Nokia was the 2nd highest selling phone brand in 2013, why did they sell themselves off to Microsoft

[amits1024]

This was the list of best selling phone brands in 2013 -

Samsung: 444.4442 million (24.6% market share)
Nokia: 250.7931 million (13.9% market share)
Apple: 150.7859 million (8.3% market share)
LG: 69.0245 million (3.8% market share)
ZTE: 59.8988 million (3.3% market share)
Huawei: 53.2951 million (2.9% market share)
TCL Communication: 49.5313 million (2.7% market share)
Lenovo: 45.2847 million (2.5% market share)
Sony Mobile Communications: 37.5957 million (2.1% market share)
Yulong: 32.6014 million (1.8% market share)
Others: 613.7100 million (34% market share)
Total: 1,806.9647 million (100% market share)



In 2013, Nokia sold more phones than big players like Apple, LG, Sony and the Chinese brands. Only Samsung sold more phones than Nokia in 2013

After having stuck with Symbian for way too long, 2012 & 2013 were Nokia's comeback years in the phone market. Nokia had good range of phones with their good range of feature phones, budget smartphones like Nokia Asha, they even had their own OS called Meego and had made a good phone Nokia N9 with Meego OS in 2012. And not to forget the Nokia Lumia which was gaining in popularity in 2013, especially with the flagship Nokia Lumia 1020 with 41 megapixel camera, something which is still yet to be beaten even after more than 5 years and so many camera-centric phones being launched

Nokia were coming out with innovative Lumia phones one after the other in 2012-2013, even had futuristic features like wireless charging, something which other brands brought in 2017, Nokia had brought it way back in 2012 in Nokia Lumia 920. Nokia had a excellent advertising team and the Nokia Lumia's were promoted very aggressively in those times with Nokia coming out with good advertisements too

Nokia had a solid base in 2013 and rather than continue making Nokia Lumias, Meego phones and the budget smarphones/feature phones, Nokia in less than 4 months sell themselves off to Microsoft and that killed off Nokia and it also killed off Windows phone as well

Now when Microsoft took over Nokia, a lot of Nokia's core team had gone. Microsoft never had the hardware team and we can see the Microsoft Lumias never had any hardware innovations. Microsoft never did any proper advertising too. Only innovation which Microsoft did in phones was a software based innovation - Continuum which was used to dock the phone and connect it to a bigger display and run full Windows using the phone as the processor. There were no or very little hardware based innovations by Microsoft in their phones

If Nokia hadn't sold themselves off to Microsoft, Nokia would have grown even bigger in 2014 & 2015, coming with out more new innovative & futuristic features in their phones, especially the flagship Nokia Lumias. They would have been active in the feature phones & budget smartphones range as they were

Microsoft have always been good at software and Nokia were always good at hardware, so with Microsoft focusing on the Windows phone software and Nokia innovating at hardware level for Nokia Lumia, Windows phones would have grown big in 2014 & 2015

Talking of apps, Android was a growing platform in 2012-2013 too and that was the time many developers made apps. Developers made apps for Windows phones too in 2012-2013 when Nokia Lumias were there. Nokia selling themselves off to Microsoft put many developers away from developing Windows phone apps. And with Microsoft acquiring Nokia, there was a big gap between the launch of last Nokia Lumia by Nokia in 2013 and the Nokia Lumia 830 & Nokia Lumia 735 by Microsoft in September 2014. Microsoft then stopped using Nokia name and came out with Microsoft Lumia from November 2014, Microsoft Lumia 535 being the 1st Microsoft branded phone

So what was the reason for Nokia to sell themselves off to Microsoft just 3 months after a succesful 2013. There would have been some very wrong people in both sides for such a ridiculous deal to happen which benefitted neither of them. I felt very sad looking at the list of best selling smartphones in 2013 with Nokia at 2nd and then Nokia disappearing soon. If this ridiculous deal didn't happen, by 2018, Windows phones would have been very popular everywhere by now and many people would be buying Nokia Lumias

 

[Bobvfr]

There is a documentary about the death of Nokia, they were dying long before MS came along and needed MS's money to keep afloat, shame MS didn't push on with WP but they had far too many models, too many cheap phones, too many changes.

