Why the Nokia write-down and the new device strategy is a bad thing.

[anon(8141431)]

Try to take this post as open minded as possible.

I'm gonna try to 'prove' my point by basing it on three things
1. the new device strategy was never a success for anyone other than Apple.
2. This severely degrades the Windows Phone mindshare among OEMs.
3. Microsoft is kinda making it clear that even they don't believe in Windows mobile.

Now lemme explain,

Microsoft's new device strategy sounds great on paper. Focusing where it matters, Trimming down the portfolio to just three segments. This is gonna be awesome, because apple does it. Right? Not really.
This kind of device trimming and portfolio reduction have been done by other companies in the market. The best example is right in front of them, Nokia! well, Symbian. At the time of the rise of Android, Nokia was flooding the market with Symbian devices. But even after that Nokia was losing marketshare. So, they announced a new OS(Symbian 3) and restructured their business portfolio to just 4 phones per year.
The N series: The flagship devices their fans will love
The E series: Business phones for business customers
The X and C series: Value phones with communication features.
Sounds familiar? It should. This is exactly what Microsoft's plan is.
One might say Google nexus phones exist. But, Android has a huge market presence, and 100s of OEMs. Nexus is for the Android enthusiasts, which is a group that is far greater in number than windows phone enthusiasts. Besides, Android has tons of OEMs making great hardware at all price segments.
But One might argue that Wp has other OEMs too. well....

when considering marketshare, they are largest Windows Phone OEM, by a huge margin. And they announced that the Lumia business is not a success in their last earnings call. And now they wrote it off. Well, how can other OEMs find success with Wp when even the biggest one couldn't?
but, but.. Windows 10? OEMs does not seem that interested with Windows 10 mobile.
When Sony was asked about making windows phones, their reply was 'not really' (paraphrasing) . Huawei shows no interest. And Samsung said they will make Windows 10 phones only because they can end the patent dispute. These are just some of the OEMs that don't wanna go with windows phones. Besides, making android phones is a strategy that works, why would they go out of their comfort zone to bet on a platform that has a very minor marketshare?


bu.. but.. Windows 10 will be super awesome flaberagastically wonderful. Right?
Honestly, no one cares. We care, Obviously . But it's because we are windows phone fans. We care because we love this platform. We care because we want MS to succeed.No one outside our inner circle cares about windows phone.

Even MS doesn't believe windows phone is gonna succeed. According to rumors, they might make windows phones for at least two more years. That's not really a good. They are also worried that windows 10 mobile might not be enough to save windows phone.
In my opinion, this write-off happened at the wrongest time. MS was building upon good windows phone news after good windows phone news after good windows phone. But this one write-off undid all that good stuff. They should have at least waited till windows 10 mobile's arrival to see if they could win, but now this looks as if Microsoft themselves have given up on windows mobile


I end my rant/post/whatever by quoting Clinton Jeff, an ex-blogger who was great fan of Nokia and Windows Phone.
"Basically, imho this [recommending a windows phone now] is like recommending a Symbian Phone after the burning platform memo 'leaked' out. "

 

[colinkiama]

At least we are getting a flagship

 

[runamuck83]

I just bought a Lumia 640 XL - I have no regrets.

 

[PepperdotNet]

Yes. This is exactly what we need right now. Another thread declaring the death of Windows mobile based on emotional ranting.

Everybody just turn off your windows phone right now, throw it in the trash, go buy an android or iPhone. Feel better now? Sheesh.

 

[Gustavo Sanchez]

I still love my L1520. I pains me to think that maybe I would need to start looking at future Android offerings when it's time to replace it. I tried W10, and felt my phone was getting a second lease on life. It's still as fast as the first day, the battery still lasts about 36 hours on average, and the screen still looks as awesome as anything new to market. I will just keep enjoying it as I am doing right now, and will leave my future self to decide what's going to be when my 1520 does not work anymore.

 

[Spectrum90]

I don't think this is a strategy to succeed in phones. It's a strategy to kill the phone business slowly without hurting Windows, Surface and other related assets.
The reduction in the number of devices will have an impact in sales, but they're also exiting markets (countries) and channels and probably cutting marketing spending.

