Microsoft is killing the Nokia and Windows Phone brands | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is killing the Nokia and Windows Phone brands

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79 pointsLukeB_UK90 comments

Nokia employee here.

Microsoft doesn't have a choice whether they want to "kill the Nokia brand" (that is, remove it from Lumia handsets). They have to. It's part of the terms of the sale of the Devices division.

It's our brand and we'd like it back.

Correction: They're going to keep doing exactly what they were doing before except instead of saying "Windows Phone" they're going to just say "Windows" and they aren't going to say "Nokia" anymore.

Not news.

Yeah, you'd have to pretty damn high on marketing kool-aid to think that dropping the "Phone" from the brand name is somehow a Big Thing.

I think the Big Thing is not the naming itself, but what is being signaled by it.

If Microsoft can actually pull it off, I think a single OS that works well enough on all form factors could be awesome. I imagine writing native apps that are responsive like the web apps we have today.

(I'll never use or endorse it if I can't side-load apps though! There's no way I'm moving into any kind of walled-garden.)

TIL what sideloading means.

"Installation from arbitrary locations, like we've done for most of computing history".

I was similarly confused when people started talking about "AOT compilation". Turns out that just means "compiling things from source code, like we've done for most of computing history", as opposed to shipping bytecode and compiling it when you're ready to run it.

Calling 2 different things the same thing does not change that they are different things.

Unless you're not referring to the things at all - but a convergent platform.

Huge difference. The only issue is getting consumers to buy in on the idea.

"convergent platform" is just buzz-speak. What I said before is still true.

Where previously the Windows CE-derived OS shared little more than APIs with desktop Windows, since Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, there's actual sharing of core components.

See e.g., http://j4ni.com/blog/?p=107

This is what they attempted to do with Windows 7, unify the interface with the tiled approach, and people hated it. In fact they hated it so much MS had to revert the changes. Still, if you look at the most recent versions of Visual Studio (ie. "Visual Studio Express for Windows" is separate from "Visual Studio Express for Windows Desktop") and the .net framework, they are clearly aiming to get to a place with a single dev kit for both platforms.

edit: Windows 8, not 7

I think you mean Windows 8 or maybe I missed that phase of Windows 7 but I like it better than 8. I don't like it as much as OSX though.

Yes, sorry. Windows 8.

It is a big thing for the decision makers inside Microsoft. Windows phone had it's own executive, who are now no longer a threat to the remaining executives.

What I've noticed about commercials is that when it comes to non-founder companies (companies no longer controlled by their founders), is that the target of the commercials is not really customers. It's the management, and sometimes, their "bosses", investors. An example is the countless "we're no 1" commercials. Nobody goes and touts their products or services actual advantages, or even goes so far as simply saying they're the "best". Best would matter to customers. No 1 tells you something about sales figure (and is easy to fake), and why would customers care about sales figures (except in extreme cases) ?

The message here is simply that there's a management change, and this is big news and to be celebrated, political foes have been slain, new victors have been chosen and crowned, this is a victory to be shouted off of roofs everywhere, because that's what people who decided to push this message feel.

> and why would customers care about sales figures (except in extreme cases) ?

Because most people go with the crowd. Conformity isn't as popular in the tech crowd as it is in the main stream.

Yep. This is a studied psychological phenomenon. People tend to prefer options they believe other people are choosing. A.k.a social proof. (ref. Goldstein et. all: Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive)

Also people want to go where the developers are and developers want to be where the most people are.

I think you're spot on: be it marketing- or management-driven, this announcement was made for the sake of the announcers, not the readers.

I misread your comment, but do think "Bing Thing" would make an interesting brand.

It reminds me a little of the time Microsoft marketing went crazy and stamped the ".Net" brand moniker on just about any product they could.

And a while before that, everything was "Active"...

As a counter point, Apple has a habit of labeling products with i- and labeling software libraries with -Kit.

