First look into Lumia launch and preliminary prospects for market success

Yeah, its yet another Nokia blog article. But this is genuine Bloodbath news and is a big story and it deserves a fair look. So this blog is not Tomi ranting about Elop madness. This is my first view to the Nokia Lumia launch and preliminary glances into its market share performance. And you know what? We have a mixed bag. Some good news, some bad news. Spoken like a true consultant, eh?

MASSIVE MOMENT FOR INDUSTRY

So. Yes we start with the historical view. Nokia invented the smartphone. Nokia's primary smartphone OS has been Symbian up to this quarter. While Nokia had flirted with other OS options in the past, the CEO announced in February that Symbian would be replaced by Microsoft Windows Phone OS, and nine months later we had the first Nokia branded smartphone using the Microsoft OS being sold. The Lumia 800 is now spreading to more markets.

A moment if you will allow it, please. So, Nokia had invented this industry and had held a dominating market lead every single year, every single quarter, every single month and every single week and every single day, ever since. Up to February when the CEO announced his intended replacement OS. So yes, even then, Nokia warned everybody that this year (and 2012) would be years of adjustment and Nokia's short-term market performance would take a hit. That is inevitable in this kind of transition. But now we have in essense 'Nokia Smartphones 2.0' haha. This is the true second generation of Nokia's smartphones. This is as big to the industry as when Sony launched PlayStation 2, or when Microsoft went from DOS to Windows. Not many were around to remember Windows 1.0 (was horrid) and few can remember that it wasn't until Windows 3.0 that Microsoft delivered any kind of major market succes, and Windows 3.1 was the first that was considered reasonably bug-free and user-friendly (but even then, not a match to the Macintosh of the time).

Sony took Playstation 2 to new heights in dominating the home console gaming world. Microsoft grew its global market size as it shifted from DOS to Windows. Nokia had 29% market share before it announced this transition. Theoretically there is nothing to prevent us from believing, that Nokia might achieve that level at some point once again, on this new WP7 platform. What we have to do, obviously, is now to monitor this period of transition to see clues to how well Nokia's new platform might perform. And that Symbian still outsells WP7 by a wide margin is no inherent flaw - so too did PS One outsell Playstation 2 for a long while, as did DOS outsell early Windows for years. But a transition to a new platform is no guarantee that the market-leading position is carried. That same timing of DOS that allowed Microsoft to transition to Windows, was also used by IBM to transition from DOS to OS/2 (a kind of Windows clone or Macintosh OS clone) which failed. And while Sony was able to hold its market lead going to Playstation 2, the next transition to Playstation 3 saw Sony losing its market lead.

In any case, the first sales of Nokia Lumia800 smartphones is a huge event for Nokia and notwithstanding this year's short-term stumbles by the former smartphone-maker juggernaut, this is also a major event for the global smartphone industry. And considering Nokia is still by a wide margin the world's biggest handset maker, and Microsoft is (by an even wider margin) the world's biggest OS maker, their partnership has the potential to produce a powerful entrant to the market.

GOOD NEWS

So lets start with the news. Lumia710 the second Lumia series smartphone was initially announced by Nokia to be available in the first half of 2012 (meaning end of Q2). Nokia then did something it very very rarely has managed before - it underpromised and overdelivered - it launched the Lumia710 also this month just before Christmas. So now Nokia has two actual Microsoft Windows Phone based Lumia smartphones shipping and selling, while both Lumia800 and Lumia710 are available only in limited countries. Still, this is a rare treat by Nokia which has become known much more for chronic delays. Congratulations!

The Lumia710 is a modest-price smartphone, the little brother to the Lumia800 so its hardly going to make the world excited about Nokia's comeback but it is a second smartphone in the line of Lumia and helps Nokia get more sales volume and market share. And its actual sales levels will be nominal during the last days of December in only a few countries, but that will ramp up during Q1 of 2012.

