The Nokia Q4 smartphone sales numbers released yesterday took me a bit by surprise, so we spent most of yesterday on the blog and on Twitter talking about the newest numbers. But now returning back to our series of One Nokia Problem Discussed In One Picture, today lets look at the transition from Symbian based Nokia smartphones to Windows Phone on Lumia.
I've already shown you in one picture how Nokia's unit sales that grew faster than the biggest rivals in 2010, grew 53% in just one year in fact, immediately turned into catastrophic decline the moment when the Elop Effect happened in February 2011. I've then shown how Nokia's performance compared to the two main rivals over these past few years, Apple's iPhone and the Samsung series of smartphones. And at the previous blog posting in this series, I showed how the collapse in Nokia market share was in fact, a world record failure in the handset business, far faster than any other comparable market failure, like Palm, Motorola, Siemens, Windows Phone, LG and RIM. Now lets look at how Elop's promised transition ie migration strategy is working out.
A lot of people seem to be celebrating the 4.4 million Lumia smartphone sales number as if its 'good news'. They clearly don't know the industy or Nokia's past. Nokia did 4.4 million smartphones not per quarter, but per every two weeks back before the Elop Effect. The last time Nokia introduced a new Symbian version operating system - like the new Windows Phone 8 right now - was when Nokia introduced Symbian S^3 for Q4 in 2010. How did it do? In the first quarter, it sold 5 million units, led by its flagship, the N8 which sold 4 million units. Now, even as the smartphone market is more than twice as big, Elop's 'magnificent' Microsoft marvels on his Lumia series - after five months of trying, including not one but two new operating system versions and not one but three separate flagships - have yet to match that 5 million sales per quarter.
The 4.4 million seems like a big jump from the miserable Q3 when Nokia managed only 2.9 million Lumia, but bear in mind, that in Q2 of 2012, Nokia sold 4 million Lumia, so in the last 6 months of massive global Nokia/Microsoft Lumia/Windows Phone push, including new carriers announced and new operating systems released, Nokia grew Lumia by.. 10%. yes, a lousy 10% growth for Lumia in the past 6 months while the industry grew in the same period .. get this .. by 57%. You wanna call that a success? I don't, and I won't.
So lets go to the migration ie transition rate then from Symbian to Windows Phone. Elop promised when he released this risky Microsoft strategy in February 2011, that he will achieve 1-to-1 transition from Symbian to Windows Phone. Now we have seen Symbian at its last viable quarter, so its about time to count, did the migration succeed then. Here is the picture:
The above picture may be freely shared
Yeah. The promised transition from Symbian to Windows Phone has not succeeded anywhere near 1-to-1. Its not even doing 1 out of every 2, or even 1 out of every 4. If we measure by unit sales, and ignore the growth in the smartphone industry for the past 2 years, and try to paint this misery in the best possible light for Elop's misguided Microsoftian misadventure, then by unit sales, Nokia sold 28.8 million smarpthones per quarter as the strategy was announced, and today 2.2 million of those smartphones are still on Symbian. Out of the 26.6 million Symbian sales attempted to migrate to Lumia running Windows Phone, there are only 4.4 million that succeeded and 22.2 million loyal Nokia smartphone users on Symbian, that were scared away to buy a rival handset maker's smartphones, Samsungs and others on Android, Apple's iPhones, or Blackberries or whatever others. By unit sales, the failure rate of Elop's Microsoft strategy is 83% only 17% have succeeded. So only one in six existing Nokia customers were migrated successfully to Windows Phone. Thats one way to look at it, the 'rosy' view. How about the reality view? Brace yourself.
If we measure by market share, Nokia had 29% market share when the new strategy was announced. This measure accounts for market growth. So today, Symbian based smartphones only account for 1% of global sales, and Nokia therefore has attempted to transition the 28% of its smartphone customers it had using Symbian to Windows Phone. And now the successfull transition results in 2% market share for Lumia in Q4 and 26% of Nokia loyal smartphone user market share gifted to rivals, in scaring away loyal Nokia users to Android, iOS, Blackberry, bada and others. Now the failure rate of Elop's strategy is a mindboggling 93%. Yes, only 7% of Nokia's attempts to lure Symbian customers to Lumia has succeeded. Out of every 14 attempts to migrate a customer from Symbian to Windows Phone, 13 have run away. Only one in 14 attempts to transition to Lumia has succeeded. You call this strategy good, and worth pursuing?
