“Although Stephen Elop is waiting until a Feb. 11 investor meeting to fully outline the company’s new strategy, he offered a few tantalizing hints during Thursday’s earnings conference call,” Ina Fried reports for AllThingsD.
“Elop hinted at a change in the company’s strategy for the high-end, which has focused on the Symbian operating system with a planned shift to the mobile Linux-based Meego operating system,” Fried reports. “He didn’t give specifics, but did draw a distinction between the low and high-end of the markets, suggesting a dual-OS strategy may still be the plan.”
“Although Elop didn’t name any names, he did talk about the need for the company to ‘build or join a competitive ecosystem,’ suggesting that it might be open to shifting to a competing platform. And while he wouldn’t confirm such a move, he said that the company could pull off such a switch because of its strong brand and relationship with operators,” Fried reports. “Among the possibilities that have been suggested are Android and Windows Phone 7. The company has also cancelled or delayed plans for two U.S. smartphones, suggesting that a change may be afoot. ‘We made a decision to not proceed as people thought we would proceed,’ Elop said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Thank you, Mr. Obvious.
Fried reports, “Earlier in the day Nokia reported that December quarter profit fell 20 percent as the company ‘faced significant challenges’ and lower margins… ‘Clearly there is a pattern of disappointments in the United States,’ Elop said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Clearly.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we’ve said before: Nokia should concentrate on their specialty — crap margin, low-end, mechanical-buttoned candy bar cellphones — hope they can coast along on emerging markets while they try to figure out what businesses to try next (kitchen appliances? floor wax? breakfast sausages?) before the money runs out.
How much is their frivolous litigation Against Apple, which will result in naught, cost their shareholders?
@breeze
Nokia is hoping to win their suit against Apple so they gain access to IOS in the settlement.
Nokia days are over and there symbian thingy. It was nice while it lasted, all my cell phones where nokia because of the easy menu…but they dind’t kept up with the tech evolution, or wanted to make things better. It’s like MS, same old s*it different looks.
silverhawk:
High hopes for deep slopes, they’d be better off spending the millions litigation will cost them on alternative energy.
Great so now what happens to the Qt libraries????
just my $0.02
Funny how they managed to ship and sell more smartphones than ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD.
Once again, Apple’s business plan is proving correct: build devices that your customers love and are easy to use, and don’t worry about being all things to all people, because you can’t. Just because you can sell something doesn’t mean you should.
Nokia is simply providing a lot more of a big chunk of market share Apple can take on it’s way to global domination
MDN should run a new poll asking which OS Nokia will adopt, WP7 or Android. I’m betting on WP7.
Until now they do not understand what “SIMPLICITY” means!!!!
Africa awaits with bated breath the next piece of turd Nokia burner dumbphone.
They are the Dells of phone makers…maybe they should team up with Dell and create the ultimate turd….
If Nokia looks at the non-market share for WP7 they should be smart enough not license it; that leaves android.
Nokia makes solid hardware, and their phones work very well for actually making voice calls.
Shouldn’t “We made a decision to not proceed as people thought we would proceed”
instead be:
We made a decision to not proceed as we previously said we would proceed.
@Branedy,
Drop “smart” from your sentence and it’s true. Cell phones, period – not smart phones.
Dessert topping and floor-wax combined??
“Delicious! And just look at that shine!!”
@ silverhawk
The big legal question mark over Android’s status could make that a risky proposition. If Oracle wins their lawsuit against Google over Android, Nokia could end up chained to a dead-end platform if they go with Android.
I agree, though, that the “non-market share” for WP7 would make it equally risky for them to go that route. So I suppose it’ll come down to whichever course of action they think has the least risk attached to it. And given the Elop-Microsoft connection, I think that might tilt the outcome slightly in favor of WP7.
I was just thinking about Microsoft’s 2M WP7 licenses shipped and it occurred to me that Nokia is going to adopt WP7. Here’s why:
Let’s do the math……okay, so 2M shipped licenses by year-end, or 11.5 weeks after launch, but surely some of those are to fill channel inventory. They don’t say what the actual sell-thru is to customers.
We also know that they had shipped 1.5M licenses in 6 weeks. So, we can conclude that in the final 5.5 weeks of the year, the incremental change was only 500k. Either, sales were dropping off a cliff during the Xmas shopping season, or, if sales were steady, one might conclude that the full 1.5M units were to fill the channel, 500k units were sold by year-end and 500k units were sent to refill those units actually sold.
We also know that Microsoft is known for stuffing the channel at year-end to meet analyst expectations. Remember the 10M Xbox 360s that Microsoft promised a couple years ago? Then they shipped 500k units over the next 6 months as retailers had boxes to the ceiling.
In other words, the 2M units shipped is Microsoft’s very best spin, given their channel-stuffing inventory-hiding ways, and it’s still pretty pathetic given the amount of launch money spent. This is not quite Kin territory but it’s close! I wonder if they’ll hint at a partnership with Nokia, since Elop laid a big hint that they may have decided to switch OSes.
I think Microsoft will subsidize Nokia’s switch to WP7, because Ballmer will not blame WP7 for failing, he’ll blame their OEMs. He’ll decide that he needs a partner worthy of Microsoft and WP7, and so he’ll elop with Nokia.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> This is a bit of the Zune story all over again, but instead of outsourcing the Zune to Toshiba, they’ll partner with Nokia.
While Nokia is a failure here in the US, they have a huge following internationally, particularly in the BRIC countries. Microsoft will see that they are fighting an uphill battle in the US, and that the pickings are easier to gain traction internationally where they may not be as far behind. That’s where Nokia has a chance.
Good luck to the happy couple!
“but did draw a distinction between the low and high-end of the markets, suggesting a dual-OS strategy may still be the plan.”
By the time they get there, Apple’s iOS devices will own both the high-end AND the low-end of the market (which they almost do already).