Nokia to Supposedly Sell Its Mobile Devices Division in 2013
- Thread starter The Knight
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eternoMind
Herald
No tech enthusiast would want that to happen!
That said, i sometimes wonder whether Nokia's decision to not go with Android will make the company a case study subject down the years when it comes to strategic blunders.
That said, i sometimes wonder whether Nokia's decision to not go with Android will make the company a case study subject down the years when it comes to strategic blunders.
yashvisent
Explorer
harry_houdini
Contributor
I simply cannot understand why Nokia cant go the Android way. Am sure it would have had atleast some devices which would have sold in tons.
Its the opinion of someone at Forbes. Honestly, though I am not a big Nokia fan, I do not want it to stop making handsets.
Since it is an ego problem for Nokia to not shift to android.. I guess the new acquiring company won't have any qualms about adopting the android os.. Then we could see some good phones from nokia..
sasikanth8
Explorer
I am not sure, but do Microsoft's contract with Nokia allows Nokia to use Android?
Every player in the smartphone field wants to differentiate, and nokia till now has had the luxury of owning or controlling at least 2 or 3 platforms, because controlling a platform gives you a totally different kind of leverage as opposed to being a 'me too' player and competing with all the other players on their terms.
The trouble is that the whole phone market paradigm has changed, from one where you sold phones and got margins on the hardware, to one where the hardware margins have shrunk, and in either case, hardware is a much tougher market to compete with all the huawei's and micromaxes of the world. So what do you do? From selling a product which is becoming increasingly commoditized, you move to more of a service player than a product player, because its harder for your competitors to copy your service aspect.
That is what apple has managed to do successively earning record profits, both on phones and laptops, while the hp's and dells of the world are figuring out what happened. You are competing at a different level. And at that point, your product sales become just one of your revenue streams, and you look at others. Take Apple and Google, two of the most sucessful smartphone platform owners. Google monetizes the android platform by harnessing the data it collects and finding more meaningful ways to target customers, and sell that data to advertisers. Apple uses it to lock users to its ecosystem and buy more of their products and their ecommerce platforms.
That's the problem where Microsoft is having a hard time, and HP lost, and why I predict canonical will have a hard time, because their plan stops at selling the phone. Microsoft is banking on the UI commonality between WP8 and Windows 8, and the common ecosystem. HP put webOS into everything they had. Printers, and sadly not much else. Wasnt enough to lock customers, and their bungee CEO also didnt do any help either.
Nokia wants full control - the platform, the hardware, and the carriers too (which is why it's prescence in the US isn't as big as it should be). It's taken an all or nothing strategy. Lets see if their bet pays off.
harry_houdini
Contributor
Nokia tied up with Microsoft quite late when its own symbian software proved to be incompetent. That time already Android was gaining ground. So I dont think that is the reason.
Great explanation but if it is that, Nokia comes out as a very rigid firm. They have to change with time, it sound quite stupid that Nokia is letting go off some profits for huge profits which are nothing more than empty at the moment. Lets say the earn some X amount of profit with android, 10X is they have their own platform. But the fact is they dont have anything at the moment, so why miss out on the X profit?. Frankly it sound stupid on part of Nokia.
I have seen Samsung rise from nothing to a major player over the years because it was/is always flexible. Also Nokia have to fear that their brand is losing its value. There was a time when people used to say Nokia hi lena, now even in feature phones Samsung is coming out to be VFM. Yeah not to forget the Micromax and Huawei and what not.
But I still feel if there is a quality product, people will buy it over the cheaper counterparts like micromax.
Nokia probably thinks (and it would be justified) that they have enough clout(at least for now) that their putting themselves behind a platform would be significant enough to give that platform some exposure. I mean it just needs a decent amount of nokia fanboys for nokia to say that "I will sell only WP phones", and for those fanboys to preach about nokia's goodness (and lord knows microsoft needs all the exposure they can get). and eventually WP will get enough marketshare along with nokia and then Nokia will have some leverage with microsoft.
Alternately, if nokia were to adopt android, any other platforms it might also support would be dead in the water, much like bada is nowhere now despite samsung's best efforts, and WP would have the same end, and eventually nokia would end up as a "me too" player, just like LG or HTC
Alternately, if nokia were to adopt android, any other platforms it might also support would be dead in the water, much like bada is nowhere now despite samsung's best efforts, and WP would have the same end, and eventually nokia would end up as a "me too" player, just like LG or HTC
Leave Symbian, I'd seen a better future with Meego. N9 was such a great device, Nokia could've kept it along with WP. But instead they went ahead and fired a whole bunch of their employees, and who were very talented. Just have a look at the range of innovative products ex-Nokia employees are coming up with.
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