And there is more good news. T-Mobile USA will launch the Lumia710. Why not the Lumia800 is what everybody was saying, the Lumia710 is really a cut-price model that speaks of discount brand product but hey, at least it is one carrier in the USA. T-Mobile is the smallest and weakest of the four carriers but yes, this is a start perhaps. The timing is most unfortunate for the Lumia series, as the Lumia710 launches in February - right smack in the time when all stores are overstocked with after-Christmas products at deep discounts. The Lumia710 will fare VERY poorly against discounted iPhones, Galaxies, Blackberries and Xperias etc. But yes, at least Elop has found one US carrier to offer one Lumia, next year. It is something and this is definitely some good news.

BAD NEWS

So then onto the bad news side. First, a survey of consumer preferences by BNP Paribas of the European Lumia launch countries. Remember Nokia's smartphone market share there a year ago was about 35% to 40% and thus most 'normobs' ie normal people who might wander into a phone store now in December 2011, would have bought their previous phone around the summer or autumn of 2010, when Nokia was still strong. Those customers would have (or should have) a natural tendency to ask for a Nokia branded smartphone - perfectly oblivious to the Symbian/MeeGo/WP drama we technologists may obsess about - and should therefore have some natural market share near 35% or so. What did BNP Paribas find? Only 2% of current smartphone buyers in the launch countries of Lumia were interested in buying a Nokia Lumia smartphone. Note if you don't live in those countries, the Lumia marketing blitz - paid for by massive Microsoft marketing budget and by Elop's personal commitment to push Lumia hard - so the Lumia marketing blitz would be unavoidable. In Britain for example, Lumia is the sole sponsor of one cable TV channel haha. One of the operators/carriers is giving away a free Xbox360 gaming console for everybody who buys the Lumia800. And yet, customers who had owned a Nokia and had heard that Nokia was now launching Lumia with Microsoft - resulted in only 2% wanting to buy one. That is a huge fail. Many major analysts have downgraded their market performance for Lumia in Q4, often slashing sales expectations by half.

Then there is management delusion. Nokia Sales Director Niels Munksgaard said that the youth are "fed up with iPhones" (!!!) Wow. Lets go to the scoreboard. In the UK - a neutral market neither Apple's nor Nokia's home market, but one where Lumia has been broadly launched and has massive marketing push - how much are they tired of the iPhone? Gfk surveyed the UK market two weeks ago and the bestselling smartphone heading into Chrismas was.. the iPhone 4S. Apple had several iPhones on the chart. Samsung's Galaxy was at number two and Blackberry had several models on the list. Nokia's Lumia 800 ? Did not make the Top 10 - and neither did any other Nokia (Symbian) based smartphone either. Last Christmas the hot Nokia N8 was the top seller this time in Britain. So. Nokia Lumia managers are now living in some alternate universe utterly disconnected from reality. Fed up with iPhones? Come on.

Then Microsoft. Steve Ballmer must be proud of his Windows Phone team. Or not. He demoted the President of the Windows Phone unit, Andy Lees to 'an unspecified role'. This, say Redmond-watchers, is how Ballmer castrates those top managers who are too visible to be fired. But yes, Microsoft's CEO is so disgusted by 2011 performance of his mobile unit that the unit boss is effectively fired. This right as the Nokia Lumia phones, Microsoft's last play into mobile - are being launched - perfectly on schedule and with no reported bugs! So its the market side of WP that is utterly failing according to Ballmer's view, not the technical or roll-out schedule sides of the software.

But there is still more trouble in Lumialandia. Some customers started to complain about rapidly disappearing battery life or even batteries that stop recharging. This has a small whiff of Antennagate. So yes, we heard from Nokia - official announcement - yes, Lumia has battery problems and those will be fixed by software early in 2012. Ouch. So now sales reps have a brand new reason to tell their customers, you know what, the Nokia Lumia has battery problems, you might want to steer away from that. Let me show you a nice Android phone here from HTC or Samsung..

