Microsoft Surface

[Jammrock]

Personally I think they did it to force OEMs away from the same old designs. Apple's hardware has been the de facto standard for a long time and few PC makers have even attempted to compete at that level. The Surface, I think, is designed to set the bar for Windows=based tablets. A put up or shut up kind of move.

I think Nokia took the deal because they knew Symbian couldn't compete with the likes of Apple iOS and Android with Samsung and HTC so heavily backing them. The Microsoft deal ensured they would have cash on hand during a transition off Symbian and would make them the premier WP provider. Whether that bet pays off or not depends on whether WP8 can gain traction in the market once the Windows 8 platform is out.

[dZeus]

I've heard that reasoning for Nokia more often, but I find it hard to believe.

Nokia was incredibly rich before they decided to get Elop in. They had so much cash that they even spend around 27 billion € on dividend and share buybacks over the years.

They had a strategy which probably would pay off in the long haul; a common framework (QT) to design apps for their platforms (Symbian, Meego). If they wanted to hedge bets, they could also carry Windows Phone like the other phone OEMs are doing (Samsung, LG, HTC).

What happened was that Elop entered Nokia, did not much for a while and then suddenly announced that Meego and Symbian were dead in the water, killing off both platforms. Instead, he'd like to focus on a third party phone OS from a company that had never had any success in the cell phone market before, and hadn't proven itself with its latest offering. This led to a complete nosedive of Nokia's market-share in the cellphone markets and has nearly killed Nokia as a company completely. Before the announcement, Nokia was losing ground with Symbian and Meego in relative market-share, but not in absolute amounts sold.

In fact, Meego kept continuing to sell extremely well compared to their Windows Phone 7.x devices (often outselling them), even though they were not sold in many markets, lacked marketing budget and despite that the Nokia N9 comes with ancient hardware specs. On the other hand we have Windows Phone 7.x, which has a nice GUI but lacks most features that make Symbian even a more advanced smartphone OS; WP 7.x is more of a feature-phone OS that lacks basic smartphone stuff like multitasking, having storage that can act as a USB mass storage device, etc.

It's my view that Elop and Nokia's board of directors killed Nokia due to incompetence and maybe some malicious intent by certain parties.

[UtwigMU]

With Nokia I'm also surprised how they announced death of Symbian so quickly. While no Windows phone was in sight.

This is basically telling people: Don't buy Symbian phones. While the Symbian phones are more feature phones than smart phones they still have market:
- people who don't want touch
- people who want cheaper phones
- people who want their phone to primarily be good at making calls and writing SMSes.

For example Slovenia is advanced market (S3 is launched here before some USA carriers launched it) and Nokia is very popular here. Yet untill couple of months ago there was no Windows Nokia available for purchase. And while I personally know several people with iPhones 4, Galaxies S2 and S3 I haven't seen a single Windows Nokia phone.

I read blogs how reasoning for killing Symbian and Meego was that Symbian was obsolete and Meego was too far away. But Windows phones are still a year and a half latter not widely available and the early adopters have already been screwed (no upgrade from 7 to 8). If by any chance Windows phone takes off, HTC, Samsung and others will jump in the Windows phone market.

I wouldn't discount Nokia completely. They as a company exist since 1871 and have been making rubber boots, tyres, TVs, CRTs (Nokia CRTs were some of the best) and have reinvented themselves many times. Also they emerged victorious out of 2nd generation of phones (anyone still remember Ericcson, Simens, Alcatel, Sagem?)

[UtwigMU]

Did some read-up on the Nokia. Here are interesting bits:

Here is a summary thread:

http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43991&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=195

Elop knew Windows Phone 7 won't be upgradeable to 8
When exec left Microsoft there was usually chair throwing, when Elop went to Nokia there was no such thing and he signed Nokia completely to MS
MS got Nokia patents in exchange for 1 billion in WP licenses
MS got ARM architecture licence and are probably working on their own phone
The Maemo team got fired
Symbian is killed
The Lumias are not selling even as much as their occasionally bad Symbian launch (we could move 2-3 million phones if we flipped the switch, with Lumias they cannot move more than 200.000 when they flip the switch).
Noka is selling IP to keep afloat, they sold off Vertu
There was a similar case with Sendo (who signed up for MS (MS invested 10% in them and promised cash) and then when PocketPC phone flopped went Symbian but since they were out of cash, they went bankrupt and were acquired by Motorola)

The board may fire Elop in 6-12 months but their IP is gone, their maemo team fired, their marketshare down - remember what happened to Matrox when they closed Boca Raton and started licencing their IP and their marketshare dropped bellow 1%


Damn, Matrox, Thinkpads, Nokia, why do all the products I like die

[VJ]

I never understood why people were bashing Symbian so much. It seemed that for many people, no phone without a touchscreen could be "smart". But my now 8 year old Nokia 6260, which ran Symbian could do everything I expect from a smart phone. It lacked a bit behind in hardware (but at that time, large memory and wifi were not common in phones), but the software more than made up for it, from decent browsers to mailclients and good third party software. I basically upgraded it, as the lack of wifi meant all data transfer had to be via GPRS - but it still is my back up phone.

Nokia should just have focussed on making non-touchscreen phones with rich functionality using Symbian (there was a large user base, many free softwares, huge development backing, ...).

Anyone thinking that MS might be considering a buyout of Nokia? Or that they are "plundering" it by getting IP and patents...?

[Umfriend]

I could not care less about MS entry into tablets. I just wish that they would manufacture Sidewinder Precision Pro FFB joysticks again.

[cjolley]

I could not care less about MS entry into tablets. I just wish that they would manufacture Sidewinder Precision Pro FFB joysticks again.

Spoken like a true MURCer