Nokia: Microsoft Must Evolve To Make Windows Phone a Success 230
DavidGilbert99 writes "Microsoft's priorities are Windows, Office, Xbox, and Surface. Windows Phone is no where near the top and that is the main reason why it has failed to make the impact many hoped for in the three years it has been around. While Microsoft can take the hit and play the long-game, the same cannot be said for Nokia, the other main player in the eco-system. While it has done all it can to evolve the platform, it needs Microsoft to step up and begin innovating. Bryan Biniak, Nokia VP, agrees: 'We are trying to evolve the cultural thinking [at Microsoft] to say 'time is of the essence.' Waiting until the end of your fiscal year when you need to close your targets, doesn't do us any good when I have phones to sell today.'"
but but but.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wasn't the reason to go with Microsoft that you could customize more(hence not need ms to greenlight api's) than, say, your own OS or android?
in Finland we have this saying ":D".
(Sure, for Nokia developing for windows phone is probably cheaper than the other platforms but that's just because "can't do it" is the line instead of "yes we can!").
Putting out fires (Score:5, Interesting)
I only know 2 people who bought windows phones (Score:4, Interesting)
One is a guy who used to teach MCSE classes. The other a grandma out at the community garden.
The MCSE guy won't say anything bad about MS, but he did ditch the windows phone and get an android one.
The grandma didn't know what she was purchasing, and is very disappointed that none of the things her daughter can do with her phone (iphone) can run on the windows phone.
Tiny sample size, but that is about all there is. Looking at the logs for the captive portal at work (10,000 students), windows phone doesn't even make up 1% of logins.
Its dead MS. Give it up.
As for Nokia, they are moribund too. Terrible management. Not sure anything can prevent Nokia from becoming a zombie patent troll now.
Re:Good luck .. (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO:
This is extra sucky because I feel that Windows Phones and Windows Tablets offer, hands down, the best "mobile" experience. Their interface is truly great for tablets/phones, but they arrives too little/too late to the scene. If they hadn't had such a mess internally the first time around in regards to tablets, things might have turned out VERY different.
I absolutely love using their interface in a "touch" environment. If they can somehow figure out how to...yaknow...actually succeed, I will definitely have no qualms about buying their devices in the future.
Re:Good luck .. (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft evolve? Wrong metaphor! Repent and rehabilitate... maybe. I shall not hold my breath.
The Microsoft business is largely built on the corpse of DEC, who they slew on its deathbed, before the will could be attested.
Microsoft "conned" QDOS and ripped-off the creator to deal as an unscrupulous OEM to IBM. (BASIC is as BASIC does. I wonder if the source of MS BASIC can be audited for its original derivation?)
Microsoft "stole" Windows from Presentation Manager. (How many .DLLs had Microsoft written before OS/2)
Microsoft "stole" NT from VMS. (Dave Cutler, you didn't even change addresses or debug message locations!)
Microsoft "stole" AD from Banyan Vines (Hey! Why'd Banyan go out-of-business, instead of sue? Boardroom shenanigans?)
Microsoft completely ripped-off the display and windowing stack of NeXT/OSX, with their weird XML in place of PostScript/PDF.
Those are just egregious highlights. There is nothing MS ever invented and brought to market.
What MS must do is become less PROPRIETARY (Score:3, Interesting)
All Microsoft problems really indirectly boil down to one problem. They try to be a licensing company, rather than a technology solution company.
This is why google nailed them in both search and phone and now tablet. Even IBM got the message, and moved toward a Linux datacenter strategy.
I just amazes me to see all their "reforms" all their "restructuring" all their products that have been doomed to fail, and they still don't get it.
Microsoft is missing a key ingredient. (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple and the Android groups have one major advantage over Windows Phone: Each has a stunning amount of control over what they are releasing. HTC, Samsung, et al don't care what the market share of Android itself is so long as people want their phone. Not their OS, their device.
At the same time, the iOS and Android devices pay nothing per unit for the privelege of running their device on that platform. To develop your own flavor of android for your device is cheap and attainable. Drivers may be proprietary, but the chipmakers have nothing to lose by letting you use them. Even for iOS, Apple owns it and can install it as many times as they like without incurring additional cost. Microsoft, you can be sure, takes a different view. In fact, as of March, Nokia disclosed that for the remaining life of their existing Windows Phone contract, they have to pay Microsoft â500 million.I've got to admit that odds are, they'll come out in the black on this proposition in the end. But certainly with their pockets â500 million lighter than if they'd sold the same number of Android phones at the same price point. At â10 a license, that's 50 million units, and at â20 a license, that's 25 million units. If they sell only 10 million units, that's â50 per unit.