Oh, I hate to say I told you so, but the Lumia was a rush job. I said that this would result in production problems that Nokia was just trying to move away from. And even worse, obviously, as the Microsoft phones are not made in Nokia factories, the Nokia Lumia800 (and 710) are not even 'real' Nokia phones, they are Compal phones with a Nokia badge glued on. Even the guts are not traditional Nokia as Microsoft's Windows Phone is not compatible with some of Nokia's standard components like the CPU. So its like Porsche went to Tata and asked them to make some Tata sportscars and then put a Porsche badge on them. Not Porsche models built by Tata, not Posche engines, nothing. Yeah, this was going to be a problem and there will be more such issues I am sure. I do weep, however, that Nokia produces smartphones in Taiwan by a third-party factory while Nokia's world-leading mobile phone production capability in the most advanced factories is running at half-capacity..

Then about the sales reps. A press story from Britain tells of the customer service rep who had told a customer that Android phones cannot get viruses but Windows phones can. Now, first of all, obviously any smartphone can get viruses so that was obviously utterly false statement. Secondly, I am sure it was not 'taught' to the sales force to say about Lumia. But third - it was a genuine bit of advice that some customer service rep in Britain had been saying - no doubt to many potential Lumia customers (who will then tell their friends etc). And if one person thinks this, there will be many more who also believe it. This image comes no doubt from the PC side, where Windows is notorious for viruses. (Yet another reason why the Windows Phone branding is so stupid by Microsoft).

The bad news continues online. Two people, one from Nokia and one from Microsoft were caught having been going to legitimate reviews of Lumia800 handsets and posting very hostile comments where they found negative mentions by the reviewer. Both posted anonymously but were traced to come from Nokia and Microsoft offices. Ouch! This is something the blogosphere takes very seriously and the tech press has picked up on the story and all are strongly condemning this practise. This will hurt both Nokia and Microsoft credibility and good will. Not what you want at your first product commerical launch.

And then there are weird 'statistics' the most odd is a 'study' by 'Customer Think' which claims to take in the opinions of a massive 82,600 customers of smartphones (wow). And they find that Windows Phone has the best customer satisfaction of any OS. Now, I would be willing to accept that kind of finding but look what else this 'study' claims. This is strongly USA-biased in its survey population, bear that in mind. First, it finds that by 'customer satisfaction' Blackberry is better than both iPhone and Android? What? Blackberry has been crashing in the US market. But maybe an anomaly. Next, lets look at cameras. They found that on individual smartphone models, the Blackberry Torch has a better camera and video than.. the Nokia N8 ! Wot? Then, take this. On 'apps' the Blackberry Torch is AHEAD of the iPhone 4S ???????

I repeat myself: ??????? This is an utter bullsh*t 'study' that produces absolutely wild findings. But I bet that 'study' will be repeated in many stories as if Microsoft Windows Phone has the best customer satisfaction of any smartphone OS haha. There is some very serious reality distortion going on right now in the Nokia+Microsoft camp around Lumia, I tell you. 

HOW ABOUT RETAIL

So then a bit of very informal market research. When I had a visit to Britain a few weeks ago on business, I visited a shopping center and saw several phone shops. One (Orange) had the Lumia 800 prominently in one window display. Another store (T-Mobile) had no Lumia window display. And the independent phone store Carphone Warehouse had Lumia in one but the iPhone 4S in the other window, very much prompting the comparison of the Lumia800 vs iPhone 4S where Lumia falls on every measure - exactly what Nokia does not want consumers to do with the Lumia800. (the N9 would have stood well against the iPhone 4S but Nokia refuses to sell the N9 in Britain haha).

