Nokia tries to reinvent itself: Bears at the door | Hacker News Reader

Nokia tries to reinvent itself: Bears at the door

economist.com

53 pointsbensummers27 comments

I think Nokia's future is really going to be determined by their ability to make great software. There is no question that they can make great hardware, but pretty much in all cases their software is letting them down. Can this hardware engineering dominated company make the shift to an organisation that can make great software? Do the managers and executive team know how to hire, motivate and manage great software people? Beyond that: Can they get their software teams to release quality products that get deployed to end-users? Can they do effective developer support and platform evangelism?

I kind of always root for Nokia because they are a successful European tech company. Unfortunately for the past 10 years they haven't failed to let expectations down. Maybe all this increased competition will get them to make all the changes they need - they certainly sounded serious at a developer outreach event I went to last year. The event still didn't leave me convinced they understood hackers though, or how to inspire application developers to write for their platforms.

Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1039390

But I voted it up since the original didn't get any attention.

I think Nokia is at an 'interesting' point. Here in Europe, they are way more important than either Apple or any of the various Android things, but they look wobbly. I will be curious to see how things work out for them, if they are indeed able to reinvent themselves.

It's frustrating how so many sites have many different URLs for the same article, confounding the dupe filter. :-(

I was one of the few who voted it up. It's a well written article with good comments.

The economist is the best magazine today. I just got a subscription for christmas, and I'm delighted with the print edition.

"While giving Symbian a makeover it is also pushing a new operating system, called Maemo, for the grandest, computer-like smart-phones."

I guess that quote shows quite well what's wrong in terms of attracting developers.

What do you try to hint at? Do you mean they should just go with some form of Unix, a proven way to attract hackers?

Actually http://maemo.org/ does not look too bad. (And maemo may actually be close to Linux or so. I haven't checked in depth, yet.)

Maemo is a Debian based linux.

I think the point is that Nokia is splitting developer attention between two incompatible platforms, rather than choosing one and getting it on as many devices as possible.

No, what I'm saying is that they should commit themselves to one OS for high end devices. As a developer, how do I know whether Maemo or Symbian has a future? Neither has a significant installed base outside of Nokia. Right now Nokia doesn't exist for me as a developer. I don't believe a word they say. They are confused and I believe they could announce Android support tomorrow.

The question "When is Nokia going to announce an Android phone?" and their known response captures pretty much everything that's wrong with Nokia.

While I agree that Nokia has a lot of problems and is getting more and more irrelevant these days, to be fair the same question could be asked about Apple and you would get a similar answer and somehow that wouldn't be a bad thing in Apple's context so I think you have to dig deeper to find the real problems of Nokia. I think it can be summarized by "trying too hard".

The answer is hopefully never. Android is an over-hyped mobile OS in geek circles (The Google Andoid Army), but it is not well known in the market. It is almost unheard of in Europe for instance...

Personally I dislike Android from all possible points of view. Both technically (Java, HTC) and philosophically (Ad-OS, cloud).

Us & Europe, Yes, thay are in Trouble . But in Emerging Markets, it's only the top 10 % who can afford/ will want the RIM/Apple/Google phones. So they still have some legs there for the nxt 5 years.

It's a fundamental change in the way mobile phoes & their markets work that has caught them. and i guess there'll never be that Nokia Domination again in US & Europe.

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