Lets Do Another Twitter Contest - Guess Nokia Smartphone Market Share 3 Years from Now: After June 2019

Now that Nokia brand is coming back to smartphones, we can do another Twitter contest based on that good news. I have changed the rules a little bit so this time I won't limit anyone to picking a unique percentage. So more than one person can now have the correct winning guess. I'll award each winner the full grand prize (all 5 of my ebooks that cost 10 Euros each, so the latest Almanac, the latest Phone Book, and Pearls Volumes 1, 2 and 3). And like before, for the runners-up, who just missed the winning guess, who were nearest above and nearest below that exact number, they get the Almanac latest edition.

This is a particularly interesting guess as the Nokia partners have not yet launched any handsets and have not yet even told us what kind of phones, at what price points, how many devices, in what regions, on what networks, with what type of distribution deals etc, will be done. And 3 years in smartphones is a very long time. Apple went from 0% to 13.4% in its first 3 years (12 quarters) but had been as high as 17.4% at one quarter when the new iPhone was launched. At the other end, Nokia collapsed from 28.8% at the end of 2010 to 2.9% exactly 3 years later (12 quarters). And sometimes you get no life no matter how much you try, like say Microsoft with Lumia, the first full quarter of Nokia Lumia sales after the deal to Microsoft was announced, was 3.0% market share. Three years later, after the unit was fully controlled by Microsoft and they had already fired Elop its first boss and given the unit to a new boss to run, the market share of Microsoft Lumia exactly three years later was 2.8%. Considering the total cost, that is probably the largest waste of marketing and sales futility in human history haha. So yeah, we don't even know WHEN the first Nokia smartphones will be shown to us, far less when they will be sold (and at what prices) but yeah. Make your guess now on what will be Nokia smartphone market share, 3 years from now, when this period, April-June Quarter has ended.

So we do this via Twitter. I am @tomiahonen on Twitter (don't post your entries here in comments on the blog). Send your guess to me on Twitter in an open Tweet (just start your Tweet with my handle, so start your Tweet typing @tomiahonen - do not send me a 'DM' ie a Direct Message. You have to enter the race openly, not secretly :-). And all you need to do is send me the percentage, you don't need to give me any reasons etc, its a contest, all I want is your number.

Make your guess an exact percentage up to one decimal point, so for example 3.3% or 5.2% or 1.9%. The time when it is measured, is after Q2 of 2019, three years from now. Thats the quarter from April to June. Now all you need to do is to send your guess to me on Twitter. You are allowed only one entry, but you may change your mind if you want, but the contest will close in three days (72 hours) hours. I will use the last entry you have made, if you make more than one guess. Go to Twitter now to enter your number, even if you want to still think about it, enter one first now, so at least you are entered, even if you want to refine your number more. By Monday about this time, I will close the contest and I will run a count-down to when the contest ends, on Twitter.

This is how I will determine the exact winning number. I will calculate the number so that we take the best number available for Nokia brand smartphone sales and then take the best available number for the total smartphone market. Then the Nokia share will be divided to give the percentate. Hopefully HMD or FIH will announce their actual sales number and then that will be the official number. If the two are in conflict, we will take HMD over FIH. If neither announces a number by middle of August (for Quarter ending June) then we take the next best number. If Nokia gives that number, we take that. If not Nokia, then I will take the average of the best four smartphone analyst houses of the recent past ie IDC, Strategy Analytics, Canalys and Gartner. If any of them publish a Nokia Q2 global unit sales number by the middle of August, I will take all published numbers by any of those four, and calculate their average estimate as the official number. If none give a Nokia number (in that case Nokia is likely to be quite small in its number) in that case, I will take the average of any other 'credible' smartphone analyst houses who have published global smartphone stats in the interim period from now to then but only of course the number published for Q2. And again for all of those other analyst houses who do give a Nokia number, I will calculate the average.

Then for the industry total number for Q2, I will use the big 4 analyst houses (but currently only IDC and SA give regular Quarterly numbers, Gartner occasionally gives a global number and it often comes at considerable delay). If both IDC and SA stop releasing a smartphone total number, then I will use the other 'credible' analyst houses as in the above.

