Buried deep within Nokia’s press release about its financial results, there’s a line that pretty much signals the end of one of the most popular and successful mobile operating systems in history. With Nokia retiring its use, Symbian is no more.
Symbian wasn’t only incredibly successful, it’s also incredibly old. Many people think Symbian originated at Psion as EPOC, but that’s not entirely true. Technically speaking, Symbian is EPOC32, which is a different operating system than EPOC. EPOC was written in 8086 assembler and C, and powered many of Psion’s PDAs, including the Series 3a pictured below. This thing is a joy to use, actually, even though it’s from 1993 and uses a 8086. The built-in spell checker is pretty amazing, and quite fast.
EPOC32 is EPOC’s (renamed to EPOC16 or SIBO to distinguish it from EPOC32) successor, and was written in C++. It was a completely new operating system, and introduced features to Psion’s PDAs such as pre-emptive multitasking and memory protection, and left the 8086 behind in favour of ARM processors. It was first released in 1997.
Psion would later spin off its software development team as Psion Software, which renamed the operating system to Symbian in 1998. Several manufacturers went on to license and use Symbian, the most prominent of which were probably Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia. Symbian continued in several forms with different user interfaces (EPOC32 was designed specifically to allow for this), and the last released version is Symbian 3 – which was updated a few times with feature packs by Nokia, the latest of which is Nokia Belle feature pack 2.
And now, Nokia has confirmed the end of Symbian for the company, effectively signalling the end of Symbian as a smartphone operating system. “During our transition to Windows Phone through 2012, we continued to ship devices based on Symbian,” Nokia states, “The Nokia 808 PureView, a device which showcases our imaging capabilities and which came to market in mid-2012, was the last Symbian device from Nokia.”
And that’s that. Nokia closed the source code for Symbian recently, but it has been available as open source for a while – the last code dump is still publicly available under the EPL license.
The end of an era. Goodbye Symbian. I will never forget my Nokia E71 – terrible software hidden by ridiculously classy and solid hardware.
Actually the last UI version was quite pleasant to use.
Although Symbian C++ was a braindead dialect of C++, coupled with a Frankenstein toolchain, Nokia was getting its act together with PIPS and Qt.
But it was too late to attract developers and the burning platform memo was the death sentence.
Perhaps Thom could grab some inexpensive recent handset running the last version, Nokia Belle feature pack 2, and do a goodbye review?
(right after that long overdue RISC OS review? ;p )
Edited 2013-01-25 14:44 UTC
Just checked the N8, and it’s still €100 used. That’s a little too much for me.
Also, working on a Palm Pre 2/webOS review at the moment
.
Edited 2013-01-25 14:56 UTC
There are other models which were updated to Symbian Belle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Symbian_platform how much is Nokia 500? And/or you can always resell it)
PS. And, really, what about that RISC OS review?
Edited 2013-01-25 14:57 UTC
I suspect RISCOS is a bit of an exercise in finding out that some promises made by old OS really are too good to be true and that regardless of heritage, protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking really are prerequisites for a useful desktop operating system.
I could do you a RISCOS review. I’ve owned more than one RISCOS machine and used them extensively in the 90’s. I’d seriously take an Amiga over an Arc any day of the week, and that’s even breaking one of the above rules (no memory protection.) