Jean-Louis Gassée: Nokia should fire Elop and the board should go too | Hacker News Reader

Jean-Louis Gassée: Nokia should fire Elop and the board should go too

computing.co.uk

81 pointsmtgx78 comments

My favorite part is that Nokia didn't want to go with Android because they would have to depend on someone else, and yet they've completely given up control to Microsoft. At least with Android they would've had some control of what they put on their devices and how different they look from the competition's devices, in both hardware and software.

With Microsoft they only have one other party to depend on, and they know they are a big deal to that party. Heck the rumour is that Microsoft pays Nokia $200 per Windows phone shipped. The reality is that the success of Windows phone is tied to the success of Nokia.

If using Android Google wouldn't have been able to play favourites much with Nokia. (See how they treat Motorola who they own.) If Nokia was on Android, the success of the platform wouldn't be that relevant to the success of Nokia.

So do you want to be a big fish in a little pond where the success of the pond depends on your success, or a small fish in a large pond where you are mostly irrelevant, but have more "control"?

Nokia's fundamental problem is that they have difficulty executing on software development. Getting someone else to do substantial chunks of development helps, but I've never seen anything indicating they have figured out development yet. So even if they had gone Android, what evidence is there they would have done it well?

> So do you want to be a big fish in a little pond

But how is this a little pond? Basically every other big player offering Android phones also offer Windows Phones. If Nokia starts making money with windows Phones, everybody else will also start making money with windows phones. If the pond grows, all other fish will also grow and consume the growing pond, so Nokias share will remain the same. The pond is only little as there is no money in it.

From all the other big players, only Nokia for some reason limited itself to offering only Windows phones. If they think their Android phones couldn't beat other Android phones, how exactly are their Windows phones supposed to beat other Windows phones? If they somehow can apply a magic formula to make Windows Phones a success, what hinders them from applying that same formula to Android?

Nokia didnt want to become just another Android manufacturer and get a small piece of the big Android pie, instead they've become just another Windows Phone manufacturer and will get a small piece of the small Windows Phone pie.

My interpretation as to why they went with Windows Phone:

1. The $$$, it's hard to turn down more than $1 billion dollars in a year (and probably more per device sold). Just makes the stupid gamble harder to turn down. 2. Nokia can still go with Android at anytime (and maybe they will once their exclusivity contract ends with Microsoft).

But $1 billion isn't really that much money for a company of Nokia's size (122,148 employees) when the company goes into a tailspin.

It's $8,187 per employee. That's 1-2 months of wages!

Yes, but if all things are equal, it's still enough money to fund the development of a new phone. Now, the question is all things are equal.

> But how is this a little pond?

Quick, find Windows in the chart: http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/21/the-opportunity-cost-of-win...

There aren't that many Windows phones available and as an example you won't find phones by Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, LG etc. And as the chart above shows what is out there isn't selling.

The rising tide lifts all boats arguments is correct, but there is a significant lead time in coming out with new phones. Last time I looked it was around 18 months, so new players jumping in will have a lag of around that much. There is first mover advantage.

Nokia's problem is execution, especially with software. Developing for two platforms (Windows and Android) wouldn't have made them any better at it. Better to concentrate your efforts in one place and succeed than spread and fail.

I do agree with your speculation as to the future - no matter what they do they won't get too far unless they fix their software development - and to a large degree the platform or how many of them doesn't matter that much except how much work they have to do.

> The reality is that the success of Windows phone is tied to the success of Nokia.

The difference is that if WP7 fails (and it did, since it'll be replaced by WP8, W8 or whatever the thing is called), Nokia flops and Microsoft walks. It's a classic bacon-and-eggs partnership, where Microsoft brings in the eggs and Nokia is the bacon.

> I've never seen anything indicating they have figured out development yet

Why would they? They run a third party software stack.

> what evidence is there they would have done it well?

Not much, really. Meebo was technically impressive and poorly marketed, but then there is Microsoft, with a proven track record of ruining anything non-desktop.

If Android or WP failed, Google and Microsoft could both walk. The difference is that if Nokia was on Android and Nokia failed then Android would keep going. If Nokia fails on WP then Microsoft probably walks and that is a huge blow to Microsoft.

Google can advertise at you almost irrespective of platform you are using. But Microsoft is getting no relevance (or revenue) when you use the new mobile platforms. It is a mistake to think of the "phone" platforms as phones. They are really a new software platform that coincidentally can sometimes make phone calls (on some of the devices). http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/iphone_disruption_five_yea...

