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  • #81
    This may be under your NDA, but care to comment on why Meego was so late?

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    • #82
      Originally posted by daniels View Post
      ...or MeeGo would've bankrupted the company very quickly. Choosing Android would've put them in a volume game against Samsung, HTC, and every east Asian ODM/OEM.
      How could there by any evidence of that in the case of Meego? It was released like a dev kit not like a phone people should buy. That and after Elop killed it... they slowly began selling it again.
      http://www.phonenews.com/nokia-selli...-states-20341/

      In addition, you will always be in a volume game no matter what OS you have. Most of the Win Phones don't even have the Windows logo on them aside from the main button. So it's not like Microsoft is using Windows to market the phone. If anything they are going to great distances to minimize the focus of their brand. Why? Probably because you can't play a game of volume if you have none to begin with. Microsoft in those markets is like Chery competing with Porsche. Now could Chery be known for building supercars? Sure, some day. But they surely aren't known for it now. So what is the brand buying you in a market no one associates you with? Well nothing. That's why Microsoft needed Nokia and not the other way around. The underlying OS on a Nokia phone can be anything and if it's good enough people will buy it.

      The only problem with that move however is if you bundle a good brand with a brand that most people can't stand. This is what you have with the MS and Nokia relationship. People will avoid Microsoft at all costs if you give people a good valid alternative...and there are tons made by HTC, Samsung and Apple...on Android and iOS that is.

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      • #83
        Originally posted by curaga View Post
        This may be under your NDA, but care to comment on why Meego was so late?
        There are a lot of details I don't feel too comfortable covering, but it was a truly enormous organisation (you've never seen as many project managers in your life) with an amazing amount of unnecessary process and resultant inertia. So development pace was very slow to begin with, then you rewrite the platform at least five times (GTK -> Clutter -> Orbit (?) -> DUI -> MTF -> QML), and end up releasing a very expensive phone (though its expense probably just covered personnel costs) that could barely compete with anything in its price range, with mid-range hardware (though it would've been high-end a couple of years previous), and no apps because there was no sensible developer ecosystem.

        There were some very, very good things about MeeGo, but pretty much the only viable option going forward would have been to can the entire organisation and start again from scratch, which would've taken them far too long to get a product to market.

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        • #84
          Originally posted by kaczu View Post
          How could there by any evidence of that in the case of Meego?
          Releasing one phone took then several years, with many, many, many, many more people than you would ever think. Trying to scale that up to handle the full range of countries and operators, plus a real developer ecosystem (one not involving Scratchbox), support of previous and existing devices, etc, was not even a remotely viable proposition.

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          • #85
            Originally posted by daniels View Post
            There are a lot of details I don't feel too comfortable covering, but it was a truly enormous organisation (you've never seen as many project managers in your life) with an amazing amount of unnecessary process and resultant inertia. So development pace was very slow to begin with, then you rewrite the platform at least five times (GTK -> Clutter -> Orbit (?) -> DUI -> MTF -> QML), and end up releasing a very expensive phone (though its expense probably just covered personnel costs) that could barely compete with anything in its price range, with mid-range hardware (though it would've been high-end a couple of years previous), and no apps because there was no sensible developer ecosystem.
            I think you're highlighting more of a problem of mismanagement than actual technical barriers. It's not like Android or even iOS are built on completely foreign ecosystems.

            Originally posted by daniels View Post
            There were some very, very good things about MeeGo, but pretty much the only viable option going forward would have been to can the entire organisation and start again from scratch, which would've taken them far too long to get a product to market.
            Start from scratch? No. The N9 did make it to market. I can buy it today if I wanted.

            http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Unlocked...words=N9+nokia

            Hell I could buy one to test it out. I probably would like it. However, I refuse to help Microsoft any more than I have to.

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            • #86
              Originally posted by kaczu View Post
              Start from scratch? No. The N9 did make it to market. I can buy it today if I wanted.
              I mean in terms of personnel. It was organisationally broken, and the only solution was to burn it and start again. Elop and MeeGo management apparently came to the same conclusion.

