Why Europe Is So Critical to Nokia in Smartphones: The Symbian S^3 Sales Pattern in Q4

IDC just reported yesterday that Nokia had fallen from 39% market share in Europe to 11% in smartphones, lost literally three out of every four customers they had in Europe just six months ago. The biggest in Europe in smartphones is now Samsung at 22%, with iPhone number 2 at 21%, third is HTC at 14%, fourth is RIM also at 14% and down in fifth place lingers Nokia smartphones at 11%. I suggested Nokia would fall globally to about a quarter of its market but that would take a year. They are failing much faster under Stephen Elop's misguided mismanagement and in their biggest and most profitable market they have lost in less than six months three quarters of their market already. The situation at Nokia is far worse than any of us could predict.

To give some more understanding of Nokia smartphones, I did a bit of very complex and time-consuming multi-dimensional optimization modelling on their quarterly results data and some other data points we have received. We can now paint a very accurate picture of what Nokia was like in Q4 of 2010, the last quarter before the Elop Effect happened on Feb 11 and destroyed Nokia's value.

This type of analysis was not possible until Nokia released its profitability information by division this July, but now we can calculate the actual contribution of not just overall Symbian handsets to all handsets of Nokia (previously some Nokia smartphones vs dumbphones info was only aggregated into one handsets unit). And why I can only do it for Q4, is that in the Q4 2010 quarterly results investor call, CEO Stephen Elop confirmed the sales number of 5 million Symbian S^3 handsets sold in Q4. If we had that official number for Q1 or Q2, I could do similar analysis for newer quarters too. But here is the full picture of Nokia smartphone and dumbphone sales.

So to be clear, we know as certain numbers the unit sales, average sales prices, sales revenues, and profitability of the dumbphones/featurephones (ie non-smartphones) and separately the smartphones. The smartphones side includes both older 'uncompetitive' Symbian S60 based smartphones, and the new, initially VERY competitive and user-friendly Symbian S^3 smartphones that were selling like hot cakes until the Elop Effect killed the success of all Nokia phones, not just Symbian S60 but S^3 and even Nokia branded dumbphones.

What we did not know is the split of Symbian S^3 vs older Symbian S60 in units sold, revenues, average prices or profits. We furthermore did not know the regional split of all the phone types dumbphones, and the two types of smartphones. But some patient multidimensional modelling will get the numbers as we have some critical data points added, the 5 million S^3 sales number and now the profits by divisions.

This is Nokia Q4 of 2010, the quarter when Symbian's new S^3 was released (led by the N8):

Type . . . . . . . . . . . . Units  . . . . . . ASP . . . . . . Revenues . . . . Profitability . . . . Operating Profit
Dumbphones . . . . . . 95.4 Million . . 43 Euro  . . . 4.1B Euro . . . . 11.5%  . . . . . . .    470M Euro
Symbian S60 . . . . . . 23.3 Million . . 128 Euro . . .3.0B Euro . . . .   9.3% . . . . . . . .   276M Euro
Symbian S^3 . . . . . .   5.0 Million . . 284 Euro . .  1.4B Euro . . . . 19.1% . . . . . . . .    277M Euro

All smartphones  . . . 28.3 Million . . 155 Euro . . . 4.4B Euro . . . . 12.5%  . . . . . . .    548M Euro
All Nokia phones . . 123.7 Million . .   69 Euro . . . 8.5B Euro . . . . 12.0%  . . . . . . . 1,1B Euro

So, how did the so-called 'failing' Symbian S^3 do then? It sold 5 million copies in one quarter - thats second only to Apple's iPhone 4 and far better than any other new OS version release, or new OS launch or new smartphone model line launched ever - including more sold than Samsung's latest Galaxy.

How did it contribute to Nokia? It jumped Nokia's smartphone average sales price so much, that Symbian S^3 smartphones earned on average 2.2 times more than other Symbian based smartphones. Nokia's new S^3 average sales price gets it in the price range of HTC and Blackberry (while still obviously half that of Apple's iPhone). Just as a note, Microsoft's head of Windows Mobile, Andy Lees, said in July to Microsoft developers that the average sales price of Windows Mobile based smarpthones is only 200 dollars (vs 284 Euros for Nokia's Symbian S^3 which is about 411 US dollars) and that would be down to between $100 and $150 next year. So Nokia had a huge growth engine in Symbian's latest S^3, which it swaps for an undesirable OS whose boss says their prices are being nearly halved in the next year. But I digress.

