When I originally promised to visit Qt/MeeGo/Meltemi/N9/N950 topic, I planned a short glance. Instead I ended up doing a full review of Nokia strategy. So this is a long post then, hopefully rewarding one.
Let’s very first point it out that I actually am very much on same track with Tomi Ahonen what comes to strategy choice of Nokia – Qt powered Symbian/MeeGo would have been the way to go. Difference between me and Mr. Ahonen is that I do not spread rumours and false claims because it did not become reality. I try to stick with facts and I will tell when I go to speculations – do not refer to those as “trusted source”.
That said, let’s get to topic.
NOKIA STRATEGY AS IT WAS
I’ll start by talking a bit about Nokia Strategy in 2010. It was in Brief about Symbian, MeeGo and Qt. First we’ll have Qt told by Tomi Ahonen (don’t worry, this is factual data for a change):
“Qt is effectively an ecosystem. Developers can make apps via Qt that work on Nokia’s Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo smartphones, today. These have an combined installed base of 300 million smartphones currently in use worldwide. That is the biggest installed base of any smartphone platform.” [1]
So Qt is a C++ framework that makes it possible to develop application once and deploy it to several platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Symbian, MeeGo, …). However, it is essential to understand that Qt does not make Symbian applications run directly in MeeGo devices – it allows same source code to be used when building application to both. Therefore having successful developer ecosystem and application offering for MeeGo needed motivated developers willing to build application on multiple platforms. It is not a big deal when application is done, but may need some additional work when you end up to see different display sizes etc. This is essential and we will return to it during this post.
So the Nokia strategy at 2010 was rather straightforward: Keep making the Symbian phones that outsell any other platform. Get developers to do Qt applications to Symbian, lure them to also build them for MeeGo, make products of both type, profit.
But that did not last. So what happened?
WHEN STRATEGY STARTS TO COLLAPSE
Now remember, what I’m addressing next is still in 2010. No Microsoft, no Windows Phone – heck, no Stephen Elop for the starters! And I’ll let Tomi Ahonen do the introduction again:
“In June of 2010, after Q2, 2010, Nokia’s smartphone market share stood at 39%. In Q3 it fell dramatically to 33%. Now in Q4 it fell further to 28%. Yes. In only six months, Nokia’s market share in smartphones fell from 39% to 28% – Nokia lost more than one quarter of its total market, in just six months!“ [2]
“I have never witnessed such a wholesale destruction of any company’s market share in a similar period of time. The nearest I can find, is Motorola which lost a quarter of its market in all handsets from 2006 to 2007 in a period of one year. Nokia smartphones today is twice as bad, as Motorola Razr led mobile phones was when facing the iPhone in 2007.” [2]
“Let me show with a familiar example. Lets go to my favorite analogy to phones: cars. The world’s biggest car-maker in 2010 is (by a slim margin still) Toyota ahead of GM. What would happen if Toyota lost one quarter of its market – I am not destroying 11 market share points because Toyota’s total market share is only 12%, so we can’t drop them to 1% haha, that is destroying nine out of ten customers. No, the same ‘ratio’ of loss. If Toyota lost one quarter of its market, and instead of selling 8.4 million cars, they would only sell 6.3 million cars. That is the same proportion of loss as Nokia going from 39 million to 28 million sales. If Toyota fell from 8.4 million to 6.3 million, Toyota would be in the news headlines all over as the ultimate catastrophic collapse of a global market juggernaut – Toyota would fall behind General Motors, AND Renault-Nissan AND even behind Volkswagen Group, landing in 4th place, just ahead of Ford Motor Company. Do you see what I mean? It is a totally exceptional situation in mobile telecoms, that Nokia has such a massive lead in its own industry, that even when it loses one quarter of its market, we ‘do not even notice’ because before this happened, Nokia was the biggest, and after it happened, Nokia is still the biggest. Nokia still today is bigger than RIM and Apple, the two nearest rivals making smartphones – combined.” [2]
“We saw it in the UK customer satisfaction survey last year, when even those Nokia current owners who did say, that they wanted their next phone to be also a Nokia – were not willing to recommend Nokia to friends – they were, in effect, ashamed to own Nokias. This is not a recipe for market success in loyalty. Nokia has just about lost this front, of the war already. Compare that to Apple owners – who will stick their brand new iPhone in front of the noses of anyone, to show how incredibly cool and clever their latest iPhone is. That is the difference. While Apple owners proudly display their iPhones, Nokia owners hide their gadgets in shame.” [3]
I’ll include here analysis on what was causing it, also by Tomi Ahonen:
“Now lets go back to history. From Q1 to Q2, Nokia profit margin and ASP for smartphones declined, but its market share grew! From 37% to 39%. We know after Q2, Nokia’s market share has been in free-fall and its average sales price and its handset profit margin has not recovered in similar proportion. What does this tell us. I think I know the answer for the market share crash. I think the evidence is overwhelming and the pattern is perfect. OPK had been buying market share into early 2010, by propping up an un-sustainable level of market share – by heavy discounts and/or marketing support of carriers/operators.“ [2]
Thank you, Tomi. This was situation at end of 2010. Nokia was rapidly losing market share. True, sales amounts were in rise, gut the growth was lagging behind the industry so bad that Nokia was indeed losing 15% of its remaining market share – every quarter. And market share had been bought for beginning of the year by lowering the prices, meaning that probably problem was present in beginning of the year already, just well hidden.
Nevertheless, facts are facts – Nokia was rejected by customers and losing market share. But problem – as Mr. Ahonen has pointed out – was NOT in strategy. Strategy was not behind the market share collapse, it was supposed to fix it in due time. But then market share collapse hit hard to low-end (less than 150€ price point) where Symbian still had hard time to reach and where MeeGo was not aimed at all. Cheap Androids were emerging and eating Nokia’s market share alive. Nokia simply did not have competitive devices in sub-150€ price range. This reality was slammed against the faces of Nokia management.
STRATEGY AS IT WAS LAID OUT IN FEBRUARY 2011
In beginning of 2011 Nokia’s management looked at the same market numbers we have seen. For fact we know they chose to use Windows Phone for their high-end smartphones and killed MeeGo, slowly letting Symbian die away. (I don’t know why Windows Phone, but it’s not my job to judge. I assume it is for the tablet/PC/phone harmony.)
