arm and TomTom (they have doubled since I started watching them!)

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nokia and MS

    While it's easy to bash Nokia's decision for becoming "just another boring clone WM7 phone maker", there's nothing to say that this is just what they have or will become.

    This is such a big tie in and partnership that the chance of Nokia not having input at a high level on the future direction of WM7+ ought to be pretty damn small. Seen from this perspective it's not such a crazy move, from either MS's point of view - where they currently have appalling market penetration and a lot of, in reality, pretty average phones and from Nokia's point of view where suddenly they get a phone OS that works (albeit not especially well, but well enough) and a partner that they have enough leverage with to steer the OS. Between them, new features and base line specifications can be decided upon and unlike the other WM hardware shops, Nokia will be ahead of the game because they helped to form the new baseline.

    Oh, and to get onto the bashing... I use an Android phone as my primary phone but am frustrated by the periodic instability of the thing. I'm techie so I know how to fix this (other than a power cycle) but it's a real downside to what's an otherwise great phone to use and, from the development point of view, a really nice system to program for other than the random phone incompatibilities aside, but we've all dealt with his on Win16/32 for years now and that's not an unsuccessful platform. This doesn't excuse the instability but it does show that in the end, it's not always a platform killer.

    I've borrowed an iphone for a couple of months to develop on and while they're slick, the pain of having to pay the apple tax and having the potential for your entire business ripped out under you at a momemt's notice is easy to see as too much of a business risk - and don't get me started on having to install the appalling itunes software to do anything with them...

    Which leaves WM7 - only used it for a few weeks now and development is annoying (iOS and Android are *much* nicer to work with) and while the interface presentation is ugly and seems to be aimed at kids (and definitely not professionals), it is admirably effective. It's a shame that without too much prodding you can revert it back to its WM6 roots and when it comes to it, the underside is pretty much that. Other than when poking hard I haven't had too many stability problems other than the odd dropped call and inexplicable crash, but there's always the inherent lingering fear of anything that's branded "Microsoft"... others have had no problems at all while some have been ready to microwave their phone after 3 days.

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  12. VulcanV5
    Happy

    Me and my Nokia

    I'm a Nokia user. I have three of 'em. One is a mobile phone. It's black with a kind of gold finish trim that's still under its protective wrapping. It has a small greenish screen on which black text appears. I have no idea what its model number is. Perhaps a 9-something-something. I bought it new as a treat for myself in April 2003. It's been in constant use ever since.

    It makes and receives phone calls. If I can be arsed, it sends text messages. It also receives text messages. It runs on standby for up to 10 days. It powers up from flat empty to full steam in 45 minutes. It has never let me down and it has been all over the world.

    My other two Nokias are a matched pair. They're Nokia wellington boots. Nokia made boots before it ever made phones. My Nokia boots are green with black trim and the word Nokia emblazoned on them. I bought them in 1983. I wear them in the garden. They are still as good in 2011 as they were in 1983. In December's ice and snow, my Nokias kept me on the move when all about me, people were falling down. They are the best mobiles around.

    My Nokia boots will -- in the eys of some -- be technologically flawed because although they are a stable platform, they don't make phone calls. But that doesn't bother me because I have my shiny black and gold wotsit.

    So then. Before all the experts on here finish Finnish burying, could they kindly note:

    1) A lot of people use phones for phone calls and aren't remotely interested in pockets stuffed full of apples, blackberries, oranges, or whatever the hell else is out there;

    2) Nokia's expertise in making wellington boots was and remains far greater than Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Samsung put together. It is perfectly possible for Nokia to return to its core business and make enormous profits.

    I hope that's set the record straight.

    PS: I have been trying to figure out how much my Nokia boots have saved me in 28 years of wear. Lesser boots fail rapidly, so it must be more than a hundred quid I've saved. I've also tried, though failed, to calculate what I've saved by never needing to buy another mobile phone since 2003. The black-and-gold Nokia cost me £205. Since then there've been almost eight years of mobile communication (talk-speak, message-speak) at an annual contract rate of £00.00. Must be £hundredss? £thousands??

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: Me and my Nokia

      "Nokia's expertise in making wellington boots was and remains far greater than Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Samsung put together. It is perfectly possible for Nokia to return to its core business and make enormous profits."

      Nope: Nokia divested their rubber and paper businesses a long time ago.

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  13. Mad Frankie
    Headmaster

    Web OS anyone?

    Been following Nokiasoft story for a while. I have a genuine question that I don't know the answer to. Forgive me if I sound thick... why didn't they think about going with hp and web os? Come to think of it, why didn't they buy palm back in the day?

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  14. JBowler

    A smaller beaurocracy?

