Is Nokia on the way out?

[Myshra]

This recent article has had me thinking recently and while I doubt parts of it (skype bit is a bit off to me) the main point of the article rings pretty true to me and I'm a bit worried about them. They have punted out profit warnings and bet the farm on an OS that doesn't sell even as well as the one they just slaughtered (an eye-watering 1 WP7 is sold for every 15 Symbian according to the article).

This brings the market to an interesting point, the giant of the industry who once sold a quarter of a billion 1100s and pretty much owned the best handset at each pricepoint is now faced with extreme fall-off-a-cliff-style-demand of their highest profit devices while being eaten alive in the mid by Android/Bada and being slapped around in the low end by pretty much anyone (but especially samsung). Nokia are seriously strong in the UK, nearly everyone on this forum will probably have owned one at some time in their life (their sales are that strong) but times have changed and the truely breakthrough devices they were once known for are sadly long gone. I don't think we will see an 7/8110 slider, 3210 or N95 coming out in Q3.

I honestly do think Nokia had troubles (playing business units off against each other as competition strikes me as odd) but it also had some of the strongest design in the industry, an OS that was stable and a sipper of battery compared to the current gorgers and at least they sold an absolute crapload of them even if they weren't cutting edge. Also, where's the Nokia tablet? I see the apple, motorola, samsung, HTC, RIM and even Archos offerings but where was Nokias move? Hell they used to make TVs, a tablet can't be that hard to make. Asus made one, talk about small handset players.

Do you think Elop kill the giant or was the destined to happen thanks to their "business units who compete" strategy / OS neglect? Can they survive? Would you have killed off the best selling OS to replace it with the lowest selling one? Will you consider a Nokia WP7 this Q3? Q3 is incidentally a peak moment for the industry (iphone 5, end of first 24 month contract wave), think they can grab some market share back?

 

[Robbo]

Nokia have a problem because they decided to try and fight the high-end phone battle against iOS and Android with Symbian, which hasn't worked at all. The Symbian sales only look good because they are on dirt cheap phones that are popular.

Thankfully, they've taken WP7 on board now and a combination of the Microsoft/Nokia brand names should help shift phones, the WP7 software is decent.

I've heard rumours recently that Samsung are looking to buy them out, I can't see it happening but you never know.

I think they'll survive, Microsoft know what they are doing and they will benefit each other.

 

[Streeteh]

In my eyes, Nokia will boost WP7 in a massive way. The software is excellent but the hardware for WP7 phones is generally lacking. Nokia have in my eyes have always had at least one brilliantly manufactured phone on the market at all times, which is exactly what WP7 needs.

Even Nokias latest smartphone was incredibly well built, it just had symbian which sucked.

I can see Apple obviously pushing iOS, HTC holding the 'high end' Android market afloat, Samsung keeping the 'low end' Android market and Nokia becoming the main platform for WP7.

 

[Tunney]

Elop has made a bold gamble. Either Windows Phone will revamp Nokia's fortunes or it will kill the company. There's unlikely to be a middle-ground.

Was he naive to announce the deal before Nokia had a product to ship? Almost certainly but hindsight makes geniuses of us all.

Nokia have been ahead of the curve on so many technologies - smartphones, touch-screen phones, tablets, app stores, etc. - but they've failed to execute on their vision. Things were a lot easier when they were a small company churing out a limited range of products. Their business hasn't scaled well and they've ended up with too many layers of management who don't care enough about the end result.

The Symbian sales only look good because they are on dirt cheap phones that are popular.

There's as many, if not more, dirt cheap Android phones out there. That's part of the problem for Nokia.

 

[Rroff]

They will only go under if they are stubbon and stupid, they've always had a lot to offer but sticking with symbian isn't gonna work for them, if they are flexible and bend with the market they have every potential to turn a decent profit.

 

[sarge78]

Everyone's next upgrade will be a Nokia Communicator running Windows 8.

You heard it here first!

Nothing can stop them, enslaving the young and destroying the old. Run to the hills, run for your lives!

 

[kona786]

Nokia should have been smart and dipped it's toes in both WP7 and Android. But there was obviously politics and special handshakes going on thus it never happened.

