
Nokia CEO: Nokia is "standing on a burning platform" - ldayley
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/
======
vessenes
This is an excellent, really excellent call to arms from a new CEO. I have a
few takeaways -- first: the board brought Elop in for a four to seven year
turn-around. He's going to make enemies, but that's okay. If he executes the
turn-around, they'll put someone more finnish back in to sooth the old guard
after they're making money again.

Second -- this guy has the Microsoft internal criticism DNA, through and
through. This isn't quite a Gates-level memo, but it's in the ballpark. I'd
love to see some leaks of him reviewing his experience using different phones,
Gates style.

Third -- he's totally correct. Nokia f-ed this up, all by themselves. I STILL
miss my Nokia E-90; it had 7mb up and down, a beautiful keyboard, video
chatting, first-class SIP phone account support, and an 840x320 screen in
2007, for God's sake! The UI sucked, the apps weren't there, and there was no
touch interface. Apple cleaned Nokia's clock. Then Android did it again.

One reason HN readers should care: Nokia is probably the only carrier in the
world with the balls to just go ahead and release unlocked phones with things
like VOIP accounts built in. They may be the only company who doesn't have to
play nice with US carriers around; innovation from them will be excellent for
consumers.

~~~
semanticist
Nokia regularly cripple features, specifically including VoIP, at the demands
of carriers. Perhaps not US carriers, but it happened frequently in the UK.

I took the calls of people angry that their 'top end' handset couldn't do VoIP
because they bought it from Vodafone.

The carriers were always Nokia's customers, not the consumers, I can't see how
that's going to change.

~~~
metageek
> _Nokia regularly cripple features, specifically including VoIP, at the
> demands of carriers. Perhaps not US carriers,_

Oh, definitely in the US—look at the difference between the E71 and the E71x,
the AT&T version. The GP was talking about _unlocked_ phones. I have an N86
which I bought on Amazon, and it's got SIP and other features which AT&T would
hate me to have.

> _The carriers were always Nokia's customers, not the consumers_

Yeah, but that's the case with every phone manufacturer.

~~~
semanticist
> Yeah, but that's the case with every phone manufacturer.

That's exactly my point. In this regard Nokia are not in a special position to
stand up to the carriers.

Unlocked handsets don't count: almost no one is paying that much for a phone.
Even Apple had to accept carrier subsidies for the iPhone to get the end
purchase price down.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> Unlocked handsets don't count: almost no one is paying that much for a
> phone.

Most mobile phones in the world are bought unlocked. Carrier-locked phones
holding most of the market is an US/UK quirk, and in many European countries,
carrier-locked phones like used in the US would actually be illegal.

~~~
thomasz
Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too. If this holds true for France too,
the vast majority of mobile phones in Europe is being sold locked. I don't
know the details about the "illegal" claim, but normally those things are
governed by EU laws, making it somewhat hard to believe that contracts common
in the UK and Germany would be considered illegal in the Netherlands or
Portugal.

~~~
CaptainZapp

      Locked Phones are the norm in Germany too.
    

You forgot to add that this is only the case for subsidized phones. Nobody
stops you from going to Media Markt to purchase an _unlocked, uncrippled_
phone for full price.

In addition: SIM locked (i.e. only able to use a designated network) is not
quite the same as a crippled phone (like in intentionally crippling the
Bluetooth stack to force users to use a crappy service to upload photos for a
couple bucks a pop).

I can't speak for Germany, but in Switzerland the only SIM locked phones are
the ones that you buy together with a pre-payed deal. And then they have to
unlock it for you after a couple years.

Personally I perceive the development of locking down devices as rather
disturbing and I really hope that this trend doesn't swap into European mobile
phones. That's why, yeah, I feel that Nokia matters a lot.

~~~
semanticist
Except that Nokia have been locking down handsets at the request of carriers
for years (cf, earlier comments about VoIP on Vodafone on certain Nokia
handsets). They really do have no special power to say 'no' to those guys.
None whatsoever.

------
andrewljohnson
A well-written email is more powerful than many people comprehend. We used to
call them letters, and they were powerful then too.

You can change a person's or a group's mind about something, even after a
decision appears to have been made. You can clinch a job, win a contract, stop
a lawsuit, regain a friend, woo a lover, and change history itself with just a
few words.

I'm not sure if people realize quite how powerful an email can be, directed at
the right audience, at the right time, with the right message. And the flip-
side is true too. A badly written, poorly directed, or mis-timed email can
have terrible consequences. You can make or break a company with a single
email.

Regarding this memo, it's a truly inspiring, and well-timed. I think this will
be a Gettysburg moment for the CEO, and may mark a turning point for Nokia.

~~~
rm445
Very well said. It's a great memo, but its main effect is to lay the
groundwork for a strategy change.

 _This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or
join an ecosystem [...] When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will
be a huge effort to transform our company [...] The burning platform, upon
which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a
bold and brave step into an uncertain future._

This may be a turning point for Nokia, but in the end it will come down to
just what this new strategy _is_ and how effective it proves to be.