The profitability of Nokia's new Symbian S^3 is the most interesting tidbit - double the profitabilty compared to older Symbian S60. So Nokia profitability for S^3 was 19.5% in Q4 of 2011. And now a few comparisons: Of their Fortune Global 500 ranking in 2011 (which reflects their latest full annual results in 2010) we find Samsung corporation (includes much more than phones, obviously from televisions to microchips) was 10%. LG (similarly multi-business conglomerate) had profitability of 2%. RIM the Blackberry maker had a profitability of 17%. Nokia Corporation (including all types of handsets and its networking and Navteq units) earned a measily 4% profit. But CEO Stephen Elop discovered a true jewel in his crown, in Symbian S^3, that produced highly desirable Nokia Symbian smartphones on a 19.5% profitability! This is pure gold. And in just the first roll-out quarter, Nokia migrated 17.7% of its total smartphone production to this new hot profit engine. No wonder the smartphone unit profits surged 64% - yes, 64% in just one quarter.

I have explained here earlier, that if you manage to grow sales, grow average sales prices and grow profits in the same quarter, that is absolute proof that you are onto a hit product. Normally to get increase in sales you do it with either an decrease in price or with added marketing expenses (which reduces profitability) but with Nokia Q4, they had the very rare trifecta, increased unit sales, increased average prices and increased sales. So undeniably Nokia found itself with a big global hit in the N8 and its siblings that ran the latest version of Symbian S^3. And anyone who claims Symbian was not competitive with Android or Windows (either version) or RIM/Blackberry or the iPhone or bada or Palm/WebOS etc, is simply not dealing with facts. The OLD version of Symbian ie S60 was not competing well, it was struggling in the market and seeing declining sales and declining average prices (and declining profits). But Nokia's latest OS version and smartphones running on it, were definitely a hit globally. Now lets see where those phones were sold:

Nokia Handset Units Sold by Type:
Region . . . S^3 units . . . S60 units  . . dumbphones . . Total
Europe . . . 3.7 Million . . 8.9 Million . . 20.9 Million . . . 33.5 Million
MEA . . . .  0.4 Million . . 1.5 Million . . 20.3 Million . . . 22.2 Million
China . . . . 0.3 Million . . 7.8 Million . . 13.8 Million . . . 21.9 Million
APAC . . .  0.2 Million . . 2.6 Million . . 28.5 Million . . . 31.3 Million
N Am . . . . 0.2 Million . . 0.8 Millon . .   1.6 Million . . .   2.6 Million
LatAm . . . 0.2 Million . . 1.5 Million . . 10.4 Million . . . 12.2 Million
TOTAL . .  5.0 Million .  23.1 Million . . 95.5 Million . . 123.7 Million

(Note all totals match almost exactly with Nokia Q4 2010 results). A few definitions just to be clear, we use Nokia official classification so MEA is Middle East and Africa. APAC is Asia Pacific which includes Australia/Oceania. Then when we take the above numbers, and multiply them by the average sales prices as per the above, we get the following split of revenues:

Nokia Handset Revenues By Type:
Region . . . S^3 revenues . . . S60 revenues  . . dumbphones . . . Total revenues
Europe . . . 1.0B Euro . . . . . 1.1B Euro . . . . .    900 M Euro . . . 3.1B Euro
MEA . . . .     113 M Euro . . .   193 M Euro . .    873 M Euro . . . 1.2B Euro
China . . . .     93 M Euro . . . 1.0B Euro . . . . .   591 M Euro . . . 1.7B Euro
APAC . . .      44 M Euro . . .    333 M Euro . . 1.2B Euro . . . . .  1.6B Euro
N Am . . . .    66 M Euro . . .       98 M Euro . .     69 M Euro . . .    233 M Euro
LatAm . . .     69 M Euro . . .     198 M Euro . .    447 M Euro . . .   715 M Euro
TOTAL . .  1.4 B Euro . . . . . 3.0B Euro . . . . .  4.1B Euro . . . . . 8.5B Euro