About here we need to start adding facts, since those are obviously missing from majority of the reports. What we read from news is Microsoft muppet emerging and destroying everything from the way of Windows Phone. I say something else:
WHAT WAS STEPHEN ELOP THINKING?
Let’s keep the idea of Microsoft muppet alive for a moment. And remember, Windows Phone is the OS of choice and MeeGo is killed, Symbian too. Then we can ask:
- What was Stephen Elop thinking when he ordered MeeGo device to be launched in the hot-selling N9 form it was?
He was supposed to kill MeeGo, remember? Sure, Intel deal apparently required launch of a device, but he was supposed to make sure Windows Phone will look superior to all options. He was supposed to force N9 to use some über-ugly form factor like Nokia X6 and spoil the swipe UI completely. What was he thinking when he let out iPhone killer instead of ugly duckling? - What was Stephen Elop thinking when he ordered N9 to be supported by series of updates that make it even hotter than it already was?
We just got SW version 1.3 out. “over 1000 improvements“, they say. What was he thinking when he let company spend all that money to keep MeeGo developers continuing work when there were no more devices to come? - What was Stephen Elop thinking when he ordered Symbian updates?
First Symbian Anna. Then Belle. Now we get leaks of Nokia Belle Feature Pack 2. Stephen Elop could have dropped Symbian Anna to begin with. Why make the “burning platform” more competitive? Why spend once agin large amount of cash to make dying platform more appealing? What was he thinking? - What was Stephen Elop thinking when he kept Qt operational?
WP was not supposed to get Qt. Qt was to die. Why did he not sell the asset to begin with?What was he thinking when he kept the company along?
NOKIA STRATEGY FROM FEBRUARY 2011 – MISSING MEMO
Let the speculations begin! I have no visibility to Nokia internal happenings since Q3 2011, so I can only fill in so little. And my NDA won’t let me do even that. Therefore I’ll link you some stuff from the web:
The answer to all this seems to be Meltemi. Meltemi has never been admitted by Nokia. But we have leak from September 2011 saying it was “Linux-based operating system code-named Meltemi, the Greek word for dry summer winds that blow across the Aegean Sea from the north. It is being led by Mary McDowell, the handset maker’s executive vice president in charge of mobile phones” [4]
Let’s put this to schedule: when leak happened Elop had been in charge for a year. It is not that he had not killed Meltemi, HE WAS IN THE HOUSE WHEN IT STARTED! And it really makes sense strategy-wise:
- Make a hot high-end device, get the positive market buzz for swipe UI and profit WP a bit with the HW form factor.
- Keep the platform alive, lure in developers to port Symbian apps to MeeGo.
- Refresh the Symbian and keep it attractive. Make sure it sells past the transition period so developers keep doing apps to it (and MeeGo).
- Keep Qt alive so migration path is there.
and finally: - Take MeeGo, optimize the SW, improve the UI, drag down the HW requirements, optimize more. Win back the low-end.
Sounds sane. And it’s not conflicting with WP strategy since WP will never reach those price points. Sounds sane.
Okay, here is the point where Tomi Ahonen fan club say that Elop did not do that and propose some weird heroic story how Meltemi was kept alive under rule of a tyrannic despot. Try the leaked memo from April 27th, 2011. It says very clearly ”There will also be opportunities within the Meltemi organization, for personnel working within the MeeGo teams.” [5]
Yes, you read it correctly: Stephen Elop himself said Meltemi team is going to be increasing headcount when MeeGo and Symbian were shut down!
SO WHAT WENT WRONG?
What next? For fact we know that Nokia’s market share started to dive after Q2 2010 and corrective actions were needed. I listed a bunch of corrective actions. Still the dive never stopped, so something went wrong. As said, my vision to Nokia inside happenings ends way too early. But I can still read the signs. What comes to unverified rumors, Meltemi was cancelled recently. That is bad. really bad. But it’s just addition to list of failures:
- Symbian Belle should have been there already during first half of 2011, both for new devices and as update to old ones. That would have slowed down the decline of market share. The strategy change messed up Symbian development and Belle came out second half 2011 for new devices and Q1 2012 for updates. Belle failed to deliver. (And let’s not forget Elop Effect contribution).
Let’s remember that Belle was (and still is) developed in Accenture. Now that Nokia strategy breaks down on Symbian side, we hear about layoffs in Accenture. And of course Nokia’s market share kept going down. - Transition was supposed to be smooth. Communication mistake of the century blew it. Now it did not cause the crash of Nokia – as I said already - but it certainly did not help. The developer community jumped to other platforms as suddenly Symbian was dead and Qt was a dead-end. Nobody told there was still need for developers and app ecosystem. Elop failed to deliver the strategy. Nokia’s market share kept going down.
- From what we’ve heard, MeeGo was planned to launch late 2010 but was delayed. [6] It could have slowed the market share decline by being there in time, but it was late already when new strategy was announced. MeeGo team failed to deliver. And market share kept going down.
- Meltemi should have been ready to be announced Q3 2011 and ready for launch Q4 2011.
Edit: Some new information came up in comments and I try to reflect it here.
For what was originally going around in web, Meltemi was “MeeGo lite” – take existing platform and develop on that. What we now hear is that Meltemi was OS built from scratch. Let’s keep the focus here: surely nobody wanted to do THIRD Linux-based OS from scratch? Something went wrong during the project. We cannot know what, but comments section gives horrible image of the path that was taken during the months it took. Obviously Meltemi team failed to deliver. And it seems that is why Mary McDowell got kicked out. (Elop wanted Meltemi, remember?) Market share reaction will be seen in Q3 and Q4 2012. - And last: Original MeeGo plans had new OS versions (and new products). Instead it was cut down to 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. Originally Meltemi should have been public already when N9 hit the shops, so it would have been piggy-backing on the updates. (Assuming the original plan being MeeGo based). Ironically – in this case MeeGo team DID deliver. But others did not, so it does not matter.
COULD IT STILL BE DONE?
For the life of me I cannot figure out why they killed Meltemi. It obviously was the lifeline of the strategy. Only reason I could think of is the developer ecosystem. Nokia management never really understood how fragile developer ecosystem is. They just assumed that developers will happily start doing apps to Windows Phone. After February 11th 2011, those developers dropped Symbian but they did not move to WP, they went for Android and iOS. Nokia practically threw away its developer ecosystem at that point.
