

Nokia Plan B fails after only 36 hours - nyellin
http://nokiaplanb.com/2011/02/16/calling-it-quits/

======
smikhanov
_radical initiatives like seating a bunch of kids on the board of directors_

This seems to be the clearest description of what this "plan" was about. A
management of a big company is not a government that you can overthrow.
Moreover, doing this is absolutely unnecessary: unlike being a citizen, being
an employee is voluntary. If you do not agree with your company's politics you
can always quit. Nokia's case is special with this regard: for people living
in Tampere there are virtually no options for alternative employment. They do
have my deepest sympathy.

As a side remark, I guess, nobody on HN doubt that Elop's business, strategic
and management skills significantly exceed those of plan B authors. Turning to
this "opposition" (pardon my political parallels) would be even worse for the
company as a whole.

~~~
jarek
> A management of a big company is not a government that you can overthrow.

Strictly speaking, it is, but you do it with money, not ideas. Offer the Nokia
board $20 or $30 per share and they will throw out the management and
institute your own faster than you can say "revolution."

~~~
sethg
Nokia’s current market cap is about US$34 billion, so the only people who can
do this are the people who control institutions with massive quantities of
money to throw around, such as... Microsoft.

~~~
jarek
If you had an absolutely iron-clad plan, it's not inconceivable that you might
be able to raise the required money for an LBO. Doubling current stock price
is probably out of question, but you might have some luck at least getting the
board to look at your proposal. It would require much more than a blog post,
though.

------
randomwalker
<http://nokiaplans.com/>

Wow.

(All letters except n, u, w are registered; most are jokes but a few are
earnest.)

~~~
legooolas
<http://nokiaplanv.com> could really do with some filtering to remove
javascript on the output page after the form... :/

~~~
code_duck
You mean the javascript that alerted 'hi' and redirected to a porn site?

------
wheels
What was missing were compelling nominees for the executive board. I'd thought
that e.g. Haavard Nord (former Trolltech CEO that took the company public,
investor and on several small boards) would have made an interesting
nomination. (Though I personally don't see abandoning Meego as a poor
decision.) It was pretty clear that a collection of small-time anonymous
shareholders weren't going to be welcomed by investors with open arms.

~~~
davidw
That and the plan of action was basically "do what we were doing before, only
better, and in fewer places". I think Android was a better option than that,
and perhaps a better cultural fit in some ways.

And, if I may be permitted a bit of a dig: it was very Nokiaish of them to
change their minds so quickly.

~~~
shareme
Nokia had three options they were considering:

A MS WP7 B Google Android C Both MS WP7 and Google Android

~~~
PakG1
Apparently, they were also looking at RIM. Link I submitted didn't get much
attention. :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2222379>

------
rbanffy
I think it's becoming obvious Nokia's investors are betting against the
company. The Microsoft partnership is not about making good phones people
want. It's about getting resources, developing some IP assets and making time
so the company can be divided and sold for its parts. It seems they consider
this the best value for their money.

~~~
Luyt
Now that Oracle has usurped the Sun patents, Microsoft is keen on getting the
Nokia ones. Plus, they can control Qt better, which is used in a few desktop
systems that compete with Microsoft's products.

~~~
gmartres
At least, Nokia released Qt under the LGPL. Plus there's the KDE Free Qt
Foundation which guarantees that "This agreement ensures that the Qt will
continue to be available under both the LGPL 2.1 and the GPL 3. Should Nokia
discontinue the development of the Qt Free Edition under these licenses, then
the Foundation has the right to release Qt under a BSD-style license or under
other open source licenses. The agreement stays valid in case of a buy-out, a
merger or bankruptcy." (see
[http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p...](http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php)
)

~~~
Luyt
Yup, that's a bit of a solace. But nevertheless, without Nokia putting their
shoulders under it, development of Qt as a whole might be impaired somewhat.
(Not that it hurts me personally; I still use KDE3 ;-)

------
sambeau
It was, sadly, never going to work. If MeeGo had been a more viable competitor
then it may have stood a chance.

But anyone reading:

"The worst product I've seen so far at Mobile World Congress is Intel's MeeGo
OS running on a netboot"

<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380359,00.asp>

Must have realised it was game-over.

------
desigooner
I'm still skeptical of this whole affair. They got their 15 mins of fame and
came across as the ones trying to make a difference. I understand that they
genuinely like Nokia, etc. but this was all too hasty and ill conceived.

The so called "9" never revealed or hinted towards who they were and all they
were banking upon was "Meego is our saviour. We don't need Microsoft. We will
revolt against the management" etc. without having really put an effort on
having a long term plan beyond 1 blog post.

Also, how clairvoyant of them to say that most of the remaining talented
software devs would have left by the time their "vision" came to fruition? Are
they just talking about themselves here!?