Indeed, when I first heard of "Healthkit" I misread it as "Heathkit" even though Apple is pretty much the antithesis of Heathkit.

Apple have been fairly consistent; the 'i' prefix has been synonymous with Apple since the iPod in 2001.

Microsoft chop and change brands all the time, often in ways that are confusing to the consumer and damaging to the business.

iMac, 1998.

Noted, but the iPod (and iTunes, also 2001) is what made Apple (and the 'i' prefix) a household name, and paved the way for everything that followed.

The number of times products get rebranded is a sign of the fact that there's just not any forethought!

Apple doesn't just willy-nilly throw the i- designation of every product they have, though. i- is a special sub-brand that's used to express something that is small, easy, light, etc. Customers who are familiar with Apple's branding can immediately guess at how an iMac differs from a PowerMac (or, when they still existed, an iBook from a PowerBook) based only on knowing their names. That branding was carried forward, so that the same connotations helped offer consumers an immediate sense of familiarity with the basic idea behind new products such as the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Even now, you see a hint of the distinction alive in iOS vs OS X. They rest on the same technology base, but keeping the distinction alive means users still have an easy mnemonic to help them keep track of the distinction between the two and their relative capabilities.

So yes, Apple does reuse monikers in their branding. But they use them to create a branding language that helps them to better communicate with customers. This is starkly different from what Microsoft is trying to do with the Windows brand, which is to turn the word into a blaring, monotonous drone to be blasted at us until we enter some sort of alternate mental dimension where words lose all meaning and every single noun is replaced with the word Windows.

Curiously, the Watch is not an i product despite being among the smallest and lightest products.

Swatch owns it . . . . kinda.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-04/swatch-objects-to-a...

There are other reasons for not using i, e.g. iTouch, iWatch

Labeling things with -Kit dates back to early NeXTSTEP (1989). I believe it was originally intended as an indicator that a library included an object-oriented API.

Let's not forget the 'Live' phase.

Windows Live, Live Calendar, Live Contacts, Live Messenger, Live Photos, Live Mail...

Or "Visual", even though none of the products are actually any more visual than their competition.

To be fair, the original Visual Basic was indeed much more visual than the competition.

They messed it up with Visual C++ which wasn't visual at all (unless raw Win32/MFC code is someone's idea of beautiful scenery).

Also "Visual J++", or, as I called it, "Visual J Double-Plus Ungood".

Actually, to this day there are no (or at least few, we could debate about Qt Designer) C++ tools that will let you draw a UI, then double-click the button to enter the code of what should happen when you click that button. Is it pretty, or easy to learn how it works under the hood? No. Does it work, and work well? Yes.

Visual Studio has a very good and well integrated visual GUI builder.

Is it anymore "Visual" than, say, XCode, or any other GUI builder?

Visual Studio is called like that since 1995 and XCode is around since 2003.

By the time is came out, Visual Studio was actually very visual in comparison with their competition.

There was more to the Skylight rebrand than Live. The idea was to bind the services to the Windows brand, a strong brand in the US, instead of MSN, which is a stronger brand outside the US.

Also, the integration was tighter, so the experience was supposed to be seamless. YMMV. It wasn't like we grabbed a can of "Live" spraypaint and hit everything we could see.

> It wasn't like we grabbed a can of "Live" spraypaint and hit everything we could see.

To me, it sure seemed that way. Went from a perfectly usable, lightweight "MSN Messenger 4.0" client to some slow-as-molasses abomination "Live Messenger".

As I said the very sentence before, the goal was a smooth integration, but your mileage my vary. Restated, I know it ended up sucking, but that wasn't the goal.

I remember my time there from MSN to LIVE to BING to YA!BING

The Nokia smartphone brand reverts to Finland's Nokia in early 2016, http://seekingalpha.com/article/1679612-a-glimmer-of-hope-fo...

It's a very Microsoft move to drop the word which is what the product is and keep the word which is a UX element the product does not have.