After Monday 20 June, I will collect all entries on Twitter and publish the full listing here. You should verify that your Twitter handle is correctly listed here with the correct percentage as I will be manually transferring percentages and names. And then we wait and see. Good luck to all. Note, this time I will not give you my number 'first' because now everybody can pick the same number and some might say, I am so accurate in this industry it might not be a bad idea to pick my number or something very close to it haha. I'll give my estimate after the race has closed. Note also that this will be a kind of crowd-sourced forecast, it will be interesting to see how its average score will compare to the truth.

For those interested, here is the current TomiAhonen Almanac 2016 that came out a couple of weeks ago.

Comments

[Winter]

It is a pity that I do not have a twitter account. On the other hand, I do not have a clue anyway.

If I had to guess, I would say that Nokia will end up with Samsung's current 2Q2016 market share. But I do not believe I have ever been right in this kind of contest.

[ChrisB]

I need to see the new Nokia phones first. Brand loyalty is one thing (especially in Asia), but to buy one, NewNokia has to convince me that their smartphones provide what made Nokia great:

- almost indestructable

- long battery life

- superb voice-call quality

- superb camera

- ease of use (including one-handed)

- slots for hardware extensions (SD-Card, Dual-SIM)

- Rich default software selection without bloatware

I don't know whether it makes sense to post a prediction without any information. It may be fun, though.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi ChrisB

Thats EXACTLY the point. Because we don't know ANYTHING except that they are coming back what is your guess? Its WAY easier to guess once we see phones, prices, distribution etc..

Come on, ChrisB, do a wild guess, post the response on Twitter

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Wayne Borean]

Made my wild guess. Should be fun seeing the outcome!

[ChrisB]

Hi Tomi,

No, there's no fun at all in this. I could as well guess how likely it is for me to become struck by lightning (and even in this case I'd have some more data available).

It'll become more interesting once we know more about the structure of the deal and the whole strategy. Then I'd be at least in the same position as those who bet that Leicester would win the Premier League ;)

Plus, I avoid Twitter like the plague.

[ChrisB]

Tomi,

Since this is a Nokia-related entry, I hope it is the right place for this comment.

I recently read that Finland had to ask the EU for financial support after the mass layoffs at (former) Nokia. The latest articles refer to the comparably minor final layoff round (1,850), but also mention that the EU had already generously supported Finland before in its Nokia-related troubles.

We know that this already started before the Nokia phone division was sold to MS. I'm all for helping out fellow-Europeans in dire straits, but what makes me really angry is that I, as a European taxpayer, have to indirectly subsidise Elop's bonus.

And what about all the Finnish pensioners who invested in good faith in a solid company's shares (via pension funds) and suddenly saw their savings annihalated? I can't read Finnish, but it would be interesting to hear from an excellent number cruncher like you what Elop did to the Finnish economy, provided you have access to reliable data.

[John Phamlore]

Did anyone actually read Nokia's official announcement on what it was doing?

http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/05/18/nokia-signs-strategic-brand-and-intellectual-property-licensing-agreement-enabling-hmd-global-to-create-new-generation-of-nokia-branded-mobile-phones-and-tablets

"Nokia will provide HMD with branding rights and cellular standard essential patent licenses in return for royalty payments, but will not be making a financial investment or holding equity in HMD."

Nokia's not taking equity in HMD in a venture that at least has the possibility of surging to being a leading player in the smartphone business.

This arrangement is a barely disguised sale of what's left of Nokia's former mobile handset business to the Chinese. Please look up the saga of what has happened to the former Saab automotive business to see why such an arrangement would be necessary.

[Abdul Muis]

@Tomi

Why? Why on twitter? I don't have Twitter account.

@ChrisB & @Winter

I also hate Twitter. I hate the 140 character.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Chris,

I hear you. The contest is a truly wild guess with essentially no data. Even so, obviously math says an answer of 150% is impossible because market share cannot ever exceed 100%. Some context of understanding the industry might guide one to what SCALE in the guess is even plausible but hey, its a FUN game when nobody can possibly know. Someone will guess the percent, due to luck, and that person can legitimately say 'I had the most accurate prediction'. No harm, no foul.