Then I took a bit more time to see the shops here in Hong Kong earlier this week. The Lumia800 is being sold by all major networks. How is it in the stores. I went to four shops of the local carriers/operators and two independents. The China Mobile store had plenty of Nokia basic and smartphone models in the store but they were all in the back. There was one Lumia800 model in the store display near the front but after the hot phones. No Nokia in window display. The PCCW store had plenty of Nokia basic and smartphones in the displays and also several Nokia phones including Lumia800 in the window display among many other Nokia phones, in roughly the same proportion as their other phone brands in the store. This was most like all mobile phone stores used to be in Hong Kong last year. SmarTone had only a few basic Nokia phones in the store far in the back, ut had two separate Lumia models. SmarTone had one Lumia800 quite prominently in the window display but no other Nokia phones there among many rival phones. The Three store had only three Nokia handsets in the whole store but one of them was the Lumia800. No Nokia phones in the window display.

Then the two independent stores. The Fortress store had many Nokia phones, cheap and smartphone but only at the very back of the store behind all other brands. In their window display Lumia800 was the only Nokia phone on display among many rival phones. Then at the Wilson store there were plenty of Nokia phones well among the rival phones, and Lumia800 was there too. But the window display did have a Windows Phone based phone - by Acer. No Lumia in the window display.

This is Elop's grand strategy to dominate the world with Microsoft-money on his amazing once-in-a-career type of situation to launch a totally new OS for what was at the time of the announcement the world's biggest smartphone maker. Wow. And how underwhelming. I've seen bigger new product launches by Motorola haha. And by the way, here in Hong Kong the pre-eminent phone everywhere is not the iPhone, its the Galaxy. Everywhere. HTC runs a good second.

MY VERDICT

This is the most important event Nokia has had in years. This is Mr Elop's career making-or-breaking event. This is the most important event for Microsoft's aspirations in mobile at least for a year. And the timing of the launch, the countries of the launch, the carriers/operators of the launch - the announcement of the partnership - etc - were all up to Elop. This is totally Elop's show. He had billions of dollars to waste on this initiative and a year to plan it and execute it perfectly. And he is failing spectacularly. The consumer survey from Europe that only 2% of consumers want to buy Lumia - when more than a third of them currently hold Nokia phones and Lumia is on every TV screen - is dismal. The actual sales performance from Britain is horrid news. The individual stories from sales rep 'virus' stories to now the Nokia version of antennagate - come on, Batteries? Really! Nokia which like an idiot abandoned a competitive advantage of providing user-replacable batteries - is now drawing attention to this drawback and obviously pushing customers to Androids (this Samsung Mr Customer, by the way, also has a replacable battery! I don't mean to suggest the Samsung will have any problem with its battery but that Lumia you are considering does have problems with its battery - Nokia itself has admitted it..). And my very informal and not statistically relevant survey shows quite consistently that Lumia is not anywhere near as prominent in the stores as Nokia used to be. Is there still a carrier boycott vs Nokia (and/or vs Microsoft and Skype) or is it accident. But I can tell you the signs are VERY bad. The Lumia sales for Q4, the critical Christmas season - and Nokia's other smartphone sales in its shadow - are going to disappoint. Disappoint heavily. So say all the early signs. All of them. There is so far no news that suggest Nokia is outperforming the modest launch expectations and Nokia is millions off from its previous new OS launch of Symbian S^3 and the N8 which did 4 million sales Q4 of last year. The Lumia is lucky to do one million haha and some analysts say half a million.

If the N8 can do 4 million last year, and the market is 60% bigger today, and the Lumia800 is 20% cheaper than the N8, and you get all the Microsoft goodies (like free Xbox360s) - then Elop should deliver 7 million at a minimum this Christmas. Even if he did only 4 million it is a huge flop for Nokia's most important product launch of the decade. But the signs suggest it will be brutal, and yes I would not be surprised if the Lumia numbers are below one million. If that is the case, I am sure Elop will be so ashamed that he will not release the number (and neither will Ballmer).