So Tomi Ahonen says Nokia should return to MeeGo path. At the time Meltemi was supposedly killed - June 14th 2012 – it has been 16 months since strategy change and Qt developer community shock. What can we expect to be left of Qt developers doing something on Symbian and MeeGo? Not much, really. SW companies have had full year and more in between. Any sane company switched focus during 1H 2011, fired people, hired people… They don’t want to go back. And it cannot be pushed. Nokia was able to push WP ecosystem with Microsoft. They could put enough money together to make it happen. But Nokia can not market fourth ecosystem anymore. They just won’t have cash for that. Especially since it was burned to all previous activities that failed to deliver.
That cash would have flowed back after launch of Meltemi devices, so reason to cancel cannot really be financial reasons either. Only reason I can think of is the lack of ecosystem.
And it answers to the question:
no, MeeGo and Meltemi are dead. They died already 2011. With successful transition, perhaps they would be alive and keeping Nokia as a market lead. And AFAIK, MeeGo employees have been tossed out and Meltemi employees will be. It would need more money than Nokia has to cover the costs of “back to MeeGo” strategy. MeeGo is gone, due to many failed deliveries. Sorry to say that, but Nokia failed to open the door to low-end smart phone market.
I guess that is about it on speculations.
HOW ABOUT N950 (AND N900)?
Now let’s start with N950. If you don’t know what it is, it’s “the other MeeGo device”. Photo of it is available in e.g. Wikipedia.
N950 is basically N9 with slide-out HW QWERTY keyboard. Tomi Ahonen repeatedly demands it to be launched to all markets. Problem is that apparently non-critical N950 bug fixing was skipped to speed up N9 development.
Let’s have an example: N9 SW loses ”send” button from the on-display keyboard when it is dismissed. On-display keyboard gets dismissed if HW QWERTY keyboard is activated. So if you open HW keyboard when on-display keyboard is already visible, you can’t send your SMS because there is no send-button. (Interestingly enough the send-button is visible if you enter messages with HW keyboard open)
This kind of bugs are not major issues. These can be fixed. But launching N950 would need exactly the work that was not done in order to deliver N9. And that work is needed from employees who were already laid off. So in my opinion, N950 won’t see shops. It is delivered to some specific developers and that’s it.
And I’m sure everybody knows N900. Tomi Ahonen reveals us his incompetence in technology from time to time with statements like this: “older Maemo-based handset the N900 can also run MeeGo. So while its hardware is older, its camera smaller etc, that could be sold as the ‘entry-level’ model into the MeeGo line, like the older Apple iPhone 3GS is the cheapest model in Apple’s iPhone range.” [7]
Okay, Tomi Ahonen is right in a sense: e.g. Mer (used by Jolla) runs in N900. But let’s remember that Tomi is pushing the wonderful Swipe UI of N9 to it. And (in his words)
“Because the N9 is currently in production and selling highly profitably (and sister phones such as N950 and N900 have been produced and could be manufactured within weeks of ramp-up time)“
Within weeks of ramp-up time? Sure, the UI used in N9 could be reconfigured to N900 and architeture could do it… but weeks of ramp-up time? Wrong display resolution breaks the UI, new graphics or UI design is definitely needed, but it’s not the worst things he ignores. Worst thing is that he forgets N900 has resistive display so it cannot detect multiple touches. So long pinch-zoom! (So long any zoom in applications where volume keys were not followed for it.) N900 used “rotate gesture” in browser, but it’s not existing in N9 MeeGo UI, so we are talking about additional rework on top of one already mentioned for N950 (N900 also has QWERTY keyboard).
Oh yes, and the fact that Tomi is so fond of the Swipe UI. (Who isn’t? All it really takes is a swipe.) But swipe gestures lose their idea as you need to press noticeably harder on the resistive touchscreen for it to recognise touch. “All it takes is a swipe” just became “all it takes is a swipe and stylus”. The claim is without base. CPU line may be same but the device is unable to run the N9 version of MeeGo (and Swipe UI) “within weeks of ramp-up time”.
N900 will not be the low-end sister product you wish for, sorry Tomi.
UPDATE 4-Aug-2012:
Tomi Ahonen drew new rock bottom on this one:
“And if some independent programmers were able to do an Android port for the N9 this fast, why could Nokia not move to Android, rather than stay with Windows, and release the N900, the N9 and the N950 on Android, like next month! Like yes, in August!” [8]
I wonder where he gets those. Expecting that would be August 31st, Nokia needs to release that port in… 42 days!
Now I like to have correct figures used. And this is my area of expertice. I gave (valid) estimates for SW projects the last 3 years in Nokia. I know Nokia working environment. I know this field. Here are more proper numbers. (Next time Tomi, use these):
Releasing N950:
3 months - assuming that Nokia still has all the MeeGo experts in the house (they don’t) and everybody would work on the bugfixing. You see, there WILL be mandatory test rounds.
4 months – assuming People working with MeeGo PR1.3 and Meltemi can be used instead. (Don’t know if they can)
Releasing N9 Swipe UI (and mandatory work-arounds due to resistive display) on N900:
6 months – assuming N950 was finished first. And assuming that Nokia still has all the Maemo and MeeGo experts in the house (they don’t) and everybody would work on the port.
Not less than 9 months, more likely 12 - assuming People working with MeeGo PR1.3 and Meltemi can be used instead. (Don’t know if they can)
Releasing N900, the N9 and the N950 on Android:
Wow, bad one – this is first Android project for Nokia, so it starts on scratch. Now let’s assume that we can use the existing port and do the necessary bugfixing. Let’s assume we have Android experts in house. Let’s assume we have the tools.
I’ll give careful estimate of 6 months for N9 and N950, as we have the existing port.
For N900, one question: Does Jellybean run with resistive display?
Depending on answer – 12 months? 18? Really can’t tell.
WINDOWS PHONE
I have been asked how Windows Phone fits to this picture.
It is obvious Nokia will push Microsoft to deliver low-end WP. They have to, since other plans are gone. Unless WP8 brings in new HW configurations also downwards, WP7 is the one to use. And WP7 does not support MicroSD cards (7.8 update is rumored to bring in BT file transfer), so it lacks some key elements of low-end market. And HW requirements are too high. So it’s up to WP8. If nothing comes up, no low-end smartphones from Nokia.
