I was around when the takeover of Nokia R&D happened in Febuary 2011, I remember walking around the offices of Ruohulati in Helsinki and seeing a massive queue to the IT room, previously linux laptops were being reformatted to run windows.<p>I asked one of the project managers: "why, will it really change that much for us, I mean, there's hope right?"<p>they responded: "This is a takeover, I've seen it before, they're just not calling it that- they'll kill MeeGO in it's crib.. and for us, it's adapt or die".<p>By the end of the second week (Elop did an eloquent speech about the future of Meego) all the really senior technical experts were working for Intel despite Elop saying "they just want to sell chips" and being generally derogatory to Intel), all the designers and senior management went to Jolla (which tried to enter a market which is fairly dominated already as a startup), myself, I was fired.. and everyone else is still running the ghost ship, I wasn't a large fan of microsofts products going in to Nokia, which is why I liked Maemo/MeeGO for the phone and I could use Linux at work- but this move cemented them as assholes in my mind.<p>Nothing they do nowadays for good PR is going to change my mind of how surreptitiously they took over nokia and sent it into it's death spiral. Microsoft really loves to own and eventually destroy Nordic companies. (skype, minecraft, nokia) - lets see what they do with TeacherGaming.
Hard to understand. They buy the one company division in the world who was pushing the Windows Phone brand, a company who was innovating in terms of design and cameras and who had finally cracked their own decent brand and product line etc, and they immediately start winding them down. And they're going to work on their own hardware now anyway.<p>At the same time they throw their own stable OS in the bin and release a buggy beta version which has ruined the experience for WP users.<p>What was the point of this whole exercise? A convoluted way of getting Nokia's masses of IP rights for mobile? Why not just leave Nokia to keep pushing WP?
I guess it is about time I stop making my hobby coding portable between WP and Android, focusing just on Android.<p>Sad, because WP is actually much better from tooling and architecture point of view, but the way the whole WP 7, WP 8, WP 8.1 and the yet to become stable WP 10, just drove everyone off.<p>Personally I was kind of pissed off, when the 512 MB devices were left out of the last preview update.<p>Also it was the only viable alternative to Android, on the countries where iOS devices are seen as too expensive, specially the ones where devices aren't subsidized.
Just few weeks ago, Nokia announced that Nokia branded smart phones and tablets will be entering market soon. This time they are based on Android OS. It'll be interesting to see how well they'll sell (compared to Windows Phone).<p><a href="http://company.nokia.com/en/our-businesses/nokia-technologies/hello-again" rel="nofollow">http://company.nokia.com/en/our-businesses/nokia-technologie...</a><p><a href="http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/05/18/nokia-signs-strategic-brand-and-intellectual-property-licensing-agreement-enabling-hmd-global-to-create-new-generation-of-nokia-branded-mobile-phones-and-tablets" rel="nofollow">http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/05/18/n...</a>
We may never know the real story. Steve and Bill used to meet in Bill's jet flying over the ocean so that they could avoid any monitoring as they made deals to benefit each other (the whole "we're competitors" was largely fake - I was in plenty of meetings with Steve and also worked for a direct report of Bill. Their goal was to make each other rich.) It may not be a coincidence that Steve dropped Flash (at the time considered the competitor to Microsoft's CLR in the browser - their bet on the future of controlling future development platforms) and Bill took-over the biggest competitor to the iphone. There were plenty of other similar deals being made between them and the major computer vendors (and, if it isn't obvious, we paid the price by the limited competition and limited choices. Bill and Steve didn't just meet with each other. People who think "free market" is real are both naive and arrogant.)<p>And in a court of law I will say that I just made all this up.
A much better writeup here: <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-cuts-another-1850-jobs-takes-950-million-charge-in-phone-hardware-business/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-cuts-another-1850-job...</a>
A lesson from Palm, Nokia, Motorola, and every other small-to-midsize company in the Telco arena: Never let yourselves be acquired. It won't end well.
The table graphic in this article really eschews clarity. The most recent figures on the left and a giant emoji slapped over it? Seems like a graph would've been better suited. The source even has the table in text format for easy processing.
I remember reading an article which explained the pragmatic reasons for the MS purchase of NOKIA.<p>Namely that MS wanted to bring back some of the billions they have offshore without it getting heavily taxed. Taking this into consideration the acquisition of NOKIA and eventual write down as a loss is not that bad. Especially considering it has kept it windows phone alive, and most likely moved any essential expertise to their other departments
There's an interesting article over at Anandtech discussing the fate of Nokia and what projects might occur under Nokia licensing contracts. <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/10333/foxconn-and-hmd-to-return-nokia-smartphones-and-tablets-to-market" rel="nofollow">http://www.anandtech.com/show/10333/foxconn-and-hmd-to-retur...</a> I hope that some of the folks getting the boot by MS will join the Helsinki based HMD Global who got an exclusive global license to create Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets for the next ten years.
I see it as Nokia was a very good hardware company that couldn't turn itself around into a software company. Before iPhone you needed many moving parts, good supply chains, great hardware variety, spare part production and who knows what. Now you need good software. Nokia was less likely to turn itself around than IBM.
The best thing that happened after MS essentially killed mobile division of Nokia is that Jolla was created. I hope Jolla will succeed. Their latest troubles and tablet project failure were unfortunate (I was a backer and won't be getting the tablet).
"... linux laptops were being reformatted to run windows."<p>Microsoft/Windows is a cancer. Ballmer once said Linux was a cancer. He later retracted, after it was well-known Microsoft itself uses Linux.<p>There's nothing more pathetic than when you see Microsoft's businesspeople or lawyers at conferences all faithfully using Windows, as if there was no other choice, and rambling on about how their products can solve any problem. These are not stupid people, but they are blinded to independent reasoning about computer software.<p>And then there are the people at Microsoft Research. What a waste (not for them -- they probably get paid handsomely). It is like MS is keeping these minds locked away, so the zombie-like adherence to Windows can persist. Keep the monopoly going.<p>Microsoft is a cancer on the brain. It creates a zombie-like, tunnel vision of computing. Everything must pass through Redmond.<p>Microsoft continues to remain dangerous to the future of computing, because they continue to work dilgently to effectively quell all independent thought from being implemented and made accessible to users.<p>Intent, malice, etc. is irrelevant. Regardless of why they do it, the end result is suppression of non-Microsoft software.<p>And now hardware.