So for those Nokia-optimists who hoped Lumia will bring Nokia back, sorry. That won't happen. Nokia's world-record crash of destroying its own market will continue in Q4 and Lumia will only make matters worse.

Comments

[Jo]

Yeah i agree unless lumia manages to n8 numbers its gotta be a huge failure Microsoft should just give up instead they screw nokia brand more

[cycnus]

Hi Tomi,

Thanks for the this article. I've been waiting for Nokia 800 sales number from you. I can't wait to see what Nokia would release as Q4 2011 report in a couple more weeks.

[Mobiles]

In my opinion it must be succeed in the market and I really like Nokia Lumia.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Jo, cygnus and Mobiles

Jo - I am afraid Elop will not want to release Lumia numbers separate from Symbian so we may not know. The analyst houses will probably not want to commit this early so we might not get 'independent' numbers either. But what we should get is 'Microsoft' numbers from the analysts (Microsoft almost definitely wont release WP numbers) which will combine Windows Mobile and Windows Phone across all makers. From that we could guess that perhaps half would be Lumia, which may be the best we will get for Q4 and then its guesstimates only and difficult to compare.

cygnus - Yeah, me too! and like I wrote to Jo, I am afraid the numbers will be weak and Elop won't split them up. I am also VERY curious to hear the MeeGo numebrs which also will probably not be broken out by Nokia.

Mobiles - True. Lumia 'must succeed' from Elop's point of view, but if it won't and that looks likely - then Elop will be under great pressure to change Nokia strategy and the Board under pressure to fire him. This all totally separate from the pressure coming out of the falling share price which should be causing Elop a lot of sleepless nights already now.

Thank you all for writing

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[guest]

WP is actually fairly recent, and Nokia+WP is a visible, potentially powerful, but really new combination.

Would it then make sense to compare the initial Lumia reception to another visible, powerful, and also novel combination i.e. Samsung+Bada, during the first couple of years when Bada devices were launched?

It might possibly give a guidance, separate from the other Nokia history (Symbian, Meego & co) about what to expect and a form of cross-checking about how to judge the market success (I do not have any a-priori, this could finally be a good surprise as well as a bad surprise for Nokia).

[Imternet Interactive]

Thank you for sharing a giochi cucina nice blog

[Neil H]

Hi Tomi,

Nice start, but lost the way in your usual anti-Elop or anti-Nokia rant that will never end. Pleas come out of this clamorous loop in finding sadistic pleasure, this is a sign of a real hollow and shallow Analyst, shame for telecom industry. Please do not bring in your personal vendetta in here (maybe your job offer for senior position at Nokia was rejected). Please write something of value rather than pessimistic and biased views.

I understand you have some talent but no vision. I am sure you have enough guts to keep this comment and reply to it.

Hope your upcoming articles are valuable to readers.

Thanks.

[Christian Surlykke]

If Nokia was run in a rational way, they would try to make some money from the N9 - launch it in more countries, try to ensure costumers that it's not a dead platform, etc.
Someone in Nokia _must_ have considered this.
So I'm thinking: Is it written in the agreement with Microsoft that Nokia cannot sell the N9 where they sell Lumia?
Also, what struck me as particularly strange about the 11/2 decision was that they wouldn't put Qt on WP. That could have kept (part of) the developer community and kept some of the transition strategy they had in place.
Again - one wonders if this is part of the agreement with Microsoft.

br. Christian Surlykke

[Nokia Sucks]

@Neil H

You must be a delusional visionary who who have many visions with no substance. The signs are out there and the Lumia line is failing. It is failing hard and you're still having delusions of grandeur for Nokia.

People like you are what makes a company go down. Executives who are out of touch with reality are known to run a company aground. I do hope you don't hold a position of power in any company as you will be disastrous and will do more harm than good. You need to take some reality check classes and stop seeing things like a hallucinating pot head.

I hope you'll pull your head out of the sand and get in touch with reality and stop smoking crack.

Thanks.

