Until today the Finnish Sisu and some rather big sunk costs has prevented the world biggest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia to admit they have been going down a wrong path already for a while. This wrong path is called Symbian. It seems that Nokia has started to use their own Nokia Maps and turned finally around.
Ben Smith of TheReallyMobileProject reports that Nokia will let Symbian go in 2012 and focus on Maemo. All high-end N series multimedia devices will be running the Linux OS by 2012, even though X series and E series devices will continue to run Symbian OS. That is, until Nokia will decides Symbian should be banned altogether.
I hope the Finnish Giant will be on a roll with smart decisions and it will start putting more focus on the developers and especially the startup community that resides in its backyard along with the focus on Maemo. Nokia has been close to invisible in the local startup scene for past few years, but we hope this will change soon and knowing some of the cool cats inside the company, we have faith it will. More than anything the company needs fresh blood and the older guard to understand to step down. The fresh blood is not only needed in respect to talking to the startup community, but to everything that Nokia does. We give massive respect to the team that made Nokia what it is, but now the smart thing is to understand to step down and make sure the next generation will have a tools to kick Droid’s ass. We want nothing as much as see all the cool cats in the scene to buzz about the next Nokia handset and fill up YouTube with videos when they are unpacking it. It would also not hurt if the phone would be a delight to use and develop for.
It hurts, but just as your economics teacher taught you, you should not calculate sunk cost when planning for future investments. Unfortunately this also applies to mobile phone manufacturers.
iWillStudy.com
Unita
It’s kind of weird that people don’t realize what kind of opportunity Symbian will provide when it’s moving to lower end devices. It’s a full blown OS open to basically anything you want to ever implement. There’s more business models than on any other platform, not just lousy appstore where your app will be lost forever (there has been companies making money with Symbian like 8 years already). We are talking of hundreds of millions of devices on the markets in coming years. Nokia won’t “ban” Symbian, it will be a mass market OS. And yeah it’s boring and UI experience sucks but hell, who cares if there is money to be made. Often it’s not there where the hype is so open your eyes people.
Petteri,
“And yeah it’s boring and UI experience sucks but hell, who cares if there is money to be made.”
I care and I bet the other people who use their mobile phone care too. And what comes to the lousy app store. There has been some 2 billion (That’s with B!) apps download, which is not the case with Ovi. I wish it were. But it’s not.
People hype what they’re excited about, and if I’d make phones I would care whether people are excited about my product. And I’m pretty sure Nokia does as well.
Ville, well you are right but when looking from bigger perspective this whole market, it’s not about the user experience, it’s just one detail and if it sucks it can be fixed (there’s army of people fixing it right now already). Look for example what Samsung and SE have done top of Symbian, it’s totally different from Nokia so it is wrong to say it cannot be made. It’s about the sales figures and Symbian is already providing big numbers and will continue providing even bigger numbers. Why there is almost 100 million Symbian devices sold this year alone? It’s not just about selling as much as you can, there is limits set by infrastructure, overall development and manufacturing processes. There is no too many companies who can do that in this area.
Yeah, because one site reports something that makes it true…
The same report is also saying that “‘Maemo Select’, the current community-portal for Maemo applications, will initially run alongside Nokia’s Ovi store, which is due to launch for the N900 via a software update next month. However, in the longer term it too will be retired leaving only the Ovi Store as the official Nokia source for free and paid applications promoted on Symbian and Maemo devices.” which is simply not true:
a) Maemo Select is just a place where Nokia highlights few SELECTed apps from community and from Ovi Store. Maemo.org is the place where the community applications really are.
b) Maemo Select might be retired (because it is just a web site…) but community repositories will still be there. They might not get “official” stamp from Nokia but Nokia still supports the community and those repositories.
So summa summarum: this article sucks.
One thing which is always forgotten, is that Symbian is 10+ years old. It is about time to put it (one GUI built on top of Symbian, S60) to better use than in niche segments (=Smartphones, in terms of volumes).