But seriously also Chris, this is what we in the industry do REGULARLY when new things start like say 3D printing or AR Augmented Reality or wearables, and in the past things like 3G, smartphones, mobile internet, MMS; before they are launched, some 'experts' come out with forecasts of what they think will happen. It is a FAR HARDER job, to do a reasoned forecast when there is NO DATA. Yet those HAVE to be done for professional business executives to make their business plans. And THOSE early forecasts are WILDLY differing (not unlike the submissions so far into this Nokia contest). Go back and look at the promises of say the Apple Watch or wearables now 2 years ago, and what has become the reality instead. Or go watch what they wrote about app stores (vs reality) or about 'Location Based Services' 15 years ago (vs reality). Incidentally, at the time when there was no data, and I made MY forecasts, I was the most accurate on wearables and app stores, and while my original LBS forecast was totally off (in line with others) by 2002 I changed my forecast totally (was the first to do so) and its since then been the most accurate of the industry - BUT to be fair, the one I did without data was TOTALLY wrong, and the change that I made, was only after early data came in. Again, to your point Chris, its WAY WAY easier to forecast once you have data. The REAL test of a good analyst really underestanding the industry is how they do with no data... :-)

PS my book mProfits turned out to have 96% of its forecasts turn out true - and it was all done with NO data on 3G as those networks were just starting to go online and we had almost no 3G handsets even in the market yet (Telenor in Norway for example launched their 3G network for commercial production first in Europe while Norway had a total of 7 handsets in the country. Not 7 million, not 7 thounsand. Seven. Total 3G handsets. But they announced, the network was up and commercial, if you bought a 3G handset somewhere (else) and brought it to Norway, you could have 3G coverage haha. This was I think right the end of December 2001 if I remember correctly.

Now, those who are 'facts-obsessed' ie typically engineers, and cannot really withstand uncertainty, they will hate this type of game and of course they say this is pointless and the outcome is useless. Fair points. There IS NO DATA. But someone at Nokia and at Microsoft and at Hon Hai/Foxconn had to make those decisions TOO, without data. Sometimes that is life. There is no data. And then the engineers have to just live with it, and go by a 'bolder' manager who just tells them - build it and they will come. It happened with 3G. It didn't happen with rival projects like the 3 satellite telecoms providers of that time who all went bankrupt. That is life. I am fully willing to give a forecast before we have any data, because I am confident I know enough about the industry to give a ball-park number that is close enough, to give guidance. THEN what I do, what most of my peers do not do, but you guys know this - I will REVISIT my forecast to see how it is going, when the data comes in.

Again, the reason this is second nature to me is, that I did that for the biggest business gamble in human history (the mobile internet/3G mobile networks and data - was literally called the biggest economic gamble in human history, by the Economist in October of 2001).

But nobody has to join. Its totally voluntary. If you want to go on Twitter and post a number, you're in. And if you're lucky you'll win an ebook or if you hit exactly the right number, you win 5 ebooks. Where is the harm in this. What it also gives us is a test of 'crowd-sourced forecasting' when we take the average and median of the forecasts and see how close those came to reality (unfortunately last time, when I made the rule that nobody is allowed to pick the same number, that distorted the guessing-game and the element of crowd-sourcing in the forecast was kind of destroyed).

Also Chris I appreciate the dislike of Twitter, I'll comment on that a bit later when I also answer Abdul.

(more replies coming)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Pauli]

@Tomi
Either I missed it from the text or you forgot to enter your estimate.
Certainly you - most accurate forecaster in mobile, I've heard - do not plan to leave this forecast solely to your readers?

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Chris and John

On the Nokia, Finland, EU and China related issues. Thanks and yes, of course, they are perfectly valid topics to bring here to this thread.

Chris - I am as gutted as anyone outside the company can possibly be (who actually wasn't working at the company and lost a job; or was a share-holder and lost a fortune; or was a supplier or 'ecosystem' partner who lost a business). I wanted Elop investigated by the various stock markets and barred from ever holding corporate offices and if evidence was found, thrown to prison. Also I wanted the Nokia Board investigated. So I'm totally with you, it was a crime, a huge heist conducted likely by 'malice and forethought', designed and executed by Elop deliberately (not to be a Trojan Horse, obviously Microsoft didn't want this outcome; but just so Elop could collect on his weird bonus arrangement). I'm still for investigations and hope they come but am not holding my breath :-)