The independent survey of Lumia owners in America by Yankee Group last year found that four out of ten Lumia owners hated the phones so much, they gave it a rating of 1 out of 5 where 5 is best, 1 is worst. And now we have the Bernstein study of smartphone users by platform, in USA and Europe, which found that only 37% of Windows Phone smartphone owners are willing to make their next smartphone purchase another Windows Phone (most of those are Nokia owners, Nokia has been selling about 75% of all Windows Phone smartphones, the other 'partners' are either completely abandoning the Windows ecosystem like Sony, LG and Dell, or severely cutting down their involvement like HTC or pursuing other platforms like Samsung, or simply no longer providing new handsets for Windows Phone 8 like Huawei and ZTE). Yes, 63% of current Windows Phone owners want desperately to get rid of their phone and replace it with anything else! Compare that to Android which has 75% loyalty or iPhone which has 95% loyalty according to the Bernstein survey. Even poor old beleagured Blackberry has 57% loyalty, far bigger than Windows Phone and look how badly RIM is doing with its current model line. (And yes, in 2010, prior to the Elop Effect, Nokia's Symbian based consumer satisfaction was second highest in the industry, behind only the iPhone. Nokia customers were very satisfied and loyally bought Nokia after Nokia after Nokia).
So lets take a new look at the same graph I prepared, and add the Bernstein finding. This is the best case of how Elop's Windows strategy has going forward, the green part is the only slice that Elop has been able to win over to remain with both Nokia and Windows Phone on his Lumia series.
The above picture may be freely shared
So yes, when we add the severe dissatisfaction with the Windows Phone operating system and Lumia by their first owners, almost two thirds want to get rid of their Lumia and take some other, any other operating system based smartphones instead of their Windows smartphones, on both sides of the Atlantic, then yes, this strategy is utterly doomed, not just failing now, but into the future. Because, look at the 'real picture' ie taking market growth into consideration, the right side graph - market share. Stephen Elop's mad Microsoftian misery has managed to migrate from totally satisfied Symbian Nokia users - Nokia grew smartphone sales 53% from 2009 to 2010 - to now, only one in 20 loyal Nokia Symbian users who were tricked into converting to Windows Phone, both arrived there and is intending to stay. 17 of those 20 have already been scared away and 2 of the remaining 3 are already decided, they will not remain with Lumia series longer. This is the very definition of textbook strategy failure.
The Windows Phone strategy has failed comprehensively. Nokia knew this strategy was extremely risky, they wrote a massive risks assessment, hundreds of itemized risks to the strategy, in their filing to the SEC and New York Stock Exchange two years ago. And Nokia listed various reasons why the transition might not result in a 1-to-1 migration from Symbian to Windows Phone. Those risks have come true, but the carnage to Nokia is worse than anyone could have anticipated. I had issued the most pessimistic forecasts for Nokia's preformance in 2011, and many derided me for those forecasts at the time. Now we can see that my forecasts turned out to be too rosy. The collapse of Nokia's smarpthone business has set a new world record for failure. Even we forecasters had no model to compare it to, nobody had ever failed this totally in any two year period, not in mobile phones, not in cars, not in soft drinks, not in airlines not in personal computers, never in any industry.
Now look at that graph. If this is the 'success level' for Lumia's transition - failing in real terms 93% of the time, or out of every 14 attempts, 13 fail - and of the remaining suckers who took the fool's gold peddled as Nokia Lumia smarpthones, two thirds hate it so much they will buy any other smartphone than Windows Phone next time, why would you think this 'strategy' can somehow turn into a success under Elop and running Windows Phone? No wonder Elop now is letting rumors spread that Nokia is considering Android instead of Windows Phone. No wonder Steve Ballmer at Microsoft has given up on Elop and Nokia, and is proceeding to build his own smartphones. And it is now no surprise that Elop desperately is peddling any story to trick journalists into believing Nokia is ok, such as reclassifying Nokia's S40 based featurephones on his Asha series as if they were smartphones. Sure, I can also call an Etch-a-Sketch a smartphone, it doesn't make it one. Luckily all major analyst houses are rejecting that silly claim.
The simple fact is, that looking at that picture, it is obvious that Elop has failed totally in his primary goal of his strategy. He did not fulfill on his promise. 19 out of 20 loyal Nokia Symbian smartphone customers have either already left, or have already decided not to continue with this unsatisfying smartphone experience. Its about time for the Nokia Board to wake up and fire this Microsoft Muppet.
