

Nokia appoints Stephen Elop (President of Microsoft MBD) to President and CEO - bkhl
http://www.nokia.com/press/press-releases/showpressrelease?newsid=1443731

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nanairo
NOOOOOooooo... I actually knew Olilla (we went to sister schools those a few
decades apart, and listen to some presentation he gave).

And I thought that Nokia was on the right foot finally. They seemed to have a
coherent plan and vision. From the mess they were in they've slowly tried to
push themselves out: buying Qt was a great move, imho, and focusing on the
Meego (for the smartphone market) and Symbian (for the cheap, non smartphone)
seem pretty good. They just had to wait a bit and I think they would have
pulled through. :(

Now I feel they are back on square one: running around like headless chicken
looking for a solution. They should have given their current solution a real
chance. Apple didn't turn into what it was today in a month or a year. It took
a lot of pain, cutting products, focusing, developing a new OS... I'd say it
took probably around 3--4 years before Apple was a healthy company again.

Changing your CEO now seems pure panic and not a logical/reasoned response.
Especially getting someone from outside the company??? Are they basically
asking for the guy to come and throw what all the progress they had made on
their new Meego/Symbian path?

Argh... bad move... bad move... I am getting really worried for Nokia... and I
liked them back in the days for their phones.

~~~
patd
It sure doesn't feel like they have a coherent plan. They have two new OS
(Meego and Symbian^3), they say "QT everywhere" but most of their apps don't
run on Symbian and Meego/Maemo at the same time.

They don't provide much support for the n900 users which was supposed to be a
developer's phone but said "Maemo is dead, we're moving on to Meego". Some of
those users are moving away to Android and it won't be easy to win them back.

Nokia can't wait an extra 3-4 years, they've already lost 2-3 years.

~~~
nanairo
I think the coherent plan is simply: Meego+Qt for the smartphone, Symbian+Qt
for the lower end.

Transitions are hard though, so I am not surprised they are still in the
middle of it. Such big changes take time.

But from all I've heard the Qt improvements they made and the IDE are very
good and welcome. And the hardest choice---to drop Symbian for Meego to
compete with other smartphones---has already been taken.

I don't think they'll be ready tomorrow, but I think with this plan they would
have been ready in 2 years. Is that too much? Sure, but that's the panic
talking: they've got a plan, they are in the middle of it, if they drop it and
try something else... and maybe drop it again and try something yet again...
and so on, they'll go nowhere.

As another example take Microsoft. They came up with Windows Phone 6.5, the
two "trendy" phones that were discountinued in a couple of weeks, while they
were working on Zune and Windows Phone 7. They kept moving from one to the
other, always making great speeches of how they made this huge change and it
will be great from here onwards. But it wasn't until recently that it felt
like they had a coherent strategy.

Samsung is another company that seems to be running around like a headless
chicken. (Though better than Motorola that seems to have thrown down the
towel, and tried to squeeze as much value as they can from their brand until
they become a anonymous Android clone, with nothing to make them unique.)

------
suthakamal
Nokia's problem is that they don't understand: \- Developer platforms \- User
experience \- Levers to create an app ecosystem

Picking the guy who ran MSFT's business prodcuts division might help them
compete with RIM in the enterprise, but it doesn't help them: \- Sort out the
Meego/Symbian mess, much less make it competitive with iOS/Xcode or Android

\- Build the next-gen OS into something slick and sexy, instead of S60
reskinned time and time again

\- Develop the kinds of tools, infrastructure and incentive Nokia needs to win
developers.

All in all, I'm sure Stephen is a super smart guy, but he's not proven to have
the domain expertise to solve Nokia's most pressing problems... which suggests
that Nokia doesn't fully understand what their deepest problems are, meaning
they really are finished.

~~~
blub
What do you mean they don't understand developer platforms and UI. And what is
a lever to create an app ecosystem anyway?

"Build the next-gen OS into something slick and sexy, instead of S60 reskinned
time and time again" They are supposedly doing this with MeeGo and
Symbian^3/4.

"- Develop the kinds of tools, infrastructure and incentive Nokia needs to win
developers." They are doing this with the Nokia Qt SDK and Ovi store. Both
have issues, but they're heading in the right direction I reckon. They should
work on the incentives.

