Nokia Shareholder Meeting - That the Future is Far Worse than we Thought

Tomi (the author of communities-dominate) is kind of like MG Siegler - he writes as a blind Nokia fan, with no hint of awareness that what he is saying has more to do with fandom than proper commentary.

In MG's case at least it is about a company that is relevant. Tomi was amusing back in 2008-10 when he would grasp at anything that "conclusively showed" how much better Nokia was than the iPhone, and later Android.

There was a period in 2009 (I think it was) when you could almost see the cognitive dissonance happening every time he wrote something.

Now, of course, he grasps at a broad conspiracy theory involving Nokia CEO Elop being somehow motivated to deliberately destroy Nokia for Microsoft.

Attacking Elop, either as a mole for Microsoft or a good old fashioned incompetent CEO, is pretty popular when talking about Nokia. However, I think he's justified his actions pretty well, and that switching to Windows Phone is a big gamble, but not an unreasonable one. I think their decision to immediately drop Meego was questionable, but I can understand why they did it.

Before my current android phone, I used Nokia phones for about 5 years. The Nokia phones had great hardware and a good low-level stack, but higher level stack needed a lot of work. If I never use another symbian device, it will be too soon.

I think you have to consider how competitive MeeGo would have been against Android / iOS (probably not very - though not for technical reasons) and look at the situation at RIM. RIM kept their own OS, and has suffered for it. I think Nokia put out the Lumia phones to stay reasonably current, which they did, and now they need to release a real "Nokia Windows Phone," that differentiates them.

Maybe they can't do it and they'll go under, but I think a lot of the criticism is sour grapes from people who dislike Microsoft or liked Nokia's old phone OS'es.

Here is a different perspective from another attendee: http://mynokiablog.com/2012/05/04/mnb-reader-generated-fact-...

I must say I am a little disappointed that rants like these are now on HN front page.

my 2-cents: I actually think Nokia could be on the up. Most companies like this have a problem with their departments lacking communication, or lack guardians that ensure each aspect is unified and works properly - and Nokia may never have this; however if they stick to the platform and strive for better quality on delivery and innovation it could work out alright.

I thought Nokia were going to bite the dust, but then I remembered consumers are fickle... if Nokia release something that looks sexy, and works well, they will be back oki. As long as they keep symbian going for the low-fi robust cheap phone market (that is still at large).

Also I really appreciate the insight on Tomi from nl... thanks!

Speaking as former Nokia employee (they bought my employer in April 2010, I bailed at the end of this January), I think all the discussion about Nokia’s strategy is missing a very big factor in Nokia’s decline. Their corporate culture is deeply, deeply dysfunctional: my pet name for them is “The Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic”. I think (judging from some of the internal propaganda we received while I was there) that some people in upper management understand that there is this problem, but you can’t take a company of 100,000 people who were hired and trained and promoted to thrive in one kind of environment and then, two years later, have them adapted to another.

I admit I didn't make it through reading the article, but I disagree with how he sees the CEO talking about wanting retail reps to sell the phone as a bad sign. Every single phone OEM that sells in the US wants that very badly. In fact, I'd be scared for any company that didn't constantly try to improve it even if they were currently first or second at it. You constantly see OEM's run contests, hardware giveaways, bonuses for selling one or x amount of a device, training sessions, etc. - all sorts of goodies - for the retail reps. That's just how most phones are sold in the US. Google selling the Nexus One from www.google.com/phone didn't work out because they didn't get this, so Nokia is already at least off to a running start if they realize where the battle to get sales is at.

I use to work in a retail setting selling cell phones. I can tell you that there are sales people that will boycott some brands. However, at the end of the day these sales people just want to make their commission. Usually sales associates will sell the brands that offer the best bonus for selling their phones.

If RIM is offering double commission for their phones then the sales person will sell anything with the name RIM on it. It's really easy as that.

No doubt is Nokia in trouble. And having followed the smartphone embryo that was Nokia 770 (with Maemo) I wonder why they were so late to really embrace this path. When they did, it was too late. What really happened in Nokia between 2005 and 2008?

Nokia can always embrace Android and become another Samsung. They seem to have lost the opportunity to build a solid alternative with the Symbian/Maemo/Meego/Win8 mess. Maybe a Maemo with Android Apks support could save them?

what a terribly written article which almost lead me to a [Certain Road to Death]

Ugh, not this rambling guy again with his highly opinionated and biased crud.