~~~
regularfry
No matter how good the strategy looks on paper, it's useless unless everyone
buys in. Its effectiveness will depend to a great extent on how well the new
strategy, and more importantly the need for it, can be sold internally.

------
SandB0x
> _The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems
> include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers,
> applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-
> based services, unified communications and many other things. Our
> competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our
> market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to
> decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem._

Please, please, Nokia, adopt Android and put your efforts into making great
hardware to go with it, without ruining the interface like so many other
manufacturers do.

~~~
follower
I'd rather Nokia actually be the only truly open mobile platform out there.
No, Android isn't sufficiently open.

It's _my_ phone, at a minimum I should be able to pull all my own data off it
in any form I choose.

~~~
wmf
IMO a GNU/free fork of Android would _still_ be a better platform than MeeGo
or Symbian, and would be cheaper to develop.

~~~
blub
There is no such thing as a free Android, except if you tear the whole Java
user space away.

And I'm REALLY curious about why you and 14 other people think that Android is
such a good mobile OS. The VM is both a legal and speed liability, the Android
UI is not GPU-accelerated and the entire OS is still immature (see the
embarrassing bugs with the SMS or the browser security holes).

~~~
rbanffy
> There is no such thing as a free Android, except if you tear the whole Java
> user space away.

Isn't that part BSD-licensed?

> the Android UI is not GPU-accelerated

It's a bit hard when you have to support more than one device, but I believe
it's a matter of time. As more and more hardware gains hardware acceleration,
I assume it will come (if not already in the latest 2.x and 3.x series)

> the entire OS is still immature(see the embarrassing bugs with the SMS or
> the browser security holes)

Don't confuse the OS with the programs that run on it. You don't blame Windows
when SharePoint eats up all your intranet, do you?

~~~
blub
The license doesn't matter that much, it's the principles - one of them being
that you don't get sued by such and such corporation if you use the code. Or
Google doesn't change the terms if they lose on trial. No one has patents on C
or C++ AFAIK...

SMS and web browser are core mobile OS services, they're not simple programs
since connectivity is very important for a mobile phone.

~~~
rbanffy
> No one has patents on C or C++ AFAIK...

Oracle is not complaining Google is implementing Java in Dalvik. Oracle is
complaining they are implementing things too similar to stuff Oracle has
acquired patents about.

[http://carlodaffara.conecta.it/oraclegoogle-the-patents-
and-...](http://carlodaffara.conecta.it/oraclegoogle-the-patents-and-the-
implications/)

------
erikstarck
I worked for Sony Ericsson when the iPhone was revealed. My job was to
translate the thousands of pages of operator requirements that came in (within
my technology area: Java) to a technical roadmap for the coming 2-5 years. So
I have a fairly good picture of how the market for mobile phones work wrt to
the interplay between operators and manufacturers.

It's hard to grasp just how revolutionary the iPhone was. There are so many
tiny things that's not by itself a revolution, but adding them all up and
you're going disruptive.

I tried to compile some of it in a list here:

[http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2011/01/21/what-apple-
did-w...](http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2011/01/21/what-apple-did-wrong-
with-the-iphone/)

~~~
recoil
Apple releases iPhone, from the well-thats-not-very-exciting dept.

...

No 3G, no MMS, no video calling, shitty camera & bluetooth. Lame.

------
bambax
I worked for Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) in Paris in 1995 when a new
team of Englishmen were brought in from London to "turn the French practice
around".

Their theme? "Burning platform". The exact same story that opens the memo was
their story too.

Maybe this Mr Elop is really an original thinker that will do great things;
but the "burning platform" analogy is the most tired image EVER.

Oh, and did it work in Paris in 1995? Not really. It was not an absolute
disaster, but in the end (two years later) the British threw the towel and
went home, and the French partners who were there before stayed on (are still
there to this day).

~~~
aik
Where else have you heard it? What makes it a tired image beyond the fact that
you heard it once in Paris?

~~~
bambax
I didn't hear it "once"; it was a central theme of the transformation story;
there were posters everywhere, email campaigns, leaflets, etc. all based on
the "burning platform" standard playbook.

The reality is that the "burning platform" metaphor is a classic story
repeated ad nauseam in business schools and business books; see this for
example (from 2005):

 _The term “burning platform” is a mainstay in business lexicon for many
years.

For those not familiar with its origin, the story goes something like this:

A man working on an oil platform in the North Sea awakened suddenly one night
by an explosion. Amidst the chaos, he made his way to the edge of the
platform. As a plume of fire billowed behind him, he decided to jump from the
burning platform even though jumping is a risky option for the following
reasons: It was a 150-foot drop from the platform to the water.

There is debris and burning oil on the surface of the water.

If the jump into the 40°F water did not kill him, he would die of exposure
within 15 minutes.

Luckily, the man survived the jump and hauled aboard a rescue boat shortly
thereafter. When asked why he jumped, he replied, “Better probable death than
certain death.” The point is the literally “burning” platform caused the
radical change in his behavior._

<http://www.imakenews.com/cppa/e_article000368179.cfm>

(Please read the rest of this article to know how the story should be used in
a business context; it really seems to describe the email, and it's prophetic
since it was written six years ago).

Where do you think Mr. Elop heard this story in the first time? What's more
likely, that he met an actual burning platform survivor, or that he read about
this very common story in a business book?

