
Nokia to Cut 10,000 Jobs After Weak Second Quarter - sew
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/06/14/business/14reuters-nokia-restructuring-jobs.html?hp
======
exDM69
If you run a tech company and are hiring, now is a good opportunity to try and
hire some ex-Nokia hackers. Most of the talented ones probably took the pile
of money offered in the last series of layoffs but there may be some still
left.

During the last series of layoffs, my company hired a whole team of Linux
kernel hackers, together with the team's former manager. The guys already knew
each other and were up to speed in no time.

~~~
Tichy
I worked for Nokia briefly two years ago, and while they never seemed to know
what to do with them, they really managed to attract very skilled people.

~~~
Gustomaximus
The team on maps did a great job. I still prefer their mobile maps over the
google version.

------
glogla
Does this mean Nokia is falling apart?

I guess that mean that Microsoft's strategy (implemented with that Trojan
horse guy) of "don't let them do Android even if it means destroying them" is
working in a way.

Then again, Nokia were the guys who popularized the paradigm of "make phones
that destroy themselves if they detect non-original accessories" and they are
Microsoft front now (and thus on the other side of War on general purpose
computers than me), so I'm not really sad to see them leave, should that be
what's actually going on.

~~~
chappi42
Don't think the strategy to also-use Android as a latecomer and go against
Samsung et al. without subsidies would have worked well.... The 'trojan horse
guy' seems to me more like a friendly enabler for the only/most successful
looking strategy left.

~~~
pyre
The fact that he's ex-Microsoft ends up looking fishy. I mean the guy leaves
Microsoft to head Nokia and his first (?) major decision is to make Nokia a
Microsoft shop. On the other hand, if you're constantly using hammers, then
every problem can start to look like a nail (i.e. he felt that WP was the best
solution because he spent a lot of time drinking the MS kool-aid, so to
speak).

~~~
berntb
It is fully possible Elop was hired _after_ the decision to go to the dar...
cough ... to go Microsoft.

~~~
felipeko
The previous CEO compared using android as 'peeing in your pants to stay
warm', i wonder what using WP would have felt for him.

And pretty sure Elop's memo is evidence enough he was the one changing Nokia
(Symbian -> Meego) strategy.

~~~
berntb
That Elop was the one to announce the Microsoft strategy doesn't really prove
he invented the idea since going there.

Why else hire Elop specifically? The guys hiring him could have found a lot of
CEOs with more telecom background.

------
Jabbles
The thought of only having two choices of mobile phone OS is disturbing. I
hope that Nokia's gamble on Microsoft pays off and they keep the pressure on
Apple and Google to keep things moving forward. More competition at this point
can only be good for us consumers.

It is, of course, sad that so many jobs will be lost. Although I can't help
thinking that since Nokia no longer has to develop an entire OS, it would have
quite an excess of engineers. Obviously that's only part of it.

~~~
loudmax
Nokia had alternate operating system and they abandoned it. Maemo was well
liked by the people who used it. It seems Nokia decided to board another
company's burning ship. It's a shame to see all that engineering talent go to
waste.

~~~
chappi42
By the _few_ people who used it... No chance at all that Maemo could have
become the mainstream platform/ecosystem needed for Nokia to prosper.

Uh and IIRC a lot of engineering talent was wasted with gtk/qt/meego changes.
The Maemo UI (imho of course) looks boring and dated in comparision to Metro.
It's a shame, yes. But it's good they not only whine but change something!

~~~
Tichy
What if there were only few users because it was rather hard to get devices
and it was never really advertised outside the tech circles?

------
pinaceae
interesting fact about the layoffs - they have wiped out their Linux/QT team
(in Ulm and other areas).

Nokia has hereby given up any development Meltemi on featurephones for
emerging markets ("the next billion" as they dubbed it). a bunch of their top
developers already are tweeting their defeat notes.

Choice blog forum post: "Meltemi product creation was in Ulm and Oulu. SW
development in Espoo (UX, Linux core), Tampere (UI FW + Qt) + all Qt sites
(Trolltech heritage). Over 1000 people focused on that. Nokia security working
hard to ensure code does not leak outside Nokia, they already closed
development enviroments and wikis this morning before announcements. By now
they most propably have wiped hard drives where Meltemi code was residing."

[http://communities-
dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/brief-c...](http://communities-
dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/brief-commentary-on-todays-nokia-bad-news-
day/comments/page/1/#comment-6a00e0097e337c88330163068ee374970d)

~~~
joezydeco
Whoa whoa whoa...they just fired _all the old Trolltech employees_???

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
I bet Digia is about to hire a lot of people.

------
iandanforth
Having never worked in such a large company I'm always surprised at these
round numbers. Is it really standard practice to pick a large round number and
just start firing? Or perhaps is this the reporter favoring round numbers over
accurate counts?

~~~
jib
It will be an estimate. You want to do some voluntary offers over picking each
guy if you can (because it is also an opportunity to get rid of
demotivated/already checked out staff who you aren't aware of).

Some big decisions (close area/team X), some voluntary offers, some selections
on individuals. Give a rough estimate of what it will mean, announce it along
the big decisions, iterate to see what happens in the voluntary area and then
do extra mandatory selection cuts if needed to hit your savings target.

~~~
toyg
Also, in countries with labour-friendly laws (like Finland, I assume) there is
usually a process to follow where the company has to justify the cuts, so they
have to actually set target numbers.

------
rbanffy
Oddly enough, Elop and the board who hired him are not among those...

In more civilized societies, they'd be expected to commit ritual suicide.

~~~
aik
They still have over 100,000 employees. And they're building new factories in
Asia. And their Lumia phones are best sellers in several countries. I don't
think they're going anywhere yet.