That was the discussion of the risk that Nokia might not be able to convert its loyal Symbian user base 1 to 1 from Symbian to Windows Phone. Boy was Nokia correct in testifying to the SEC and NY Stock Exchange, that this Windows strategy was very risky. They were correct and yes, this risk has fully materialized. The strategy is simply doomed.
This was number 4 in my series of blogs about Nokia's strategy distaster, told in short snippets of one problem at a time, and illustrated with one picture. You may fully use any parts of this blog including the stats and the grraphics.
Previously in the series, I did the lengthy analysis of the risks Nokia identified for the SEC and NY Stock Exchange two years ago in their Form 20-F.
Then I showed in Part 1 - the Nokia smartphone unit sales collapse following Elop Effect
Part 2 - The competition during Elop's tenure - Nokia vs Samsung vs Apple iPhone
Part 3 - the Nokia smartphone sales collapse compared to biggest failures in handset history (Palm, Motorola, Siemens etc)
I will return soon with part 5, trust me, this is a disaster that keeps on giving and giving, but what do you expect, we have truly witnessed a World Record being made in management failure and incompetence. There is plenty of blame to lay on Mr 'Call Me The General' Stephen Elop, the Pretend-Patton Canadian, graduate of McMaster University, previously with Microsoft and now Nokia CEO.
I've already shown you in one picture how Nokia's unit sales that grew faster than the biggest rivals in 2010, grew 53% in just one year in fact, immediately turned into catastrophic decline the moment when the Elop Effect happened in February 2011. I've then shown how Nokia's performance compared to the two main rivals over these past few years, Apple's iPhone and the Samsung series of smartphones. And at the previous blog posting in this series, I showed how the collapse in Nokia market share was in fact, a world record failure in the handset business, far faster than any other comparable market failure, like Palm, Motorola, Siemens, Windows Phone, LG and RIM. Now lets look at how Elop's promised transition ie migration strategy is working out.
A lot of people seem to be celebrating the 4.4 million Lumia smartphone sales number as if its 'good news'. They clearly don't know the industy or Nokia's past. Nokia did 4.4 million smartphones not per quarter, but per every two weeks back before the Elop Effect. The last time Nokia introduced a new Symbian version operating system - like the new Windows Phone 8 right now - was when Nokia introduced Symbian S^3 for Q4 in 2010. How did it do? In the first quarter, it sold 5 million units, led by its flagship, the N8 which sold 4 million units. Now, even as the smartphone market is more than twice as big, Elop's 'magnificent' Microsoft marvels on his Lumia series - after five months of trying, including not one but two new operating system versions and not one but three separate flagships - have yet to match that 5 million sales per quarter.
The 4.4 million seems like a big jump from the miserable Q3 when Nokia managed only 2.9 million Lumia, but bear in mind, that in Q2 of 2012, Nokia sold 4 million Lumia, so in the last 6 months of massive global Nokia/Microsoft Lumia/Windows Phone push, including new carriers announced and new operating systems released, Nokia grew Lumia by.. 10%. yes, a lousy 10% growth for Lumia in the past 6 months while the industry grew in the same period .. get this .. by 57%. You wanna call that a success? I don't, and I won't.
So lets go to the migration ie transition rate then from Symbian to Windows Phone. Elop promised when he released this risky Microsoft strategy in February 2011, that he will achieve 1-to-1 transition from Symbian to Windows Phone. Now we have seen Symbian at its last viable quarter, so its about time to count, did the migration succeed then. Here is the picture:
The above picture may be freely shared
Yeah. The promised transition from Symbian to Windows Phone has not succeeded anywhere near 1-to-1. Its not even doing 1 out of every 2, or even 1 out of every 4. If we measure by unit sales, and ignore the growth in the smartphone industry for the past 2 years, and try to paint this misery in the best possible light for Elop's misguided Microsoftian misadventure, then by unit sales, Nokia sold 28.8 million smarpthones per quarter as the strategy was announced, and today 2.2 million of those smartphones are still on Symbian. Out of the 26.6 million Symbian sales attempted to migrate to Lumia running Windows Phone, there are only 4.4 million that succeeded and 22.2 million loyal Nokia smartphone users on Symbian, that were scared away to buy a rival handset maker's smartphones, Samsungs and others on Android, Apple's iPhones, or Blackberries or whatever others. By unit sales, the failure rate of Elop's Microsoft strategy is 83% only 17% have succeeded. So only one in six existing Nokia customers were migrated successfully to Windows Phone. Thats one way to look at it, the 'rosy' view. How about the reality view? Brace yourself.