(Moore’s law makes HW cheaper but since also Android benefits from that, Android can always go lower than WP).
CLOSING WORDS
All my best to anyone who is still working in Nokia – you are the heroes. Keep the company from sinking, as hard as it may be.
REFERENCES:
[1] The CEO insane
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/03/the-ceo-insane-how-to-rescue-nokia.html
[2] Sherlock Holmes & Hound of Nokiaville
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/01/sherlock-holmes-hounds-of-the-nokiaville-why-did-nokia-market-share-crash-dive-i-may-have-an-answer.html
[3] Undesirable at any price
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/01/undesirable-at-any-price-what-happened-to-nokia-who-invented-the-smartphone.html
[4] Wall Street Journal reports Meltemi
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203405504576599011587667984.html
[5] Nokia cuts memo – The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/27/nokia_cuts_memo/
[6] http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/11/23/chrome-os-meego-devices-delayed.htm
Guideline for commenting: I hate the way Tomi Ahonen deletes criticizing comments from his blog. However, I plan to follow three of his principles: I’ll delete comments that are
- Personal insults to someone
- Duplicates
- Spam
In addition, if you wish to challenge my previous posts, please comment to those.
Thanks for doing this blog.
Where does the acquisition of Smarterphone fit in this story?
Do you think Nokia could have lobbied Microsoft to include Qt support in Windows Phone 8? This could have helped Nokia retain and grow the Qt developer base for both WP8 and Meltemi/Meego.
In your speculation and the following, there are several issues need to be corrected.
> Symbian Belle
It’s feature complete around Feb.11th, but the bug fixing speed was significantly and immediately affected by Elop’s strategy, while most Symbian gurus were looking for their own future at that period.
> MeeGo
There was two major changes around Sep. 2010. First, it’s decided to use QML instead of WRT; second, the new UI as we saw now was introduced. The result was a re-write of the application layer, and that’s done in 6 months.
Do you really think Elop could kill something new when he just joined?
And the partnership with Intel really took a great effort away from the develop team.
Also, it was decided long ago PR1.3 was the LAST update for N9. No 1.4 was ever planned.
> Meltemi
The research began long before Elop joined, but the product plan was decided somewhere in the 1st half of 2011 after Feb.11th.
However, it was the project that was planned and executed in the worst possible way I know:
1. Use some chip that is still under development. The release of the chip by the partner was delayed time and time again, with a great effort from Nokia developers to fix various issues.
2. Redo the base layer, by a team with no or very limited Linux experience. Most of the Linux gurus in Nokia were located in Finland, but the base layer is done in Ulm. Though they are really good developers, lacking of experience was really bad.
3. The central part of the whole software system was just a research prototype from some research center. The idea was really good, but, hey, how could you ever decide to use such a prototype as the core of the software stack?
4. Changing of design all the time, and we, developers, used a long time to convince our designers to follow what N9 already provided.
5. Kill the project when it’s almost ready. Yes, the product is in a really good shape in May.
One more thing, after Meltemi axed, we all got the order to delete all the source code related to Meltemi, with some reason that nobody trusted. So, let’s all speculate the reason.
> Windows Phone
I read just now that the WP8 was started before WP7 got released, meaning Elop knew already before he joined Nokia that you can NOT upgrade WP7 phone to WP8. I’m just curious if he told that honestly to the board, and what’s the reaction of the board if Elop told the truth.
Thanks for the post. I also follow Tomi’s blog. But, his unrelenting rants is getting out of control. I sincerely appreciate your level headed posts, based on logic and facts.
Now, with all other OS development stopped (Symbian,MeeGo etc. ), what do you think is Nokia’s strategy for the low-end? Will Windows 8 go low enough to compete with cheap Andriods? Is S40, and Asha range the “smartphone” for the low end? I am presuming Windows 8 will be targeted for the mid-high end smartphones.
Also, your thoughts on Nokia’s location business would be greatly appreciated. How much value does it still have?
> Qt is a programming language
Wrong. C++ is the programming language. Qt is a toolkit or framework.
> may need some additional work
What is the case with any language/tk. No exception.
> Take MeeGo, optimize the SW, improve the UI, drag down the HW requirements, optimize more. Win back the low-end.
Wrong. Meltimi was not related to MeeGo but build up from scratch.
> Belle failed to deliver. layoffs start there
Wrong. Symbian devs got fired and development outsourced to accenture way before Belle.
Remember that Elops burning platform was beginning of 2011. He madw.clear that Symbian is dead long before Belle.
> MeeGo team failed to deliver.
N9 came to market before Lumia.
> Meltemi … had a ready OS
No. It was not related to MeeGo, did not reused MeeGo. It was new from scratch cause that was what Elop ordered.
> Meltimi … This is MeeGo product just like N9!
No, its not. It was not even supposwd to be compatible. For example X11 from MeeGo got replaced with Wayland.
> Reason? My guess is that MeeGo updates lost their need when Meltemi died.
Wrong. There where 3 N9 updatea planed and cash dedicated for that before Elop joined. After 1.3 the 2.0 was supposes to come next. Meltimi is unrelated to that.
> What can we expect to be left of Qt developers? Not much
Nokia pushed Qt on mobile but that never was the market where Qt was and still is strong.
Compared to Qt before Nokia Qt is LGPL now rather then GPL like it was before making it even more actractive for commercial development.
> N950 … exactly by dropping landscape from multiple places. Just look at the image and see it yourself.
Wrong again. The homescreen is locked to portrait by default just like on the N9.
You can use the homescreen-application from Ovi to either lock portrait/landscape or activate “auto rotate”.
> You can’t send your SMS if you write it with HW keyboard.
Wrong. The send-button is not in the onscreen-keyboard but above and is not pary of the onscrewn keyboard and as such also available on the n950.
Thanks all for comments. Please understand that I never was part of MeeGo team so I based my understanding on Meltemi to what has been said in the web and/or heard in coffee room discussions. I’ll update the text when I get back to my PC again. Problem is that since we have more or less hear-say as sources on Meltemi, it is hard to know what is the truth. My understanding from Nokia times was that it never aimed to make third Linux based OS from the scratch (and it would not make sense either, considering the urgency of market share win-back).
Same thing (when get back to PC) applies to Qt for WP, Nokia low-end strategy and location services comments.