(note again, all totals match very closely the Q4 results for 2010). And now lets add in the profitability of the three units to get total profits by each region:

Nokia Handset Profits By Type:
Region . . . S^3 profits . . . S60 profits  . . dumbphones . . Total profits
Europe . . . 200 M Euro . . 106 M Euro . . 104 M Euro . . . 409 M Euro
MEA . . . .    22 M Euro . .  18 M Euro . .  100 M Euro . . . 140 M Euro
China . . . .   18 M Euro . .  93 M Euro . . .  68 M Euro . . . 179 M Euro
APAC . . .      8 M Euro . .  31 M Euro . . .141 M Euro . . . 181 M Euro
N Am . . . .   13 M Euro . .    9 M Euro . . .   8 M Euro . . .   30 M Euro
LatAm . . .    13 M Euro . .  18 M Euro . . . 51 M Euro . . .   83 M Euro
TOTAL . . . 274 M Euro . . 275 M Euro . .  472 M Euro . . . 1.02B Euro

(once again the totals match very closely with those in the Q4 quarterly results). So, we can see now that the new Symbian S^3 was sold primarily in Europe, where 29% of all Nokia branded smartphones were Symbian S^3 phones. This is also by far Nokia's biggest market for total sales and biggest for Nokia handset revenues and profits. In it, the S^3 alone generated half of Nokia's total profit generated in Europe, while reflecting only 11% of all Nokia branded handsets sold in Europe. And this market we learn from IDC has utterly crashed due to the Elop Effect, and worse - this is precisely the market where Nokia's new N9 and other MeeGo handsets would be most welcomed and Elop refuses to sell them there. Total madness indeed. Europe was 40% of Nokia's total handset sales profits, and Symbian S^3 generated half of that in Q4. The Europeans love Nokia style, Nokia brand smartphones and were buying them madly before the Elop Effect. As the Elop Effect only affects Symbian phones, Nokia could avoid the reseller boycott by releasing the MeeGo based N9 and its siblings now, and recover much of that lost sales. The S^3 units in Q4 alone delivered 200 Million Euros of profits. If Nokia were only to recover that sales in Europe with the N9 (which costs more than 284 Euros) by releasing it widely in Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain etc (yes, Elop refuses to sell the N9 in any of those big European markets) the profits generated by the premium phone would nearly eliminate the losses generated by Nokia in Q2 !!!! This would be Europe alone, not to mention all the other regions that should get the N9, not just exotic tiny Nokia markets like haha, Kazakhstan (who are one of those 29 launch countries for the N9. How mad is Elop?)

But a few interesting observations from the above tables. In addion to Europe, the Symbian S^3 had captured 21% of Nokia smartphone sales in the Middle East and Africa region, the third best migration region for Symbian S^3, but quite surprising is the second best migration region - North America, where Symbian S^3 had taken 23% of all Nokia branded smartphone sales in Q4. Yes, obviously this is by far the smallest market, but even in North America the S^3 was driving a Nokia recovery. And we know the China region took to S^3 in a big way in Q1 but we do not have the data to calculate the exact contributions by region for Q1 unfortunately.

Two thirds of Nokia Symbian S60 sales were from Europe and the China region. So why not release the N9 in China then? We hear now that Nokia franchise stores - Nokia flagship stores in China - are suffering from the collapse of Nokia Symbian sales so badly, that they now have resorted to selling rival branded phones! Imagine MacDonald's selling Burger King branded burgers under the Yellow Arches? Thats how bad the Elop Effect has hit China. Why not release the N9 now, immediately, widely, globally?

And smarptohnes in Europe? Of Nokia's total corporate profits earned in any business in any market by any type of product, the smartphones business out of Europe generated 30% of Nokia's total profits in Q4 of 2010 - and out of that, the new Symbian S^3 generated two thirds of that profit out of Europe's smartphones. When we add China's smarpthones - these two regions, Europe and China, and their smarpthone business, not dumbphone business - generated 43% of Nokia's total profits in Q4. This is the 'Pareto Rule' ie the 80:20 rule, so as long as Nokia is doing well in Europe and China (and specifically smartphones there) - all of Nokia is fine, no matter how well Nokia does in any other part of its business, networks, dumbpohnes or Navteq, and in any other regions - North America, Latin America, Africa, rest of Asia, Oceania - it matters nothing if the smartphones business in Europe and China is crashing. Very illuminating indeed. It also gives clues to how quickly Nokia could be turned around if some idiot CEO stopped sabotaging his own sales in Europe and China.