If we measure by market share, Nokia had 29% market share when the new strategy was announced. This measure accounts for market growth. So today, Symbian based smartphones only account for 1% of global sales, and Nokia therefore has attempted to transition the 28% of its smartphone customers it had using Symbian to Windows Phone. And now the successfull transition results in 2% market share for Lumia in Q4 and 26% of Nokia loyal smartphone user market share gifted to rivals, in scaring away loyal Nokia users to Android, iOS, Blackberry, bada and others. Now the failure rate of Elop's strategy is a mindboggling 93%. Yes, only 7% of Nokia's attempts to lure Symbian customers to Lumia has succeeded. Out of every 14 attempts to migrate a customer from Symbian to Windows Phone, 13 have run away. Only one in 14 attempts to transition to Lumia has succeeded. You call this strategy good, and worth pursuing?
The independent survey of Lumia owners in America by Yankee Group last year found that four out of ten Lumia owners hated the phones so much, they gave it a rating of 1 out of 5 where 5 is best, 1 is worst. And now we have the Bernstein study of smartphone users by platform, in USA and Europe, which found that only 37% of Windows Phone smartphone owners are willing to make their next smartphone purchase another Windows Phone (most of those are Nokia owners, Nokia has been selling about 75% of all Windows Phone smartphones, the other 'partners' are either completely abandoning the Windows ecosystem like Sony, LG and Dell, or severely cutting down their involvement like HTC or pursuing other platforms like Samsung, or simply no longer providing new handsets for Windows Phone 8 like Huawei and ZTE). Yes, 63% of current Windows Phone owners want desperately to get rid of their phone and replace it with anything else! Compare that to Android which has 75% loyalty or iPhone which has 95% loyalty according to the Bernstein survey. Even poor old beleagured Blackberry has 57% loyalty, far bigger than Windows Phone and look how badly RIM is doing with its current model line. (And yes, in 2010, prior to the Elop Effect, Nokia's Symbian based consumer satisfaction was second highest in the industry, behind only the iPhone. Nokia customers were very satisfied and loyally bought Nokia after Nokia after Nokia).
So lets take a new look at the same graph I prepared, and add the Bernstein finding. This is the best case of how Elop's Windows strategy has going forward, the green part is the only slice that Elop has been able to win over to remain with both Nokia and Windows Phone on his Lumia series.
The above picture may be freely shared
So yes, when we add the severe dissatisfaction with the Windows Phone operating system and Lumia by their first owners, almost two thirds want to get rid of their Lumia and take some other, any other operating system based smartphones instead of their Windows smartphones, on both sides of the Atlantic, then yes, this strategy is utterly doomed, not just failing now, but into the future. Because, look at the 'real picture' ie taking market growth into consideration, the right side graph - market share. Stephen Elop's mad Microsoftian misery has managed to migrate from totally satisfied Symbian Nokia users - Nokia grew smartphone sales 53% from 2009 to 2010 - to now, only one in 20 loyal Nokia Symbian users who were tricked into converting to Windows Phone, both arrived there and is intending to stay. 17 of those 20 have already been scared away and 2 of the remaining 3 are already decided, they will not remain with Lumia series longer. This is the very definition of textbook strategy failure.
The Windows Phone strategy has failed comprehensively. Nokia knew this strategy was extremely risky, they wrote a massive risks assessment, hundreds of itemized risks to the strategy, in their filing to the SEC and New York Stock Exchange two years ago. And Nokia listed various reasons why the transition might not result in a 1-to-1 migration from Symbian to Windows Phone. Those risks have come true, but the carnage to Nokia is worse than anyone could have anticipated. I had issued the most pessimistic forecasts for Nokia's preformance in 2011, and many derided me for those forecasts at the time. Now we can see that my forecasts turned out to be too rosy. The collapse of Nokia's smarpthone business has set a new world record for failure. Even we forecasters had no model to compare it to, nobody had ever failed this totally in any two year period, not in mobile phones, not in cars, not in soft drinks, not in airlines not in personal computers, never in any industry.