I get it as a pure branding exercise if you just think about what Microsoft brands have equity and history, but it still strikes me as funny in terms of what the words actually mean.

So, now it'll be even easier to confuse Windows (the desktop OS) with Windows (the touch-based OS) even though, in theory, they have nothing to do with one another?

Apple has two different names (OS X and iOS) despite similar APIs and no one seems to have any trouble differentiating those. Maybe Microsoft could at least steal that idea.

The vast majority of users will not have to worry about the distinction between versions. They will be using what they perceive as Windows. When they pick up a tablet running Windows it will be Windows and when they sit at their desktop or laptop they will be using Windows and when they pick up their phone it will be Windows. Add in the universal apps and you have even less confusions when a user can move from Desktop/Laptop to Tablet to Phone to XBOX and use the same app.

So, basically, the theory that they have nothing to do with one another is not looking at the entire ecosystem.

Well - apart from the fact that Windows 9 is rumored to have the old UI for desktop PCs and the new tiled UI and app store for devices.

Users will never be able to move from trad PC to tablet to phone to Xbox. The hardware ecosystems, UI models and user requirements are just too different. IMO it's nonsensical to pretend otherwise.

The Apple approach of creating fundamentally different operating systems with significant convergence and overlap while also simplifying interaction and data exchange looks like a much more intelligent solution.

I hate to tell you this, but desktop Windows has been looking pretty Metro recently and MS is pushing touch screens into laptops. And Windows Phone shares code with Windows.

It also reflects a key problem in Microsoft's culture. They see themselves as a Windows company, not a software/services company, even still, despite Nadella's proclamation (which wasn't sufficiently different from Ballmer's when he took over). They have fallen into the trap where they see everything only as an opportunity to push the Windows brand, instead of products. They fail to see that the primary purpose for a company is to make money, NOT to simply chain the company to a specific product or brand. They're always looking for ways to shoehorn "Windows" (where the definition of that varies from the OS product to just the brand name) into new products, which leads them to make bad products the market doesn't want. Even Nadella demonstrates this by insisting everything must run on the same Windows kernel. XBox consumer don't care, even the slightest, about the OS kernel in the unit. Nor do smartphone purchasers. Nor, fundamentally, do most computer users. All they care about is what can they DO with the product. Will it play my games/run my apps/run my programs? will there be a constant stream of fresh new content and experiences for it? If the answer is no, there is no amount of "Windows" they can add to save it. The XBox brand grew from nothing, with no visible link to Windows in its first form (although yes, it was based on Win2k) and the 360 was a completely unique OS, and was a huge success (aside from the hardware failure issues). This alone should have been proof that Microsoft doesn't need everything to be Windows, but no, they simply planned on how to make the XBox One into a Windows box.

Windows (and DOS) built Microsoft, but Windows will also kill Microsoft if they don't start looking at products instead of "Windows" of opportunity.

I'm not sure I follow where this fits in here: "Windows" replaced "Windows Phone" in this example, and "Lumia" replaced "Nokia Lumia".

I don't see this as representing a continued use of the "Windows" brand in other contexts. We're not talking about Windows Live, Windows x, etc. In fact they seem to be moving away from Windows in non-OS stuff. There's Bing/MSN/Xbox for Search/Info/Entertainment, (they recently announced a relaunch of the MSN brand for instnace).

Well, first off, I never claimed they named everything Windows.

Second, As I clearly stated, I was using "Windows" in everything from the product itself to just the brand. Windows Phone is not a window oriented OS, so there we have MS tying their flagship brand to something that has nothing to do with windows. Then, as I mentioned, is the need to shove the Windows kernel into the XBox one, when the 360 demonstrated a small, lightweight, custom built OS is far superior for a gaming platform.