Do you realise that non-desktop (Android, iOS etc) devices/platforms will soon (~2013) outship desktops and that the prognosis is a consequent decline in Microsoft's relevance? That would such an incredibly bad thing for Microsoft to walk away from.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/03/02/when-will-the-tablet-market...

http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-person...

http://www.asymco.com/2012/06/19/the-evolution-of-the-comput...

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/23/the-pc-market-overview-for-...

> They run a third party software stack

See platform stuff above. It is all about the software. You'll always want to personalise your offering in some way, even if it is as trivial as changing the default search engine in response to kickbacks. But generally you'll want to do more. Nokia also has divisions like Navteq (maps).

On the personalization point, no you don't have to. Honestly, I find that all changes done to Android by manufacturers tend to make it worse and not better.

Also, before iPhone and Android came along, Nokia was pretty much the only company that knew how to execute on hardware. In 2006, I would never have considered buying anything other than Nokia. Samsung, HTC and Motorola all made shitty flimsy phones.

If Nokia had gone with Android early, they wouldn't have needed to customize their offering. I'm willing to bet that Nokia hardware running stock Android would've sold like hotcakes in 2008-2009

> On the personalization point, no you don't have to. Honestly, I find that all changes done to Android by manufacturers tend to make it worse and not better.

We never talked about whether the others were any good at software either. The reality is that the iPhone was a transformation from a hardware centric device to a software centric one. And most manufacturers are terrible at software. Have you ever heard anyone praising the quality and usability of software from Samsung, LG or HTC?

Android let them avoid doing software, but for commercial reasons you still want to do something. If you have exactly the same software on two devices then the user will use price as the differentiator. Software is an easy way to make them look different, and to give people a reason to pay more you need to have something unique. As a Motorola person explained there is no way Verizon is going to stock a bunch of different phones where the only difference is a little Samsung/Motorola/LG logo.

Nokia's plans were all over the place. They were developing multiple different platforms concurrently, but weren't getting traction on the new ones. They had no idea there was a problem, hence no inkling of an Android solution.

If they went Android they too would have customized it to give people a reason to buy their devices over the competition. (The million people a day activating devices are not you or me.)

You can of course prove every manufacturer wrong by starting your own company that does stock only, and make reasonable profits. We'd all love to hear a success story like that :-)

It's certainly true that differentiation matters, but I'm not sure how it benefits Verizon when training sales people on platforms is so important and they barely succeed on getting people who can answer questions about iPhone and Android. Interesting quote from the Motorola person, I'm guessing the reason to favor Samsung is more subtle. (Such as, the Galaxy is a sexier phone and easier to push, or the Droid name got old and is closely associated with Motorola, or Motorola moved too slowly on 4GLTE devices.)

Verizon needs differentiation so they can play manufacturers off against each other. If the phones from several different manufacturers are essentially identical (aka "stock") then there is no point stocking all of them since that really would cause consumer confusion. By having a variety of devices they don't become too dependent on one manufacturer.

Like any geek I strongly prefer stock. But if I was in the business there is no way I would do it. Since Google is weak on social I'd make sure my "enhanced" software experience put Facebook front and centre. I'd make my screen contents seem bright (choice of theme and default wallpaper). Consumers are notorious for buying the loudest sound systems (something Bose exploits) and the brightest TVs (hence default modes on them). HTC's stuff looks good - it shows the time in big digits, somewhat retro with the weather. And then I'd sure as heck make it sound like you are getting more. Literally by claiming various enhanced sound apps, I'd do something about storage (eg a partnership with Dropbox), and something about peace of mind should you lose the device (remote wipe, lock, gps find me) and more.

The moment you start the customizations even if it is just additional widgets & apps, extra wallpapers etc it becomes a simple slippery slope from stock. They all give people a reason to buy your "enhanced experience" phones versus anyone saying they have just stock.

I presume you mean MeeGo (an open-source mobile OS) not Meebo (a startup Google recently acquired).

It doesn't matter so much how big of a fish you are in the pond, if the pond is really small. Nokia was the biggest fish in the Symbian and Meego pond as well.

If WP7 was a runaway success, other manufacturers would flock around it in no time.

Do you really think Microsoft is a loyal, dependable long-time partner, based on their previous track record?

>treat Motorola who they own.

Whom.

Who is the subject, whom is the object.