“There has been some 2 billion (That’s with B!) apps download, which is not the case with Ovi”
The other thing that people forget is that OVI is not (thank God) the only place to get apps. Take Getjar as an example, or all the operators, media companies, 3rd party portals… you name it. The open model has its issues (service discovery) but you cannot ban Google Voice for example… And besides, who cares about the download numbers, if monetization is only done by a very few.
“People hype what they’re excited about, and if I’d make phones I would care whether people are excited about my product”
I would care about what sells. Not that much about the hype. Apple will face serious problems getting to a long term +3% marketshare in mobile phones. That is not done through hype, it is done through hard work, logistics etc, but most of all; understanding what the _majority of users_ want. If you want to reach the mass market, that is.
“People hype what they’re excited about, and if I’d make phones I would care whether people are excited about my product”
The fact that you read TechCrunch doesn’t mean that 99% of the world would know anything about it, nor the hype TC together with similar tech blogs spreads around. As a business person you should understand that the bubble you live ain’t the case in the developing markets and even less in the markets that aren’t yet even developing.
Great posts Petteri & Karri. Seems to me that you really understand the market and don’t only repeat what you read around the tech blogs.
Great to see people are passionate about the subject.
We all know its about sales, especially Nokia. And you can argue the semantics or the wording, but it’s a strategic choice Nokia has made. They have understood (and accepted) that even though Symbian is still very big number wise, it’s not the future. And since its not the future one should not invest in it to the same extent, but make sure there is a smooth transition to new areas that don’t have the scale yet, but that have the promise. Nokia is just facing the same problems in taking the risk to place its bets on anything new, while the old stuff still brings in boat loads of money. And as we have seen the solution is not to try to do everything. Nokia is not alone here. Any giant faces the same challenges.
Thus, you don’t stop the production line the day you make the decision, but you will shift your strategic focus in which will support the future growth of the company in the long run. And that’s not Symbian. Nokia has accepted that fact. Everything else is a rounding error in this debate. I am sure we all know this and it doesn’t event come as a surprise. At least it shouldn’t.
Great discussion, guys. Cant go into commenting the details other that their is a lot of good points in “all” the posts and that technology will always evolve, which rarely means new technology rules them all and old tech is made obsolete.
Lets be honest here about the fact that the media loves “black and white scenarios” and “kill, drop or clean” always makes for a great headline. Business on the contrary is more complex and while tomorrow nobody cares about your headline anymore, because the crowd has moved on – your staff, investors and customer do.
Stay tuned.
Udo,
Thanks for dropping in. Appreciate the comment and joining the conversation. As said, one can argue the semantics or the wording, but headlines aside, the direction ahead in regards to Symbian should be rather clear cut even if the business is messy. Doesn’t solve all the problems and might bring a few new ones with it, but I think we all know that Symbian needs to go.
Sounds you have a clear point of view here. Lets see how it turns out and then we take a beer and talk about the details and reasons together. You just have to trust me that i capture history accurately “in hindsight”!
Its great to see so much passion and support for Maemo. Its a great platform and one that holds a lot of potential and excitement – for Nokia, for Developers and thus for Finland :)
Ville,For sure Nokia has to focus on market trends and the bigger picture.how dare we say that symbian has driven Nokia sales.For the first time in its history Nokia is playing second fiddle in smart phone market and come 2013 according to the latest figures the smart phones will surpass the so called ordinary phones including CDMA that Nokia re-launched the other day.Home problems are best solved with home solutions and Nokia should look for fresh ideas rather than commit machinery buying ideas.A new breed of staff will help quash any fears that Nokia is dominated by old ideas and is led by ageing quacks who have reached their prime.Truth be said,the team has done a wonderful job but its high time they pave way for new team.Linux OS is not the best either but for now symbian OS is a flop.Nokia is Finland and Finland is Nokia.Get techno savvy advisers from there.Ville,for me Nokia will have to pull up its socks.things are not looking rosy at all.Other manufacturers including the latest Entrant Dell are spoiling for a fight in consumer and market share
wanarua,
‘Nokia is Finland and Finland is Nokia.’ Well put :) I’d love to argue otherwise, but you said it.
Udo,
Not going to challenge your ability to reason “in hindsight”!, but will take you up on the beer. I’ll be sure to write up a follow on Nokia’s tricky relationship with Symbian :)