Now look at that graph. If this is the 'success level' for Lumia's transition - failing in real terms 93% of the time, or out of every 14 attempts, 13 fail - and of the remaining suckers who took the fool's gold peddled as Nokia Lumia smarpthones, two thirds hate it so much they will buy any other smartphone than Windows Phone next time, why would you think this 'strategy' can somehow turn into a success under Elop and running Windows Phone? No wonder Elop now is letting rumors spread that Nokia is considering Android instead of Windows Phone. No wonder Steve Ballmer at Microsoft has given up on Elop and Nokia, and is proceeding to build his own smartphones. And it is now no surprise that Elop desperately is peddling any story to trick journalists into believing Nokia is ok, such as reclassifying Nokia's S40 based featurephones on his Asha series as if they were smartphones. Sure, I can also call an Etch-a-Sketch a smartphone, it doesn't make it one. Luckily all major analyst houses are rejecting that silly claim.
The simple fact is, that looking at that picture, it is obvious that Elop has failed totally in his primary goal of his strategy. He did not fulfill on his promise. 19 out of 20 loyal Nokia Symbian smartphone customers have either already left, or have already decided not to continue with this unsatisfying smartphone experience. Its about time for the Nokia Board to wake up and fire this Microsoft Muppet.
That was the discussion of the risk that Nokia might not be able to convert its loyal Symbian user base 1 to 1 from Symbian to Windows Phone. Boy was Nokia correct in testifying to the SEC and NY Stock Exchange, that this Windows strategy was very risky. They were correct and yes, this risk has fully materialized. The strategy is simply doomed.
This was number 4 in my series of blogs about Nokia's strategy distaster, told in short snippets of one problem at a time, and illustrated with one picture. You may fully use any parts of this blog including the stats and the grraphics.
Previously in the series, I did the lengthy analysis of the risks Nokia identified for the SEC and NY Stock Exchange two years ago in their Form 20-F.
Then I showed in Part 1 - the Nokia smartphone unit sales collapse following Elop Effect
Part 2 - The competition during Elop's tenure - Nokia vs Samsung vs Apple iPhone
Part 3 - the Nokia smartphone sales collapse compared to biggest failures in handset history (Palm, Motorola, Siemens etc)
I will return soon with part 5, trust me, this is a disaster that keeps on giving and giving, but what do you expect, we have truly witnessed a World Record being made in management failure and incompetence. There is plenty of blame to lay on Mr 'Call Me The General' Stephen Elop, the Pretend-Patton Canadian, graduate of McMaster University, previously with Microsoft and now Nokia CEO.
I was afraid when I heard the news that nokia was gonna hire somebody from ms. at that time, I have decided not to buy a windows mobile/windows phone from nokia right away. although nokia built a marvellous piece of hardware, the OS is such a turn off for me (due to bad experience with wm)
Posted by: Kikin Sipit | January 11, 2013 at 09:35 AM
What's interesting in that context is that Nokia changed its Symbian strategy beforehand. They aborted the "each phone gets a new incompatible Symbian version" and "older phones get no updates" strategy. Nokia's new Symbian strategy was to have one, the same Symbian version for all phones, extend that Symbian version step by step and push updates to already sold devices.
The N8 is a prime example. Its supported so long like close to no other mobile device. Anna, Belle, Carla, Dora. 4 major updates in years.
Thing what that strategy-shift means. How customers would love it. Just try the N8 running Belle. It is not only competative but its very good. Tgey moved it close to the MeeGo design philosophy, performance, battery, features. Combine that with what you have to pay for a N8 today, with innovations like the 808 real pureview.
Those who say Symbian was going to lose should just try the 808 running Belle for a while. Forget its Symbian and what press wrote about Symbian (just like you may already forget what they wrote about the 3th ecosystem Windows Phone). Just use it for a while and you will see why it was selling so well (unlike WP) and why customers buy it (unlike WP) and why once they had it they would buy next time one too (unlike WP).
Posted by: Spawn | January 11, 2013 at 09:41 AM
All those bad press about Symbian. Why? Mysterious or was that for the same reason we read so much bad press about RIM right before Microsoft contacted them end of last year to get another exclusive WP partnership going. Also why is that that Microsoft "exclusive" strategic partners always with those who have an alternate OS right before launch? Double-win?
Posted by: Spawn | January 11, 2013 at 09:50 AM
@Spawn:
>> All those bad press about Symbian. Why?