In this sentence, 'they' is Google and they are the subject. The 'actor' in the sentence. The 'actor' mistreats and owns the object in this sentence. The proper word to use for the owned object is whom.

Sidebar: It is my sincere belief that people who take naturally to the structure and nature of grammar have an easier time programming (I'm a coder).

'Whom' is a relic of formal and archaic English. You might as well fight the singular 'they' or ending sentences with prepositions.

As per Skitt's Law, you might want to watch your sentence fragments and run-ons. ;)

you might want to watch sounding like an ass.

What would be your opinion on those who have another mother tongue than english? If they never succeed to master all the details of english grammar, do you consider they are doomed to have a hard time programming?

> If they never succeed to master all the details of english grammar, do you consider they are doomed to have a hard time programming?

I was actually talking about anybody's ability to master the intricacies of grammar in general, not specific to English.

That aside, it's commonly understood that programming without knowing English isolates you greatly and robs you of the opportunity to both collaborate with and benefit from 99% of other programmers.

English has been and continues to be the lingua franca of programming.

I understand your point of view. Here's my insight on this.

French is my mother tongue, and I was quite good at it a few years ago. I thought that people misusing words or making blatant grammar errors were careless and demonstrated an absence of perfectionism. Then I started to work and study in English. Since then, my level of English has greatly improved, but my mastery of French syntax and grammar intricacies is decreasing. In fact, I noticed that I tend to forget much of the edge cases of French. Sometime I write a text in French and get to feel bad while re-reading it, knowing I used to have a much better style and grammar.

Of course, I could dedicate a greater part of my time to nurturing my study of both languages details. But natural languages intricacies are too often irrationals, or too far stretching for the added value they bring. Thus I have a hard time finding the passion to go in their details, master them and use them. I don't mean I won't investigate them when I first encounter them; I will out of curiosity, but I won't give them as much importance.

Now, I got to start learning a third language, which is fundamentally different from French and English: Vietnamese. As I study it, I find further less reasons to concentrate on each languages edge cases. I understand the beauty of using a language to its full extent. But I do not intend to be a master of any specific language, I intend on communicating ideas in the three languages. I prefer being a master at communicating using languages, than being a master at communicating in one language. As long as I am able to communicate any idea of any complexity, I'll be fine.

Maybe it's a sad use of the Art of Languages, using only their generic components. But I feel my brain can only hold this much by-hearth-illogical-details, and there are only so few minutes left in my life, I have to make good use of each one.

So now, my perspective on language comes to be that my ability to communicate with 90% correctness with as many people as possible is more important than my ability to be correct 100% of the time in a single language.

It's quite similar to my view on programming languages. They come and they go: concentrating on a single one, learning and exploiting its intricacies seems inefficient to the bigger picture, and more error prone when working with other people who might not understand my use of little known features. Knowing to effectively convey meaning in many languages seems more useful. Not that I wish to be "jack-of-all trades, master of none"; just that I think I can be a master at languages, without being master of a language.

So to sum it up, I used to think mastery of a language was a symbol of perfectionism. Then I got to feel that only so many details about a language are useful in 99% of the cases. Then my recent experience at learning a third language further comforted this opinion. And when I look back at my friends who write perfect French but have little energy left to learn other languages, I feel sorry for them as they are putting themselves in cages.

Thus, I think one can have an easy time programming even though they do not master the intricacies of a single natural language. =)

You've misunderstood me completely.

Sorry about that then.

A big part of why they went with Microsoft was that the Android market is already saturated, as opposed to the WP market, where they have a chance to catch an ecosystem in its infancy and become the dominant player in that ecosystem.

There is no such thing as iOS, Android and WP markets: it's a smartphone market where 3 platforms compete (2, really). To use a metaphor a couple messages away, Nokia is bringing a rubber duck to a gunfight.

Amazon and the Kindle Fire kind of destroy that idea. They beautifully demonstrated with that just how stupid Nokia were.

First, Amazon is in the tablet business, which is a very different beast from phones. Case in point: carriers.

Also, they're selling Fire tablets at below cost. That'd be horrifying for Nokia's finances. Not to mention that Kindle Fire's sales crashed hard after the initial holiday rush.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/05/amazons-kindle-fi...

Meanwhile, LG, Sony, Acer, etc. etc. are in losses with Android and HTC is barely ekeing out a small profit. That demonstrates, how smart Nokia was not to just into this pool

Amazon are in the content business which is why they sell below cost. Additionally because of DRM there is significant first mover advantage - people can only drop your platform by dumping their existing bought content.