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              • #87
                Originally posted by daniels View Post
                I mean in terms of personnel. It was organisationally broken, and the only solution was to burn it and start again. Elop and MeeGo management apparently came to the same conclusion.
                Take care soon "chithanh" accuse you for astroturfing for Microsoft.

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                • #88
                  Originally posted by daniels View Post
                  As someone who worked for Nokia (in Helsinki) on OSSO/ITOS/Maemo/MeeGo for 2.5 years, and then as a contractor for another 2 years, I don't think you could be more wrong. When they made the Windows Phone, Nokia's properties were Series 30/40 (great, profitable, but extremely low margins on extremely high volumes), Series 60 (unsustainable disaster, technically horrific OS with an unusable UI and a worse development and cross-device deployment story than Android ever had), and MeeGo (shipped everything years late, unsustainably huge, organisationally broken). Choosing S60 or MeeGo would've bankrupted the company very quickly. Choosing Android would've put them in a volume game against Samsung, HTC, and every east Asian ODM/OEM.
                  Then why is their Symbian OS still doing better than Windows Phone, even though they have discontinued it?

                  Symbian was due to be shelved for sure, but teaming up with Microsoft and going with WP was obviously a horrible choice. Meego wouldn't have bankrupted them. The Meego phones they made are still so popular that people still pay for them even though the OS is pretty much unsupported. Jolla seems to be doing fine with Sailfish, obviously it's a bit early to say, but why do you think Nokia couldn't have done what Jolla is doing now? The Jolla workers are even the same people who were in Nokia at the time, so it's not a question of expertise, nor resources. There's really no good reason why Nokia couldn't have succeeded with Meego.

                  There was no good decision to make; that the company is in such dire straits (and to be honest, I'm surprised it's not worse) is a reflection of the company between 2006-2010, rather than anything in the Elop era.
                  Come on, you don't believe that yourself. Elop did several mind-numbingly fuckwitted things that single-handedly caused a huge collapse in Nokia's revenue and worth. Burning platforms?

                  At least in the UK, Nokia's marketing has been successful enough that (despite the still rather low marketshare), people tend to refer to Windows Phone devices generically as 'Lumias'. There's definitely still an identity there for them, though whether they can ever rise again, I don't know.
                  Ah, that's not a testament of Nokia's marketing genius, it's rather of the sorry state of Microsoft's mobile OS. No one knows or remembers any other windows phones other than the Lumias. And when it comes to the Lumias, they're mainly notorious for being crappy phones and breaking all the time.

                  http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=NOK&...=14&f=2013&g=m tells you about all you need to know about Nokia: two years before Elop, the market had already decided the company more or less had no future. And it had a point.
                  Two years before Elop, Nokia was still the biggest phonemaker. Nokia had the best carrier relations, and they were doing great everywhere except the US market, which has always been difficult to conquer for Nokia.

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                  • #89
                    Originally posted by dee. View Post
                    Then why is their Symbian OS still doing better than Windows Phone, even though they have discontinued it?
                    That is no longer true, in 2012Q4 the Symbian sales have been overtaken by Lumia sales. Symbian still has a higher installed base though.

                    Originally posted by daniels View Post
                    Choosing S60 or MeeGo would've bankrupted the company very quickly. Choosing Android would've put them in a volume game against Samsung, HTC, and every east Asian ODM/OEM.
                    I don't understand why people keep on claiming that Nokia had to choose between MeeGo, Android and Windows Phone. Samsung was smaller than Nokia when the change in strategy was announced, and could sustain operations with 3 mobile platforms (Android, Bada, Windows Phone), no reason why Nokia couldn't do the same and instead had to put all eggs in one basket.

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                    • #90
                      Originally posted by Akka View Post
                      Take care soon "chithanh" accuse you for astroturfing for Microsoft.
                      It is my understanding that only current, not former employees are admissible for the Nokia Army.

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