~~~
sethg
The “burning platform” inspirational stories are probably based on an actual
disaster:

“Piper Alpha was a North Sea oil production platform operated by Occidental
Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd. The platform began production in 1976, first as an
oil platform and then later converted to gas production. An explosion and
resulting fire destroyed it on July 6, 1988, killing 167 men, with only 59
survivors. The death toll includes two crewmen of a rescue vessel. Total
insured loss was about £1.7 billion (US$ 3.4 billion). At the time of the
disaster the platform accounted for approximately ten percent of North Sea oil
and gas production, and was the worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives
lost and industry impact.”

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha>

------
avner
Stephen Elop has finally put in writing what the market has said about Nokia
ever since the iPhone came out. Props to him for finally initiating this
intervention at Nokia; it has been long overdue. Someone has finally said "we
have fucked up, its now time to get back on the horse and make it right" to
the Nokia management.

Less than a decade ago, nobody could ___touch_ __Nokia in the mobile handset
market, Nokia defined quality... and then they got complacent and instead of
innovating, they stuck to old principles. Its like Nokia witnessed the age old
fable of the tortoise and the hare firsthand.

~~~
lamby
Your comment and Engadget's article seem to imply that Nokia failing in the
smartphone market means that Nokia is failing generally. But wouldn't Nokia
still be making a lovely profit even if they stuck to the more vanilla phones?

Don't forget that only a fraction of people can afford these >= £500 devices
and only a fraction of those buy them without financing.

~~~
kenjackson
Nokia used to be up around 60% of the mobile phone market (in terms of
profit). Now they're around ~20%, while Apple is more than 50% (on less than
5% marketshare).

Nokia is still making money, but pretty much all new profit is going to
everyone else (especially Apple).

<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2666565/posts>

~~~
ergo98
Do you think there is a fixed "profit" out there for the taking?

Apple's profit margin is an extreme aberration, and it isn't sustainable. Any
comparison that relies upon profit numbers is...disturbed.

~~~
chc
Apple has been making similar margins on all of its products for the past 10
years. How can you say it isn't sustainable?

~~~
ergo98
10 years ago Apple had 5 billion in revenue. Now they're pushing 100 billion
in revenue. They butting in on competitors who operate in the 5% margin range,
and who are all desperately starting to claw back at Apple's gains.

No, it isn't sustainable. History will prove me out, and in 3 years I would
bet that Apple has seen a significant margin haircut. Quote me on a 50%
decline.

As a comparison, by the way, look at Sony (which was the Apple before Apple).
Once a purveyor of high margin audio equipment, they saturated that market and
started moving to high markup mobile audio equipment...and then TVs...and then
lower markup mobile equipment, etc, and then everyone started fighting back.

Apple is exactly following the Sony curve.

EDIT: Arrowed down. This is one of those seminal moments that speak volumes
about a community, and I think HN is done (just furthering an observation that
has grown). Account and site abandoned.

~~~
chc
One downvote on a site where the voting arrows are tiny and close together and
votes can't be reversed is a "seminal moment that speaks volumes about a
community"? I think you're being a little melodramatic.