[Neil H]

@Nokiasucks

I think your name says it all and its no point in arguing with you.

I am neither a pro- nor anti-Nokia or matter of fact any other technology firm. I am just saying an Analyst needs to have a rounded view and not only amplifying negatives for personal vendetta..especially I feel sorry when industry veterans like Tomi..lose their way, over-targeting a person or a company.

There are more interesting things to write about and have a better conversation.

Thanks.

[n900lover]

I'm not that sure Elop would be under any sever pressure even with really horrible lumia Q4 number, like 250,000 or less. It was explicitly stated the new strategy is first succeed in usa and roll to the world from there, in other words for Elop (and presumably the board) the primary and crucial market is usa. I could even imagine him making the argument that initial failure in europe & asia validates the strategy to start in usa.

So I think his time will come around Q4 2012, after nokia unveils windows 8 on market. Even if he is fired, by that time the option to go back to symbian->meego will be gone. He is presenting the fact that nokia doesn't have a plan b as a feature and I'm afraid he will succeed at least at this bit.

[martinohsk]

Hi Tomi,

"The Lumia sales for Q4, the critical Christmas season ......... are going to disappoint. Disappoint heavily. So say all the early signs. All of them."

A very emphatic statement if ever there was one. But wait, why no mention of positive early signs such as Phonehouse France, KPN Netherlands and ThreeUK showing the Lumia 800 on their bestseller lists?

Your conclusions may be right or wrong, but your obviously biased analysis and highly personalised nature of your attacks on Elop do nothing for your credibility.

[Poifan]

I don't buy that the N9 would sell any better in mainstream shops. I think the big issue for any upstart OS at this phase of the market is that consumer's see risk in not buying iOS or Android devices and going with a challenger. Sure the (nearly) identical hardware of these two devices is great and the OSes are both pretty slick, but why make the leap when one's peers have iOS or Android? I think Blackberry's are still bought, but only by those that want a QWERTY messaging device. Nokia/RIM/MS need to do something disruptive to break into this growing duopoly. It's not good enough to be "as good as or even slightly better" than iOS or Android.

[von]

Then again during the transition of Sony's PS1 to PS2, there weren't that much competitor compared to the launch during that of the PS3. Which can be said with Nokia. Not to mention, Nokia is known to innovate and be the first. I can still remember their local commercial with the Nokia 7650 then the 6630 with video calling. Those were the golden days of having a Nokia phone. Which i don't really get in watching Nokia with WP OS. N9 almost brought those feelings back but with its downgraded camera from the N8 it felt incomplete. I have waited for the N8's successor long enough and now have moved on with an Xperia phone. And I do thank android for letting phones have higher resolutions in their screens which Nokia is completely incapable of.

[n900lover]

Christian Surlykke:

I don't want to search for exact wording, but it is something along the lines "wp will be nokia's primary smartphone platform".

The biggest obstacle isn't the agreement, but Elop himself, no doubt about it. Again, I think he would maybe even admit that n9 can be great success, but just for now. In the long term it would be killed in "ecosystem" wars and all that babble, so for him it's only waste of resources.

Also, I think he is using this scorched earth tactic because there is great internal opposition to the ms deal. With another option available, people would try to strangle wp7 with passive opposition and worked on symbin/meego instead, hoping that when wp7 is finally gone they can return to symbian/meegoin full force. With no alternative available Elop can make credible threat that unless everyone work hard on wp7 exactly as he says, the company will go bankrupt and everyone will be on street.

[Neil H]

@martinohsk

my point exactly..

[Sander van der Wal]

Putting Qt on top of WP would have been great for developers and would have unified Symbian, MeeGo and WP development, greatly increasing the changes of Qt on other open platforms too.

And that is exactly why *Microsoft* does not want that to happen. A cross platform toolkit commoditizes the underlying platforms, and is not a strategy for a winner in a platform war.