 

[nate0]

Technically it was a smart move for Nokia. Not so much Microsoft. In a way you could say they saw the Tsunami coming...what if Nokia road the wave into 2015 or 2016 and then Microsoft dropped the bomb on them that W10M would be in maintenance mode going forward? They would have been like HP ramping up for their release of the 2nd Gen X3 only to have a rug pulled out from under them at some point.

I'd say Nokia really never knew all this but it played out well for them anyway. They are in the top 10 already and only really been making devices through HMD for maybe 2 years now.

Of course for all us Windows phone users we definitely could have used a few more Nokia models between 2014 and 2017....

 

[fatclue_98]

Nokia were coming out with innovative Lumia phones one after the other in 2012-2013, even had futuristic features like wireless charging, something which other brands brought in 2017, Nokia had brought it way back in 2012 in Nokia Lumia 920.

Palm introduced wireless charging in 2009. Nokia was bleeding money long before MS came aboard and would've failed spectacularly were it not for MS. This is all well documented.

 

[Iain_S]

its a shame at the time HMD didnt buy Nokia back then, they would probably in the top 3 makers by now.
Nokia were dying before MS purchased them and finally put the nail in the coffin.

I am excited to see what HMD do with the Nokia brand. They will do a lot more for it than Microsoft would ever do.

 

[kaktus1389]

its a shame at the time HMD didnt buy Nokia back then, they would probably in the top 3 makers by now.
Nokia were dying before MS purchased them and finally put the nail in the coffin.

I am excited to see what HMD do with the Nokia brand. They will do a lot more for it than Microsoft would ever do.

To my knowledge HMD are just ex Nokia employees and it was founded on December 1st, 2016.

 

[VetDuarte]

There is a documentary about the death of Nokia, they were dying long before MS came along and needed MS's money to keep afloat, shame MS didn't push on with WP but they had far too many models, too many cheap phones, too many changes.

Do you recall the documentary's title?

 

[Bobvfr]

Pretty sure its called "The death of Nokia".

EDIT


Sorry I was wrong, its called "The Rise and Fall of Nokia", I think its a BBC program as part of a program called "Newsnight", it's no longer available on the BBC iPlayer, and doubt it's available outside the UK.


Well worth watching if you can find it though.

 

[tgp]

In 2013, Nokia sold more phones than big players like Apple, LG, Sony and the Chinese brands. Only Samsung sold more phones than Nokia in 2013

Isn't this statistic a bit deceptive though? Nokia didn't sell very many smartphones. I believe that most of this number would have been Asha and feature phones. About 110 million WP/WM in total have been sold since the release of WP7 in 2010, and many from this number are not even Nokias.

The statistics for the other manufacturers listed here are mostly, if not all, smartphones.

 

[Bobvfr]

Although Nokia had an awful lot of really smart stuff in the pipeline, they really (Like a lot of people and companies) didn't see the iPhone coming and with the really bad management that had crept up on them, just couldn't respond in time to the smart phone, they were going broke and the only lifeline was MS.

Nokia as said was dead, MS had WP but no one to play with, and as far as I am aware pumped a lot of money into Nokia to get them to use WP, even before the 7 billion to buy the company.

So they were dead, had a reprieve from MS, but then MS didn't do enough to stop the slew of cheaper phones that caused so much hassle in the long run, and unfortunately it all coincided with the disastrous breaks that MS put in the way going from WP7 to WP8 and then Windows 10, if MS had cleared the crap and made just two high end phones (The equivalent of the 950 and 950 XL) and had managed to (And I actually liked WP8) go from Windows 7 to Windows 10 on both the desktop and phone, I think they stood a very good chance of going places, but you can only ditch/upset your customers so many times.


So yes the Lumia range died under the stewardship of MS, it was already dead years before and Nokia basically went broke but ended up with MS's cash, MS nursed the baby along but as mentioned Windows 8 and WP8 was a disaster even though I liked it.


We aren't going to get any more Windows "Phones", no one wants a Blackberry running WP. WP is a thing of the past (Shame cause my 950 XL is still doing what I want it to).


But if MS can bring out phone sized devices running Windows 10 (Not WP), I don't care if they fold or not. If I can finally have the two apps that I have on my 950XL that I don't have on my Surface Pro 4 i.e. PHONE and MESSENGER, and I can somehow point my cherished mobile number at my Windows account instead of one device without having to use Skype (And I like Skype, have a Skype number and subscriptions) then I will buy one.