~~~
DevX101
I can understand why they chose not to reveal their identities so soon. If
they were young as they say, they probably didn't have any power in the
organization to speak of, and would almost certainly have been fired within
weeks.

Now that the plan didn't work they still have the option of staying at Nokia
until they can find a better fir for them.

~~~
desigooner
I understand that, I'd probably have stayed anonymous as well but it seemed
like it was a hasty decision as staying anonymous sort of took out the
credibility since nobody knew how much stake or influence they really had in
the organization. FWIW it seemed like a few software developers who were
working on Symbian if I had to guess, pledging their stock options and not
really anybody from management.

~~~
jamn
The link is not working for me; going to <http://twitter.com/NokiaPlanB/> only
shows the following quote: "there are no 'nine young investors', just one very
bored engineer who really likes his iPhone"

If this is the case, then I guess that explains the anonimity.

------
henning
I guess that's "fail fast" in action.

------
clu3
Pity for Nokia! 5 Years ago, I worked in Maemo (now Meego) platform for 1 year
as a subcontractor. I was in charge of one application on the official Nokia
770 firmware. There was lots of fun but the device release was still months
later then scheduled.

Nokia's been missing on the web. It doesn't have a real online product. Its
browsers on different phones really do not work as I wished, they crash quite
often. And this is a huge miss!

Nokia didn't create a software community that are inspired by
something|someone. I get inspired by Apple stuff because I admire Steve Jobs.
I would have developed Android apps because of Google search engine and lots
of stories on how Google succeeded

My 2 cents

~~~
metageek
> _I was in charge of one application on the official Nokia 770 firmware._

Ooh, which one? I had a 770 (sold it and bought an N810, which I still use).

> _Its browsers on different phones really do not work as I wished, they crash
> quite often._

The browser on the N810 is rock-solid. The one on my N86...well, I don't think
I've ever seen it crash; but that might be because I almost always use Opera
instead.

------
erikstarck
An interesting explosion of Nokia plans after the B one. There's certainly not
a lack of creativity out there.

It begs the question: what if Nokia, instead of selling their soul to
Microsoft, simply would have asked their fans for help?

Yes, I know. Crazy. But, what if...?

~~~
brudgers
> _"But, what if...?"_

Nokia had enough trouble trying to keep internal developers on task, e.g
Mobile Web Server for S60 [<http://research.nokia.com/page/231>] with Python
Integration. One can only imagine the huge time waste that managing all the
tangential and marginal ideas produced by third party developers would
require.

Nokia has immediate access to a sound mobile OS, a suite of high powered
development tools for it, and a technology roadmap extending out for a decade
of more. To say they sold "their soul to Microsoft" is unsupported by the
facts. It is not as if going with Android would be morally superior - given
the way in which Google leverages individually identifying user data one could
even argue that adopting Android would be a less ethical course.

~~~
erikstarck
I wasn't referring to any third party developer ecosystem with the word
"fans". They could involve their fanbase in more fundamental questions like
openly asking "which path do you want us to take?".

No, I don't expect any company born in the 20th century (or before) to ever do
that. But maybe they should.

> To say they sold "their soul to Microsoft" is unsupported by the facts.

And yet the things you mention are exactly what the soul of a technology
company consists of. The nitty gritty OS, the vision of the future.

Of course there are many benefits in joining forces with Microsoft and no,
Android is not necessarily a better choice. But the fact is that the software
_is_ to a high degree the soul of the devices that Nokia sells.

------
chanux
I thought Nokia plan 9 was to run Plan 9 OS on Nokia :D

------
GrandMasterBirt
Plan M is the superior one. I don't think you can top that one.

