WSj Report: Nokia CEO Considers Big Shake-Up on Friday 11th

My own $.02 prediction, for what it's worth: Symbian will essentially be EOL, though Elop won't come out and say that, and neither will the company. But by shifting resources away from Symbian, they're essentially let it die from benign neglect.
 
Yeah I could have accepted Android.

Our burning platform just exploded with us standing on it.

I can't believe they even entertained partnering with a company that lost so much marketshare, they're in the single-digits, even in the US.

Nokia lost marketshare and growth but no where near the complete f-up MS did and we think they'll be our saving grace?

Microsoft just won BIG.

Doesn't this crap have to be approved by the board? Can't believe they thought this was a good idea. I guess they're gunning for the buyout.
 
Going with WP7 vs Andriod is a smart choice. Many manufacturers already integrated Andriod into their phones & Nokia can't make a "difference" with Andriod. They will lose their identity.

WP7 is incomplete today, it is evolving and it has great potential. Nokia has the excellent opportunity to make WP7 perfect with all of their experience over the years. We all know how good they are with the hardware.. but my concern is the time to deliver this new WP7 Nokia phone. Two years is too long these days, there is a good chance that they may not be successful. They will still be in the market, but may not dominate like Andriod or iOS. They somehow need to do this in the next 6-9 months max.
 
They won't shut it down on Friday, they will move it into support over some period of time. Just my opinion. I could be way off.

It's a terrible shame because the Symbian OS is robust and very powerful but the UI is a messy, unmanageable 10 year old kluge job. Worse still, Nokia is paralyzed by the rate at which the competition's UI features are advancing. They are stuck in an impossible scope-creep situation where they are leap-fogged before they can even implement their catch-up software. They're basically being dragged by the competition's car.

This is not a problem that can be fixed by jumping to Android. There is a fundamental malfunction in corporate culture at Nokia that has to be addressed before anything else or they will get dragged to death.

Did you know that PR 1.1 was supposed to be delivered in December and 2.0 in January? Now it's February and 1.1, a minor series of bug fixes is just rolling out.

This is a product of bureaucracy. A situation in which every self-serving manager demands and gets a say but nobody is willing to take responsibility for anything.

There is a culture of innovation at Nokia. There's just an incredibly fat pig sitting on it. Elop has step one right. Big managerial purge. Nokia needs people with vision to take both command and responsibility.
 
Lol, if they can't do that with their own platforms, that's impossible with someone else's.

*Sigh*... I'll be around until my N8 is replaced.

Hey, all the best to Nokia, maybe this strategy will pay off, but I'm just not seeing it. Even in the long-term.

Heck, did any of the current platforms get any access to MS's services? Didn't sound like it...
 
I would be surprised. he can't very well use meego in the low and mid range. I doubt he is going to use android or wp7 in markets where symbian is strong.

Here is what I think he will say.

One, he will say they are sticking by Symbian and will step on the gas and start fixing it with qt. and i mean this year. The low end s40 platform will eventually be able to run full Symbian, even if it's a cut down version, as hardware advances.

Two, he will say that Meego is late, it needs more work, but it will have a future for folks who wish to upgrade from Symbian in markets where Symbian still is strong. He is going to say that Meego is 2012 and beyond platform.

Three, he is going to use wp7 that Microsoft is going to let him customize, so he can enter the NAM and capture some of the value here. If wp7 and nokia turns out to work, he may start migrating that strategy to Western Europe.

In short, Symbian stays and he steps on the gas to finally get it fixed. if it is EOL, it will take a long time to end Symbian's "life".
He puts the brakes on Meego but says it's a "future" that may appeal to Symbian upgraders.
He also might outline a tablet strategy based on Meego.
He is going to use wp7 as a way to get some share of NA and UK markets.
There is an outside chance that he may do something with Android, perhaps as an experiment.
He is going to take a machete to the Finnish bureaucracy. he needs to get some software developed. what are all these people doing?
 
The biggest two concerns I have are how long will it take for Nokia to get a WP7 device out, and how will Nokia be able to differentiate themselves without Samsung/LG/HTC getting to use their goods like maps?
 