Asymco has good data on who is making profits in the industry: http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/03/the-phone-market-in-2012-a-...

Samsung makes all the Android money because they make the best Android phones. It isn't that hard to understand. Second point I'll make is Nokia's windows phones are competing with Android so pretending that they are in some different "pool" is just lying to yourself. Third, if you read the article the guy is saying Nokia makes good hardware and could bring that to Android possibly beating Samsung in the process.

Right, but the reason Samsung is making money is the customer wants the Samsung Android phone and the carriers are selling them, same as they did with Motorola before them. And of course, the customer wants the Samsung phone because Samsung and the carrier are advertising it so much. When is the last time you saw a Nokia phone advertised by a carrier in the US. (The issue with Qualcomm is really what killed Nokia, Elop was the response to falling or nonexistent really US marketshare.)

> Nokia's windows phones are competing with Android so pretending that they are in some different "pool" is just lying to yourself.

This.

Having done a freelance gig at Nokia, working on some Windows Phone stuff pre-Mango, I can say that Nokia is, and always has been, fully aware of the WP roadmap. The Lumias were brought out quickly, but have never been representative of what Nokia is capable of.

Don't fire Elop, retain the board as-is, deal with the fact that there will be incompatibilities. And wait for a Nokia running Windows Phone 8 and a Pureview camera. This strategy has legs.

Completely agree. Like Elop said, it has become a battle of eco-systems. Sticking to Symbian would have meant being where Blackberry is now; where except the delusional CEO no one cares about version 10 whenever it comes out.

Early reviews of Windows Phone 8 have been uniformly positive. And given Elop's background, he must have known this way back. This is all according to plan, and like you said a device with Pureview could turn this around.

I disagree. They had the N9 which was/is a superb device. If they had refocused on migrating their Symbian existing ecosystem around that platform then I think they would been in a much better place today than they are.

The risk Nokia has with Windows Phone is it ends up being one vendor of many and doesn't control the software. It means that they can't amortize their costs across the ecosystem as full stack vendors can which makes them very vulnerable to other vendors bleeding them on the hardware margins.

It also risks that Microsoft might Surface them with their own device leaving them ultimately with nothing.

Had Nokia refocused their smartphone efforts towards Maemo/Meego back in 2008, they would have had a chance. But they were hopelessly late in 2011.

What killed both Symbian and Meego was all the petty internal turf wars. Divisions inside Nokia spent years fighting over control of a hill that was about to be bulldozed to the ground.

The Symbian people fought particularly hard to keep their preferred status within Nokia. Their plans to rewrite the Symbian UI and reconquer the high-end smartphone market from Apple were completely unrealistic, but upper management didn't understand software and allowed Nokia's Linux-based efforts to be suffocated while enormous resources were poured into Symbian.

Those are minor risks. The real risk Nokia has with WP is that it'll continue being a marginal platform that can't support a company with Nokia's ambitions even if they got 100% of the WP market. There is reason to believe that in the unlikely case where WP actually takes off, Nokia have real competitive advantages over other vendors. (License fees for all WP devices from mapping, a lump sum OS cost rather than per phone fees).

> I disagree. They had the N9 which was/is a superb device.

Maybe so. But then they would be fighting against the ecosystem of iphone, andriod, AND windows phone. It would be a huge uphill battle without a strong ally. They would be on their own for all the marketing as well, AND making less money per unit since we know Microsoft is paying Nokia a large sum of money for their deal.

For the ordinary user, the N9 doesn't have any of the niceties that you see on iPhone or Android. It was going to remain that way; there was no way Nokia would have convinced people to write software for it. Also, the tooling around Maemo/Meego+ and Symbian doesn't compare to what iOS, Android or even what Windows Phone has.

I have owned half a dozen Nokia devices, and really I want them to succeed. They really didn't have a choice.

I have to partly disagree with you about N9.

True, it's unfinished and the recent update for PR 1.3 is probably its last. The development environment is not as mature as iOS, since the Qt SDK didn't have as many years of use.