I never owned a Nokia before as I always though Symbian felt clunky - Android is definitely my smartphone OS of choice - and many others feel the same.

I don't believe WP7 will bring success to Nokia any time soon.

 

[tomk11]

To be honest, Like Kona786 and many others, I will hardly consider a phone which isn't android. The Nokia N8 was possibly my favourite piece of hardware (phonewise) ever, yet I'd never but it due to sybian.

Perhaps in a few years when WP7 has matured and there are more apps I might reconsider, but I fear it will have the same restrictions as IOS. I definitely wouldn't but I WP7 device this year.

 

[SKILL]

WP7 is an odd one, personally not a fan of the tile ui, but other than that it appears to be a decent solid os, yet essentially it's an odd option, people looking at smartphones appear to be either going for iPhones or Android, iirc MS lost market share overall in the last quarter (at least in US) which isn't a good sign of them becoming a big player,

And on that note I think Nokia are insane, Android has good and bad points but ultimately it's outselling everything else and quickly becoming the market leader, doing Android + WP7 would make sense but pinning a companies hopes on an OS with single-digit market share and no real growth is madness,

but on the other hand Nokia is, and will be for a good while yet, a massive name in the phone market, they will sell whatever WP7 phone they produce, it just depends how much, and how late that is/how many of their fans have gone for iPhone/Android before they get it out...

 

[killianzz]

Personally I think windows phone 7 needed a flagship manufacturer, and who better than the giant that is Nokia. I believe that for windows 7 to really grow, it needed a big company to get them onto the shelf of every phoneshop.

I somewhat see the sense of Nokia's decision, rather than joining the android game late they've gone for the 'potentially' bigger market share of having a relatively exclusive OS.

a lot of average joe consumers don't read into market shares of different operating systems. They see a massive company (nokia) running a good looking OS made by an even bigger company (microsoft). With 2 colossal companies you can be sure of a top notch marketing scheme. Dont get me wrong, I think it is a totally gutsy move, but for that reason I respect their decision. Before you bite my head off, this is only my opinion.

EDIT: I don't know of any low end WP7 handsets, so that could play out to be quite interesting?

 

[grudas]

in 10 years a 15 year old "duh what is nokia? is that some kind of "brick" phone that exsisted when i was 5 years old? lolzz" remember the alcatel? trium? Sony(before they joined with erricsson)?

 

[Owenb]

Thankfully, they've taken WP7 on board now and a combination of the Microsoft/Nokia brand names should help shift phones, the WP7 software is decent.

I've heard rumours recently that Samsung are looking to buy them out, I can't see it happening but you never know.

I think they'll survive, Microsoft know what they are doing and they will benefit each other.

I don't think it will be as successful as some hope- unless the carrier's really push it(apparently they wanted Nokia to go with MS to give Google competition). There are already some good WP7 phones but nobody is buying them. The same companies that are selling millions of Android phones are only selling hundreds of thousands of WP7 phones.

Also I am not sure how much either brand is really worth. Nokia were synonyms with mobiles but that has changed- when I think mobile now I think-"Apple, Google/Android, HTC, Samsung". Also the brand isn't anywhere near as big in the US as it is in Europe(sorta the inverse of Motorola). And of course most people have fairly negative memories of Windows Mobile- and people in general have never taken MS to heart.

 

[Evilpaul]

Nokia were the go to mobile company, but as the market matured they have failed to keep up. 10 years ago they were the hardware innovators when the software didn't matter too much. 5 years ago they had decent hardware and Symbian was the most polished mobile platform. Now, they still do decent hardware, but Symbian failed to evolve into the non-stylus touch screen era. It became a dog to work with and other companies seized the opportunity to make waves.

Despite what the press says, Nokia are still the worlds biggest mobile phone company and they are not going to die any time soon. They will lose market share against Samsung, Motorola, et al. but they will come out fighting next year.
They have made a bold choice to jump onto Windows Phone 7, and drop MeeGo, but from my experiences it looks a decent platform. They do hold the future in their own hands, but it will come down to how well can produce and price their offerings, and how well they handle no longer being the "big fish" manufacturer.