For Elop it would have been great. He would still have the burning platform, but with Qt on WP he would have a new platform next to with with safe crossings, and a way to quench the fires on the burning platform, making it salvageable.

That was the original Nokia strategy anyway, Symbian was the burning platform, but Maemo the new platform and Qt the bridge and fire department. But though sheer incompetence and company infighting, Nokia managed to set fire to the Maemo platform and the Qt bridge and fire department too. That was the platform Elop was talking about, the Symbian-Qt -MeeGo platform in flames. Not just the Symbian platform. The Symbian caught fire the moment the iOS App Store was announced.

[n900lover]

http://www.mobilesplease.co.uk/news/nokia-lumia-slow-start/

Handset : % sales
...
Nokia Lumia 800 black : 0.17%

(Statistics based on sample of 5,377 UK mobile phones sold online across major UK retailers and networks in November 2011.)

[n900lover]

Sorry for double post, but I forgot to add one interesting bit from link above:

As far as December 2011 is concerned, the indications are that the Nokia Lumia 800 has improved its sales performance by doubling its market share but according to sample statistics it still stands at below 1% which must be short of where Nokia would probably like to see it.

And btw, 0.17 % of 5,377 phones is 9 phones.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Guest, Neil, Christian, Nokia, n900Lover and Piot

Guest - good point but not valid comparison because Samsung clearly is prioritizing Android right now with Galaxy the hottest line of smartphones this year. I do see that Nokia and Microsoft would prefer the comparison to bada because it only did under 1 million for several of its first quarters haha. No, Nokia needs to do far better on the phone that it betted the farm on, and which is the main OS for its future.

Neil - on 'personal vendetta' - I have no quarrels with Nokia, they have been very good to me - I am an ex-Nokia executive, Nokia gave me tons of work, have used me in various official Nokia events as their outside expert etc. My first book is an official Nokia book etc. (I am ex-Nokia and obviously I left on excellent terms if my book would later be accepted as an official Nokia book and sold on the Nokia website). I love Nokia. I want Nokia to continue to be the biggest handset maker, and to return to the biggest smartphone maker. I am a Finn and I am most proud of what all Nokia has done. I have no quarrel with Nokia whatsoever. I am a REALIST and I am guided TOTALLY by the numbers, especially the money numbers. Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop made a massive mistake with the Elop Effect - that is what I was critical of. If he fixed those errors and stopped making new ones - I would not bother to talk about him again. But he KEEPS MAKING MORE stupid mistakes as I outlined in the posting two days ago about Nokia sales.

In this blog I listed specific NEWS items, both good and bad. I am an analyst and author. Among my 12 published books, I wrote THE book on how this industry makes its money. I am referenced in over 100 books by other authors so my peers respect me. I am known for voicing my opinion when global players in this industry make obvious massive mistakes. This is nothing unusual and nothing unique to Nokia. I was VERY vocal about SprintNextel's moronic decision to terminate customers who complained too much to their calling center (for valid concerns). I called for the CEO to be fired and led an online revolt about it. He was fired. This is nothing new. I was very critical of Vodafone on this site, and of Motorola. Go read the blog.

But Elop HAS been making mistakes. In this blog I chronicle NEWS about Nokia's most important product launch. My readers are curious about these things - and they trust my honesty and expect me to comment on the news. That is what a blog is. Note that I have zero benefit from driving traffic here, as I have no advertising on this blog (never had) and we have no registration of visitors. I maintain this blogsite only to connect with my readers. If you don't find value on my blog, please do not come back.

But your 'opinion' Neil H, that I am a 'shallow and hollow analyst' and am a 'shame for the telecoms industry' is a funny line. If I was not the most published author - and this blog the biggest source of free information on mobile industry stats - I might be 'afraid' of your warning. I think my career can survive your warning.. :-) At least whenever I post comments on other blogsites, I use my real name not just an initial like a coward.