And yes the incredible truth is, that yes, the EU gave Finland assistance in the Nokia catastrophy and its aftermath; and that means Elop stole money from European taxpayers (to a small degree, most of Elop's bonus was then paid by Microsoft but that is also just an accounting gimmick - Elop was part of the package that Microsoft was buying/forced to take and however you 'structured' that payment to Elop, Microsoft paid 8 Billion dollars to Nokia to buy its handset biz and Elop was paid is bounty which was if I recall around 40 million dollars in the end, something like that kind of scale. I remember the final number was larger than the original reported number. Its like the Financial Times calculated, the biggest heist since Bernie Madoff's crimes and Madoff is still in prison while Elop walks free and now works in Australia for the local telco Telstra as their Strategy guy.

Should Europeans be outraged about it. Of course they should. But they've perhaps been slightly distracted by Greece, Ukraine, the Syrian refugees, Putin and Brexit haha..

On the total economic impact to Finland and its economy, I'd love to see that kind of analysis and it would seem like a natural thesis topic that some MBA graduate at say Aalto University in Helsinki would be conducting. Hopefully we will see serious numbers and analysis on it in coming years. Not an easy quick thing to do and needs very serious analysis and partly suffers from the issue of - against what. You cannot prove a counter-factual. In other words, we cannot perfectly know what could have happened, always you can argue, Nokia was headed to a collapse anyway and this was inevitable, so you'd have to build a credible alternate Finnish economic condition for that period with fair credible alternate Nokia performance and that will always just be a theory, it can never be proven.

John - great comment thanks. The Saab situation with China is a valid example and I am sure the negotiations on the HMD - FIH - Nokia - Microsoft deals would be structured with the Saab lessons in mind.

So with Hon Hai/Foxconn ie FIH, I am guessing this is their play to move from white label manufacturer to a phone brand. They can probably set up a similar arrangement with 'their Nokia' (dumbphones) as Elop did with 'his Nokia' setting up a Lumia brand that Microsoft could use WITHOUT the Nokia brand (as well as the Asha brand arguably for same purpose). In the way that Lenovo got the Thinkpad brand when it bought the IBM laptop business, and Lenovo had a short-duration right to use the IBM branding, they introduced Lenovo alongside IBM, on Thinkpad, then removed the IBM brand and Thinkpads became Lenovo Thinkpads - looking and feeling the same because for years prior to that, they had in fact been manufactured by Lenovo anyway.

Hon Hai/Foxconn aka FIH should be able to do this, so they could introduce a Foxconn brand mobile phone (dumbphone) or Hon Hai brand or FIH or whatever cool modern internet-age name they can come up with and then tie it to say Asha. So a Nokia Foxconn Asha. And co-brand all dumbphone sales with Foxconn. Then two years later, drop the Nokia name gradually from newer phones so that say 4 years later, no Nokia brand anymore exists and all Asha are Foxconn Ashas but hopefully for Hon Hai/Foxconn/FIH, they have achieved that impression in the minds of consumers that Foxconn = Nokia. Now, this is less likely to fully succeed because Nokia ALSO exists in the market (and the earlier confusion with Microsoft). But for Foxconn/Hon Hai if they can sell 50 million phones under their own brands, set up a worldwide sales organization and set up their brand, its a good position to be. THEN they should ALSO do a migration to Android (but without the Nokia branding) so Foxconn could have an Asha division selling 'Nokia' dumbphones and introduce a Besha division or something, to sell their Android smartphones. Some consumers will think these are 'also' Nokias and others will simply buy them for being good value low and mid-price smartphones. And it won't hurt that the same guys also manufacture the iPhone haha.

We'll see how it plays, the downside for Foxconn/Hon Hai is mainly that the dumbphone market is declining so fast. 500 million last year, 400 million this year, 300 million next year, they need to move real fast to set their brand up before the total market is down to 50 million dumbphones globally sold at 10 dollars average price haha while low-cost Android smartphones sell for 15.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Abdul and Chris

On Twitter. I also get it totally. When I joined Twitter, I was told it was great by people I respected and I tried it and after many weeks was utterly frustrated that it was just horrible. I didn't see any sense in it and it didn't work for me at all. And I was about to quit, when one of my friends and trusted mobilistas (might have been Russell Buckley) opened my eyes to it, and suddenly night-and-day moment, I fell in love with Twitter and have not looked past since. I've got 15,000 followers and have done 116,000 individual Tweets so far (approx 1.5 million words. Thats about as many words as my 12 books combined; and this blog has about 4 million words, so you get the context of how intensely I embraced Twitter)