Edit: Could you explain why they should commit suicide? Are you saying the
executive board has failed? I think it's much too early to tell.

~~~
gahahaha
Can anybody say that the executive board hasn't failed? I don't see how Nokia
could have fumbled the ball more totally than they have.

The Stock price:
[https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...](https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1339515960000&chddm=446054&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=INDEXSP:.INX&cmptdms=0&q=NYSE:NOK&ntsp=0)

~~~
aik
They're making a long term investment with Windows Phone (WP) -- with the
current plan they probably won't reach profitability for another several
quarters. If the plan succeeds, Nokia will be profitable again when the point
comes where WP gains a significant enough marketshare where Nokia is able to
completely replace the drop in Symbian sales with WP phones (and their new
cheap feature phones).

If you follow the path of no-Elop, Nokia would still be investing in Symbian
and Meego. Are you claiming the stock would've been better if following that
path? It's very unlikely, especially if you look at the steep drop in Symbian
phone sales over the past few quarters.

~~~
pessimizer
The drop in Symbian sales came after it was announced to be a dead platform.
Without that announcement, no steep drop. And from all indications, the Meego
N9 would have (or did according to some) outsold the Lumia 800 if it had been
generally released.

Nokia was stagnating before, but not drowning. The major problem that they had
was management of their software projects, which were becoming a tangled mess
of unfixed bugs and missed dates. Instead of buying a new car, they just
needed a new transmission.

~~~
aik
1\. From my understanding all reports were that Symbian had just become too
heavy to maintain and improve. Thus not worth it.

2\. I don't think it matters too much if Meego would have outsold Lumia 800.
Again, it's not about selling individual phones in the short term, but it's
about the ecosystem. Meego may have been OK in the short term, but I believe
unless it was massively better than iOS/Andriod (which to me it seemed like a
poor copy in many respects), and it would be able to get the app count, I do
believe it would have died before long. I believe Windows Phone is a great OS
already, superior in many ways to iOS/Android, and has great potential still.
In addition, I can guarantee that Microsoft has 10x the capability of Nokia to
rally up developers to develop apps. And lastly, MS has massive additional
weight to ensure it's a success -- to continually pump the money until it
reaches success.

Although Nokia isn't the only maker of WP phones, MS has done a lot to give
Nokia the advantage. I agree we're yet to see if it pays off though. I'm
hopeful.

~~~
pessimizer
Symbian was definitely a creaky mess, and definitely would have to be replaced
by something in the medium term, but people liked it a lot, and with the Qt
ecosystem being ported to both Symbian and Meego, they were going to be able
to use the same apps (depending on the power of the phone, of course.)

It wasn't in any way a copy of iOS or Android. It was a full multitasking
Linux desktop that you could treat as a smartphone, and had (and has) a small,
rabid developer community. Of course, the Meego move was a bit silly, but I
think they were using it as an excuse to reboot the GUI systems, of which
there were three, which is two too many.

There are still new apps being created for Maemo (and Meego/Harmattan was just
tarted up Maemo) all of the time. What was lacking was a mass market phone
that would encourage more commercial developers to target the platform. The
N900 was a phone for technophile nerds like myself, but all of the glowing
reviews of the phone accidentally made the N9 a massively anticipated phone,
because it had N900 cred, yet looked pretty (unlike my beloved N900 brick.)
They had to dump it outside of major markets in order to avoid comparisons of
it and the Lumia, because people wanted and liked it so much. Me, I like a
keyboard.

~~~
aik
Firstly, I don't think it really matters if there's a small community. Or if
it satisfies the nerds. In the end they need volume, that's it. That's also
why I think Android will suffer long-term -- it just might be too (or overly)
complex/confusing for many people.

Personally I agree Meego had/has potential. And the fact that it was fully
multitasking, and based on Linux, is cool. I just don't think any of these
facts (and most derivative effects) matter to the vast majority.

Lastly, FYI -- WP will have keyboard options when Windows 8 comes out.

------
SlipperySlope
The takeaway ...

"Chief Executive Stephen Elop is placing hopes of a turnaround on a new range
of smartphones called Lumia, which use largely untried Microsoft Corp
software. But Lumia sales have so far been slow, disappointing investors."

------
madoublet
With WP7, Nokia is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. It can really
only offer a handful of similar spec'd phones b/c of the platform's
limitations. WP8 will allow them to do what Nokia does best and offer a wide
range of products across a number of price points. So, I think it is a little
premature to count them completely out. With that said, they will live or die
with the WP8 launch. Personally, I hope they succeed b/c they have been doing
a lot of cool things with their hardware and value added software.

------
nuje
Rumor is they also buried Meltemi today.

------
kqr2
More details from Bloomberg:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-14/nokia-to-
cut-10-000...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-14/nokia-to-
cut-10-000-jobs-as-elop-tries-to-stanch-losses.html)

------
GhostIdentity
And thus Stephen Elop becomes the Trojan Horse of modern era.

------
saket123
Nokia still has time to diversify (albeit not much). Every successful gadget
company out their (apart from Apple, but they have IOS and MAC OS) like
Samsung (windows phone, droids and some version of in house dumb phones), HTC
(windows, droids) , ASUS (Windows, Droids) have diversified. Nokia's Elop is
betting 122000 jobs on an OS which has 1.5 % market-share. I get that they
need to make Windows Phone flagship due to investment from Microsoft but they
should still think about making Android devices. I am sure with Nokia's build
quality, innovation (they really own some cool technology) and Android
ecosystem they will give Samsung a good run for its money and will sold far
more phones then Lumia with lesser marketing cost. People who use Nokia love
it for its build quality.They make good phones. Wish they don't melt away
because of management politics.

------
joverholt