~~~
suthakamal
UI: MeeGo is their first UI that doesn't have massive echo's of Symbian in
it... and while it looks clean-ish, it's not necessarily any improvement over
Android, which already has years of improvements, and 3rd party UI goodness
(i.e. HTC Sense) built atop it.

Developer platforms: Nokia's owned QT for a while... what did they do?
Nothing. Nokia had the WebKit WebRunTime years ago... what came of that?
Nothing. Nokia actually enforced arcane third-party code signing/testing for
apps on Symbian... who builds a developer platform and thinks that's a
reasonable idea?

Ovi Store: Whereas RIM also does carrier-integrated billing for BlackBerry App
World, RIM provides the developer with a consistent 70/30 split on app sales,
and consistent payment intervals. With Nokia? Your split varies WILDLY from
operator to operator, potentially being 35% of gross app price or lower on
some operators, and you get paid depending on when those operators decide to
remit payment. So, even with the most carrier relationships on earth, Nokia
can't even do a decent job getting developers paid.

So, Nokia hasn't got an especially sexy UI w/ Meego, they've not got a great
developer tools story (indeed with WRT and QT they have a history of screwing
up even when they have a technology advantage), and they understand so little
of the app developer needs that they can't even build a billing solution that
competes with what RIM have built with App World.

------
xpaulbettsx
Stephen Elop is a smart guy - really down-to-earth and easy to talk to; of the
few MS execs I've actually met, he was definitely the most personable.
Definitely sad to see him go.

~~~
kiiski
Why is he "going" from MS and not "coming" to Nokia? Do you believe he wont be
as good exec for Nokia as he was for MS?

~~~
shrikant
It is "going" from Paul Betts' perspective - he works at Microsoft.

------
dgregd
[http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/12/palms-third-
act.html#commen...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/12/palms-third-
act.html#comment-2049747)

Only 3 OS platforms have survived in PC world. Windows (C#), Mac OS
(Objective-C) and Linux (Java). IMHO in mobile space there is also space for 3
OS platforms only.

As a developer I am curious to learn what main development language Nokia has
chosen for their platform. Symbian has lame C++ version and crappy IDE. I
guess that Meego thing uses C++, right?

BTW that CEO replacement reminds me situation with coach search for Polish
football team. We had Dutch for two years. Nothing changed. Players were the
same, one naturalized Brazilian wasn't enough.

I'm afraid that little Finland has no enough talented developers to build
something competitive to software written by world best developers gathered in
SF area and Seattle. And it is so late.

There are rumors that many parts of Symbian code are highly unmaintainable,
that they preferred cheap programmers over talented. If these rumors are true
then Nokia is really doomed in smartphone market. And they deserve this.

------
maxniederhofer
Interesting that they didn't pick a Finn this time. I heard from a friend
there that they were actively trying to recruit to build a succession pipeline
of Finns.

If you don't know him, here's a video of Elop speaking at Web 2.0 Expo:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHKMUHvb2iE>.

------
macco
I don't know if an American guy is the right person for Nokia. Don't get me
wrong I don't have anything against Americans, but Nokia it a Finnish company
and should act like this. Probably they didn't find an expierenced guy from
Finnland - good CEOs a very seldom. I hope they don't try to be like Apple -
they should concentrate on their strength. They are building the best
hardware, imo, and with Meego the have a great software-platform.

~~~
Setsuna
He's from Canada.

[http://conversations.nokia.com/2010/09/10/stephen-elop-to-
jo...](http://conversations.nokia.com/2010/09/10/stephen-elop-to-join-nokia-
as-president-and-ceo/)

------
asmosoinio
Hope this helps Nokia renew their smart phones and their user experience...

Just yesterday I used the Ovi store to install Mail for Exchange to a E71, an
that was a truly horrible experience; a reminder of how out-dated the Nokia
services are. Doesn't help if the HW is top-notch.

~~~
blub
What was so horrible about it? "Horrible, awful and terrible" are starting to
become HN memes for "it wasn't perfect".

The worst I had was when it wouldn't accept my CC. That was annoying, but
buying & installing is pretty simple actually.

~~~
bkhl
I agree with your statement about the HN meme. Nowadays, people don't describe
in detail or give supportive arguments and examples to show why a product or
service is so "horrible". It almost looks like these people just want to bash
a company/product without any clear reason. :)

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jaggs
Great, just what a failing company needs. An ambitious, political manager from
another failing company. This is definitely going to end well. NOT.