I think Symbian's UI is at the point now where it's unmanageable. If anyone's interested, I can explain the problem after work today but I doubt I will have the time until then. Let me know because it's really very interesting, sad and stupid.

Symbian could well survive if Nokia can purge its software pipeline and start the new UI from scratch with a crack team and no bureaucracy. This would mean either (a) Going back on the promise to deliver UI changes to S^3 devices (b) Going back on the promise of ongoing S60 backwards compatibility or possibly both. They need to sever the UI ties to the past or they're not moving forward with Symbian.

As for MeeGo, it's in much better position but still in jeopardy for substantially the same reasons as Symbian. I think Elop is going to take over MeeGo with much closer personal oversight so that there's no feature creep and a very strong driving vision.



Nokia may well decide to put WP7 on phone, but I don't think MSFT will allow any customization beyond pre-loaded apps, for example, because it damages their interests in WP7. Moreover, like I said above, Nokia has a major malfunction in its software development process that means that any customizations they would ever hope to put on any OS would always be late, buggy and deficient.

They must fix their house before they can do anything. And if they can fix their house, they can make their own internal software properties work. Stepping on the gas isn't exactly the problem. It's that there's a brick wall in the way.

If Elop thinks that he can solve Nokia's problems with a third-party OS, he's going to drive the company into the ground all that much faster. This is particularly true if he thinks that he's going to gain an appreciable following in North America (or anywhere else in the world) on the back of Windows Phone 7.
 
Absolute rubbish.

I'm not sure what your agenda is, but you are the biggest spouter of ******** on the Symbian forum.

They've already got WP7 working on a prototype (that was actually said to run much better than Meego!) so this year is certain to see a WP7 phone from Nokia.
 
It does also goes on to say that Nokia *may* also show off an unfinished version of a Meego device at MWC (likely a tablet).

You know what I think? One of the stipulations of the deal with Microsoft may have been that in return for using WP7, along with 'financial incentives' from Redmond, that Nokia drop all Meego phone projects going forward.

Unless Intel picks up the ball and runs with it, Meego looks like it was mercy-killed by one of its parents.

And now I know why Nokia came out with that comment about how important the E7 was to them. Of course it is. It'll be the only thing that they'll really have to show off, and sell as a higher margin device, until they get a WP7 device ready and out to market.

It may not be until sometime next summer that you see a Nokia WP7 phone.

Man, I can't believe the predicament that this company finds itself in. Elop obviously thinks that the company's future viability as a going concern is at risk, if such a radical move is warranted. All the happy talk from the Symbian and Nokia side over the last few years has been just that, all talk.
 
Why because I have been saying that symbian can't compete. That Nokia's marketshare will sink if they stick with symbian. That Meamo/meego was a pipe dream for nokia. That its current offerings are less than adequate compared to the competitors offerings.

oh wait that is all true...
RIP Symbian...
 
WP7 was a great move. Nokia even has the liberty to make more customisations to the OS than any other manufacturer. That pretty much means you get all the benefits of WP7 along with anything else Nokia wants to include, and any interface changes they might want to make. Looking at the similarities between the MeeGo tablet demos and WP7's tile interface, we could see the tiles replaced by mini apps. Nokia has a great opportunity to differentiate themselves with WP7. Unfortunately, it also means that Nokia WP7 phones might be on a different update schedule.
 
If Meego gets replaced by WM7, I'm gonna be beyond ****ed. WM7 does nothing for me, plus I've been waiting forever for a N900 successor on AT&T.


I'll wait for the "Official" announcement before blowing up...
 
If another manufacturer wanted to customize, I'd bet MSFT would (or would let them). MSFT's goal is to sell more WP7, so why wouldn't they cooperate with anyone who would help them sell more?
 
First of all it's about time. Secondly Nokia needs a new OS and application ecosystem and even if its dead last right now it's better than what Nokia has. Microsoft is dead last and needs to get some phones into people's hands or the software ecosystem isn't going anywhere. It would have nice if Nokia took on WebOS, but WinMo 7 is any day better than Symbian.
 
Back
Top