Anyway, Apple has always had a disproportionate share of any market it
seriously participated in — the big difference is that 10 years ago Apple was
a very small part of a single market. Some fluctuations will probably happen
over the next half a decade, but you can bet that Apple will remain absurdly
profitable in a way that embarrasses most of its competitors. It's just
something that Apple is good at.

~~~
donaq
_you can bet that Apple will remain absurdly profitable in a way that
embarrasses most of its competitors. It's just something that Apple is good
at._

I'm betting it's not. It's something Steve Jobs is good at.

------
erikpukinskis
This memo is spot on, except for the optimism at the end. I think Nokia is
toast.

At the end of the day, you can't create a best-of-breed product out of
nowhere. You need the core competencies to be already present in your
company's DNA.

Palm came back out of nowhere and created in the Pre a phone with great
usability fundamentals, and an incredibly innovative contact/data management
layer. But that didn't come from nowhere.... those are exactly the things that
the Palm Pilot excelled at.

Apple created a phone with incredible industrial design that pushed the
boundaries of what was possible in a category of device. These things, also,
have lots of precent at Apple, in the Macintosh, the iPod, OS X, and the
iTunes music store.

Google, in Android, built a phone OS that has incredible integration with
networked apps, and is built on a well run open source project. But before
they started, they already had the best network app development teams in the
world, and many world class open source developers and evangelists on staff.

What does Nokia have? I'm honestly not that familiar with their history, but
they appear to have had (at one time) world class supply chain management and
global distribution. And solidly built hardware? Is that it?

Honestly, I think Nokia had the right DNA to make a huge contribution to cell
phones when they were a brand new, untested product with limited global reach.
But now that those issues have been nailed, the distribution channels are in
place, and everyone's phones, from Motorola's Android phones to LG's crappy
feature phones are "good enough" for the people who buy them.

My guesses for the big future developments in phones are the web maturing as a
development platform (Google seems positioned to ride that wave), powerful new
software APIs (social, location, augmented reality, AI, etc), new media
distribution models (Netflix, iTunes, Shopify, etc), and of course design-
driven expansion of the user experience (Flipboard, FaceTime, Google Maps,
etc).

I don't see product teams at Nokia who appear to be executing in any of these
areas at the level that would be necessary to dominate in them. And they would
need to dominate in two or three to stop hemorrhaging customers.

I think they're toast.

~~~
wisty
Nokia already produces some of the best phone hardware there is. If they got
Android onto it, I'd upgrade in a heartbeat.

They also know how to differentiate without creating fragmentation. Most
Android products suffer because of fragmentation - different OS versions,
different hardware, etc. Nokia should know to create a core platform or 2
(standard screen size, hopefully upgrade support), and then make money on
marketing prettier models to the people who'll buy them.

It's obvious that they need Android, maybe with some "value added" features
tacked on (but not in a tacky way).

OK, crappy feature phones may be "good enough", but mobile phones has always
been something of a fashion business. Nokia is good at this game, they just
got blindsided by the iPhone and Android.

~~~
yason
Nokia could create a fairly vanilla Android phone with Ubuntu style LTS (long-
term support) for upcoming Android releases. Buying one of these Nokiandroids,
you could be sure to be able to run Android 5.0 in 2014 before the support
dies out. Nokia was synonymous with quality ten years ago and while nowadays
anyone can order a truckload of tegra2's and whip up a new Android model out
of them, the end-user quality sucks because your new phone will be outdated
sooner than you can google the Android version roadmap page. Nokia could show
that they deliver what people want and still ride a different wave than the
Q1/2011 trendweasels.

~~~
wisty
Exactly. 10 years ago, anyone could make a dumbphone. They all just made phone
calls, and sent texts, kept memos, and had some terrible Java game system.
Nokia came to the top because they offered quality dumbphones, not because
they offered a completely different experience.

Now there's iPhones (which Nokia can't really do anything about), and Android
phones (which Nokia can do better than anyone, if they really try), Windows
Mobile (maybe) and burning platforms like Symbian (despite Qt rocking, or so
I'm told).

------
Peaker
I think Nokia have repeatedly been making really dumb decisions about both
their marketing and implementation.

Some examples include:

* Code-naming their phones obscurely, making it nearly impossible to remember and later buying a phone you like. Compare "Galaxy S" and "iPhone 3G" with "N6310".

* Not bothering to place the phone's name anywhere remotely visible on the phone, so you have to yank the battery out if you want to know your friend's phone model.

* Repeatedly implementing really dumb design decisions without ever fixing them: When calling someone, the "Speaker" button temporarily means "End Call" _in addition_ to the "End Call" button. What possible purpose does this serve? It means you need to bother your eyes and hands with the phone when explicitly need an eyes/hands-free experience!

Many more of Nokia's decisions seem simply stupid. Does anyone see
justification for these dumb practices?

~~~
dirtyaura
_Code-naming their phones obscurely, making it nearly impossible to remember
and later buying a phone you like. Compare "Galaxy S" and "iPhone 3G" with
"N6310"._

Nokia's phone naming strategy was certainly not dumb at the time. They built
brand around 'Nokia', not around specific models. You had 'Nokia' phone
regardless of the model, similarly as you currently have 'iPhone' regardless
of the exact model. (And current iPhone numbering i.e. 2G, 3G, 4 is easy to
remember just because there are so few models) It was an integral part of
Nokia's strategy that there were many many models to choose from, any single
strong model brand could have been hindrance for that strategy.

Now, we can argue that in smartphone era, building strong model brands might
be wiser strategy (Galaxy S), but that's another discussion. Nokia's model
naming strategy was definitely not stupid in earlier times.

------
bni
Nokia had something good gooing with Maemo on the N900, they should just have
pushed on with that. They had a software platform that was competitive with
iOS, technology wise. Lighter, smaller and sexier phones with the Maemo
software, it would have been awesome.

But instead they decided to start over with Qt and a partnership with Intel.

They ripped all progress out from under them.

------
quannum
The idea of a Nokia device running Android is pretty appealing. They've always
had good hardware, but Symbian has become a develpment dead-end, and Meego
isn't yet here.

