Nokia's New CEO Sends off Burning Memo of Fails

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dgingeri

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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." - Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

I think we are going to see some massive changes in Nokia in the near future, and they will either create a huge change in the market again, or they're die fabulously. This CEO is not taking this lying down. I'm rather impressed...
 

jkflipflop98

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Sounded good up until the "ecosystem" BS.

Here's the thing. People don't want a zillion different "ecosystems" around. They want one, and only one, that they trust. At this point there are 2 players in the game - Apple and Android. They have established codebases with a ton of developer support and massive amounts of programs for consumption.

If you're going to build a whole service stack based around your mobile devices, it had better damned well be a homerun the likes of which the tech world has never seen. It has to do something new and revolutionary and it has to make people go "Wow!" as soon as they see what it can do.

ANYTHING less than that, and you're going to fail. It's the same principle as entering the CPU industry. Unless you have some great angle that is going to throw Intel and AMD off their game, you may as well not even bother. You're just going to end up spending billions of dollars and end up with nothing.
 

Yuka

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Nice metaphor. I've always liked Nokia for it's simplicity in the way of making cel-phones, but cel-phones are more than that these days, sadly.

Just get into the Android bandwagon and collaborate with Google just like HTC and Samsung are. Or make a partnership with MS and try to sell the "WP7 experience" (which, IMO, is lacking).

Cheers!
 

Takuhi

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I think it's fairly obvious that they need to start using Android and to start undercutting the competition. They need to cash in on Android's popularity (and brand familiarity), and they need to start learning lessons from China , Korea and Japan. When it comes to getting a product released, they really know how to do it within a tight time scale over in Asia.

What Nokia needs to show us is that it is possible to get yourself something as good as an iPhone , HTC Hero or BlackBerry Curve at a fraction of the price. But to be "good" it has to tick all the boxes ; style, usability, platform stability and price. In this economic climate, where most people are trying to save money, it is easy to make money if your product is something they can actually afford. It's all about "bang for buck".

(On a side note, Apple probably isn't the best business model to follow. They make their money by periodically releasing annual hardware and software updates. They make money by making everyone buy a new phone every 12 months. Eventually this is going to start biting back when more people start opting for 24+ month contracts. The increasing price of Apple products will eventually slow their ability for a regular 12 month product turnover.)
 

TeKEffect

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Wow thats refreshing at least compared to the non-sense the last CEO would spew. I haven't owned a Nokia phone for many years. Lets see if they can change that.

[citation][nom]jkflipflop98[/nom]Sounded good up until the "ecosystem" BS. [/citation]

He also mentions joining one IE Android. He was just laying out all the options. He knows they they can't half ass something. Thats what the whole story was about, radical change.
 
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You have to admit, this is kind of exciting from the perspective of a consumer. If they can make the jump anyway.
 

cookoy

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very nice analysis of what went wrong and where they are standing now. but little as to how to deal with all these issues other than behavior change. i just hope good, talented employees don't start jumping off "the burning platform" and seek employment elsewhere.
 
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I own 5230 - bought it coz its cheap and has free navi - and i cant understand ppl saying symbian sucks. And 5230 uses older symbianˇ1 while sˇ3 has many improvements. Ofc they could use android or wp7 for higher end smartphones but they also should keep symbian.
 

digiex

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They have to align their mid range to the low end, their high end to the mid range, and create something new in the high end.
 

Humans think

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My first cellphone was a Nokia 14 years ago and almost every phone after that in 1-3 year intervals. I have to say i didn't visit the service store even once.

They make reliable devices which are up to the task. I don't think that they are doing sth wrong but their philosophy of phones is not contemporary or mainstream anymore hence the market share loss. People's desires changed not Nokia.

I was thinking of buying the N8 this year but now that everything is on the table i risk ending up with an outdated device from scratch. I guess I will have to w8 a while before I jump on board.
 
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@jkflipflop98

just like games developers cant makes a game for all the different myriad of platforms out there........... Smart development houses with their finger on the pulse will look towards developing a strategy that allows them to port their wares onto the different platforms with ease, Adobe saw that coming and attempted something that would allow this, apple in it's infinite wisdom did not like the idea and nuked this with an update EULA that went along of the lines of you can only use apple approved IDEs to create iPhone apps

the iPhone is so superior that Job fears having the same app on the iPhone run on an android device would make said android device appear inferior, so he decided to protect them from such embarrassments
 

megamanx00

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Glad someone opened their eyes, but he's still leading the blind here so we'll see now Nokia turns out. People aren't exactly rushing to buy the Nokia E7 after all. Nokia either needs to focus on one common OS and redo their ecosystem, or start using Android. If Nokia wants to stay with it's own echo system then it would be best for them to ditch Symbian and support MeeGo. Whichever way they go they would need to make sure there is a healthy supply of apps as well as incentives for developers to put applications into the MeeGo ecosystem.
 

abottig

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I just hope the MeeGo device he was referring to was the n9.

You cannot compete in the consumer space with iOS and Android. Focus on the Uber-Geek market and make a full line-up of truly open Linux phones!!!
 

bto

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The easiest way for them to fix this is in adoption of the Android OS. They know that. The very impossible option of creating a new similar OS like Android or apple, is suicide. If they go android, they could emerge as a strong player in hardware and lose the Nokia coding. They already have (in my mindset) one of the best hardware brands out there as far as phones go. Why not push your strengths like a bulldozer to the top of the hill.
 
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Nokia should adopt Android as their new OS and ditch Symbian. There are way more apps for Android than Symbian. They should offer more enhanced Ovi Maps for free and make it work offline not like Google Maps that needs an active connection to the internet. They should change the interface of Maps to look like the Sygic Mobile Maps.
 

masterbinky

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[citation][nom]abottig[/nom]. Focus on the Uber-Geek market and make a full line-up of truly open Linux phones!!![/citation]
Wow.. yeah, they're not out to commit suicide. It's a great idea from a consumer standpoint. The problem is the carriers. You would black list your own company so fast you couldn't dump your stock before it fell, if you didn't allow the carriers to cripple the phone. I haven't seen a decent nokia available in a long time. My significant other loves Nokia phones for a the main reason of quality. They weren't the best phones, but they took a beating and didn't die on the two year mark (at least for her, somehow she has one that's 5 years old and triband.) He focuses on the ecosystem thing, which is retarded. It wasn't magic everything became possible, it was improvement of processors, and development of OS's that wasn't just an embeded system that can run a java app. If Nokia wants to get back in the game, make something polished, that works consistantly, for those that hate technology. My other half hates the android phone after a year of having it because of the quirks and "it doesn't work." She will remember the two times that she couldn't answer because the screen was being wierd and didn't respond for the rest of her (and more unfortuneatly my) life. If Nokia doesn't lock them into a draconian OS and applications, interfaces with windows well (you know to load music from WMP *shudders* smoothly), and provides good working apps of the best "Oh, shiny" functions like: video player with all major codecs so there's nothing to convert, flash with flash game ability (it'd be an instant sell if she could play robot unicorn attack on her phone *shrugs*), e-mail, internet, messaging. If you allow developers to program in C/C++ (it's just more efficient then java ok?) with a decent SDK you could get good programs that people will be wow'd by.
 

wolfram23

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I think they need to use other OSes like Android and/or Win7 rather than trying to push something new (in the high end market at least). On the cheaper side they can have their propietary things, small, lightweight but add some good features like wifi internet and some social apps (facebook, twitter)
 
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