Steve Elop and Nokia's Future

firewall2302

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On the otherhand, it is really doubtful that L820/810/822 can achieve any appreciable sales facing the more competitive HTC 8x and Samsung Ativ S in all carriers. Without Preview camera, there is basically no major differentiator.

I had to stop right there. The Lumia 820/810/822 aren't supposed to compete with the HTC 8x and Samsung Ativ S. They're to compete with the HTC 8s and the bazillion cheaper Android devices that are out there. Believe it or not, there are people out there who choose to get a mid-range phone rather than shelling out the extra money for a flagship.

And on the exclusivity front - I AGREE with Nokia's decision. Since each carrier wants to be able to market a device as being THEIRS it is the right way to go. Make variations to your design and features and then put those variations out as carrier exclusives. The carriers love to push phones that are their exclusive so you get a much stronger marketing push from people that are already paying you for exclusivity rather than investing a boatload of your own money in it.

In fact, the only thing I could fault them on is that T-Mobile announced their Lumia before Verizon did. I would think the nation's largest carrier would be more important when it came to placating their subscribers by saying "yeah, you guys are getting a great phone too." However, MacPhisto has stated in other threads that it is likely this is Verizon's choice rather than Nokia's so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
 

lancguy

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I'm really getting tired of these posts on how Elop is a bad CEO and Nokia's doomed. You guys don't understand their strategy, and investment analysts like the one referenced here have no clue either. They at least should have some clue as investing is all about seeing what's in the long term.



Nokia's strategy is a long term one. It's kind of like chemotherapy to cancer. It sounds like a drastic choice, and in the short term may make things even worse, but it's the only way out in the long term. Looking at stock prices to argue about Elop's lack of business savviness is really narrow minded and it's surprising so many stock market blogs don't see further than the present.

I think the 920 exclusive is good thing: it creates buzz, hype and envy, just like when the iPhone was only available on att and I think in the long run it will pay off. On top of that, everything points toward these exclusives being limited to a few months. ****, even VZ could get a 920 variant.

So Nokia has a flagship device, the 920, and they have exclusive variants of the 820. Each carrier getting an exclusive guarantees they will advertise Nokia and WP device sufficiently.The 810, 820 and 822 are basically the same phone, with the same processing power as the 920 btw. The WP experience will be VERY similar, except for a few luxury features of the 920. Why do you think car manufacturers come up with dozens of different models every year?

At this point, the more diverse the WP offering, the better, as the platform needs to gain popularity. By having different models on all carriers, Nokia is making sure of that.

Are you kidding? 1. Design 2. Screen: better resolution, better refresh rate, better colors and sunlight readability, extra sensitivity, size. 3. Image stabilization 4. Built-in NFC and the list goes on.
Yeah, but all these exclusive carrier devices in the US does nothing more but fragment the market. I can't help but think that it's a poor marketing strategy. I'd be willing to pay a premium to buy an unlocked 920 in the US and go to my carrier of choice. Would it hurt AT&T? I'm not an AT&T customer and will never will be again. Also AT&T and Verizon are virtually identical in monthly plan pricing. The only real differentiating factor is LTE coverage. So there is no incentive for an AT&T customer to switch to Verizon when you need to pay a premium for an unlocked phone, unless you have coverage issues or hate the company like I do. We also know the 920 will not work on Sprint or T-Mobile (until T-Mobile completes the re-farming for 4G).

So I don't see the big deal with the exclusivity contracts. It's either a win-win for AT&T or a wash if the customer takes a BYOD to Verizon. What's up with the exclusivity?!?
 

Laura Knotek

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Yeah, but all these exclusive carrier devices in the US does nothing more but fragment the market. I can't help but think that it's a poor marketing strategy. I'd be willing to pay a premium to buy an unlocked 920 in the US and go to my carrier of choice. Would it hurt AT&T? I'm not an AT&T customer and will never will be again. Also AT&T and Verizon are virtually identical in monthly plan pricing. The only real differentiating factor is LTE coverage. So there is no incentive for an AT&T customer to switch to Verizon when you need to pay a premium for an unlocked phone, unless you have coverage issues or hate the company like I do. We also know the 920 will not work on Sprint or T-Mobile (until T-Mobile completes the re-farming for 4G).

So I don't see the big deal with the exclusivity contracts. It's either a win-win for AT&T or a wash if the customer takes a BYOD to Verizon. What's up with the exclusivity?!?
At the present time one cannot take a device that is not branded to VZW and use it on VZW. VZW uses a database of ESNs/MEIDs and will not activate any device that is not listed in its database as having its own branding.

That might change once voice over LTE is implemented. However, at this time the CDMA network is still used for voice, while the LTE network is used for data. VZW (and other CDMA carriers) will not activate any devices that are not branded as belonging to them. Hence, no Sprint devices on VZW and vice-versa.
 

Yangstax

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I had to stop right there. The Lumia 820/810/822 aren't supposed to compete with the HTC 8x and Samsung Ativ S. They're to compete with the HTC 8s and the bazillion cheaper Android devices that are out there. Believe it or not, there are people out there who choose to get a mid-range phone rather than shelling out the extra money for a flagship.

For those carriers which don't carry L920, L820/810/822 are competing with HTC 8x and Ativ S. HTC 8x is priced at only $199. How low can L820/810/822 be priced to avoid the range competition? We will soon find out when Veriaon and T-mobile announce their prices. Even L820 is priced at $99, it still can't avoid competition.
 