On the other hand Qt and QML are in a completely different league compared to the primitive way of building UIs in Android or iOS. Nokia hit the jackpot with declarative UIs, and then completely failed to build and support a product around them.

e.g: Think about iOS - you either code your UI in Objective-C or use a designer. Borland was doing this with its C++ Builder and Delphi lines in 1996. On Android you had to edit XML files by hand for the longest time. WP tooling is the most modern of the three you've mentioned. C# is much nicer that the aged Obj-C and XAML is also a declarative language, but the XML format is bloated and completely uneditable outside of specialized design tools.

I completely agree here about QML. While Visual Studio allows to make drag-and-drop development what is very nice for beginners but you should support your apps as well and QML wins here.

The qt dev stack is imo at least as nice as the ios dev stack.

Where I can see something as basic as UI design guidelines? Such as: http://developer.android.com/design/index.html

IMHO, apps on Nokia phones have been primitive in comparison.

Nokia's attempt at HIG guidelines for mobile devices is at http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/docs/library/html/qt-componen....

Apps on nokia phones and on other platforms have been primitive because there isnt a widespread use of app stores on those platforms. Without a money trail, the company pushing the platform can only do so much. Even on android and ios its not the app guidelines or the dev stack thats made the applications stand out - its the third party developers working hard for the money made available by the app store.

Nokia N9 UX Guidelines:

http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/docs/ux/

Maybe there: http://www.developer.nokia.com/Resources/Library/Symbian_Des...?

The more time goes by, the better Elops bet on windows phone looks to me. Now that Google owns a device maker, developing for android is less attractive as you'll always be dealing, in part, with Googles hardware divisions priorities. On the other hand, Nokia is, more-or-less, Microsoft's hardware division. Other people make windows phones, but Nokia is the biggest player and their best bet. That's a pretty good place to be in if you're not going to make your own OS.

Of course, maybe windows phone will be a total failure, but given the alternative is being a "me too" Android developer I think it's a reasonable strategy.

Are you saying that now that we have over 2 years of empirical evidence that WP is causing a decrease in market share and revenue for both MSFT and Nokia. It looks better after that than before when WP's future was uncertain?

You people seem to forget that WP is not a brand new player that no one knows what's gonna happen to it anymore. It's been over 2 years. The evidence is in. It's no longer a question of whether "will it be a failure". It already was a failure.

Google has shown nothing that indicates they will favor Motorola over anyone else. Furthermore, the point of open source is that you can always fork the software if you do not like the way the main branch is going. Forking Android would not be easy but it is a possibility and it forces Google to play nice.

I do not know what is the big problem with being a "me too Android developer". If you are going to use someone else's OS, might as well use one that is wildly successful already. So no it is a terrible decision and it continues to be a terrible decision as Windows phone market share languishes.

First up outside of Samsung and HTC none of the other Android vendors were as of Q1 2012 operating at a profit. Everybody else is bleeding red ink. I would expect that several of the second tier Android vendors to throw in the towel over the next few years as their losses become unsustainable.

Secondly margins in the Android world are going to get much tighter. Google has essentially slit other the Android tablet makers throats by selling the Nexus 7 at cost. Effectively this gives the vendors the choice of competing with the Nexus 7 and Kindle (both of which are sold with little or no margin in hope to recoup via the app and content ecosystem) in the 7" space or the take on the iPad in the 10" space. Essentially the way the market is heading unless you control the whole stack, your margins will be impossible to sustain against those that do.

While Google has not yet favored Motorola, I'm sure Samsung is watching very closely especially after the release of the Nexus 7. I would not be at all surprised if Samsung forks Android to become a full stack vendor. I believe that they have the Cyanogen developers on staff already so it wouldn't be a huge hardship for them to do that providing they could get a content ecosystem off the ground.

I do not know if you have noticed but Nokia is also bleeding red ink. This whole idea of the Android market being too competitive is wrong, because it mistakenly segregates the Android market from the WP one.

There is no such separation. At least not on the WP side. In the real world, in almost every wireless store in America there is a stand with a bunch of phones where Android phones sit next to Windows Phones, Blackberry's and sometimes iPhones. A shopper comes in and looks at them all and decides which one he wants. So Android are in the same market as the Windows Phone and the iPhone.

Yes there is high competition in Android. Which means that there is high competition in smart phones period. Nokia are feeling and will feel the competition and the pressure for low margins regardless of whether they make Windows Phones or Android phones.

They sell WP phones in stores?? (Half joking here)

"Outside Samsung and HTC every other Android vendor is bleeding red ink"

You mean the two vendors who make good phones also make money? Wow...

Also, I believe the Chinese vendors (ZTE etc) are doing well.