    No, I think you get a larger one.

    I remember, back in 1993, when Nokia had the EO220 - the first smartphone - within the reach of its fingers a bigger beaurocracy; AT&T killed it. Meanwhile, another beaurocracy - the fruit company in question - was killing EO by promising something better tomorrow. (Hands up all those who still use a Newton, ha ha.)

    Your whole article comes back to that age old geek question, "why does good software get killed by bad software?" Beaurocracy is irrelevant. Apple has marketing and Microsoft has a company structure that just fixes bugs, bugs, bugs until the stuff actually works. Good engineering with lukewarm marketing cannot defeat good marketing of bad engineering, and simple dumb persistence will win over either. That's why I still keep my Microsoft stock, well, that and 10 isn't a bad P/E today (take a look at ARM Ltd ;-)

    John Bowler <jbowler@acm.org>

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  15. ted frater

    Nokia never asked me!!

    Ive a box here with 20 or so different phones in it.

    None of which meet MY needs.

    Recently before Nokia sold itself to the devil, I tried to make contact with Nokia to as if they would make a phone for my needs, the money is here, and in my view there are thousands of folk world wide who would buy what i want too.

    What that is ill come to later,

    they were virtually impossible to get through to , and didnt even reply to a simple email, when i eventually found an address to write to.

    The only phone I can use for the simplest of tasks is their Communicator 9210i.

    Because its has the key spacing to suit my hands for texting. No other phone has.

    its a folder ie a side acting flip phone with a protected main screen, decent speaker when open on outdoor, so I can hear it when the tractor is running

    Im old, with big hands, tired eyes, and partly deaf,

    i work in a dirty industrial noisy and frequently wet enviroment.

    the phone will live in a pocket with other harware, nuts and bolts etc.

    So what would I want in aphone?

    a folder, to protect it when not in use.

    a kebboard like the 9210i

    a screen big like the E61

    a battery of 3000mah so it will last at least 2/4 weeks

    a clear and loud speaker

    solid METAL construction,

    Reasonaby waterproof and repairable.

    And screwed together , no plastc clips, proper o ring type seals on all joints etc.

    Size/ about the same as a HP Jordana ie 3in wide abot 4in long and it can be up to 1in thick.

    weight doesnt matter, a it must be on a strong lanyard .

    The sonim is agood phone but I cant use it, keys too small.

    they dont answer the phone on their uk no either.

    Perhaps I should get someone in China to make it for me and ill sell it and make a fortune!!

    Folk like us dont ponse around in offices with an iphone as a personal ego prop.

    It wouldnt last 5 mins in my life, and I wouldnt have one if it were free.

    If im concentrating on driving or plowing or whatever I dont need email on the go, or news feed or anything like that. For cthose needs i like to sit down infront of my nice IBM thinkpad with a decent screen and top quality keyboard to do emails ,letters etc.

    Ted

    in

    Dorset UK.

    Ted

    Dorset UK.

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  16. Magnus_Pym

    when you get to the bottom...

    ... you find that corporate share holders are the driving force.

    A young or fast moving company (like Nokia was) appears to investors to have unlimited potential. A national lottery shot. Could loose a million, Could gain a billion. A mature one looks like 'safe investment with good returns', OK as long it gives a few percent above base. The share holder mix turns from 'go for it!' to 'what's the bottom line?'. Those that remain are not interested in the company or it's products. How can they? most of the money is invested by brokers on behalf of pensions and portfolio's on behalf of individuals worried about their old age. The brokers have no long term view only the second-by-second stock ticker. They just want to protect their investment and so protect their jobs.

    The board only has the power that the share holders give them. If the response to any question is 'will it give us a bigger dividend this year?' then how can a company think long term? How can a CEO make any rational plans when the real power is irrational and unthinking?

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Has Sendo been forgotten to quickly?

    I wonder if Microsoft is going to take what it can from Nokia and just give it all to HTC like it did with Sendo's crown jewels back in the Microsoft Windows Smartphone for Windows 2003 Mobile CE Version 2005...

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  18. John Burton

    ipv6...?

    > how many other mobiles do you know that can obtain an IPV6 address?

    My android (HTC desire) for one using the standard untouched software.

    My network doesn't offer ipv6 so it doesn't get it on that, but on home on wifi it just picks up an ipv6 from my wifi and *just works* with it.

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  19. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Grenade

    Yup...

    "Also, WP7 is remarkably good at not making you poke through fourteen levels of shit to find out what you want."

    Very true. Most V1.0 release of MS product are that simple. Then come the patches, upgrades, service packs and bloatware that add features few want, but no one can remove.