~~~
ldayley
Android on Nokia hardware is an appealing idea, but given Stephen Elop's
Microsoft background I wonder if they won't shift to WP7. Or both.

~~~
metageek
I see two things to make me hope they might not go with WP7. The first is the
ecosystem: he correctly points out that the ecosystem is what they're lacking;
but WP7 doesn't yet have one to offer. The second is that MS apparently
exercises strong control over the design of WP7 phones, which would leave
Nokia little room to distinguish themselves.

An Android-based Nokia could come with improvements in the phone features that
make it feel like a Nokia, so that existing Nokia customers who are
considering jumping ship to the Android of the week will be more comfortable
sticking with Nokia.

~~~
metageek
> _The second is that MS apparently exercises strong control over the design
> of WP7 phones,_

This is where I went wrong; Elop was able to negotiate an exemption for Nokia.

------
oconnore
I'm predicting an HP-Palm/Nokia combined effort. HP and Nokia already
collaborate, and webOS is the closest Nokia will get to an existing
"ecosystem" that they could thrive in. Palm has crappy hardware, and awesome
software. Nokia has excellent hardware, but crappy software. Both of them are
getting slammed by Apple/Android. The solution is obvious.

Also, Nokia's work on Meego would transition well to webOS, since they are
both linux based.

~~~
jallmann
Nokia should have bought Palm when they had the chance. The former has solid
hardware and crappy software, the latter an inverse problem. It would have
been a perfect match.

------
elehack
Hopefully they're able to restore competitiveness, but I hope they don't do it
by simply adopting WP7 or Android. I'd really like to see them make something
like MeeGo viable. IMO, the mobile space could use an open ecosystem without
the Google tie-in.

------
nl
I think they might be looking at Android rather than WinMo7 (ok, maybe I'm
just being hopeful...)

The memo repeatedly mentions innovation and market leadership.

With WinMo7 locked down as tightly as it is it is very difficult for a company
to be innovative in that market.

OTOH, Android already has quite a diverse ecosystem, and would allow Nokia the
opportunity to do it's own thing while still supporting an active developer
community.

If Nokia was interested in WinMo7, why would they invest heavily in a Silicon
Valley Engineering office (as opposed to a Seattle office)?

Finally, there is already a (very active, community) port of Qt to Android
(<http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/>). If Nokia got behind that it
would give them a roadmap that would avoid alienating app developers who were
hoping to support MeeGo.

------
paganel
IMHO, this does nothing else than hurt morale. It's not that the Nokia
engineers were so stupid as to not know where their platform stands. This memo
only contains lamentations over lamentations, with only a small, general call
to action towards the end: "We are working on a path forward -- a path to
rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11,
it will be a huge effort to transform our company. "

The way I see these types of memos work is like this: spend the first part of
it describing the problem, and the second part should include the suggested
solutions. I know a former boss of mine who , if I didn't do that in my
"lamentation" emails, i.e. not suggest solutions, would have smashed my head
against the nearest desk.

------
cloudmike
Nokia is standing where Nintendo once stood: struggling to hold market share
against powerful juggernauts, and in dire need of a bold product that eschews
conventional wisdom, challenges consumer's expectations, and tickles
developers' imaginations.

The problem is that Apple already did that recently. The iPhone was Apple's
Wii, and now it seems incredibly difficult for Nokia to innovate that much
that quickly without creating something the world might not be ready for, like
the N-Gage.

I hope they pull it off though. Respect for the candor in the memo.

~~~
teyc
I love the analogy. They were great, but they need to redefine the platform
and what it means to be a smartphone again.

------
edderly
Ignoring the problems with WP7, if Nokia were to produce phones with other
'external' OSes why would they stick with just one?

No one criticizes Samsung and they are pretty much a mobile-OS whore: SHP,
Bada, WP7, Symbian (albeit a year or so ago), Android, Limo, etc.

N.B. Regarding SHP: I can't remember the name properly but this was the
old/existing Samsung feature phone platform, it probably has got rolled into
Bada, although Bada has two configurations (with and w/o the Linux kernel).

~~~
lotusleaf1987
IMO, that's because Samsung doesn't have a clue and would rather hedge their
bets. Most people I know who has a Samsung Galaxy, Captivate, etc have
complained endlessly about the wait for updates.

Samsung's business is in selling phones, not developing a software platform
and therein lies the problem. They make their bread and butter on planned
obsolescence and in the process screw over their customers.

~~~
edderly
But this points out a potential weakness with the model of taking someone
else's OS and slapping it in your device.