I stand corrected on ZTE. The chart I was referring to did not have them on there.

However looking them up we have profits of 151 million yuan on sales of 18.6 billion yuan which is barely breaking even so I would hardly describe them as doing well.

Still that puts them ahead of LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.

> Effectively this gives the vendors the choice of competing with the Nexus 7 and Kindle (both of which are sold with little or no margin in hope to recoup via the app and content ecosystem) in the 7" space or the take on the iPad in the 10" space.

Also, there's rumors of an iPad mini coming out this year - there's a WSJ article about it in the last day or to, and I saw Gruber giving some credence to it. If that actually happened, there'd be basically no room in that market for any other players to make money.

I'm not sure your first and second points really make sense together - if second tier vendors throw in the towel wouldn't that reduce the pressure on margins?

The pressure on margins for those that remain will come from those that control the full stack versus those that don't. A full stack developer can sell the device at near cost then recoup on app and content sales. The Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire are two examples of Android devices that follow this model.

I'm not sure what the margins are on the current Nexus phones are but if the next phone is of similar quality and has similar margins to the Nexus 7 then its going to put Samsung and HTC in a very uncomfortable position, especially if Google uses Motorola to build it. HTC is especially vulnerable as their operating profit last quarter was low.

Similarly if Amazon decides to do a Kindle Phone similar to the Fire that's going to put Samsung and HTC in another difficult position unless Google is going to start sharing more of the app and content 30% with the remaining phone vendors than they do today.

The key point is that the market has moved from devices and platforms to ecosystems. Unless you can derive revenue from all parts of the ecosystem then its going to be very difficult for companies that can't do that to compete with others that can.

If Windows Phone ever get a good market share, you can be sure that Samsung (and others) will take notice, turning Nokia in a me too. The only company that has to gain from this situation (Windows Phone getting bigger) is Microsoft, not Nokia.

The problem with your reasoning is that Microsoft is also going hardware. And not by buying Nokia... Look at surface, it's only the start. So your main argument that it's not good to rely on the product of a competitor... is weak.

And it's not at all a reasonable strategy. A reasonable strategy is when you minimize the worst possible outcome of the strategy. This is maximizing it... while at the same time maximizing the best possible outcome. There is no way this is reasonable. It's a bet. A risky bet strategy. Might work... but computer history will remember it as a bold risk.

[Edited for typos]

They are only serious about it if they push it to their channel and compete directly with the OEMs. They don't have enough stores to go it alone. If you read between the lines of the recent article in Vanity Fair, it seems Ballmer will not take it seriously and wants it to die by not being successful enough, because they never gave it a chance.

If I had Gassee's track record I would refrain from criticizing.

1981-90 - Exited when Apple was on a downward spiral.

1991-02 - BeOS, didn't get anywhere.

2004- - Palm, didn't get anywhere either.

Come on.

BeOS was a great product. Apple almost bought it. Part of their problem was that Microsoft was charging people for DOS on every PC that shipped, regardless of whether it actually shipped with DOS. Once Microsoft did that, it pretty much killed a other PC operating systems. The Microsoft of the 90's was lethal. Nothing compares to them today.

BeOS was a great technical experiment and a terrible product.

It had no drivers, no printing support, no decent SDK and was generally immature across the board. It would have been a disaster for Apple to use it who actually had real customers to support. I really wonder whether BeOS was ever a serious consideration over NeXT.

The talent who made it ended up managing the creation and development of the iPod though.

Upvoted. If anyone knows about great technical experiments that were terrible products, it's someone named Taligent. <:)

"If you're not failing now and then, you're not trying hard enough" -- Bill Joy (from memory)

Gassee cracks me up. The way John Dvorak used to. I read Monday Note because Gassee seems to one of two people who understand what's happening to traditional publishing and news. (The other being Clay Shirky.)

Gassee has been pretty candid about how Jobs schooled him when Apple was choosing between BeOS and Next. That Gassee has learned from both his successes and failures impresses me.

As for his time at PalmSource, I can't say much. I tried some Palm dev work, didn't light my fire, so I ignored Palm(Source).

However, there was a pretty good post mortem of HP, Palm, WebOS a week or two back. WebOS had a shot, but blew it Untouchable's style (brought a knife to a gun fight).

Apple was not on a downward spiral in 1990. (Stock price in 1990 was almost double 1985.)

The other points are fine but isn't that just ad hominem? His points seem valid.

