RIP, Nokia (1865 - 2014)

Is this a serious piece of writing or just trolling?<p>&#62; 2003-2008 = back when euro was worth real money.<p>1 euro was worth between 1.1 and 1.5$. Now, it is worth 1.25$...<p>&#62; Rather than spend its resources on building an OS that depended on novel interfaces and sensors,<p>Like the first (and best) GPS phones?<p>&#62; that allowed for outside development<p>Like symbian and the nokia owned qt creator.<p>&#62; If Nokia had gone with Android[...] Windows Phone, on the other hand [...]<p>Aren't you forgetting the numerous other hands that are symbian and its successors: tizen, meego and meltemi?<p>&#62; Elop [...] clear-eyed<p>Humm. Choosing to ditch their own system to use another one may have been a bold and smart move, but still developping 2 or 3 different systems while trying to integrate an external new (and unproven) one seems to me like increasing the problem rather than solving it.

"If Nokia had gone with Android, the best that it might have achieved was to become an also-ran—another in an endless stream of me-too commodity smartphone makers."<p>No. Nokia could've been Samsung, which has the lion's share of the Android market. And Android Lumia would be the prettiest Android handset on the market.

While I certainly wouldn't call Nokia's position anything but worrisome, I think it might be a little early to start planning the funeral.<p>One of the benefits Nokia has by going with Windows Phone is the relationship it now has with Microsoft. I'd be very surprised if Nokia's tablet offering isn't front and center in just about every piece of marketing MS does.<p>The biggest issue that Windows Phone has currently is a lack of third party applications. I really do think that standardizing the platform across Phone/Tablet/PC will help in a big way with this problem (not pushing them to higher numbers than iOS/Android, but much, much closer than they are today).

Nokia won't last until 2014. They are declining too fast. They went from 45% market share to 18% in China, one of their strongest and biggest markets, last year alone. This year they will probably fall way below 10%. Nokia will most likely be acquired by the end of this year or in the first half of next year (or go bankrupt otherwise).

(One person's anecdotes do not a trend make - I know) I can offer an Indian perspective - When I was first shopping for a good phone in India in 2008 or so, every single person (techie) said "Nokia" without hesitation. From the savviest Tecno-geek to the manual laborer at a construction site -everyone had a Nokia.<p>Fast forward to 2011 late/early 2012; virtually NONE of the techies I interact with recommended a Nokia. Infact, I haven't heard even one of my friends/acquaintances purchase a new Nokia; it is always Samsung/HTC/iPhones or rarely Blackberry. On the lower end, the flood of cheap Chinese phones in the Indian market means no cheap Nokia's.<p>Nokia was a name many people swore by in India, now not so much...I am afraid the end is near for them.

Nokia get rid this problem by doing some encouragement to develop in their <i>old</i> J2ME/Symbian platform in such country that still have good market share like Indonesia. In Indonesia, Nokia encourage developer to develop games in their platform in a contest named "Developer War", and now it has 4 episode/chapter.

I don't think it's necessarily game over for Nokia, but they've got to drastically rethink their game plan.<p>They burned through cash getting the Lumia phones ready, gorgeous as they are, which is a gamble not yet to pay off. They're using the third horse in the race, a platform which it's creators have yet to successfully manage into the mainstream consciousness. Too many flaws to stand next to Android and iOS, but not completely down yet.<p>Lets not forget Nokia is still one of the biggest mobile handset companies in the world, they've got a solid brand name appreciation in areas of the world yet to be opened up.<p>Essentially they've still got chips left on the table, it just depends on the next run of cards whether they grow their stack or not. But lets not get in the way of a snappy headline.

If Nokia actually dies, Microsoft will pretty much have to buy them in order to ensure that they don't lose their (rather shaky) grasp on the mobile market (more of a foot in the door really...) That would make Microsoft the third company producing an entire mobile ecosystem of its own after Apple and Google. It's interesting to observe that the technological trend towards ecosystems is also happenning in the business sphere, albeit with some delay.<p>Also, I would be sad to see Nokia go - I always liked their well-built (dumb) phones.

I met a Nokia developer evangelist at one of the events and asked him about some of the map features. The dude told me that he would get back but never bothered to. I'm not judging a company by one individual's behavior, but it surely gave me a negative impression about their developer evangelism.

Windows 8 preview is good..may be not windows7 killer with PCs..but surely can compete with Android OS in mobile devices....only problem with Windows 8 is free development tools..hope MS looks into it..else it may loose the race before it starts....<p>and saying 'RIP Nokia' is very bad...i feel Nokia is still the best with its hardware and looks..i like Nokia 900 looks n hardware rather S3....<p>Android would have been better option...but they can switch to ANdroid as well when Windows 8 is not helping..there should be no worries about that...