Then we have the concept "We're going to unify PC Windows, Windows Phone, and XBox to the same kernel" which is not smart, because while the OS X BSD-based kernel is portable and extensible (and widely used in low memory devices world wide for ages), the Windows kernel was PC oriented from the go, and became less portable over time (killed Alpha support, killed MIPS support, was originally written for the N-Ten platform, the i860, another RISC architecture). They have done this for ages, with Windows CE and Windows Embedded. They ignore the question of "what is right for this niche" and just shove Windows in there somehow. Windows CE was mostly the Windows UI, regardless of the use case, and Windows Embedded is a range from a slimmed down Windows to what used to be Windows CE (meaning once again, calling it Windows has little real value, since you then need to determine what type of Windows you're dealing with).

The Bing rebranding was because Windows Live Search was always a horrible name, and they wanted something short and memorable that could be verbed, like Google or Xerox. Windows Live for Games is dead because no one wanted to use it. Windows Live Mail never caught on, it was always less memorable than Hotmail or Outlook. Windows Live Essentials is now Windows Essentials.

Then there's Windows Azure. Rather than coming up with a product brand for their cloud computing, they called it Windows and added a color. Granted, they've recently officially dropped Windows from the name, but it's still deeply entrenched, and commonly used even by MS still.

My point stands quite well. They have too strong a focus on "Windows" as a thing that needs to be everywhere, and fail to see the value in their company brand, and in unique products.

As a pure branding exercise it seems like an insane, sycophantic, shortsighted move.

Having all your products share exactly the same brand accomplishes two things: Customers get confused, and any one of your products has the ability to do serious harm to the reputation of all of your products.

> Having all your products share exactly the same brand accomplishes two things

Except they're not. "Windows" is the OS, "Lumia" is the phone.

I see it as unifying it under a common name. Windows from phone to PC to server, it's familiar. Hence why no more "Windows RT". It's all Windows. The only difference is in the server line, it's "Windows Server 2012", but that's a different market.

Or you can benefit from confused consumers' perceived value by identifying with the established product.

ie: Outlook, Pentium, Godzilla

I love (some) MS products, but Microsoft marketing is the worst I've seen.

Microsoft continues to fail miserably on one very important front: Marketing

If I were in charge I'd fire the ENTIRE marketing department and start fresh. They have lost the tangible sense you need in order to understand your customers and communicate with them. Much like when UPS decided to almost ruin a brand recognized world over by launching a campaign that re-branded them as "brown". What an absolutely clueless move!

Microsoft examples abound. From commercials with people dancing around a table snapping magnetic keyboards on and off a device to "Cortana" (WTF!), a name only a mother could love and want to say all day long.

I am disappointed because they have a lot to offer. They just don't seem to have a clue as to how to make the right decisions any more. Please fire everyone and hire me as your benevolent dictator. Almost anyone could do better.

Come on, do you really think that the marketing department at Microsoft (or other company of similar size) is in charge? Strategy is being decided by their higher-ups, only details of operations are on them.

Same thing applies to most software I write. Strategy, ideas and decisions are from higher ups. Far away from implementation.

Thank you. That's exactly the point. Most people see something similar at their own job. Why is it a stretch of imagination to think, that other departments are in the same position as yours?

I thought Cortana was a brilliant idea, and a nice touch. Halo has served Microsoft very well, it's an extension to that.

Just my take on it.

To riff off that:

.net - A bad name and it was impossible to search for information in the early days.

SkyDrive - Great name...but oops already trademarked.

Live.com - Makes no sense.

Bing.com - See Live.com.

Does "ebay" or "amazon" or "google" make sense?

At least for ebay and google, these names held no previous definition. Live, bing and amazon are all words that meant something before they became brand names.

"ebay" and "google" are made-up words, very distinctive.

"amazon" isn't unique, but it wasn't hard for them to wrestle to the top on that one, especially with the .com domain.

"live" could've been a thing, but it's buried under layers of branding. Is it Microsoft Live? MSN Live? Is it "live" as in "alive" or "to live"?