I end my rant/post/whatever by quoting Clinton Jeff, an ex-blogger who was great fan of Nokia and Windows Phone.
"Basically, imho this [recommending a windows phone now] is like recommending a Symbian Phone after the burning platform memo 'leaked' out. "

I agree with that.

 

[runamuck83]

It's a strategy to win back oems and let them create the phones.

 

[phelme]

It's a strategy to win back oems and let them create the phones.

though oddly enough, BLU appears to be doing just fine on Windows Phone even with the flood of minutely different Lumias.

 

[anon(8141431)]

Yes. This is exactly what we need right now. Another thread declaring the death of Windows mobile based on emotional ranting.

Everybody just turn off your windows phone right now, throw it in the trash, go buy an android or iPhone. Feel better now? Sheesh.

I quote Ben Thompson, who predicted the nokia write down at the time of the acquisition,
"Windows Phone is as good as dead"

 

[barotropic]

Nadella (and his advisors) displayed amazingly bad headwork with the timing and lack of clarity in this announcement, IMHO. It's impossible to tell if he meant that they will simply scale back WP hardware development, or bring it to a complete halt after the next iteration this fall, or completely abandon thte WP mobile OS next year. Are they interested in handing off hardware to 3rd parties, and continuing the software side? Who knows? And this uncertainty, if not remedied, =will= cause the end of Windows Phone / mobile.

They might as well have said "Hey, let's throw a huge wet blanket on Windows 10, the first "unified across hardware" Windows, just 3 weeks before it begins to deploy. Let's tell developers there's really no value in developing Universal apps, because we're working on ending the phone/mobile side of things anyway. Let's give the baying hounds of the tech press enough meat to create a real "Windows Phone is really dead this time!" frenzy, so that the uninformed consumer, and quite possible we Windows enthusiasts, will now never again consider the platform. Let's make Windows tablets unviable by destroying desktop/phone/tablet synergy and ecosystem by the implied threat of walking away from phone."

I know MS needs to be profitable. And not being inside Nadella's mind, I don't have all the facts. But it seems to me that waiting just 3 or 4 months before making this sort of announcement would have given WP's last best hopes (new flagships, Windows 10 and Universal apps) an opportunity to make things clear one way or the other. I keep looking for followup from MS in vain, thinking maybe they'll read all the death notices, and try to clear things ups. I guess the silence speaks volumes. Alas.

 

[Great deal]

All the views (including my own) are based on emotion and 'framing' from a certain perspective. What we don't know and will never know are the true facts ie Big Data trends, descriptive, predictive and prescriptive that companies such as Microsoft use to base their decisions on. Its very easy to see what they are doing and it makes perfect sense.

They are using a combination of the Surface strategy with the MASSIVE enterprise community to push WP into the minds of people. When Companies switch to Windows 10 (and they will) they will create universal apps and use existing ones (95% of the business world use Windows btw) and the phone is automatically the number one choice as ease of use/integration - developers don't have to do much at all to develop app for the desktop (who in their right mind wouldn't given the millions and millions of users worldwide) and in turn for the WP platform.....

its so easy to see, take a step back and it makes sense - We could easily have said at the time when MS wrote off a billion dollars of surface stock that that's it...end of the line...no go...look at where Surface is now and even that will get stronger with Enterprise adoption. Apple have made it very clear they are consumer focussed...MS will leverage the market that they know who are waiting for something like W10 to gain traction/market share...The ONLY scenario I see where it doesn't work is MS screwing up W10 but again with the testing/preview strategy I think they will nail it.

 

[fdalbor]

The 640 is selling pretty well and that is without W10. Will W10 make a difference, who knows. My own experience with W10 so far is a high % of computers will not run 10
2 of my 3 units won't get 10 and 2 of my brothers 3 units won't get it either even though all run 8.1 just find. Maybe we are a isolated instance, and maye we are the norm. If we are Microsoft is in trouble. Will the same thing happened when W10 is released for phones. A lot of people are going to be upset.