The industry exploded over that period, so the stock price isn't an accurate indicator of how Apple performed relatively. By 1990, Apple was clearly not competitive. Microsoft was winning, and what they had was DOS!

What ticked me off were his words: "...the board also needs to be renewed with people who have an understanding and working knowledge of the mobile industry." It is perfectly fine for me (since I am a nobody in the industry), or _maybe_ even you to say the same thing. Gassee's carries more weight though, and gets published, read and discussed.

I feel Nokia's management is doing what they can. No other handset vendor-developed OSes have succeeded. Blackberry, Bada, Meego,... The roadmap would have been shared way back when they signed up for this. Windows Phone 8 is the real deal; WP7 was too little, too late.

You don't necessarily have to be good at running a company to be good at criticizing how others do it.

Same way you don't have to be a professional football player to commentate football.

In fairness, a more accurate analogy would be a poor football player criticizing better ones.

If you take “Moneyball” as an example, sometimes a poor but experienced football player might be more insightful about success and failure than a player who is successful based on “natural talent” and/or following conventional wisdom.

(That’s what I tell myself every time I write a blog post about programming...)

I think he can criticize because he knows exactly what the problem is.

But besides that, Apple wasn't in a downward spiral in 1990. BeOS got bought and basically took over Palm, Palm got bought by HP. (And if not for Apotheker killing it, WebOS could very well have been lauded as HPs savior now that Microsoft has stabbed its OEMs in the back).

... and replace them with who?

... and the new regime will do what?

... so Elop can't do X,Y,Z but why not ask him to hire the right people to do X,Y,Z?

How fast can Nokia turn Symbian around into some sort of magical software that can please developers and users all-around the world?

Going with Windows Phone may be the not-so-bad alternative for short-term while stabilizing the company (i.e.: moving from old regime to a new regime is very very very tough, if you know what I mean).

Once the company has stabilized (if they can...), even though you get a hit by siding with Microsoft, start your plan B: build your own ecosystems.

You don't bulldoze your way out of mountain of problems. You come up with a step-by-step plans.

I find these sorts of things (chewing over previous decisions) to be rather painful and less than productive. I'd much rather talk about solutions moving forward since really, that is all you can do. I'm all in favor of figuring out what information or skill might have given you better insight in the past but that's really as far as I would go there.

Nokia's bread and butter has always been 'feature' phones, and that is something they really can't afford to give away. One strategy I could certainly see them taking would be to start with Android, replace the user land part with an application to run a feature phone, and push the footprint of that software down to allow for the least expensive hardware to run it.

Then leverage the core competence in the Android kernel to create the best of class kernel for a Nokia branded 'smart' phone.

I do wonder however if Elop is the guy to push such a strategy.

And do what with it? The transition is happening too fast for that. Nokia was always the one to push features down the stack (S60 to S40) but ZTE can do that cheaper with Android. The reality Nokia never saw was that Android is two systems, 2.x is S40 and 4.x+ is S60. Both run on a Linux kernel and run basically the same apps, with games running better on newer hardware.

Nokia had reached the end of the road on Symbian and needed a new direction.

This is a risky thing to do and going with Windows Phone gave Nokia the backing a very large and still influential company. Going with anything else would have meant going in alone. This includes Android which would be going alone into an already crowded market.

The current situation isn't great for Nokia, but they are in a deal that has the potential to help both companies, Nokia with short term financial help and Microsoft with a strong vendor to create showcase phones and the distribution network to get them into consumers hands.

Contrast this to RIM who tried to go in alone.

EDIT: fixed typo

Microsoft killed RIM a few years ago, the monster is just taking a while to succumb to it's injuries. Microsoft shipped an update to Exchange that enabled wireless syncing and push to WM5 devices, and licensed to client to Apple for iPhone and some of the Android OEMs, then finally to Google. This killed the need for BES. The carriers opened up real IP0 connectivity for iPhone and Android as well as WM eliminating the need for the BB internet service and email, and the extra fees payed to RIM. That part of the business isn't dead yet, and the BB is still popular in a number of markets, but RIM is unlikely to succeed in the US with a tohc device

While that contributed to the fall of RIM, what really did them in was that they didn't have a real operating system that could be leveraged to properly compete with Apple and Android.

Maybe he knows what he's talking about: Apple was doing great when he was in charge of products, and after Sculley fired him Spindler almost destroyed the company.

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