I have a simple analogy for you to understand. Twitter is like the News Ticker Feed on the bottom of CNN news. This blog is more like CNN main news coverage (in this analogy). If you want analysis, if you want detail, if you want facts and the full story - you want to see how CNN has the 3 minute story today about Putin and his St Petersburg economic summit or whatever is in the news. BUT the News TICKER tells you in VERY short, one-line summaries the HEADLINES of what is happening. EVERYTHING that is relevant, the biggest stories, go into the news ticker. Some of it you want to know, some of it you would not have been exposed to without the news ticker, and not all in the news ticker gets into a news STORY on CNN. But its 'everything' snapshot of the world. If you have only 5 minutes and CNN is stuck on some stupid story about sailing and you want to know what is happening in that battle for Fallujah, you just watch the CNN ticker feed and you have the news headlines.

The relationship of this blog to my Twitter feed is like CNN actual news articles with reporters and video, compared to its News Ticker Feed headline news.

Except that Twitter is FAR FAR FAR better than CNN on delivering breaking news and headlines. FAR FAR FAR better. And FAR FAR FAR faster. Everything that ever breaks in news is on Twitter first. Sometimes it is on CNN simultaneously but never faster than one minute before its on Twitter. BUT Twitter gets the breaking news ALWAYS first, so often the news breaks on Twitter and its 2 HOURS before CNN puts it onto the news Ticker and another two hours before CNN has a news crew reporting that story in the main news. And CNN is fast on this, other news networks are often behind CNN on breaking international random news that happens in unpredictable ways (a volcano, a fire, a terrorist incident, a downed airline, a business collapse, whatever).

So Twitter changed my online life in two ways. First, if you remember this blog in the previous decade, I would write 'long stories and short stories' Many of my blogs were long but often I also did just short update stories of a few paragraphs and a link to where that story was coming from. I have stopped that short story type of blogging because it works FAR better on Twitter. So this blog became a pure 'long form' story site. I very very rarely anymore write anything as short as 5 paragraphs. But probably half of what I write now is 10,000 words per blog article haha.

This blog is where I come to think about tech and mobile; Twitter is where I comment on the news about tech and mobile. And the extreme power of Twitter over any other media (including Facebook) in spreading breaking NEWS is that all major experts of tech and mobile soon also discovered this power of Twitter - it means they are ALL there. Chetan Sharma is there, Ajit Jaokar is there, Russell Buckley is there, etc etc etc etc - which led to the other change. Those of you who were with this blog in the past decade remember the frequent mentions and links to Forum Oxford. We (Ajit, Russell and me) collected our most trusted peers - and invited essentially anybody who had published a book about mobile whether we agreed with it or not - to come join the free, expert, unaffiliated tech-neutral mobile discussion group, Forum Oxford, where for about 5 years we had THE best discussion in mobile. When the iPhone launched, very very very smart debate and discussion about it, etc. What we often have early in the discussion threads here on mobile topics (before it degenerates into typical Apple vs Android vs Microsoft vs Linux bullshit arguments). Forum Oxford was the place that had the highest number of the best mobile experts in the same place, discussing what was hot in the industry. Forum Oxford discussions were distributed as 'news' in many companies like Nokia and Samsung at the time where management literally read what we wrote, on a daily basis, to see what the 'big gurus' were saying.

When Twitter became the de-facto digital home of that community - but reaching 10x larger expert audience - all who could comment on our discussions and debates - that ended Forum Oxford. Forum Oxford was like what individual BBS systems were to chat, before we had the internet and Facebook. Now the debate went to Twitter instead. Because each of our Forum Oxford friends and colleagues was also on Twitter - but had a FAR larger reach via TW and we got FAR wider discussion - making the debate even better.

