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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, July 15 2012 @ 11:35 PM EDT |
Far be it from me to suggest that Elop possesses the necessary competence to
pour champagne out of a colander, even if his technical people recorded video
instructions. And yet ...
Some stupidity you're born with: other stupidity you learn.
Microsoft management has always taken the approach of motivating its henchmen
with "the sky is falling" speeches. (The usual party line is something
like "we're surrounded by enemies, only a death march can get us out",
which has the virtue of being self-fulfilling prophecy, even if it wasn't always
true.) Now, at Microsoft, the customers can't flee--when you have them by the
necks, their minds follow no matter what their hearts say.) So there's no
downside to such rhetoric. Elop may have been just reflexively using the same
management technique he'd learned from the Uberlords of Redmond, expecting the
same effect.
This can also explain the "take it and lump it both--NOW!" attitude
taken towards the retailers and Telcos. MS-Windows has always had the luxury of
being able to tell all its customers that, and getting away with it. Why waste
money on niceness when you have them by the necks and all your training has been
on how to squeeze?
The radical pruning of the product line to protect the One True Sacred Cash
Cow--again, where have we seen that before?
I suspect that anyone whose only "business" experience is Microsoft
would have similar successes in managing any company where
"competitiveness" means "both OEM customers and retail customers
have real choices." A lot of organized-crimelords probably have similar
problems when they try to invest their money in a real business and face
customers whom they can't kneecap.
Having said all that, even if the original plan wasn't to burn down the platform
and knife everyone within reach, it is hard to believe that a raid on the patent
portfolio wasn't part of Ballmer's Plan B.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Fresh blood - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, July 15 2012 @ 11:58 PM EDT
- Fresh blood - Authored by: PJ on Monday, July 16 2012 @ 06:24 AM EDT
- Fresh blood - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 16 2012 @ 01:40 PM EDT
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| Authored by: jonathon on Monday, July 16 2012 @ 05:03 PM EDT |
What you are missing is that Nokia had 65% of the world wide cell phone market.
Their bread and butter was feature phones.
The historians can argue about what the first smartphone was. The iPhone made
smartphones sexy. Whilst it threatened Nokia profits, it did so only at the
high end of the cell phone business.
Nokia management did do one thing right --- develop an OS that could be used for
both feature phones and smart phones. Something that was delivered.
When Elop insisted that WP7 and its successors be the only OS used by Nokia, and
killed all of the other projects that Nokia was working on, he killed the
product that made Nokia successful --- the feature phone.
It was a Nokia feature phone that first blurred the difference between a feature
phone and a smart phone.
In releasing the iPhone, Apple was attacking the high end smartphone market.
Symbian, and subsequently Meego was able to cover the low-end market, and then
waltz upstream, to compete with iOS. Except Elop killed the upstream Nokia
competitors, by not selling them in the markets that desired them.
For Nokia to turn around, it has to do the following:
* Fire Elop;
* Terminate all WinMo7 contracts. The OS is DOA. It has proven to be a
marketplace failure;
* Terminate all WinMo 8 contracts. This OS is DOA. It has proven to be a
marketplace failure;
* Make a peace offering with all of the carriers it used to work with;
* Make a peace offering with developers;
* Release the N9 is all 250 countries of the world;
* Release the N950 is all 250 countries of the world;
* Restart development of MeeGo/Tizen;
* Go back to basics:
## Basic feature phones: Voice and text messaging only;
## Standard feature phones: Voice, text, picture, and video messaging; GPS
navigation, Weather forcast, MP3/MP4 playback,Social Network Integration;
## Basic Smartphones. As "Standard feature phones" but "using the
Internet";
## Standard Smartphones: WiFi functionality added to Basic Smartphones;
* Entice developers to come back to Meego/Tizen;
The major, and arguably, only difference between an Android tablet and an iPad
is the hardware specifications:
* Not the OS;
* Not the applications;
* Not the software;
* The hardware is the only difference between the two devices;
Nokia can make good hardware.
If the developers can be attracted back, the application software will rival
that of the Apple and Google Play stores.
But if Nokia continues to hitch a ride on the WinMo disaster, Nokia is doomed to
bankruptcy. (Microsoft has had four consecutive failures in the mobile space.
WinMo8 will be their third disaster in their run of five consecutive marketplace
failures.)[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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