Christian - yes, totally agree on N9. It probably is not in the contract as a prohibition, but more probably as an incentive ie Microsoft wouldn't pay 'marketing dollars' if MeeGo phones are marketed in the same country. Would amount to the same thing haha. That would explain why N9 is sold in 29 countries but all are obscure markets or tiny countries.

And that Qt decision - totally true, totally true. It hit me also immediately. The MOST bizarre part is, that since Qt was already supporting Android, then any 'intelligent' CEO negotiating on behalf of Nokia would have INSISTED that Microsoft agree to Qt integration with WP before signing that deal. Ballmer would have signed that deal to get Nokia. Only because Elop was 'negotiating' he didn't bother to ask for it. And obviously, if the choice is 'migrate to WP without Qt support' or 'migrate to Android with Qt support' - the choice of Android is obvious for Nokia with Symbian and MeeGo and S40 already supported by Qt (and Meltemi to come also)

Nokia - thanks for responding to Neil but please lets keep the discussions here polite and not get into personal attacks, ok.

Neil - the fact that someone here posts with a viewpoint in no way invalidates that viewpoint. But on your point 'there are more interesting things to write about' - I would ask what is more interesting right now than the ACTUAL field reports of the launch of what the world's largest handset maker and the world's largest software maker call the third ecosystem? WHAT is supposedly more interesting today 23rd of December than that? Tell me what I should be prioritising ahead of Lumia's first actual field findings before the Q4 results are released in late January? Are you not just a bit too biased in favor of Nokia and Microsoft to say this story is not current and relevant?

n900Lover - Trust me, the Nokia CEO and Board are under tremendous pressure when the share price has fallen 55% in 10 months and continues downwards, and more analysts recommend to sell the stock than to buy it, and they know this current quarter results will again be disappointing. They know that the sharks have been circling Nokia with a view to buying it - stories already confirmed that Sony, Samsung, Google and Microsoft have taken a look. Google ended up buying Motorola obviously. But if anyone other than Microsoft buys Nokia, Elop is fired instantly. And the worse the picture gets the poorer the compensation would be to Nokia's Board and shareholders in any takeover. There is MASSIVE pressure but Elop is a good poker player and clearly a great liar, so he won't let the pressure show in his demeanor. But selling Vertu? For a handset maker who stops making its own operating system and becomes mostly a box-mover, then the boxes you don't want to abandon are the luxury boxes haha. This is desperation at Nokia, trying to stay afloat.

On Windows 8 - the carriers will scream and yell (because of Skype). I doubt there will be real Windows 8 on a Nokia smartphone ever. The carriers stopped Apple from implementing the non-SIM card version of the iPhone this year - which is why the iPhone was delayed by 4 months. Apple is far more powerful as a handset maker in terms of consumer demand than Nokia, and the Skype threat is far more than the SIM card was. No. As long as Nokia is independent, that won't happen. If Microsoft buys Nokia or its smartphone unit, that might happen but then the carriers do a 'Kin' against Microsoft - if you remember, Kin was killed within weeks after all carriers told Microsoft that they would not support the Kin phones, after all (after initially promising to).

Piot - I'm sorry about the spam on the site, I've had my most busy autumn and have fallen badly behind on the maintenance (and replies) on the blog. I am trying to work at it now. Sorry about that.

About the deleting. You've been here long enough Piot to know this, I mostly allow all discussion on any thread but in some cases I SAY in the BLOG ARTICLE that I will limit discussion on that thread. In those cases I delete all irrelevant comments and even those that have both relevant and irrelevant points. Like the blog earlier this week about Nokia sales. That is a rare topic and I did not want the comments to disintegrate into the usual debate about iPhone vs Symbian vs whatever and so I said, that thread is limited only to topics about Nokia sales channel issues. You've seen me do that before, I do that rarely. In most other blog postings, I am very open-minded about any questions and comments and try to answer everyone who posts.

Thank you all

Tomi Ahonen :-)