And back to the S^3 premium smartphones. Using the current IDC numbers, Nokia's new S^3 had created a surge not just globally, but specifically in Europe. And ignoring all other Symbian S60 sales - the S^3 handsets alone had taken almost 15% of Europe - and thus S^3 alone would have been bigger than RIM or HTC or any other smarpthone brands in Europe except Apple and Samsung. And Nokia total Symbian sales towered over Apple and Samsung as recently as Q4, when in Nokia's biggest market - and the world's biggest smarpthone sales region then and now (Europe still sells more smarpthones than North America even now in Q2 although the gap is closing) - Nokia Symbian sales were far bigger than Apple AND Samsung - combined!

So now we know. Symbian was not dead. It had a strong Phoenix moment of recovery in Q4, when Symbian S^3 established a Nokia record for most sales of a new handset and new OS version, when three Nokia S^3 handsets (only one, N8, sold for the full quarter) produced a jump of 7% in Nokia branded smartphone sales, reversed a Nokia-pattern quarterly decline of 7% in average prices that had held true for as far as one can remember but rather produced a 14% jump in ASP (thus creating a 21% jump in average prices over where they should have been without S^3); and this in turn produced what must be a Nokia record (we do not have historical data to know for sure) of 64% jump in profits for the smartphone unit. And while Phoenix died flying too close to the sun, the Nokia Symbian S^3 was not dying, it was killed - by its master, the new CEO.

So what was Nokia S^3 for the corporation and brand new CEO Stephen Elop in his first quarter when he was in charge? Symbian's brand new OS version was in only 4% of all phones sold by Nokia. They were an instant hit and generated 12% of total Nokia handset revenues in their first quarter during which only 3 models had the software and only one of the three handsets was sold for the full quarter. And of Nokia total profits in the quarter? A massive 22% of Nokia's total profits came out of those mere 4% of total Nokia branded phones sold that had the S^3 operating system from Symbian. This is genuinely a 'Goose that lays Golden Eggs' It is not just a new cash cow, it is your profit engine right there. 4% of devices produce 22% of your total profits. This brand new OS and its brand new phones are the heroes of Nokia that the brand new CEO inherited. Any other reasonably intelligent CEO would have celebrated this team and its amazing new software and the brand new phones, and rushed to promote and celebrate their success, to quickly spread S^3 to all Nokia smartphones - not to fire the programmers and put an end their successful operating system.

Of course if the new CEO is not interested in Nokia's best interest, and wants to kill Symbian no matter what kind of success it can generate, and wants to replace the world's bestselling OS with the best ecosystem with the world's least-selling smartphone OS with the weakest ecosystem to be adopted by Nokia instead, then that CEO would release memos and decisions causing an Elop Effect to destroy his own products and their success. That CEO would have to be a delusional psycopath and he would not be working in Nokia's best interests but rather, in the best interests of say, Microsoft. But such a lunatic CEO would only be possible in a Hollywood movie of an alternate universe. If you look at the above numbers - and Nokia's CEO and CFO had these numbers in February when he made those fatal Elop Effect decisions - you will see that you are sitting on a pile of gold in Symbian S^3 - if normally Symbian is able to sell at prices only roughly in the price of an SonyEricsson featurephone, and suddenly you have a hit phone series selling in the prices of far more expensvie smartphones of the HTC and Samsung and other Android phones - and the Blackberry - and you have such a highly desirable new product range which jumps your profits by 68% - that is success by any measure.

What you do, is spread it to the max, not kill it. You reward and promote the engineers who managed that turn-around, you don't go firing them! No wonder morale plummetted totally after Elop's February madness. But thats another story. I wanted to share the numbers as this is the kind of stuff I do on my vacation haha.. A good multidimensional statistical problem haha, I love that, its relaxation for me. Feel free to share the above numbers and please quote TomiAhonen Consulting as the source for those numbers which are not directly from Nokia quarterly results.

