When talking about Elop there are other changes apart from the move to WP. I have never seen so aggressive nokia marketing as now. They are pushing their symbian devices very hard (billboards, internet ads etc). I witnessed a nokia salesperson working full time in a large retailer pretending to be the retailer's employee (given away by his t-shirt which had the N8 slogan, but not the nokia logo) trying for some 20 minutes to convince one customer to buy the N8 over the iPhone (he also said that N8 is GHz and E7 is dual-core haha). They also have committed to years of updates for their devices (not staying back to the previous FP) and showing off new and desirable devices E7, X7 etc for the first time after the N95.
I also hate the WP7 move, and I believe that it is killing nokia. Maybe Elop is a trojan horse, BUT the effectiveness in the process of selling phones since his arrival seems to have increased tremendously.
when you are slashing your prices / margins, marketing is no art.
I watched a video where Elop presented the new next big thing ( a windows OS ruining in an N9 enclosure) he presented it as if it was something so great it must remain top secret. But to my BS meter it looked a more akin to a desperate hooker showing her koek in the hope you'll try it.
The fact that the top secret video was published by Nokia to bring some of that N9 thunder over to Windows, suggesting that the only nice thing about the N9 was the enclosure, and to suggest it was cool because it ran Windows, left only the after taste of trojan horse in my mouth.
sorry Nokia, you invested wisely in the past, sorry to see you running scared after the iPhone, but you were on the right path to an open and world dominating brand. In the words of my favourite politician you should "stayed the course". your new partnership is the old school has been business model of the tech boom, you need a business model for sustainable growth now. From my point of view you partnered with a T-Rex, at a time when mammals are about to bosom.
good luck. and thanks for the fun times with my n800 and n900, sad to see it this way, but the mammals win in the end, and the big powerful giants die out.
How did any technology company ever get anything done before the word 'ecosystem' appeared on the lips of analysts/CEOs/bloggers?
The tale of the ecosystems:
In the pre ecosystem era Nokia had all smartphones worth having. They also had all dumbphones worth having. If fact Nokia ruled the entire globe with high quality devices that were used to connect people, and life was good. Well, almost the entire globe. A backwater place called North America where evil operators ruled by enslaving both phone companies and end users, proved to be too evil for the freedom loving Nokia to thrive. The poor people there had to live with ancient devices with antennas called Motorola and something called Blackberry, a kind of typewriter technology.
Then a fruit, an apple, decided to make something new and fresh for the poor enslaved people. But it also took a bold rebellish step against the major operators, making a cool device with a SIM card using GSM technology that would enable the device to run on operators world wide. The new device was loved from day one, even though it was not very capable, and half of the technologies was stolen from Nokia. Although not intended as a main feature, the device had the ability to easily purchase, download and install small programs called apps through iTunes, a closed system used on iPods for music. This ability, music and apps, became extremely popular and very soon became the number one selling point. When the device came in its second generation, the technology was up to a level so it could be sold world wide. Because it was based on GSM, the apple only needed to ramp up the production without changing anything. The device became an instant hit everywhere it was sold, particularly due to apps and music, but also because it was new and different and fun and easy to use.
A sneaky company called Google had secretly studied all this by gathering information with its internet based sneaky-ware technology. They understood that neither hardware or software alone was enough. The key was to have access to the platform, the system where all these transactions took place, where the apps lived, where the music was played, where the searches were done. This platform had to be apple like, fun and easy, and packed with in-house made sneaky-ware services like email, search and other stuff. They thought world wide from the start, and soon became an even greater success than the apple because almost all phone manufacturers began making devices for this sneaky company, cutting prices to compete with each other.
Poor Nokia had no idea what to do, it had no idea what was going on, it was completely lost. The world had suddenly disrupted somehow, it had changed entirely. It did all kinds of strange things, it bought large software companies, open sourced them, closed sourced them again, and ended up giving them away for free including everyone working there. It made devices no one wanted, it made iTune-like systems that no one liked. The end was near. Then another old, and a bit sedate company, had made an OS that was very cool, but something was lacking, it didn't sell. Somehow the world had disrupted on that company as well. The two grumpy old farts met, talked and exchanged ideas, and suddenly got it. At last they understood what the sneake-company had understood years ago. It has to be easy, cool and fun, but most important of all, the easy cool and fun stuff have to be interconnected into a system managed by us. Since Nokia had no idea how to make good software and the sedate one had no idea how to make good hardware, they agreed to cooperate. We have to deliver a full package similar to the apple, or we will simply become servants of the sneaky-company. By doing this we will also free lots of poor souls from the slimy tentacles of the sneaky-company and the voodoo-spells of the apple. At least we will give them a choice.
And that's it. Without an ecosystem you are nothing but an OEM, a servant for the sneaky-company, doomed to do nothing but slash prices for the rest of time. The Nokia board want Nokia to be much more than a servant, and that's why the ecosystem is what it's all about.