@spawn
I’ll try to do more detailed reply to you later. You deserve one.
Hey, anon exnok,
i have been on occasion gathering stuff that might be able to further your goals.
its not much but here goes, anyway sorry if i post at the wrong place. =x
1. A commenter at tomi blog
Elop slows symbian down fall by feb 11 event.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/03/brutal-truth-about-lumia-cannot-sustain-even-1-to-1-replacement-of-symbian-windows-phone-strategy-do.html?cid=6a00e0097e337c88330168e914322b970c#comment-6a00e0097e337c88330168e914322b970c
Thanks for pointing me to that Guardian article. And some nice numbers there. But they support my story more than they do Tomi’s or yours.
Problem is – you are referring to a different survey then Tomi does. Read Tomi’s post again – he clearly refers to Kantar data for February, not March. And Nokia’s/Symbian market share of 12.4%. This one: http://www.cellular-news.com/story/48197.php
(Though there is no direct mention of Nokia market share there, or anywhere else publicly, Kantar certainly did have detailed country breakdowns for paying clients. So my guess is that’s what Tomi somehow got and used)
Guardian used the numbers Kantar provided them for March. One month later. Nokia lost another full percent of market share, and went from 12.4% to 11.4%. While Android gained 0.6% (from 37.4 to 38%) and iOS gained 1% (from 22 to 23%) in that same month.
Btw., that Nokia market share 1% loss in March, with “Elop effect” in full swing among consumers, was actually better performance then Nokia showed in the previous 4 months. When, according to Tomi’s data, it lost 2.5% of market share a month, every month.
Why, if we look just at Kantar data Tomi and you (Guardian) provided – we may conclude that Feb. 11th actually slowed Symbian decline, and reduced Nokia market share losses 2.5 times
2. Another one.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/03/brutal-truth-about-lumia-cannot-sustain-even-1-to-1-replacement-of-symbian-windows-phone-strategy-do.html?cid=6a00e0097e337c88330168e90a223a970c#comment-6a00e0097e337c88330168e90a223a970c
Tomi, aren’t you ignoring one key data point in those Kantar reports.
As you say – in September 2010 Symbian market share was 23.1%. In February 2011 it was only 12.4%. Nokia/Symbian lost 46% of its market share between September 2010 and February 2011. Are you saying that this happened because of Elop effect?
How could it? Windows Phone strategy was announced on Friday Feb. 11th. Kantar surveys do not include the whole last month. This year’s survey lasted 12 weeks and ended on Feb 19th. There is absolutely no way Elop effect/announcement/memo could have had any significant impact on last year’s Kantar February survey. Not in 1-2 weeks before survey was completed. So isn’t it way more logical – that last years’ Nokia/Symbian September-February 46% drop in U.K market share happened because Symbian sales were crashing there anyway? Without any help of Elop effect.
Btw – between September and February, in 4 months, Nokia lost 46% of its market share.Without Elop Effect. In the next 7 months February-September 2011, with Elop effect in full swing – Nokia also lost ~46% of its previous market share. Seems that the rate of Nokia market share losses decreased during those 7 months after Feb 11th. Hardly an evidence of disastrous Elop effect.
And before you get to Q4 2010 Nokia Symbian sales numbers as an evidence of a big turnaround. There is absolutely no evidence of such turnaround in Kantar numbers, who measure actual end customers buyers.
You never mention that Q4 2010 5 million Symbian 3 devices shipped, are official Nokia numbers oartphone shipments to wholesalers/carriers. And that there is absolutely no evidence Nokia N8/Symbian 3 sales to end customers/users were anywhere near as good. I did check – and there wasn’t a single big analyst house (Gartner, Strattegy Analytics, IDC, others) or other reputable independent source, telling anything good about Nokia N8 or S3 end user sales in Q4 2010. At least in publicly released reports. For all intents and purposes, most of those 5 million S3 smartphones shipped could have been sitting on carrier shelves in January 2011 and were a big reason why Elop and Nokia Board decided to make such a radical change. We have no way to know yet, one way or the other.f sm
The Kantar numbers from Feb 2011 are certainly no proof of anything – but they are another datapoint supporting my hypothesis, that Nokia’s Q4 2010 turnaround was based more on channel stuffing then the real end user sales, customer acceptance and demand for Symbian 3 smartphones. And it fizzled itself in Q1 2011, before Elop effect could cause any real damage.
PS. Found the dates for last year’s Kanatar February report. Panel survey ended on Feb. 20th – 9 days after Feb. 11th. And lasted for 12 weeks too. Or 84 days: http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/March2011/android-dominates-the-uk-smartphone-market.html
And Kantar panel actually includes 30 000 households. Which would mean that at a steady 23.4% market share – there should have been 7020 recorded Nokia smartphone purchases in 12 weeks. Or 83 Nokia smartphones bought a day. Subtracting the 9 days after Feb 11th, will leave Nokia with 6273 smartphones recorded, or – again – 21% market share.
3.
“Almost all the smartphones we sell nowadays are Apple and Android – Nokia phones just don’t sell”.
http://www.swedishwire.com/component/content/article/1:companies/8211:iphone-and-android-smash-nokia-in-sweden
Demand for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android smartphones is surging in the Nordic region, according to Fredrik Rudberg, managing director at Swedish handset distributor Mobile 20:20.
At the same time Nokia has taken a back seat in the Nordic smart phone market. The booming sale of smartphones came at the expense of less startling Nokia models, he told the Finnish daily newspaper Kauppalehti that. Nokia’s N8 smartphone, however, sold well immediately after launch.
“Almost all the smartphones we sell nowadays are Apple and Android – Nokia phones just don’t sell,” Fredrik Rudberg said. “The N8 sold very well right after the launch in Sweden and Norway, but Nokia does not have other smart phones in the highest price range”.
I guess there is one good reason why Meltemi was canceled: Windows Phone was tweaked to use less resources
Elop mentioned lately that Nokia and Microsoft had found ways how to run Windows Phone with lower spec hardware than expected. This means Windows Phone can cover that area what was supposed to be conquered with Meltemi.
Therefore – with Nokia’s shrinking cash reserves – fhe gamble to create a new OS line seemed less and less lucrative.