Don't forget Metro and the trademark issues.

Or earlier this week when they suddently rebranded a lot of Bing things (back) to MSN things.

Hey now, Cortana is a really cool use of a property they had access to. One of the perks of being a huge, diverse (in the product / market sense) company.

I see that as a negative. They slapped one of their two popular characters on something as a desperate attempt to lure people in and be like Apple. Google didn't give their thing a personality. Having a personality may be better, but this just seemed kind of sad to me. It make me realize how little Microsoft has that people have positive associations with.

"Come try our new plumbing business! You don't want to? What if we call it Mickey Mouse's Plumbing?"

It's not a bad move. It may even turn out to be a smart one. But it just reminds me of their weak position.

Why not just call it the Halo phone, or release the Master Chief edition.

I agree. Their marketing is terrible. Problem is that they have too much money to throw around and hope something sticks. And then there was Balmer. Remember the early windows phone ads when they were trying build up hype??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55kOphD64r8

"All this recent evidence led us to speculate whether Microsoft is simply planning to just use Windows for its brand in the future, and that appears to be the case"

Is speculation really necessary? Microsoft seems to have publicly announced "One Windows." And for those not really following Windows Phone and Threshold (Windows 9), the future seems to be an OS that adapts to the device you're on. If you're on a phone, a Phone app appears, large enough screen, the desktop becomes available, etc.

Much more interesting is to speculate if and when the old Nokia releases a new phone, say an Android model. There is probably contractual "rusty handcuffs" period of 2-4 years that prevents it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have skunkworks projects already. Of course, a lot of factories and supply chains are gone, but know-how and contact networks would make it possible to bootstrap it again.

A Jolla speculator, http://followingjolla.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-small-print-t...

This smells a bit of a slighty dangerous throwback to the "windows everywhere" days where Microsoft tied everything into Windows. It makes me wonder if they understand that the Windows brand itself is a liability moving forward. Nokia had the same problem - just like "Nokia" had become synonymous with "dumb phone" in the consumer's mind, so too has Windows become associated with "legacy business computer at work that I hate". I feel that if Microsoft wants to succeed they need to chart a future that succeeds without being chained to something with such strong associations in people's minds - even for those for whom it is a good association, it is the wrong association.

Surface. Xbox. Windows.

Those three should be the only brand ids, and long term I would start replacing the Windows brand with the Surface brand.

I don't understand the surface branding either. When I hear Microsoft Surface I still think of those table tops.

Exactly. The only reason the used that for the tablet's is because they couldn't really sell Surface and ended up reusing some of that tech/team in the tablet.

Some reason for the past week I have this itch to switch completely to Apple! Starting with the new iPhone I will be dropping my windows phone. Followed by an iPad to replace the Surface v1 (big fail!). Already own a macbook pro with Windows, so I will simply switch over to OS X. Dropping C# in favor of NodeJS/Yeoman/Sails.

I really wonder what would have happened if Nokia had jumped onto Android early.

Sad day.

Or put more effort into Meego - which actually was a very good OS, and the N9 which was a great product. Adopting Windows phone was the nail in the coffin...

Or not hired Elop. Whats he upto now anyways?

I think that adopting Windows phone came with a pile of money, so it's hard to weigh the pros and cons without more information.

At the time Nokia already had a pile of money.

The N9 was highly anticipated, and IMO, a resounding success. But the fact Stephen Elop said it would be the first, last, and only Meego device made it DOA. And of course, the Windows phones weren't well received...

I tried to tell them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1727208

Nokia had systemic problems that were clear to anyone working with them.

Now, just make the phones Surface phones and they'll be some coherent branding around their mobile efforts.

Good idea, but it doesn't roll as well...

And Windows Phone was never to be heard from again (in whichever way you want to take it).

"In fact, Microsoft refers to Windows Phone simply as Windows."

What?

Hey, why don't they call it the Kin? Or PocketPC? </sarcasm>

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