I do not mean this as an advertisement for Twitter to you, I love it that you're here with me. Many of you who read this blog also are on Twitter and follow me there, and we have discussions here, on Twitter, in emails and in DM private messages on TW too. Thats all fine. Do whatever you like. But most who go to Twitter early on don't get it. It feels so incredibly random in the generic feed and when you once Tweet something, nothing happens and the character limit is annoying etc etc etc. I get it totally. I felt exactly the same. Now, if you still are on TW or you want to try it (again perhaps) then do this. Go to my Twitter page @tomiahonen and join one of my Twitter LISTS.

Take my largest list, Mobile Mobile Mobile (has 128 top mobilista experts including EVERYONE that I have ever mentioned on this blog haha). And just join the list and then follow that list. Don't look at the unfiltered Twitter feed it is total chaos. And if you have some dozens or hundreds of people you had followed but weren't sure exactly why or what, ignore those too. See what this list of Tomi's supergurus are saying. Right now, as i write this that list has Tweets from: Jonathan Stark, Rudy de Waele, Peter Vesterbacka, Jukka Eklund, Dave Birch, Osama Manzar, etc etc... They are ALL related to mobile or tech. And suddenly its a WEALTH of 'wow that is good info'. So Osama tweeted about how the language of Urdu reaches China. Dave talked about a website that is built using AI, Jukka about game developers for Barbie (yes, the toy). Peter of course talks about something latest with Angry Birds, Rudy about smart cities and Rolls Royce, while Jonathan Tweeted about targeting in marketing.

That Twitter feed is THE most valuable use of your time to see 'everthing' in mobile/tech that you may want - if you are a fan of the topics (the tech side, not the political side) of this blog. In fact, most of the topics I ever wrote about on this blog in the past 5 years, were prompted by something that those 128 mobilistas had Tweeted about. Try it. I don't mean you try to become 'me' or a big mobile guru. Try Twitter and Tomi's 'Mobile Mobile Mobile' list for a week on Twitter, to see does it bring you value. Its like try to imagine watching a broken TV set where CNN is visible but the news ticker feed is not visible. That you had watched CNN and never even know that a Headline News service was available and possible. Then imagine buying a new TV that is not broken, and suddenly you discover the headline news - it will be like the best thing ever ever EVER for any news junkie.

Thats what Twitter is. Every single day, before I come here, to my digital home - the CDB blog (long before I go into my email); I go to Twitter first. Not to see what the silly kids are now saying about some popstar's latest hairdo; I go to MY LIST and my gurus. What are they saying. What is Jukka Eklund Tweeting about or Rudy de Waele or Jonathan Stark etc. Because all of those - my colleagues - use Twitter exactly the same way - to be their PERSONAL breaking news 'ticker feed'. Whenever ANYTHING big happens in tech - before I write my blog, I mention it on Twitter. EVERY TIME. There is nothing in tech that gets you the breaking news of our industry faster and more thoroughly, globally, than Twitter. (Which is why all 24 hour news channels now monitor TW as their breaking news alert, ahead of what their competitor put on their TV screens).

Twitter is not, and cannot become a substitute for blogs. Twitter is not and cannot become Facebook. Twitter is a specialized supplement that enhances all other social media - because its best at delivering breaking news. So all 'news' happens on Twitter. And for us in digital, the beauty is, that most Tweets will include links to where some data or news article is now out, about that given matter. Like I often do on MY Twitter feed, if there is breaking news about say wearables, I may link to my blog about what I said about Apple Watch, etc. So for those who want the background on a news item, mostly on Twitter, you also have that. AND you hear from THE ultimate best experts on that given area, not second-hand from the CEOs of big companies or the talking heads of major consultancies who didn't do the thinking or the analysis. On Twitter you are exposed literally to the best minds, directly.

Now, you all have OTHER areas of passions, like for me say James Bond or Formula One or now, the US Presidential Election. For EVERY area, there are leading experts on Twitter. If your passion is the European football/soccer tournament or whatever, there is a bunch of best experts about that topic who are ALSO on Twitter. You can now personalize your Twitter feed to add those people (and remove some from Tomi's lists that you may not like to follow or who focus on a niche area that isn't to your interest).