You don't get deep pockets by giving away unnecessary slices of your pie.
Re:True (Score:3, Interesting)
- The XBox line isn't exactly a sidelined product. .docx / .xlsx files without munging them up any day*.
- Surface Pro is loved by those who use it, and many (including me) think it is a product whose time is only just arriving. It is the closest we've come yet to being able to go truly paperless, especially as a student.
- OneNote is the best note-taking app on the planet, the only limitation being it's lack of broad device support.
- Office 365 with documents stored on Skydrive ROCKS. It is like GDocs, except with more features and not totally sucking. Full real time collaborative edits would be nice, but I'll take the ability to work on and generate
Let's also not forget that even after decades, Excel and Word are light years ahead of anything else that has attempted to challenge them. Sure, I have issues with some of their moves (I'm looking at you, Metro!), but I can't say, as a mature objective person, they anything they've done has totally ballsed things up to the point that I have to go running into the decrepit arms of OpenOffice.
Oh, and before you go off yelling "OMG shillz0r!!" I would like to point out that I have been around here a long, long time. I've earned my stripes. I use Linux daily, admin several servers, have a homebrew NAS running FreeBSD and did my share of M$ bashing. However, berating them as though their products aren't worth anything is just immature. Grow up.
Also, don't be coughing up the old argument "$other product is better than Microsoft's offering because my personal use case fits into its feature set!"
* And yes, the OOXML format is here to stay. It's what the vast majority of businesses use, so get used to it. It'd be nice if ODF was the standard, but then again, try creating ODF files in OpenOffice, editing them in AbiWord and back again a few times. ODF is no better at providing word processor agnosticism than is OOXML, and has the detraction that all the ODF word processors suck royally.
Nokia's true blunder was WiMAX (Score:3, Interesting)
Ericsson worked with Verizon [ericssonhistory.com] to create LTE which could operate with Verizon's legacy CDMA network. By working with the telecoms to create LTE, Ericsson is going to benefit from decades of contracts to provide support and equipment to telecoms worldwide in the adoption of LTE.
Nokia chose to anger the telecoms by backing WiMAX in an alliance with Intel, WiMAX being promoted as a technology that could disintermediate the major carriers. Considering 9/11, this was an EXTREMELY bad time to threaten the US telecoms. Think about it. Nokia did not get access to Intel's fabs. Unfortunately for Nokia, in 2008, it became clear that its fab partner, Texas Instruments, was bowing out of its alliance. One can follow the ugly story of the Nokia-Intel alliance here [taskumuro.com]. By backing the wrong technology, WiMAX instead of LTE, Nokia went from owning the IP for the entire wireless stack to selling it all off. So now Nokia has to go to another party for its wireless chips, in particular, for the upcoming LTE.
Only Nokia was at the same time engaged in an IP battle with Qualcomm, its real mortal rival. Qualcomm possesses the IP for interoperability with CDMA, Verizon's network. And Nokia lost that battle, an unprecedented IP settlement [latimes.com] to the tune of a massive instant payment of roughly $2.3 billion USD.
So Nokia by not developing an LTE chipset found itself at the mercy of its mortal enemy, a company that would have been glad to have seen Nokia disappear from the face of the Earth a few years ago, especially as Qualcomm's business of licensing IP could be threatened previously only by the likes of European Nokia. And Nokia made itself into the mortal enemy of the US telecoms by pushing for WiMAX in its alliance with Intel, in the decade following 9/11.
What could have possibly pushed Nokia into making such an alliance with Intel and such a technologically and politically mistaken decision of pursuing WiMAX? I speculate it was all due to a fateful decision by the previous Nokia leadership to (badly) follow the advice of a fellow Finn, none other than Linus Torvalds [theregister.co.uk]. (And yes I get the irony that Torvalds was at one time working for a competitor to Intel, that's why Nokia's leadership clearly followed his advice horrendously.) "But it had a "Plan B", and had been considering it for years. In 2002, I'm told, Linus Torvalds convinced Nokia to create a Linux unit."