Comments

[haari]

i'm a c++ developer and i've been working at nokia for nine years.
i hate microsoft so much and forced to use windows 7 on pc since nine years. actually i would like to use macbook pro but all of my line managers always declined my request to have it :-(

after the announcement of new strategy, i was starting to think to quit nokia and move to google or apple, what do you think guys? should i resign from nokia?

[peter]

@haari, win7 PC is excellent though WP7 is a crap.
VS2010/2008 is excellent IDE for developing windows apps/services for desktop/server/mobile.

No nokia investors complain about adding a Windows Phone line.

But they do object to the strategy of using it as primary smart phone OS for $1-2B cash from microsoft as marketing/R&D fee.

Nokia alone has already been a big player of top three. Meego Product line itself can be primary smart OS. and Market welcome it to be a major one of the three too.

Why self-inflicting in this way ? Only explanation is it is the result of economic crime commited by Jorma Olilla + Steven Elop + Chris Weber.

[n900lover]

Ahh, the good old Nokia conspiracy theory in reverse - all must have tanked in Q1 (or better - would have in Q2/Q3), otherwise why would bod and Elop made the change?

[gamgigo]

@Victor Szulc

Three phones by the end of 2013?
Three phones by the end of 2011:

N900 Already released (originally running Maemo - can be easily flashed to MeeGo) - Low end.

N950 Already being given away to developers - For developers.

N9 Already released in some places - High end.

As for the N9 is a fail:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/22/editorial-dear-nokia-you-cannot-be-serious/

[Victor Szulc]

Sorry, if you have a problem with that estimate, you should take it up with the guy who came up with that estimate: Kai Oistamo, chief of smartphone development at Nokia.

Read up on some of the recent articles about Nokia... Once Kai Oistamo went through the all of the development teams work, he came to the conclusion that they wouldn't have more than three Meego handsets in two years. When he reported that estimate to Elop, THAT'S when the final decision to join WP7 was taken.

[n900lover]

Victor Szulc:

Problem is that this statement is patently false. There are already TWO devices in hands of reviewers and developers and it's laughable to claim that in two years there could not be more that one device because of technical obstacles.

Only thing this shows is that Elop and management has absolutely no clue about what they are doing. Or they have a clue and are just lying.

[shavy]

Tomi always believe in figures. Figures doesnt neccesary show facts. Tomi, its time to let go of MeeGo. Your blog post is blinded by ur obsess with Meego and your hatred towards elope. Open up ur vision and your mindset.

I believe if you overcome Meego and ur hatred towards elope, your judgement of nokia future will be of a different views. I look forward to reading your "new" blog post.

Always remember, let the professional carry on with their work. As an outsider, it is better to keep your views and not disrupt the professional from carrying on with their work.

With nokia, life still carry on.. without nokia, life still carry on.

[EL]

N9 is not Meego, no matter what the PR says. The Meego Kai Oistamo talked about HAS TO BE the version that runs on Intel chip, not Maemo Harmattan rebadged.

[apollo_dev_team]

@n900lover:
How do you know that was patently false? Do you have more clue? Please let us know more...

[apollo_dev_team]

@EL:
N9 is not Meego? But N9 is MeeGo 1.2 "Harmattan"? (see Wikipedia) I'm getting confused and understand more or less now, why the big boss canceled it hehe ;-)

[n900lover]

apollo_dev_team:

Again, there are already two devices. If you have the UI and basic system, it is relatively trivial to port linux to another hw.

http://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/meego-scales-because-linux-scales/

http://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/my-disagreement-with-elop-on-meego/

Repeating that N9 isn't Meego is just semantic game. There is difference inside the OS, but that is totally irrelevant to users and almost irrelevant to app developers. It makes no sense to kill meego in nokia just because currently it has different app "installer" format that the real real meego.

And if somebody asserts that meego needs to run on "intel chip" he even doesn't read the PR statements.