If you want SECOND hand info, then you don't need Twitter. If you value FIRST HAND news, then you have to be on Twitter :-) And me, and anyone who wants a career as a 'guru' expert analysts forecaster pundit, I HAVE to be on Twitter because if I'm not there, nobody would take my opinions seriously anymore. I certainly have zero respect for anyone in tech who claims to be an expert but isn't on Twitter haha... (obviously in the English language, they have other Twitter rivals for Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc language groups)

With that endorsement of Twitter - its a COMPLIMENTARY service to this blog. My Twitter feed itself is HEAVY and overbearing. If you follow me its either total silence or OVERLOAD. I do Twitter-floods where I literally do hundreds - literally hundredS - of Tweets in a day - then I may go a week without a Tweet. But when I do my Twitterfloods, I go over ALL relevant news in tech, with live commentary as I read the Tweets (in chronological order) so typically I cover about a week of news. And I 'retweet' every RELEVANT item that I think my followers might be interested in, even if I personally am not passionate about that aspect. And I comment on those Tweets that I think need a comment - like say a given statistic that is published, and I point out why that given statistic is misleading (because it has this fault in its methodology or whatever) and then occasionally there are big items that shake 'our world' like now Nokia, and then I come here, write a blog about it, and tell my Twitter followers that now I have written a new blog about the Nokia story. So you may want to follow me but you may want to NOT follow me, because my Twitterfloods are a rough thing to absorb. BUT if you appreciate my thoughts on OUR industry, they will ALWAYS be first on TW before I come here to the blog to write more about it.

And if you are on TW or will now join (or rejoin) it - it is free haha - then do find me, I am @tomiahonen, just search and you found me, and follow me, and then send me the number for the Nokia forecast and you're entered into the contest (entry deadline is tomorrow Monday)

I get it many hate Twitter - I also did, until I 'understood' what it is, and what it is not. Now I cannot imagine life without Twitter. its possible you hadn't yet tried Twitter to its full power haha, and my Mobile Mobile Mobile list may be a good way to see the power of Twitter for a second look..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Pauli

Rest assured, my own forecast is done, I just don't want to publish it to 'poison' the purity of this experiment. Some might revise their numbers if they saw Tomi's number is significantly different haha. I will publish my number right after the contest has closed at the end of Monday. I will also publish all the contest entrants here so everybody can see the guesses and those who joined via Twitter, can verify I have their number correctly entered. And we have a good single place to see all the entrants, when we return to this contest in 2019 haha.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Abdul Muis]

@Tomi

I try Twitter once. What I hate is a real mess reading a twitter message. Very uncomfortable.

I wonder if you have try Google+ (https://plus.google.com/)
Google plus is like Twitter but with a longer message.
If Twitter is SMS, G+ is MMS.

Many that have Twitter account, also have G+ account.
ex. CNN https://plus.google.com/+CNNInternational, BBC https://plus.google.com/+BBCNews

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Abdul

I understand what you mean, but G+ is 'solving' exactly what is not the problem. The moment you allow longer messages, the power of TW is destroyed. Its like putting two sentences into one news item in a CNN News ticker. It HAS to be a headline. the moment its more than a headline, the purpose is muddled and the power is instantly ruined. Anything can be summarized into a headline of 140 characters. Everything beyond 140 characters is DETAIL. If you want to know the headlines only, and THEN decide what you want to read - this is EXACTLy the power of the Wall Street Journal front page (small headlines) and the far more powerful variant - CNN headline news ticker feed - and now the most powerful variant - Twitter.

If you want to read more than 140 characters, there are dozens of such services. The moment Twitter abandons 140 character limit, I leave and so do most others. its power is the CONCISE nature of ALL messages there. You should see my Twitter feed. If it allowed more than 140 characters I'd truly run out of time. That is not a fault, that is a benefit. We KNOW just like on CNN's headline news feed that it has NOTHING except headlines. 140 characters is a good way to achieve that.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

PS Abdul

of course I cheat. So often if i have something to say that doesn't fit nicely inside one Tweet of 140 characters, I continue the message into the next Tweet - and literally, I can easily send a 10 Tweet 'rant' about one issue - now I had 1,400 characters instead of 140 haha.. the limit doesn't stop me !!!!!