 

[anon(10409867)]

I will ask everyone eager to draft a story to wait. The story of Nokia it's not yet over. I can feel that another wave of coming.

 

[Gregorius Magnus]

Without the buyout, probably it would have been a bit cheaper for Microsoft to maintain the environment, but would have felt a lot less pressure as well due to a lot slower expansion. This means that it had been a longer lifespan but still living on Windows Phone 8.1 It was going to die anyways.

 

[squeezy99]

I love my 950xl, it still performs really well and the camera is wonderful. Beats Iphone anyday.
MS should have been more agressive in their marketing.

 

[Scott McBurney]

My opinion is that Nokia selling out to Microsoft was a huge mistake. They were making progress in emerging markets with windows phone. They were making a little progress in the US, but when they launched the Lumia 930, and you couldn't get it on anything but Verizon (branded with a different name). I think if Microsoft had worked more WITH Nokia instead of buying them and shutting everything down, the world would be very different right now.

 

[Pacus1x]

I think that's what Nokia wanted in the first place... to sell their mobile division and stop the money bleeding. MS made that huge mistake and probably that sealed WP fate. The good news at least is that Nokia phone brand is starting to coming back to life with some good hardware from HMD Global. The bad news is about WP/WM10m and MS most likely won't ever venture into mobile OS again and it's dead/buried/mummified for good.

 

[Kevin Rush]

I love my 950xl, it still performs really well and the camera is wonderful. Beats Iphone any day.
MS should have been more agressive in their marketing.

My 950xl and Elite x3 are a joy to use, performs great, and suits all my needs.

 

[vEEP pEEP]

i think Nokia got over confident. Like all leaders...they get replaced. The N95 was an incredible phone at the time. But smartphones where more for tech nerds. They never marketed well or showed the value of a smartphone. Then Apple came a long and with superb UX and marketing started their roll.

They knew Symbian as dying and did not move fast enough on Meego.

They had HUGE brand recognition in the dumb phone arena and massive support in Asia Maybe they should have pushed their new phones there?

Hindsight, eh?

Mr. V

 

[vEEP pEEP]

they tried too hard in the US. The US did not know Nokia....
The 1020 and 1520 - great ideas! Should have pushed harder in Asia....

 

[vEEP pEEP]

I think MS is afraid of the word 'Phone' because it means competing with Android and Apple. Oh and they sucked at getting it right, despite have a viable product.

The need to give a new label, like a Nomadic Electronic Appliance (hey, I am not in marketing)

Although Nokia had an awful lot of really smart stuff in the pipeline, they really (Like a lot of people and companies) didn't see the iPhone coming and with the really bad management that had crept up on them, just couldn't respond in time to the smart phone, they were going broke and the only lifeline was MS.

Nokia as said was dead, MS had WP but no one to play with, and as far as I am aware pumped a lot of money into Nokia to get them to use WP, even before the 7 billion to buy the company.

So they were dead, had a reprieve from MS, but then MS didn't do enough to stop the slew of cheaper phones that caused so much hassle in the long run, and unfortunately it all coincided with the disastrous breaks that MS put in the way going from WP7 to WP8 and then Windows 10, if MS had cleared the crap and made just two high end phones (The equivalent of the 950 and 950 XL) and had managed to (And I actually liked WP8) go from Windows 7 to Windows 10 on both the desktop and phone, I think they stood a very good chance of going places, but you can only ditch/upset your customers so many times.


So yes the Lumia range died under the stewardship of MS, it was already dead years before and Nokia basically went broke but ended up with MS's cash, MS nursed the baby along but as mentioned Windows 8 and WP8 was a disaster even though I liked it.


We aren't going to get any more Windows "Phones", no one wants a Blackberry running WP. WP is a thing of the past (Shame cause my 950 XL is still doing what I want it to).


But if MS can bring out phone sized devices running Windows 10 (Not WP), I don't care if they fold or not. If I can finally have the two apps that I have on my 950XL that I don't have on my Surface Pro 4 i.e. PHONE and MESSENGER, and I can somehow point my cherished mobile number at my Windows account instead of one device without having to use Skype (And I like Skype, have a Skype number and subscriptions) then I will buy one.

 

[Bloobed]

Nokia selling the phone business to MS was a smart move, Nokia using WP was not.