Aykazu

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With the moves that Elop has made since his introduction as the Nokia CEO, I hardly see how he could survive another failure. If the Lumia line once again fails to catch on, he's gone. The shareholders won't stand for anymore stagnation. When people go into their carriers stores, they are walking out with an iPhone or a Galaxy SIII for the most part. The Lumia lineup is pretty intriguing, but 1. having it as an AT&T exclusive was a bad idea. 2. even though they have Microsofts backing, their marketing dollars have pretty much gone to waste. iPhone, Galaxy, Droid, they're all household names. The Lumia just doesn't have the recognition right now. It was a shortsighted decision for Nokia to align itself solely with a fledgling OS. Not saying Android was the way out of the dire straits Nokia was in, but they could have at least offered devices from both OS's. Samsung does it, HTC does it, and a few other OEMs do it. There's nothing wrong with playing both sides of the smartphone fence. The Lumia Nexus could have been launching alongside the Lumia 920, and likely would have been a success. Pride got in the way of Elop forming a partnership with Google alongside his Windows Phone selection, and it may cost him in the long run.


Im saying that Nokia and especially Stephen Elop did not have the choice to go with Android and Windows Phone at the same time, it was far too risky for Nokia and Nokia was late from this game because of Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Anssi Vanjoki, Jorma Ollila and many other old leaders of Nokia.

So why was Android out of the question? It was because Nokia was afraid of the patent wars. Now hold your horses and let me explain what I think. Looking through the Economics of Nokia we find out that when Stephen Elop took over in Nokia, Nokias sales were going down fast, the Symbian products did not sell enough and Elop saw this, he knew that there was something that needed to be done really fast.

They propably looked through various of options which propably were:

Develop Symbian and MeeGo and sell them there was a major downside in both of these products, in Symbian the problem was that it was just terrible compared to Android, it had no real advantage over Android.
The MeeGo was good and it down right had everything needed to compete with Android exept Apps and LTE (WHAT!?!??!?!), yep LTE was missing and thats because it was developed with Intel and it supported Intels chipset which did not support LTE.
Jollas version of MeeGo which they are announcing sometime later this year will not be exactly same MeeGo what we saw in the N9, infact they have stated that it is completely different platform even though sharing a lot from MeeGo and thus also the name change to Sailfish.

So the consumers didnt want the Symbian and MeeGo could not offer them a future, let alone an ecosystem. Decision was made to ditch Symbian and MeeGo.


Second option was propably the Android development: So Nokia saw that they could get a platform and a working ecosystem from Google, but they also knew that it would take time and they would need to fight patent wars consistantly with Apple and Microsoft and they would have dosens of competitors who allready have products with the same platform not to mention that they would still have to do something to differentiate themselves from the others. And Google did not offer them any exclusives. So even though it would have been possible to work with Android but it also had its downsides.

Third option do both: Android and Windows Phone: This would have put Nokia in the same position with Samsung and HTC and they wouldnt have anything exclusive from Google nor Microsoft, they would have been just another OEM.

4th option, go with Microsoft: Good things, get 1 billion dollars each year from Microsoft and get your maps to be the primary maps used in WP and W8. Get exclusive deals with third party app producers so differentiating with other OEMs.
The downside with this was of course the fact that Windows Phone does not have a huge marketshare like Android so it would take time and effort to create that marketshare.

Anyway the 4th option was the one they took, one reason was also propably because they taught that they could make theyr organisation more agile and that would lead Nokia to be able to make better products in less time and give better customer support.

I know this is a really raw version but I really cant be bothered to write 10 pages of analysing the whole situation.
 

firewall2302

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For those carriers which don't carry L920, L820/810/822 are competing with HTC 8x and Ativ S. HTC 8x is priced at only $199. How low can L820/810/822 be priced to avoid the range competition? We will soon find out when Veriaon and T-mobile announce their prices. Even L820 is priced at $99, it still can't avoid competition.

This is like saying that because my town has a Bentley dealership but not a Ferrari dealership then all of the Ford dealers in town are competing with Bentley...

Ok, that might be a bit over the top, but the point remains the same.

Just because they are smartphones doesn't mean they compete with all other smartphones. There are different market segments in the world of smartphones and the 820/810/822 are designed for the middle of the road.

The 820/810/822 are not competing with the 8x and Ativ S, even on carriers that won't carry the 920. They were designed and marketed as mid-range phones and therefore can't compete with the flagship devices put out by other OEMs. Rather than being aimed at the people who have to have the best tech regardless of price they are aimed instead at the sensible people who want a good balance of features and price. The final group would be the low-end where features are less important than price - Nokia looks to be targeting that segment with it's previous WP7 devices ($.99 L900 anyone?) just like Apple does with the previous generation of iPhone.

What this really means is that barring announcements that may be coming from Verizon, Nokia has chosen to not compete in the flagship segment on any US carrier other than AT&T. Which, to me, is a very sad decision. The more flagship devices WP8 can put in the market, the better it will do at taking market share away from iPhone 5 and GSIII.
 

lippidp

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I'm not going to waste time trying to predict the future. I wish Nokia and Elop the best of luck. If they do tank THEN we can all chime in as to why. Nobody hear is right or wrong. It's still playing out.
 

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