If you have not tried 'my way' as I outlined in the above, try it Abdul. Go to your old TW account, join my 128 Mobile Mobile Mobile list and follow that list for one week. If you think its not worth your while, no biggie. BUT imagine Abdul, if that actually 'is the best thing' like - for example I think - maybe you didn't know how to use Twitter when you were there. Like a person with an electric power drill, trying to use it as a hammer - very bad. But when someone shows you how to turn it on with electricity and drill holes - gosh, nothing makes holes better than an electric drill haha... Try it :-)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Abdul Muis]

@Tomi

"of course I cheat. So often if i have something to say that doesn't fit nicely inside one Tweet of 140 characters, I continue the message into the next Tweet - and literally, I can easily send a 10 Tweet 'rant' about one issue - now I had 1,400 characters instead of 140 haha.. the limit doesn't stop me !!!!!"

This is exactly the problem I hate with twitter.... When I read your message and see 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5, I have the difficulty of following the tweet. First, I must scroll to the first tweet (1/5), then read backward to the last tweet. It's really inconvenience, and make me wonder why not G+.

"The moment you allow longer messages, the power of TW is destroyed. Its like putting two sentences into one news item in a CNN News ticker. It HAS to be a headline. the moment its more than a headline, the purpose is muddled and the power is instantly ruined. Anything can be summarized into a headline of 140 characters. Everything beyond 140 characters is DETAIL."

Hmmmmm....
But you don't have to use all the character....
I mean, if twitter (or G+) offer up to 5000 character, you can limit yourself to 140 character if you want to use it as news ticker. It's like, if you live in USA, you don't have to buy a gun, even though you're allowed to buy a gun.

"If you have not tried 'my way' as I outlined in the above, try it Abdul. Go to your old TW account, join my 128 Mobile Mobile Mobile list and follow that list for one week. If you think its not worth your while, no biggie. BUT imagine Abdul, if that actually 'is the best thing' like - for example I think - maybe you didn't know how to use Twitter when you were there. Like a person with an electric power drill, trying to use it as a hammer - very bad. But when someone shows you how to turn it on with electricity and drill holes - gosh, nothing makes holes better than an electric drill haha... Try it :-)"

I wonder if you read your TW from computer or phone? In my experience, reading the TW from phone is very inconvenience if the the post have multiple part. Following the reply of multiple TW is even harder because some will reply to the first part, and some other will reply to the last part, and some small percentage will reply to the middle part. AND.... some reply will be multiple tweet.

[Nils]

i still have no idea who is doing what with this business structure.... T.T

So HMD has licensed the brand and is doing the what? strategy, specs, sales?. Foxconn is going to be sole supplier with the vietnamese factory from ms???
Whats with the OLED/ Sharp settings Foxconn has or hasnt (now).
if the dispaly is OLED only, can Foxconn do this without the koreans?
Foxconn wouldnt touch apple shares? so the target should be chinese and korean shares.

Who is doing marketing/ sales? How much say Foxconn actually has?

Arent the chinese subventions for the display market ending this year?

Br

[Zachary]

I too do not have tweeter haha
If i do later, will post it up there.
My guess is at 8.9%.

[Mika]

ChrisB,

Take EU supporting Finland in the aftermath of Nokia as a small return of what Finland pays to the EU yearly. We have been paying more than receiving for quite a long time, and still do.

But yes, today they sell Elop t-shirts with a "Thank you 2010-2015" message. This is a mockery of the older "Thank you 1939-1945" t-shirt which was dedicated to the Finnish WWII veterans without any sarcasm intended. So that gives you the idea.

My observations are that Finns are more pissed off to the bunch at helm before Elop and to the Board of Directors. If you ask me, the governing body of the company failed once burning platforms were announced by not firing Elop immediately after that. Then next in the sequence, the stockholders failed to take care of their investment (however, Nokia stock is publicly traded, and Finns didn't have a majority in the company anyways). Which makes it reek a bit of that Rauma-Repola Oceanics incident back in the 80s.

So there definitely are no sympathies toward Elop around here, but there are no sympathies for the former board of directors either. Siilasmaa, though, has pulled a rather good one.

Oh, what's Nokia's market share after 3 years? Guessing 7 % (and that's some "don't get your hopes too high up, son!" right there). But guessing is fun - it's only your personal biases at play right there! I'm also saying that Nokia is also growing its market share at that point. The only somewhat probable thing that we can convince ourselves to know is that they will likely have the phone available late 2016 or in the beginning of 2017, and that's it!

Great competition Tomi! (And yes, I do product design. I'm not an engineer, but a physicist)