You gave the answer yourself:
>> the "each phone gets a new incompatible Symbian version" and "older phones get no updates" strategy
Such a stragegy can only end in failure. Let's be honest here. Symbian had its flaws. Nokia has made big mistakes (N97 anyone?) Of course this could be seen in sales numbers and bad press.
So that's why it was changed. And how long did they execute it?
Yes, precisely 4 months! Not enough to register as an improvement so in the back of the head of many people Symbian remained that ugly beast that didn't want to work with other iterations of itself.
One can't help but wonder what would have happened if they had the new strategy play out instead of pressing the panic button
Posted by: Tester | January 11, 2013 at 10:15 AM
I remember Finnish Sonera.
Posted by: Conspiracy theory | January 11, 2013 at 10:38 AM
To be fair one should mention that most Symbian releases were somewhat 'feature complete'. I still have a N95 in use and allthough I never received a major update I do not feel lacking anything. Be it multitasking, copy and paste, proper bluetooth support, messaging support or client software - all was there. There was no need to receive an update to receive an usable system, and I never depended on an update.
And now take a look at for instance Windows Phone, Version 7. There was nothing, no multitasking, no proper bluetooth support, no copy and paste. All of this had to be added as an incremental update.
This are two different design philosophies: Give All / Update Nothing vs. Give Nothing / Update All.
It is a bit unfair to compare (some of) Symbian to what we have now, a 'rolling release' of operating systems.
Posted by: Lasko | January 11, 2013 at 10:41 AM
@Lasko:
'Feature complete' is a relatively useless term. Before the rise of the app it really didn't matter - but would you want to develop apps for a platform where you got 10 devices with 10 different sets of quirks and bugs? I sure wouldn't. For development it's a complete show stopper.
Posted by: Tester | January 11, 2013 at 12:25 PM
But we were talking about consumer reception, not developer reception, weren't we? ;-)
Posted by: Lasko | January 11, 2013 at 01:57 PM
The real problem with Symbian wasn't that it couldn't be good but that it was very time consuming and expensive to make it good. It was an aging platform that simply wasn't designed for many modern features (touch, gpu, large screen resolutions, etc.) and adding each of these took forever and by the time they were out, they were already a cycle behind the fast moving front runners. The N8 was horribly delayed (at least 6 months from announcement) and it took until Belle to truly be close to a modern smartphone (and it still was missing key features). A truly viable version of QT wasn't available until spring of 2011, well after the February 11 announcement.
Posted by: Poifan | January 11, 2013 at 03:02 PM
@ExNokian
Well, "We may not succeed in transitioning over time our installed base of Symbian owners to our Windows Phone smartphones." is one of the risks found in the 20-F, so - of course - the plan was to transition the Symbian users to Windows Phone. And ""We expect the transition to Windows Phone as our primary smartphone platform to take about two years." - which is now.
I mean, we are not talking about just 95% or 90% or 80% or even 60% - we are talking about 7% (!) here. Now saying that "but it was never promised that all of the Symbian users should be transitioned" is quite ridiculous, isn't it?
Posted by: Lasko | January 11, 2013 at 03:33 PM
Tomi> Its about time for the Nokia Board to wake up and fire this Microsoft Muppet.
do you think there are any reasonable people left on that board? wouldn't they have insisted on a "dual-strategy" with Windows Phone in combination with Nokia's own systems (Meego/Symbian) to see what platform would sell better? it seems like they have gone "all-in" with Windows at this point, hopefully i'm wrong..
now that Nokia stands for the major part of Windows Phone sales, it does seem highly unlikely that Microsoft would let Nokia go bankrupt; that would pretty much leave Microsoft with no real "partners".
Posted by: bjarneh | January 11, 2013 at 03:34 PM
@Tomi : it's not the first time you say Elop failed its strategy and should be fired, and prove it with hard numbers.
So the question should better be : why, with even the hard numbers in front of their eyes, the people in charge of hiring and firing Elop fail to accept the same conclusion ?
Posted by: Cyan | January 11, 2013 at 04:50 PM
The new world order's business axioms for companies such as Nokia (or HP or Dell, etc.) can be summed as as: own stuff, make stuff. And it doesn't hurt to have some big government have one's back.
The unprecedented collapse at Nokia was the complete absence of a strategy for producing its own modern ARM SoC or for producing its own LTE baseband chipset, preferably with support both for FDD-LTE and TD-LTE.
Just compare what Nokia's competitors did and see where Nokia fell short.