We should remember that thanks to Moore’s law with a same price we get better and better hardware. It means that this progress means Windows Phones would anyway conquer lower price points than now, even without the latest performance tweaks Nokia and Microsoft claimed have done..
@all
When I started to write this post I knew it will be troublesome. You see – I keep anonymous blog and that means my credibility comes from using solid facts and credible references. For Meltemi there is no such thing. And other thing is my NDA from Nokia times. I intentionally avoid using information that I would have received from Nokia before Q3 2011. So I need to use unverifed leaks as my reference.
Further, for Meltemi we have lots of leaks after cancellation, but it is debatable if we can trust that pissed-off developers give us true image of the state of Meltemi. I will fix my post to contain what I see reliable enough.
@spawn
I promised a reply:
-You are right, I should have said C++ framework instead of programming language.
-”Wrong. Symbian devs got fired and development outsourced to accenture way before Belle.Remember that Elops burning platform was beginning of 2011. He madw.clear that Symbian is dead long before Belle.”
My point was that Accenture started layoffs, not Nokia. I do know how it worked with Accenture – lots of friends ended up there to see their talent is not needed anymore.
-”N9 came to market before Lumia.” And was supposed to be ready at end of 2010 originally. Two months before strategy change. Sure enough, MeeGo team delivered the delayed schedule rather well.
-”Nokia pushed Qt on mobile but that never was the market where Qt was and still is strong.”
Exactly. But this was about the companies doing mobile apps with Qt. They switched platform already and are unlikely to move back in near future. I will rewrite that and Meltemi description (same apps etc.)
-”Wrong again. The homescreen is locked to portrait by default just like on the N9.”
This was meant to be a very visual example, visible on the image. Will the Ovi store app make Facebook app run in landscape mode?
-”The send-button is not in the onscreen-keyboard but above and is not pary of the onscrewn keyboard and as such also available on the n950.”
Now if I remember correctly and it has not been fixed in later SW releases, this happens if you open physical keyboard after already having virtual keyboard active. This dismisses virtual keyboard and above bar with send button. It’s just one of the bugs that would need to be fixed before commercial launch – those will not be fixed in few weeks as Tomi Ahonen suggests.
Let me add some perspective as a third party Symbian and iPhone developer.
Commercial third party developers had already left Nokia to go after the booming iPhone app market. The market that was growing exponentially, that was easy for customers to use and that was very easy to program for. Consider this, a year or so after App Store opened for business, devs got 10 times as many downloads (sales) from the App Store compared to the then just opened Ovi Store combined with the existing Symbian app stores.
Leaving a market does not mean removing apps from an app store. After all, as long as these apps sell you make money. But you are not investing, you no not plan for new functionality, you do not learn a new toolkit (Qt), especially not one that is taking ages and ages to reach a level suitable for production use.
Regarding Qt, the stategy on that toolkit was moronic. First you buy a toolkit that *unifies* UI development across multiple platforms and then you create *two* *different* API’s *on top* of Qt for Maemo and Symbian. There goes the single source argument. This was the single most stupid software related thing I have seen Nokia do, and I have seen them all, starting when Symbian was still EPOC. No wonder developers were not queueing to develop for Qt, and the first thing Rick Green did after becoming head if development was to kill that strategy, after having it waste a year at that crucial time their platform was being eaten alive by the competition.
By the time Elop wrote the memo people were happily developing for iPhone and Android, and milking their old Symbian apps. There might have been a few new devs doing some Qt, but the supposedly 400.000 devs that downloaded a Symbian SDK were long gone to greener pastures. Elop was counting on the PC Windows developers looking for some mobile action to fill the ranks of the third ecosystem.
While it may be possible to run Windows Phone on lower-end hardware (i.e. Tango), is it really an appropriate OS to run in the lower-end markets where data connections are either unavailable or severely restricted? I don’t believe so, but not having used a Windows Phone extensively, I can’t say for sure.
Regardless of the resource situation at Nokia, I think canceling Meltemi (or all of the various “Plan B” options that don’t involve Microsoft) was a dumb move. Then again, Elop has made several.
I have updated the blog. I tried to keep it reliable enough and referred to comments section. Thanks for everyone who sent updated data.
You are doing pretty good job opening Tomi’s factual mistakes. It seems that you consider that Elop has done his work well, or? Or are you just pushing the opposite view on Tomi to balance things?
You’ve got at least one fact incorrect:
N900 does run Meego: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9HAyU1krJc (Mer is the very same Meego instance that Jolla is going to use)
When evaluating the possible success of the Qt strategy vs WP one should objectively consider the following:
1. In which time-window will Symbian finally be replaced? The unofficial leak says that Meltemi would be more or less ready – for WP we dont know. It seems that WP8 wont be in high end soon: (“hinting that it’s unlikely to push too far down to the very budget end of the smart phone spectrum”” http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/windows-phone-7-was-doomed-by-design-microsoft-admits-50008466/). Or will the low-end be WP7?
2. In which time the high-end will be ready? WP8 devices will be launched Sept 2012. Jolla promises to reveal their device by the end 2012.
3. What would be the dispersion and earnings potential of Nokia Maps be? For Meego we dont know eg how many IVI participants there would be, nor we know, if there would be any other tablet manufacturers w Meego. For WP maps and navigation is free. Through time the money from advertising may bring significant amount of cash in. Currently the main part of earnings comes from selling the mapping data.
4. Could Nokia have defended their Symbian sales until Meltemi is ready. Could they have kept at leat the market share they have gained with WP? That is almost impossible to answer. At least they could sell something in middle east, which WP does not support. China was also late in the game and now the WP7 has at least mildly lost appeal due to no upgrade possibility and that no new apps would work on WP7. (With Qt it should be easier)
5. How fast the Pureview tech could have been ported to Maemo/Meego vs WP? It has been hinted that the first vawe of WP wont have pureview yet, we’ll see.
While answering these on should keep in mind that Burning platform memo would not have existed and the strategy could be eg. Qt as plan A, WP as business users and mainly NA and plan B. Also all the delays due to reorganization and people fleeing (I still agree that they needed to fire people) should be taken into account. And bad managerial choises: why on earth did Elop nominate McDowell, who had a long list of failures behind her. Was it only because she talked English? It sounds like Elop made huge mistake in his nomination – why didnt he choose someone, who knows software development for christ sake! He was brought there to solve the delivery problems in the first place!