Once the operators (typically) have added their crap on top it leaves you
little margin to extract extra cash until you get someone to buy another
device.

~~~
potatolicious
Seems to work alright for Apple - even though they're doing gangbusters on App
sales, it seems the majority of iPhone's profitability comes from hardware
sales themselves, and this is without any real shades of planned obsolescence.

Nokia is renowned for their hardware build quality - well in advance of LG,
Moto, or Samsung. I think the market has spoken that they want the full
experience - solid software, beautiful hardware, and impeccable integration of
the two. Samsung IMHO has fumbled that ball up until now, producing cheap-y
hardware coupled with lazy software integration. There's a _lot_ of room for
someone who knows what they're doing with Android to come and eat their lunch.

~~~
edderly
Except Apple is a bad example as it makes it's own OS and own the end to end
user experience with out a dependency on a 3rd party?

------
jasonkester
A helpful tip for those arriving late: Skip the entire article and read the
email directly.

The article is longer than the mail, says less, and says it less eloquently.

------
Jayasimhan
This is exactly where Steve Jobs found himself in 1997. He stood by and did
what he wanted to [or may be not yet]. Hope Elop does it as well.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Unfortunately for Elop, there's only one Steve Jobs.

~~~
shadowfox
There can only be one hero?

~~~
rilindo
There can only be one!

------
cookiecaper
A good memo and he's certainly correct about the phone market. I hope that
Trolltech/Qt makes out OK.

------
kefs
In case anyone is curious about the full story behind Mike Williams and the
"burning platform", watch the following video. You won't be disappointed.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83EwglrnvlU>

edit: part 1 for those interested

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgkZtklS6xE>

~~~
kefs
downvote? not sure why as i was only trying to provide context. :/

------
nazgulnarsil
idea for how to create value in your brand when you're "just another android
phone".

1\. create a really awesome skin like HTC has.

2\. create a suite of really awesome apps and release them on the apps market,
but give them free to users of your specific phone.

~~~
akgerber
3\. Create some of the best hardware out there, as Nokia does.

------
donaldc
I thought that this was the most interesting part of the article:

 _and that Elop would start looking to Nokia's new Silicon Valley campus as
its center of gravity, with execs and senior management expected to start
spending more time outside Finland._

That's quite an endorsement of Silicon Valley as a tech hub...

~~~
jsnell
And also the part of the rumors that makes the least sense. Hack through the
middle management and bureaucracy with a chainsaw, cut off all the incredibly
inefficient contractors, clean all the dead wood from R&D, kill one or both of
the in-house operating systems, give up on building services and just start
preloading every phone with Bing services for big money, etc. One might not
agree with those actions, but at least one could plausibly argue that they'd
be beneficial to the future of the company.

But how exactly is moving the heart of the company into Sunnyvale going to
help? Nokia isn't exactly in the position to compete for the best people in
those horribly over-fished waters, especially soon after a round of brutal
layoffs. Are the dregs of Silicon Valley really going to be that much better
than the talent elsewhere? Does the world even need one more company centered
around that echo chamber?

~~~
rdl
I agree -- I think the best thing Nokia could do is probably to relocate
somewhere more central within Europe (Berlin? London?) and become the
strongest European mobile phone option, vs. trying to compete for talent in
SFBA. Arguably they could also try NYC or another major city with lots of
development expertise but no strong mobile company.

------
Geee
That's really interesting read, but doesn't tell anything about specifics. I'm
not really sure what they will announce on Friday. As we can see however, it's
about ecosystems, not about the OS.

1\. Qt is really valuable asset, they are keeping it. Actually they are
keeping everything they have now.

2\. Joining WP7 or Android as an OEM would cut Nokia out of their ecosystems,
not going to happen.

3\. Adopting WP7 or Android as is would require Nokia to cut back some custom
hardware features and make differentiation harder.

My best guess is WP7 with Qt allowing Nokia's services and apps on those
phones. This would be additional to Symbian and MeeGo devices. However, I'm
pretty sure they are starting to ramp Symbian down.

~~~
metageek
> _My best guess is WP7 with Qt allowing Nokia's services and apps on those
> phones. This would be additional to Symbian and MeeGo devices._

If they adopt any third-party OS, I can't see them keeping MeeGo. That'd be
stupid; it'd leave them having to build a MeeGo ecosystem instead of just
taking advantage of the one they join.

And I don't see Microsoft allowing Qt on WP7; it'd undermine their whole .Net-
based story.

~~~
Geee
On the other hand, I'd believe Microsoft would want Nokia to "catalyse" their
ecosystem, because of the lacking success of WP7. The ecosystem of WP7 is now
very weak, and not much of an asset for Nokia, except MS services like Bing.
But, Nokia doesn't want to give up Qt apps and their own services.