Samsung has its own ARM processor Exynos, is developing its own LTE chipsets, and owns its own fabs. Samsung owns stuff, makes stuff, and its homebase Korean government allows it to grow unchecked as a virtually unregulated chaebol.
Huawei through HiSilicon has its own ARM-based K3 chipset and its own multimode LTE chipset:
http://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/newsroom/press-release/hw-124301-hisiliconbalong710chipsetsupporting3gppltegtimwc20.htm
Of course Huawei also has the full support of the Chinese government as the Chinese leverage their legacy TD-SCDMA and future TD-LTE on China Mobile to compel Western companies to cross-license IP. Huawei apparently has some sort of cross-license agreement with Qualcomm.
http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/12/huawei-v-zte-chinese-lte-patent-spat-in.html
"Qualcomm has some kind of patent cross-license agreement in place with Huawei that appears to include a covenant not to sue Qualcomm's customers over patents implemented by the American company's baseband chips."
That cross-license agreement is worth real money--it cost Nokia approximately $2.3 USD in 2008 to get Qualcomm to go away.
Even Apple at least got into the game of designing their own ARM processors, for example buying PA Semiconductor. And even Google wound up having to buy a huge chunk of what used to be Motorola.
Pre-2010 Nokia was headed in completely the opposite direction from the strategies used by today's rising players, Samsung, Huawei, Qualcomm, Apple, Google etc. Nokia was in the process of losing their fab partner Texas Instruments, and Nokia had sold off the IP that could have been used to develop their own LTE baseband chipset. That Nokia failed to anticipate the need to own stuff, make stuff, and it paid the price.
Posted by: John Phamlore | January 11, 2013 at 05:21 PM
@Paul:
Current prices on Amazon (USA): Lumia 800 (black, 16gb) $279.34; Lumia 900 (black) $289.00; N900 (32gb) $367.00; N8 (grey) $389.00; N9 (black 64gb) $350.99. So the N9, the N8 and the N900 are all more valuable than more recent Lumia efforts to consumers judging by market price.
Posted by: Eurofan | January 11, 2013 at 07:09 PM
@Tester
> So that's why it was changed. And how long did they execute it?
> Yes, precisely 4 months! Not enough
Exactly. Everybody is able to see how Symbian's evolution lead us up to Belle which is really good. That after the investment was shut down, after Symbian was burned and after Nokia ('s Elop) made clear there eill be no more Symbian phones.
I think this strategy shift addressed a huge chunk of the problems Symbian had (and yet was still number 1 even with that problems). I think Nokia's management made somemvery good decisions. That Symbian strategy shift, MeeGo and Meltimi.
Its sad all that was aborted before it played out. Its so sad that the new management jumped off what was build up decades lobg and made tge comoany number 1 down into the rounding-error below the oceans "surface". Its sad that before jumping the management burned everything above "surface" and its even more sad there are people left who try to sell the situation as win, as opportunity, as improvement. That cold water will turn into gold! See, it already started and you can't feel your legs any longer cause of the gold below them!
@ExNokian
> How come you stick with the "1 to 1 transition to Symbian" (using unit sales as measurement) when no such thing was ever promised?
Because the 1:1 transition was the goal, the target, the optimum. This, the Symbian market share, was the asset, the pot of gold, the real value Nokia had. This market share is what they offered to Microsoft, what they had on the table to negotiate with.
And the lost near all of that. Its a total disaster. Now Nokia sits alone on that rable with nothing on it any longer while Microsoft moved ob to other tables. "Good bye Nokjia, was a nice nightm I will call you tomorrow (not)".
@Poifan
> It was an aging platform
Every platform is aging.
> that simply wasn't designed for many modern features
No platform was. Even not Android (first versions or before Linux+Stack which Android is based up on). Hey, the base of Android wasn't even designed to run on ARM or run graphical user interfaces. Same for iOS's base.
Requirements and usage change constantly and so you need constantly drive your OS future. Look at DOS=>Windows 3=>Windows 95=>NT=>etc. WP8 for example had its roots (indirect) in a OS bought for $50k from a hobby dev and was designed to never ever need more then 650KB RAM.
> touch
See above and buy a N8 (they are cheap!) to try out yourself.
> gpu
Symbian supports OpenGL (running on GPU) since a while. WP still does not till today.
> large screen resolutions
Android did hot support it too. It only came with v3, which was unusable, and became usable with v4 which was released recently. iPhone still has HUGE problems with that.
