“With Nokia expected to unveil a shift in its long term strategy at the company’s annual Capital Markets Day this Friday, it should be no surprise that rumor and conjecture are rife,” Steve O’Hear reports for TechCrunch. “Much of that has focused on whether or not the Finnish mobile giant will be adopting a third-party platform with talk of Windows Phone 7 given new CEO Stephen Elop’s previous connection with Redmond. A rumor that our well-placed sources would appear to confirm – see below.”
“But we’re also hearing that Nokia is planning to lay down stronger roots in Silicon Valley too – like so many a European tech outfit… And in what looks like preparing the troops for a major change of direction, an internal Nokia memo titled ‘Standing on a burning platform’ has been doing the rounds,” O’Hear reports. “The widely distributed circular penned by Elop himself is a description of Nokia’s somewhat precarious position – and I say that as someone who has been fairly bullish on the handset maker’s recent products.”
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs, pyromaniac.
O’Hear reports, “Specifically, our sources say that the memo paints a picture of a smartphone market in which Apple owns the high end, Android is winning in the mid-range, and Chinese competitors – MediaTek is singled out – are likely to snatch the low end. In other words, Nokia is being attacked on all fronts. Symbian and MeeGo are cited as simply not being competitive enough. Instead, the choices facing the company, as hinted at by Elop in Nokia’s recent earnings call, are to ‘build, catalyse or join’ – the implication, says one source, is that to build is a reference to Symbian or Meego, catalyse refers to Windows Phone 7 and join would mean Android.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Going from MeeGo to MeToo is not a winning strategy, it’s merely a survival strategy. It’s wholly unsurprising that Microsoftie Elop would chose such a route.
Here we go
Wait for it………
Microsoft & Nokia in Bed
Is it possible to count the number of ways the iPhone has changed the world? I never could have imagined such a stunning transformation in my wildest dreams.
Mister Softie and Nokia in bed together will provide endless voyeuristic giggles. I’m gonna love this one.
If they go Android or Windows Phone 7, it should be an attempt to stay afloat while they design their own decent OS — lest they become another HTC. And there’s only so much money to be made when you’re dealing in a commodity market.
Personally I hope they take up Windows Phone 7 and not Android. More competition is always a good thing, and two party races rarely work out well in my opinion (just look at our current political system). A three party race may force cooperation, and stop one from becoming totally dominant.
“build, catalyse or join’ – the implication, says one source, is that to build is a reference to Symbian or Meego, catalyse refers to Windows Phone 7 and join would mean Android.”
That’s exactly how I interpreted Elop’s comments during the earnings conference call. However, in his other comments it seemed obvious that “catalyse” is his favored choice. Symbian will stay at the low end. WP7 will replace Meego on high-end handsets, and Meego might stay for tablets.
When will people get it?
It’s not just the OS that matters it’s the entire ecosystem: OS + Media/App Shop/Library + Device = success
Or to put it another way:
iOS + iTunes + iPhone/ iPad/ iPod Touch = Apple
Aaaargh..
It’s not like they don’t get it at the moment.. It’s more like they don’t have it.
I hope they go with wp7, not a widely adopted platform, but we more alternatives than android, and MS and Nokia together have the numbers to theoretically a viable alternative. I would hate android be a defacto standard.
Jumping from the fire to the turbo blast furnace.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.
NoSoft introduces: The Blue ‘Flip O’Death’ Gripper phone ‘E’ Series with a pop out QUIRKY keypad!
They didnt get it when they needed to, and now they have got it, its too frickin late.
Nokia will not be able to build an OS and an App store because its all over – Apple, and in a somewhat f**ked up way, Google, have
won.
Microsoft? Game over – like volunteering to go down on the Titanic.
“Nokia CEO Elop: We’re standing on a burning platform” and Apple is above us holding an iOS blow torch to burn us and all Android junk knockoffs to hell. Help, monkey boy, help.
Nokia will have no choice but to join the evil empire based in Redmond; or else fade into irrelevance. Their entire mobile phone lineup is very old school and looks very tired, fit for the bottom end of the market where profits are thin on the ground.
MS offers the only real hope for a new beginning, a new chapter in the Windows Phone 7 drama that’s only now being written.