@jiipee
I consider Elop has done his work better than Tomi makes us understand. While I still was inside Nokia, he was actually good at motivating people and making us break out of old habits. For communications I’d say he has been… …not so good.
You make really valid points about Qt vs. WP. And as I’ve said, I think MeeGo strategy could have delivered just as well as WP strategy, if not better.
Thanks for good comments.
Are you going to correct your mistakes on N950 not having landscape mode anytime soon?
You can pick up a new N950 image which has the the phone in same angle, and landscape UI on screen.
I had invested too much to Nokia because I trusted MeeGo would be success. I would like to know why Elop planned a 3rd Linux based platform (Maemo, MeeGo, Meltemi) as he has been emphasizing the importance of the ecosystem all the way. Would the Meltemi apps have been copatible with MeeGo/N9? Or was that Mcdowell
… or was the Mcdowell’s desicion which backfired? Everyone expected that the Meltemi was MeeGo lite (continuation to Maemo5 Fremantle and MeeGo/Maemo6 Harmattan), similarly than Tango update was needed for WP7 to extend the usability in lower price range.
@ Spawn :
>> MeeGo team failed to deliver.
> N9 came to market before Lumia.
But development of N9/N950/ Meego started WAY before Lumia. I think N9 came too late in market so it could have make difference but Nokia killed it by not releasing it key markets. It is only the spare wheel on markets where WP doesn’t support the language.
Unrelated now.
What I felt Nokia was doing wrong and do wrong is that for some reason in upper management people can’t believe you can release a smartphone with some features missing at launch. So they prefer delay delay delay. If you believe in your product, if you believe that your product has differentiation, that it does better in key areas (Swipe UI, the social feed, multi tasking) it doesn’t matter if key feature A or B is missing. People will love it because it’s different, it is cool and it does some tasks better so they will buy it. Needless to say that iPhone 1 came in the market without 3G, MMS (and Nokia laughed about it) but had many key points which made it better : innovative UI and interaction, browser capabilities for example. Buzz, people loved it, bought it despite the lack of main features. But what Nokia proper failed to understand is the concept of OTA updates which improve the phone over the time. So no matter if you feature A or B is missing at launch you can just release it 2-3 month after via an OTA when it’s ready. Phone is already out, making money, and create more buzz over the time. Nokia didn’t get the concept at all, stuck in the old model : want new stuff? Buy new phone.
Funny enough WP phones came out with obvious missing features. No Skype on Lumia 800 (on launch), no front facing camera for Lumia 800 (fixed with 900), inferior web browsing experience and crippled of bugs which makes me wonder if WP7 was out for a month at Lumia launch (WiFi connection, battery issues) as Nokia is not supposedly making any software anymore.
Nokia completely missed the App store rush by taking TOO long to simplify Symbian development. It took a very long time to simplify the app signing process of Symbian for example (it should be a month or less but took so long to implement and decide). Other funny example : after the OVI Store launch it took more than a year for employees to be able to push apps there (even for free). Seriously even simple decisions took forever to Nokia. When you are loosing your leadership you should be agile.
The Intel effort was in fact not a good move at the time, he drained some effort when Nokia needed resources the most. Endless meetings to choose Qt over something else, trying to align strategy, basically adding overhead when the company needed to focus and deliver fast (a stupid example : renaming all the classes of N9 UI library to MeegoTouch). The alliance could have happen after the release of a first product. What a waste of money and time to create Meego conference when there is nothing to show, to give to developers, to hack on. I don’t know also why it took so long to get stuff stable on the platform, for example the UI drivers, the wireless drivers, stuff like that. Was the right people hired? Was the strategy of outsourcing not good? Nokia was greedy to not buy the driver to a company? And it’s not because it was bleeding edge hardware, competitors are using very similar chip-sets.
Nokia is also crippled of management layers, it’s almost impossible when you are an engineer to reach a decision maker (even worst when you work as a subcontractor). Managers sits in “Weekly meeting” talking over and over about problems but actually make no decision on what to do. Nokia have their old engineers (the one who made the company successful back then, kudos) sitting now in key position (or where some decision could happen) but they didn’t get the new revolution coming in, around 2007 – 2008. So if your direct manager doesn’t believe in what is changing, how he can motivate his team? and how he can report to his own boss a radical innovation an employee could bring?
Nokia outsourced too much Meego development, loosing or not building internal knowledge to be able to keep the innovation going in-house.
One big mistake which wasted a lot of engineering power was to not be able to make company wide effort to build one single widget set for mobile platforms for Qt. It stayed being split between meegotouch and orbit which same, dragged speed down, even at some point someone tried to unify them
. When Qt was bought it was the best opportunity to simplify the horrible developer offering because of course Symbian APIs were not meant to be used by casual developers who want to make apps. What Nokia will let to Qt? LGPL, the Symbian port (but now removed from Qt5). QML (or its ancestor which was already in works before Qt acquisition) but granted he got more momentum.
Nokia now cuts resources like hell basically getting rid of the software side of Nokia (just keeping Maps and some other stuff) and this is sad as Nokia losses what it was trying to create for years. Nokia was a hardware company and it took a great deal of time for them to understand than software matters as much as the hardware nowadays.
Nokia failed to plan current device + 1, it kept firefighting to deliver the current generation. Nokia research centers seemed to focus only on hardware innovation when the software side needed the most (modernizing Symbian or even building the future before it happens). Ok you can say Maemo was supposed to be that but it never had a proper chance when Symbian was ruling (Maemo devices already had touch screen back then!).
The WP strategy is also to me something I still fail to understand. You have in house thousands of Linux engineers who can write from bottom to top an innovative UI (swipe), can build an entire OS, why not using Android? Elop said that we won’t be able to make differentiation : this is utter crap, look the N9, Lumia, they are MUCH better hardware than any low quality plastic Android phones. Imagine a 808 on Android. Nokia in house could write a new UI for Android (just like other players do) and offers a mapping solution MUCH better than Android stock (real offline support, sorry to say Jelly Bean offline support is a joke) or imaging solution. The two latter are the selling point of the WP strategy by Elop and funny enough the weakness of Android. LoL.
People have no idea how many great people, smart engineers, revolutionary ideas are (or were) in Nokia and how much the innovation was just killed by people who had no idea of what was going on in the market, or simply did not believe or trust in small teams to deliver.
