“This was the ‘cannot fail’ game by Ballmer. He could not lose. And yet Elop delivered failure out of this project. He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. This could have worked. Now it is doomed. The Nokia gambit to gain Windows a place in the top 3 (or at worst, top 4) has failed. Now, the only road left is to try to go Windows Phone 8, and start again from zero. Except today, Sony(Ericsson), LG, Dell and Motorola are no longer in the partnership. Samsung has its own two operating systems it will prefer over Windows – bada and Tizen. HTC is deeply suspicious of Microsoft. Nokia is essentially the walking dead. What is left? ZTE?”
Chuckle. I get a kick out of grandiose schemes for world domination failing miserably. Don’t get me wrong. I love entrepreneurs who take risks and try something new. This is not that case. This is Steve Ballmer assuming M$ had a right to monopoly or at least huge share anywhere in IT. Ballmer assumed because they had extended the monopoly IBM granted them that M$ could extend it again into mobile stuff. Not so. Monopoly and small cheap computers don’t mix. The world is full of real entrepreneurs willing to take risks to sell a good product at lower prices than others. FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) supports that. The burden of M$’s tax on IT does not.
Too bad Nokia followed M$ into the quagmire. I wonder what would have happened if Nokia had switched to Android/Linux instead. No doubt they would still have taken a hit because of reduced selling prices but using Android/Linux would have prevented some loss of blood and unit share might have remained, something on which to build.
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Verizon Wireless announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2012 earlier today. The biggest wireless carrier in the US revealed that during the quarter it sold a total of 5.9 million smartphones. Of that number, 2.7 million of them were iPhones from Apple. Verizon also sold 2.9 million Android-based devices, so where is Windows Phoney??
It is widely known that sales reps, will recommend other smart phones over M$ failing products any day.
Walk into your local AT&T, Verizon or Sprint store and ask to look at the latest and greatest smartphone. A store employee will show you the Samsung Galaxy lll and other Android phones from the likes of HTC and Motorola. It is highly unlikely that you will be shown a Windows Phone like the Nokia Lumia 900. At Verizon, you’re definitely going to be shown about the Motorola DROID RAZR 4G.
You have to figure that the only real goal with Elop was to trash Nokia and leaves the bones for Microsoft to scoop up later. Why else would a new CEO come in, totally kamikazi all their existing work and then force an untested new platform on the company as its main product.
Either he is a complete moron or he is as described elsewhere, a plant meant to put Nokia completely out of business so that all of their patents can be acquired by Microsoft or one of its proxies.
Same thing with Novell and VMware, instead of innovation, M$ rather use ‘Entryism’ and lock-up the market.
Microsoft has nothing further to gain by an outright purchase, effectively they already own Nokia but without the financial and regulatory concerns.
Nokia was on the side of Linux until 2011. So Microsoft hijacked it from Linux using moles, then destroyed the company without ever having to even buy it; it then passed Nokia’s patents to enemies of Linux. And some people still treat Microsoft like it’s some kind of benign scapegoat and not a destructive — oftentime criminal — corporation.
Actually, as a plan to trash Nokia, it worked out very well.
Now, Stevie B will buy Nokia with dimes he scrapped under the sofa, and will hunt (and haunt) Free Software projects with patent lawsuits threats.
Agent_Smith there is one big problem with that plan. Motorola.
Google money does not come from Devices or Selling OS’s. So Google has no reason not to go MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction against Apple and Microsoft.
There is no winner in a patent battle only loses right. Google case it wins because it can block Apple and MS from having devices in the market.
How do you block Android. Google never sold it.
@Agent_Smith
“[] Free Software projects with patent lawsuits threats.”
If that was a genuine danger, Nokia would likely be doing it already. They pretty much invented the mobile phone, so it’s reasonable to guess their patent portfolio on them is enormous. There’ll be infringers somewhere, or at the very least, people who’ll settle out of court if the lawyers start on them.
@oiaohm
“How do you block Android. Google never sold it.”
Easy. Sue the OEMs that put it on handsets and tablets.
Hey, Mr. Pogson, I’ve got news for you: another huge hole was punched into Android, as Apple won against Samsung. No, that may not directly affect other Android products, but indirectly it very likely may, as manufacturers will be thinking twice about the increased risk of getting sued due to Android being a kind of black hole, where you can’t see clearly what you have to pay to whom at the end of the day.
Small but soon not so cheap anymore computers.
Right on!
Perhaps Nokia’s move to Windows Phone wasn’t such a bad one as you make it out to be. While Android will keep sinking deeper and deeper into the mud, Windows Phone will be rising from the “ashes”.
Samsung has already demonstrated high interest in Windows 8. And they happen to have a few WP7 phones as well.
Will you have to hate Samsung very soon, Pog?
Chris Weig wrote:
“Small but soon not so cheap anymore computers.”
What an asshole you are Chris. You are happy that we will have to pay more for our hardware? And then more after that? What? You don’t think you’ll have to pay more? Everyone will have to pay more because that’s how it works in patent wars. Everybody pays except the lawyers. They get paid.