[Eurofan]

Elop is no more a professional than the current pope is a holy man. Vestments and investment make an office holder not a wise leader. Elop is not wise, is not perceptive, and is not trustworthy. Where is the professionalism? I read @gamgigo, @n900lover, and now apollo_dev_team and completely agree with them, especially the first two. Oistamo, Elop & co. are splitting hairs over the language of the law. What about the spirit of the law. A company should make good products that its customers have reason to expect it will make. Nokia! Make what your fans and potential fans want you to make and would gladly pay for: N9, N950, and a flash updated n900! Three price points, three form factors, setting up nicely for next year's improved models. So obvious. In twelve months you will have the choice to confirm your Microsoft suicide pact or do what you should have done two months ago. Release the N9, N950, and flash updated (hardware quality control improved!) n900 for a quick 2-3 billion dollars in profits on top of a quick 4-5 billion dollars in world wide sales and market buzz. The "ecosystem" will come later, just as it did for iOS and Android. First compelling devices and OS and Nokia already has that, at least in its hard core fans' eyes and in the eyes of most professional smart phone observers.

[EL]

@n900lover

I don't claim to know more about Meego/Maemo than you (I certainly do not), but every where I read, they talked about Nokia keeping Harmattan so as to not postpone development schedule. That does not sound like merging Moblin and Maemo is merely copy & paste, bam bam next case..?

I was not referring to Meego Harmattan underlying Linux not relevant to users and app developers, I can comprehend that. But I would think that it matters to Nokia, who has to sell a phone with a SoC in it running some O/S. The N9 runs on the same chip architecture as N900 from 2 years ago. I would think at some point the hardware platform becomes relevant to the user experience. May be not 2011, but you only stay competitive for so long when everyone else is doing dual core with 1.5ghz clock speed. This gap will only widen.

Nokia was banking on Intel to deliver the next gen SoCs, Intel thus far has not delivered, so is the alternative sticking to OMAP3 indefinitely until Atom on phones turn up?

If porting Meego (Harmattan or otherwise) is relatively easy to port to other SoC architecture already, as suggested by the advocates, it really needs to be done pronto on modern multicore SoCs by whoever wants to pick up Meego after Nokia. S/W cannot live without competitive processor hardware.

[Pino]

@Baron95, where you can from? - are you another Microsoft trolls?, I have an N8 from November 2010, and I have had not any kind of bugs, or failure, or freeze or any other things!.
You treat us, Nokia users, as litle children!.
So what are you looking for in this blog?, you are an mentally ill?! why you are attacking Nokia N8 users with your lies from bugs and crashes? what do you win with this crap?
Ok, you do not like this blog, then wath are you doing here?, maybe you are some type of microsofist-sadomasochist that enjoy reading Nokia blogs for painful jerk and mental masturbation!.
I see, you like Microsoft Window Phone, show us a good paper about WP and why people/user do not buy devices with WP, or why WP market share is just a 1 to 1.5%, wait, maybe for you this numbers are a big success! if your answer is yes for this numbers, then I apologize if I offended you in any part of my comment.

[James]

@haari & peter,

That seems odd that nokia C++ programmers would be forced into using VS on Win7. If you program Qt for the phones you should be using Qt Creator. It works even better on Linux which makes sense for phone programming. Unless you program for the desktop, but even then Qt Creator compiles 4x faster on my quad core and has a far quicker editor than VS which isn't optimized for C++. The only thing I use VS for is the debugger if I have something really nasty going on.

This kind of makes me wonder if you guys know what you're talking about. But then I'm independent enough to tell a boss trying to dictate my tools to f--- off. But then I don't work for big nokia.

[apollo_dev_team]

@n900lover:
ooh you took Felipe as sources. It seems he has a lot of time to write his blog during his work in Nokia, no wonder... hehe. Well, he could quit Nokia as his boss Ari Jaaksi did one year ago and now ends up in webOS dilemma or another senior vice president guy Alberto Torres. Hmmm talking about webOS, I'm still disappointed since I was not able to get two fire-selled HP touchpads for 99$

If Meego is so great, why it couldn't convince anyone in Nokia boards to have it as primary Nokia smartphone's OS? Where was Meego when iPhone came and conquered the market??? Always delay and delay and delay??? Not ready for mass production??? This has been always the case over and over again until the decision makers came to the conclusion that there was a big mistake to rely on Meego (only).