> etc.
What etc?
Posted by: Spawn | January 11, 2013 at 07:11 PM
@Cyan
> why, with even the hard numbers in front of their
> eyes, the people in charge of hiring and firing Elop fail to accept the
> same conclusion ?
Because Elop did one thing very well: He made sure Nokia cannot just leave his way.
He not left bridges, he burned them. As soon as there was something Nokia could utilize as alternate to the WP all-in strategy he burned it.
Nokia has no alternate left. R&D shut down, all talent on any level left, alternates ways burned, cash problems, partners and carriers posioned, different contractual bindings, a junk rating and bad management on all levels.
It needs time to repair that. Firing Elop can only be the first step (but needed to get reconstruction started). Its needed to replace much of the upper management that is responsible for this situation. They nitmlike to be replaced. If there is a 0.01% possibility left to stay they will try. If Nokia dies on that try is not the most important aspect.
Gambling. Even if you lost everything you will continue cause tomorroe you will win. This is what Elop keeps on to tell us. Next quarter, one more try, tomorrow it will all turn around!
Posted by: Spawn | January 11, 2013 at 07:39 PM
@spawn
There was simply no suitable hardware platform for a successor to the N9:
http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego
"In October 2008 Texas Instruments announced that they would stop investing in smartphones’ baseband modems ... For Nokia this meant the end of the TI OMAP path for MeeGo ... The alternatives to the OMAP 3 line SoCs by TI were Qualcomm and Intel, of which Nokia ended up opting for Intel ... An interviewee described the decision concerning Intel as a disaster, however Qualcomm probably had not prioritized MeeGo very high compared to other projects such as Android and Windows Phone ... When Nokia was making their future hardware choice after TI’s OMAP, Intel didn’t have proper plan or schedule for LTE support."
Observe that since 2010, Apple has switched from Infineon (purchased by Intel) to Qualcomm baseband chipsets, Microsoft Windows Phone is exclusive to Qualcomm chips, and RIM is apparently in the process of switching to Qualcomm. Even Samsung has produced versions of its phones that use Qualcomm chips while using its own elsewhere internationally.
Posted by: John Phamlore | January 11, 2013 at 07:49 PM
@Spawn. I do have an N8, nice hardware, great camera, weak CPU and memory (C: partition, yikes!), took up to a year after I got it to have a fully touch UI (Belle) and still no support for multiple Exchange accounts. I certainly understand that things change, but often platforms get to the point where it's better to start from scratch than keep trying to make an old dog do new trick. MS switched from DOS to NT Kernel, Apple changed to a BSD kernel, MS went from WinCE to NT kernel on on WP8, RIM is changing to QNX. Adding GPU, touch, and QT to Symbian all took unacceptably long to add to the platform.
Posted by: Poifan | January 11, 2013 at 08:30 PM
Yay Baron95 is back.... Since when is ASHA a smartphone?
I guess you better dump Nokia before the Blackberry launch.
Posted by: ejvictor | January 11, 2013 at 09:48 PM
@Poifan:
>> MS switched from DOS to NT Kernel, Apple changed to a BSD kernel, MS went from WinCE to NT kernel on on WP8, RIM is changing to QNX.
True, but there's one crucial difference:
All the successful transitions were not done by obsoleting the old system but by a gradual migration.
Windows from DOS to NT, for example, went through several years of intermediate systems that ensured that software continues to work. Why, do you think, was Windows 95 introduced, instead of going to the NT kernel right away? Yes, right, because otherwise lots of people would have sat there, unable to run their legacy programs anymore and cursing at Microsoft.
But at the time the NT kernel was introduced for home users with XP they already had 6 years to get versions of their software that used the Win32 API so the percentage of problem cases had been reduced dramatically.
Compare that to an abrupt jump to a completely different platform. You won't have any customer loyalty there because nothing they had will work with the new device. Instead of choosing your next product they'll choose the one they like best, no matter who manufactured it.
That's why Nokia would have needed the migration path, first introducing Qt on Symbian, ensuring that newly developed software is future proof, and then later introducing MeeGo as a successor platform that can be smoothly transitioned to.
No such luck with WP. Users just chose the closest thing in the market to Symbian, which happened to be Android because for them there was no more harm in leaving Nokia behind as opposed to sticking with Lumia.
Posted by: Tester | January 11, 2013 at 09:59 PM