------
callahad
I would work for that man.

~~~
tjmc
I used to (at Macromedia). He's a great guy. Very approachable and down to
earth, but certainly not afraid to make the hard calls as you see here.

I sometimes wonder where Microsoft might be if he'd replaced Balmer, but it's
great to see him take on Nokia. Talk about a tough gig!

------
Unosolo
Not really impressed, yet. And here is why:

Zero points for coming out: Mr Elop was brought in by the board exactly with
the goal of rescuing Nokia in mind. Looking from that angle the memo is a bit
overdue.

Zero points for opening the letter with a metaphor - this is the way someone
steering a major technologic corporation is expected to convey the direction -
by projecting a vision.

Negative ten points for picking wrong metaphor. It broke down immediately. See
for yourself: should Mr Elop's best employees take his advice literally and
jump the burning platform? Followed with a change in behaviour meaning never
again joining a severely fragmented bureaucracy ridden company? What was the
lesson learned by the oil rig worker? What could he have done differently in
the situation when he woke up on a burning platform in a middle of a sea?

I’d award one point for openly enumerating the challenges. But these are the
symptoms of Nokia demise, he hasn't dug deep enough, the list is known at this
point to every man and his dog.

Negative ten for the actual lack of a credible vision at this point. Let’s
wait till the strategy comes out.

------
kooshball
wow, that is one way to motivate the troops. The lack of mentioning of WP7 at
all and the re-emphasis of Andriod as a competitor makes me think it's
unlikely they will be running Andriod any time soon.

~~~
SwellJoe
I don't follow your logic.

Windows 7 _isn't_ much of a competitor. It had a smaller debut than Android
and iPhone, by a large amount, and is being outsold by both so the gap is
widening. If I were Nokia, I wouldn't be worrying about fellow also-rans in
the industry, like Microsoft. I'd be worried about the products that were
eating my lunch, and I'd let Microsoft figure out how to protect their own
lunch.

If Nokia chooses Windows for their next generation, I'd wager they'll keep
dropping like a rock. How could they generate any excitement over a _Windows_
phone? Nobody likes Windows phones, even people who like Windows on the
desktop.

~~~
inoop
Remember that Microsoft has a trick up its sleeve: Midori. It quietly
incubated the Singularity research OS, a pure .NET operating system, a couple
of years ago and is turning it into a commercial product. The advantages of
the OS are increased security and massive parallelism, both due to the fact
that .NET code is inherently memory safe.

My hypothesis is that Windows Phone 7 is a stop-gap measure introduced to
build their brand and app portfolio while they're working on the 'real' thing.
Note that WP7 apps are .NET apps, so transition to a pure .NET kernel would be
relatively easy. Of course I have nothing but a hunch and some rumours, to
base this on, but I find it highly unlikely that MS is just going to sit there
while Google is building the dominant platform for internet usage (note that
in some countries, like India, smart phones are now the most popular device
for accessing the internet).

Remember that although us geeks are picky about the OS our phone runs, a the
large majority of phone buyers really don't give a crap and switch easily. My
girlfriend goes into a store and just picks out something shiny, possibly
looking for specific features like a keyboard to type out email on. And app
portfolio isn't just a matter of quantity. About 10% of the apps on any given
platform probably satisfy 90% of a user's needs. Microsoft really just needs
to have that 10% to be a compelling alternative, and they have the cash to
simply write it themselves or pay people to write it for them.

So all in all, I don't think that Microsoft is out of the game just yet. On
the contrary, they're just getting started, and this deal with Nokia is going
to be very valuable for both companies.

~~~
SwellJoe
"The advantages of the OS are increased security and massive parallelism, both
due to the fact that .NET code is inherently memory safe."

So, what? Everything in userspace on an Android phone is Java and runs in the
JVM. That's not really a feature users care about, but even if it were, the
leading OS already has it.

You then go on to say:

"Remember that although us geeks are picky about the OS our phone runs, a the
large majority of phone buyers really don't give a crap"

Which I agree with. Which is why there's _no_ reason for someone to switch to
a Windows phone, even if, on some technical level a .Net phone were lovelier
than the competition.

Just because the next magical version of Windows is based on a smarter core,
doesn't mean any normal user will have a reason to switch.

"On the contrary, they're just getting started, and this deal with Nokia is
going to be very valuable for both companies."

You still haven't answered why Nokia would sign on with another sinking ship
rather than simply choosing to make great devices for the leading (free) OS.