Meego is great yes, from technical point of view, from developers point of view or from open source (fans) point of view, but for mass production, mass deployment, mass market or ecosystem perspective???
If it's easy to produce and has huge potential as smartphone's OS, why Nokia didn't have one or two Meego devices every quarter since 2010??? Why there is no other device maker takes Meego or at least give a chance to produce another Meego device at least one until today?

And as far as I know, Nokia strategy under Elop at the beginning was QT and Meego (before he moved to WP). Please ask Felipe what was the strategy of Nokia first under Elop before they moved to WP... just to make it sure...

[n900lever]

apollo_dev_team:

No, Felipe isn't my "source", I linked his blogs because he nicely reiterated the argument, bonus point he works in nokia and on meego.

It is simple fact that linux is the most easily portable operating system in world. It runs on biggest supercomputers, ordinary PCs, microcontrollers and yes, tons of ARM derivatives.

Why so long is different question. I'm not insider so I don't know the answer. But the fact is that working meego on N9/N950 is available (and this must have been obvious in February), which makes this whole transition to already failed wp7 even more absurd.

[n900lover]

EL:

Yes, it's not that simple, but it's not some gargantuan task. Moreover, it doesn't stop you from updating the UI or porting to another hw. I assume that's why they decided to create the swipe UI first, so they can ship product, and resolve the meego/harmattan dilemma later.

AFAIK the reason N9 is built around OMAP3 is because N9 should have been available last year. As the release date slipped the hw became old but changing it would add another year for designing the phone around new hw (the software isn't as much problem, after all linux already runs on OMAP4).

Nokia certainly didn't go with meego because of intel chips. From the start it was clear that it will take several years before intel has offering comparable to arm on the phones/handsets. Also intel doesn't keep the changes for themselves but pushes them directly into stock linux kernel to make them available for everybody, no need to use "their" meego.

[Peter]

tomi, we are now clear that nokias problem is integration and execution problem not the ecosystem problem.

elop has been executing in nokia for almost one year now.

Can you evaluate his performance with previous management ?

here are some aspects to look at:

1. wp7 product line appears being delayed, left behind htc, fujitsu, samsung,etc.

nokia is using microsft hardware platform and whole software for phase I, why it could take so long time to bring one wp7 to the market ? a small company with 100 employees can easily get it run with 6 months as long as it uses all microsoft staff.

2. meego n9 announced 2 months ago, we still have not seen any shipment to consumers. there is no improvement in execution.

3. symbian anna took 10 month to deliver. execution becomes worse under Elop.
Symbian belle looks on time but we got is just announcement not delivery of nokia 600,700,701.

4. Weber brought down nokia North Amerca sales already but there is no product line to sell in N.A. the new web site looks like a work of high school students.

From performance aspects, Elop and his ex-microsoft clan Weber are both disqualified IMHO.

Coupling with huge strategic error, can we say Elop and Weber will be fired by the end of this September ?

[karlim]

It's funny how this place is becoming an echochamber for those who hate current Nokia.

Tomi writes another post how Nokia last q4 is an absolute evidence that Nokia was turning around, that they had a huge hit with Symbian 3/N8. Then Victor Scultz and Baron95 show how one Christmas quarter 2010 can not be an evidence of anything Nokia. It is just one quarter, a fluke of Christmas buying season, pent up demand from Nokia fans for the devices that are late at least half a year, preodered and paid for at leat 1 million before the quarter even began.

And then Peter, n900lover, eurofan and the rest of the bunch jump on a completely irrelevant sideline to this Tomi's post (which was all about Nokia Q4 2010/Symbian resugence), and start pouting about what a great thing Meego/N9 is. Based on a few videos/1-2hr handling impressions from bloggers and without even touching a device...

If you want to talk N9 now, I'll refer you to all the excited gaga and hype of Palm Pre and WebOS from early 2009 to summer of that year and suggest you compare to current N9 hands-on previews.

But Tomi post was not about N9, it was about Symbian, and you are completely ignoring the huge holes in his argument that Victor and Baron exposed. I guess because those facts make your whole argument how Nokia was doing great before Elop came along to crash like a house of cards. And you'll better ignore it then face the facts