Combine the N8 with the Kinect; now that’s what I call a barnstorming idea in the best traditions of the original barnstormers in the 1920’s.
Of course an idea of this magnitude can only ever come out of the nut of Ballmer’s bald head.
Am I the only one who finds the name “Meego” rather like the acronym MEGO – “My eyes glaze over”?
That Yahoo money is burning a hole in their pocket.
If it weren’t for the Euro red-tape MS would have bought Nokia by now.
Funny, funny stuff. Looks like we’re officially down to 4 (that matter).
* iOS
* Android (the wannabe iOS and “Hey, look at all our features that geeks will love, but might confuse regular people.”)
* Windows 7 (“When it comes to apps, less is more. Uh, unless we’re talking about the Mac, where less is less. Look at the monkey! Look at the monkey!!”)
* Blackberry (Phone plus typewriter — exciting!)
http://taketotask.wordpress.com/
I can’t believe Nokia’s Board of Directors and shareholders are swallowing this BS. Nokia is probably the only company that has a chance of competing with Apple using internal resource – i.e. their own hardware designs and their own software. Tossing one of these out the window is an act of desperation and will be perceived as such by customers. Why would I buy a Nokia Android phone over Sammy, HTC, LG, etc. etc.? Or a Nokia Windows phone. Everything that differentiates Nokia will be gone.
Unlike Motorola’s cellphone business, Nokia is not quite at death’s door and shouldn’t resort to such extremes. At least RIM is trying to improve their own product in house, although it doesn’t look like they’ll succeed in time.
Obviously, Elop is the Manchurian CEO, sent to destroy Nokia from within and it looks like he’s making a good start.
Here’s hoping that they “build” for as long as it takes.
@Famous Grouse,
I totally disagree. There are currently 3 viable mobile platforms:
iOS
Android
WP7
WP7 is only on the viable list because Microsoft will continue to pour money into it, build out the ecosystem, and bring on hardware partners who can take the same Android phone and put WP7 on it and sell it as another option.
As great as iOS is, there is still a very large lucrative market for the remaining scraps. Look at the MP3 player market…Apple dominates, but there’s still room for the scraps.
RIM is dead. They won’t be able to transition from typewriter phones to the new generation. Slowly as people give up on their old phones, they’ll migrate over. There is no upgrade or transition path for RIM. It’s why all their attempts to date have failed. If you own an old Blackberry, you may be ready to give up the typewriter, but that means you’re starting from scratch and there’s no downside at that point to going with the best platform (iOS). This is different from switching to Mac wherein a user may see that OS X is superior, but they own a bunch of Windows 7 software and accessories, plus already know how to use Windows, etc…
Nokia is in the same boat as RIM. There’s no new generation user base. No ecosystem. Symbian isn’t up to the task. Meego could be developed into a usable platform, but where’s the user base, the ecosystem, the developers, the apps, the content, the accessories, etc…
What competitive advantage would Nokia have over someone offering Android or WP7? It would be purely disadvantage as the new platform would lack everything built to date around Android and even WP7.
It’s worth looking at why people bought Nokia phones and where their strengths and weaknesses are. Nokia could build high-spec phones and phones that could be used to protect tanks. Nokia could never build phones with a decent interface, create an ecosystem, or get decent app development.
So their best bet for survival is to give up on the company that could’ve been if Jobs was their CEO or if Jonathan Ive worked for them, but instead prepare to scale down and continue to build highly durable tank protecting dumb phones along with joining in with WP7 and Android.
I hope they talk to HP before they make any stupid mistakes.
Hmm, I wonder what Intel is thinking right now? Weren’t they all aroused by MeeGo not too long ago?
Damnit Nokia, you want to be successful? Then make your own smartphone OS, make it original, and make it good! That’s how Apple did it for god’s sake, how hard is it to grasp the concept!?
Sigh.
Apple’s first true competitor will be whoever actually understands their philosophy instead of blindly copying their products.
@ Burning platform
Hum… dude, you are talking about Fl… I mean Elop.
Look at his pedigree: Macromedia, Adobe, Microsoft…
With THAT legacy, what can you expect?
Nokia has already passed the oblivion tipping point. Now, there will be a bunch of fanfare and alliances announced to artificially delay the inevitable. Ships and icebergs don’t mingle well. Nokia will be acquired or simply sink by 2013.