Of course, because the new CEO is coming from Microsoft, he may very well have
loyalties that simply don't make sense for his new company...and if that's the
case, he'll merrily drive the company into further insignificance while
drawing a nice fat paycheck, and making his friends at Microsoft happy.

~~~
inoop
"Just because the next magical version of Windows is based on a smarter core,
doesn't mean any normal user will have a reason to switch."

I agree, but chip makers, handset makers, and ultimately carriers do care.
Apple, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo sure care a great deal about people
jailbreaking their devices.

My point was not that a new kernel would directly persuade potential buyers,
but I do think it is needed to support the features that users have come to
expect from modern phones (i.e. multitasking). In my opinion WP7 is just not
up to the task, so if they want to compete, they need to step up their game in
the OS department.

"You still haven't answered why Nokia would sign on with another sinking ship
rather than simply choosing to make great devices for the leading (free) OS."

I don't know, maybe MS is giving them a truckload of money? Nokia has a large
software development group, so maybe the deal is that Nokia will develop apps
for WP7? Maybe they just want to differentiate from the Android horde? I
really don't know why they would go with MS, if indeed they choose to do so,
but all I'm saying is that I don't think Windows Phone is a 'sinking ship'.

------
foobarbazetc
The only way forward is to embrace WP7 and become the WP7 phone. Build apps
and an ecosystem around that. Hell, get Microsoft to acquire Nokia and make
WP7 exclusive. WP7 is a much better platform than Android anyway (in a couple
of OS updates at least).

There is no way that Nokia will ever win using Symbian/MeeGo or Android.

If they stay the course then Nokia's dead and will never recover.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
I agree with everything you said except I think there's a 0% chance of
Microsoft buying Nokia, it doesn't fit their business model. Companies would
not be as willing to license WP7 if MSFT were competing directly with them and
able to undercut their competitor's prices.

~~~
foobarbazetc
The point is that Microsoft would no longer need to license WP7 (and quite
frankly, I doubt they really care about those licensing fees when ecosystem
market share is a far bigger revenue source).

Both companies are at a point where they're about to enter irrelevance in the
mobile space (Nokia actually entered irrelevance as soon as the iPhone
launched, but it took them a while to figure that out due to pride and
thinking all that matters is how many widgets you ship -- they're about to hit
the bottom of the abyss).

The problem Microsoft has is that all the existing licensees don't care at all
about their platform. Samsung, HTC and LG all have their hands in multiple
pies, not willing to commit to any platform because they don't care about who
wins, as long as they make money.

They need someone to focus exclusively on WP7, delivering the best integrated
experience the platform can offer. Nokia's not going to go exclusive unless
Microsoft does too.

There are issues on both sides though:

* Nokia used to build great hardware. They need to start doing that again to convince Microsoft it's worth acquiring.

* Microsoft needs to recognize that WP7 isn't going to go anywhere unless something major changes.

The upcoming announcement might be a precursor to the above scenario.

------
grego
If they don't want to alienate existing developers, a logical choice would be
official Qt support for Android. Meego could also be tweaked to run Android,
as it is already being done by others, see for example
<http://www.aavamobile.com/>

~~~
nextparadigms
They could run Myriad's Alien Dalvik engine. I also agree that official QT
support for android would be great as well. I think 2 open source mobile OS's
rising at the top of the mobile market would be a great thing for wold. I
think Apple will provide enough contrast with their closed iOS platform to
balance things out.

------
laujen
A strong Nokia is good for smart phones. I hope Elop is smart and doesn't get
bogged down in the tablet fight. Nokia needs to focus on doing smart phones
well. Plenty of market there as 6 billion people will be buyers.

------
ylem
I'm very curious how this will effect QT...

------
mhartl
It's worth noting in this context that Nokia has reinvented itself before; for
instance, the company started in 1865 as a pulp mill and paper manufacturer.
They've pivoted a few times in the years since.

------
lhnz
This is a great PR campaign from Nokia. :)

------
msh
There are at least one reputable source that claims it is false:
[http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/the-
nok...](http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/the-nokia-ceo-
burning-platform-memo-at-engagdget-doesnt-ring-true-to-my-ears.html)

------
hook
Is it obvious to everyone that he is preparing Nokia for a transition to
Windows?

------
adsr
This is interesting, but wouldn't a move to say Android or Windows make them
"just another Android or Windows phone". I understand the reasoning behind
this but it seems to me that they would also lose something here.

------
ramanujan
Nokia should ally with Facebook to make the Facebook phone. That is the only
thing I can think of that would put them back in the game.

The downside is that MS probably has the inside track on that with Windows
Phone 7/8.

------
np3000
<http://twitter.com/#!/vicgundotra/status/35182523650801664>

Looks like Nokia is going with Windows Phone 7

------
gamble
This is the point where someone argues that Nokia is doing just fine, since
they still have 110% market share in Tanzania...

------
allenbrunson
compare and contrast with this statement from the company, several months ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1481354>

this new memo makes me think better of them. if Nokia can get out of the new
CEO's way and let him execute, then maybe they can turn it around.

------
meemo
Is anybody else thinking "Manchurian candidate"? I mean if he decides to go
with Windows phone 7.

------
elboru
absolutely agree