Sad days for Nokia…
@Heh
Removed. Doesn’t make sense to complain about few apps missing landscape (preinstalled or not). People would understand that some apps are “just not as good as others”. SW Updates can do rest as Timmaqesih very kindly pointed out.
I did leave the SMS bug as an example, though. Small things like that do not look good in commercially launched device and traditionally Nokia has fixed that kind of issues prior to launch.
You might want to change the image to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nokia_N950.jpg as the murobox image is copyrighted and I doubt they have given permission to distribute it. The wiki pic is more liberally licensed.
Also you claim: “Worst thing is that he forgets N900 has resistive display so it cannot detect multiple touches. So long pinch-zoom! (So long any zoom in applications where volume keys were not followed for it.)” on talk about n900. Well I played with a mates unit for an hour, and it does have another zoom, gesture based zoom. You do a spiral with stylus, and the UI zooms in or out depending if the spiral is enlarging or diminishing. I kind of liked it and wish capasitive screens had it too.
Also resistive screen can support multitouch. Have a look at: http://www.gizmag.com/fujitsu-resistive-multi-touch-panel/15790/ , for example. A little tweak on hardware, and N900 could have multitouch.
Oh, forgot to write one thing.
You are wrong when you claim N900 couldn’t use QML for not having enough memory for it. N8 has exactly same amount of memory and it has QT 4.7.x which has QML.In fact N900 has more memory as it supports swapping, and has 768M swap memory.
@Heh
Listen to yourself: gesture zoom? HW tweaks? is that something which applies to Tomi’s “could be manufactured within weeks of ramp-up time”?
@Heh
The image was actually not from Taskumuro website but the discussion forum, posted by one commenter. But hey, better safe than sorry so we now have link to wikipedia image, which has the landscape UI you were asking for.
While I was at it, I removed the memory issue from the list. Sure, paging helps but it’s slow. Problem is, Tomi already wants it to be “low-end” sister product so let’s assume he’s okay with Swipe UI not being at optimal performance.
@anonymousexnokian You said
“My point was that Accenture started layoffs, not Nokia. I do know how it worked with Accenture – lots of friends ended up there to see their talent is not needed anymore.”
and it is true that Accenture did lay off many staff, but Nokia also laid off hundreds and hundreds of Symbian staff in the year before the Accenture deal. They closed whole sites.
This is a sad but fascinating read, especially to another ex-Nokian who was involved with Maemo. I appreciate the trouble you go to. And I thought my research for http://post404.com was thorough! You are my new source-finding-and-analysis hero.
people still want meego not WP….that’s the reason why nokia lost their share….about 2years later meego still up to date Os…where wp have dump os.
Nokia needed to build a smartphone and improve upon it. I like Qt and QML, but the thought that in order to build a smartphone, Nokia first needed to acquire Trolltech, absorb the team, invent QML, and get Qt 5 out the door was silly.
You can’t build an iPhone 5 competitor from scratch, The best you can do is build an iPhone 1 competitor and evolve it quickly.
The way I see it, Nokia was crushed because Product marketing asked for the world, and engineering management didn’t stand up and say “we can’t do that”
Look at how microsoft moved from MS-DOS -> Windows 8, in many small steps, Nokia didn’t have as much time, but Nokia was constantly re-inventing everything.
Software can’t be built like that
pw, I don’t believe Nokia was unable to pull off the Maemo/MeeGo/Meltemi strategy. When I worked there I saw the right pieces in place to do it, so no, Engineering would NOT have said “we can’t do that”. Instead, we would have said “give us time and resources, and clear a path!”. Too bad the status quo got in the way of our success.
Did it occur to you that releasing Meltemi could endanger Microsoft subsidies, or overall reduce the “goodwill” coming from MSFT that Nokia came to depend on as the cash was burning?
Even if Meltemi was 100% ready at the time of cancellation, releasing it could have reduced the total cash coming in.
Ecosystem is a much lesser problem in this light.
Also, axing Meltemi allows Nokia to get rid of lots of people outside just the Meltemi R&D team – store, services, etc. So if the aim is to reduce short term cash burn ASAP, this gets you most impact.
Meltemi was aimed to low end phones, where WP is too big resource hog. Nokia still makes and releaces S40 phones, which meltemi was going to replace, so goodwill wasn’t the reason.
As for savings, I doubt axing meltemi gave Nokia even a month more breathing room. The meltemi department even with the outside people and departments is such a tiny part of the whole company.
Cynic in me sees this as a management defence cut. When any potential plan B is axed the only option is going forward with current management and strategy. Nevermind the company as long as the management is protected.
You make quite a big mistake in your part on what it means to loose market share. Yes, it is bad, but the comparison with the car makers is just nonsense. Loosing 25% markershare does not mean you loose 25% sales, it just means that your relative size as compared to your competitors is declining. The smartphone market is a growthmarket if ever I saw one, much more so than the car market. Marketshare alone does not say anything on the number of units sold, nor on the profits that are made by that. It just means that others in the industry are doing better than you.
If the market for smartphones doubled in a year (I don’t know this figure, this is just an example), then a drop from 39% to 28% percent marketshare of that market still means that sales increased by 23%. Sure, picking up that full 100% increase or even more would have been nice, but a 23% increase is not a bad figure by any measure.
@André
I have tried to put the comparison in another way here (click link). If similar thing had happened in car industry it would have been world-class news. For Nokia, nobody cared.
But just to make you happy, I also pointed out that Elop Effect in fact could not have caused the drop of unit sales in the first place (click link). Now Elop Effect DID deepen the drop of unit sales, though.
I guess Nokia does not take care about the old customers. They only want new customers and that is all.
I have a N900 and I will don’t want to buy a nokia anymore. Only the simple oldest for have a cellphone but smartphones never (almost when some really useful come to reality).
The actual developing of techonology is most economic based but we have and can make a better really useful device. The problem is nobody want to do that.
Well, I can correct me: There are some people who want some like as mine: https://www.tizen.org
So, in fact, Nokia never was insterested in that. First, you can think Why Nokia don’t support free software (and Linux) knowing that they are from Finland and Linux is from Finland too. Nokia is only interested in money, not people (connecting people? or getting money from people?).
Now, I’m sure in some: I only will buy a Nokia phone if they are more concerned with their customers and with Linux (and the free software too).