 

[Myshra]

EDIT: I don't know of any low end WP7 handsets, so that could play out to be quite interesting?

Essentially there is no such thing as entry requirements (1gig chips arnt cheap, big screen) stop it from being in existence. They will rely on their other OSes for this.

 

[AbsenceJam]

I'm curious to see if Windows phones can manage to do okay as business phones as the OS seems well integrated in that respect, other than that I don't see them getting much market share really. Who here actually wants one? They can't really do much to distinguish themselves from the iOS and Android phones.

 

[SKILL]

Personally I think windows phone 7 needed a flagship manufacturer, and who better than the giant that is Nokia. I believe that for windows 7 to really grow, it needed a big company to get them onto the shelf of every phoneshop.

I somewhat see the sense of Nokia's decision, rather than joining the android game late they've gone for the 'potentially' bigger market share of having a relatively exclusive OS.

a lot of average joe consumers don't read into market shares of different operating systems. They see a massive company (nokia) running a good looking OS made by an even bigger company (microsoft). With 2 colossal companies you can be sure of a top notch marketing scheme. Dont get me wrong, I think it is a totally gutsy move, but for that reason I respect their decision. Before you bite my head off, this is only my opinion.

EDIT: I don't know of any low end WP7 handsets, so that could play out to be quite interesting?

You could be right, especially with Microsoft $'s behind the marketing campaign and the known Nokia name,

However when looking specifically at smartphones are Nokia really well regarded by the general public? Symbian was big yes, but at times nokia's definition of a 'smartphone' was slightly different to what we now view as smartphones, eg iPhones and the higher end 'all-screen' Android's...

Microsoft definitely aren't well regarded after the previous windows mobile versions, my sister bought herself a samsung 'smartphone' based on the old version of windows a couple of years ago, she hated it with a passion so even as someone who has had lots of nokia's over the years there is no way she'd touch a nokia wp7 phone, and I doubt she's alone in that

Can marketing overcome that and produce a great selling handset to really catapult WP7 back into the game, and give some more life to Nokia, I'd hate to guess, I think it's going to be interesting especially as it's release date is looking to be around the same time as both the iPhone 4S/5 and Ice Cream Sandwich which will no doubt bring with it a new wave of Android handsets...

 

[Martynt74]

Do Nokia still do any modern day phones in the guise of the old 8800? I used to love my old Sirocco even if the actual phone was a pile of crap in most ways bar its looks

 

[Tunney]

Do Nokia still do any modern day phones in the guise of the old 8800? I used to love my old Sirocco even if the actual phone was a pile of crap in most ways bar its looks

No, there isn't. Unless you're willing to fork out £5,000+ for a Vertu phone.

 

[Gibbs-UK]

I thought Nokia was taking on the Linux based OS, don't know if that was true or not?

 

[Fillado]

Thing is, most people don't realise just how advanced Symbian was/is. Just go compare an N95 to an original iPhone. It is STILL the only mobile OS that does FULL multitasking (by that, I mean not through specific APIs (iOS) or by invoking a service separate to the app (Android)) along without destroying battery life. It is the only OS that ships with a proper filesystem and built in file manager. I could go on listing ways that iOS and Android have been having to play major catchup to the functionality of Symbian.

Which is why Nokia is in the position it is now in.

In the 4 years since the original iPhone was announced, Nokia have barely moved. While the others were playing catchup to Symbian's functionality, Symbian should've been playing catchup in the UI/UX. Instead they initially slapped on touch to normal Symbian, and then messed around making it open source while minorly improving it to what we have now as Symbian^3 (or whatever they want to call it).

Slow is the very definition of Nokia today. Heck it's taken them 2 years (only just released) to add the ability to update apps in the Ovi Store.

Going to Windows Phone doesn't help. They are now with an OS that is still functionally deficient, has very little app support and seems to be moving at a fairly slow pace. Plus, dare I mention it, "Windows" is that unexciting thing you run on your PC. iOS/Android are exciting. "Windows" isn't.