    That's OK though because WP8 will be more secure, have more user friendly features and be less buggy. At least that has been the MS mantra for the last 25 years. ;-)

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  20. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    The finish of the Finnish?

    [I thought that was rather a good title but I am awfully self-centric]

    W7 on the Nok may be a short term necessity convenient to both parties.

    And who knows?

    Maybe W9 for mobile devices might give the Nok exactly what it wants without too heavy R&D costs?

    And by then other hardware/software/firmware developments might make for re-energising the Nok with W7 evolutions having to compete?

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  21. BreakingWind
    Linux

    Breaking Wind

    Can anyone explain why it is it that most of Joe and Jo public love Apple - while most media writers are gagging for them to fail...???

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  22. illiad

    Basically, it was speed and ability that beat nokia..

    And NO I AM NOT talking about programmer or geek features!!!!

    Basically, symbian has no support from adobe flash, so web browsing is not so good, as can be seen by the sink in marketshare of those phones without it... Anyone in adobe like to tell me why a newer system like android is supported, but not the older nokia symbian???

    when you go from the nokia, and try any android phone, it seems far faster, full 'PC like' web browsing, better resolution, faster UI..

    And .. Android DO NOT make phones!! If it did, there maybe some truth in all the hate...

    Good companies with experience, like HTC, SE, Samsung etc make good handsets... and they also sell them with a range of different OSes...

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  23. illiad

    @N900 lovers/haters...

    N900 is 'very old' in the tech timescale... At the time of release, it was a great bit of tech.. BUT it was sold as a *linux* minicomputer, with mobile phone abilities... so all the geeks loved it...

    How many guys with linux, still have the original unmodified linux they installed on their PC 10 years ago??? those will be the ones that could not handle the work keeping it up to speed with the latest big needs of websites, media players, faster internet, to say nothing at all about gaming...

    The N900 lovers are those that have the ability to upgrade and change the linux to something a lot better, and the haters, well, their laziness led them back to something 'easier' eg the newer Phones/ PCs where the hard work has been done for them... It continues today, where some are complaining about the lack of a HDMI port????

    If you find a very cheap 10 yr old PC, you will soon find out why.. most of the companies making the video,card, sound card, even network card, are no longer trading!!!

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  24. veramin
    FAIL

    Finnish culture compounded with RoW politics

    Nokia had a system for end user testing called TRUE whereby you got a phone to use and you entered bugs into a database. It worked on the principle of motivation by gifts - if you got into the top 10 reporters you got free stuff - or at the end you got to keep the phone. You got points based on whether bugs were accepted or already known.. Yada yada. However certain POS employees realised by dumping blocks of errors they would still get a point for each. Hence the databases got stuffed with utterly retarded reports such as 'phone does not make call' - unrepeatable problems. Couple that with the fact that nokias phone home fault system was utterly useless in helping symbian guys find the bugs within that crappy OS you had a receipe for fail.

    Most of the last symbian phones (N95 - aalto, N96, N97 - ivalo) where known to be real bug bags when finally released to the market.. But in Nokia people had literially lost all hope of decent phones - so the 'good enough' mentality meant 'just get it out so we can move on with our lives'

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  25. S 10
    WTF?

    The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

    The thing that puzzles me is that smartphone hardware is largely converging - there's not really much in it between different hardware manufacturers. Generally it's now the software and supporting services that make or break a device. It seems that Nokia has thrown away the ability to control the parts of their product that count.

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  26. illiad

    OK, WP7 lovers..

    Is this the kind of phone you want??

    http://regmedia.co.uk/2011/02/23/toy_computer.jpg

    Nice and easy, no small fiddly bits you cannot see, big green buttons when you switch on...

    Seriously, is that what you want?? no need for cut & paste, its too complex... multitasking, customizing, why would you need that???

    These are my issues - Now, IF there is a WP7 user who know how to make their phone have a display like THIS when I turn it on (For FREE), then I WILL buy a WP7 phone!!!

    http://st2.gsmarena.com/vv/bigpic/samsung-galaxy-s-ii-ofic.jpg

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  27. Jim Coe
    WTF?

    "Sequences shortened"

    To me. an old bloke with longsight an big shaky fingers, this is what gives me iphobia,apart from an 18 month contract with 3 (foreign) or O2 (foreign) at a price which assumes that I want to multitask whilst driving, shopping or sleeping

    I regard a mobile phone as an excellent portable device for calling Emergency, Home or a taxi.For OS and UI I have Desktops, Laptops.Netbooks and Media Centres,with achoice of Unix .Linux. Windows, Android, Chrome and what have you.

    But, none of this matters any more because Goldman sacks the World.

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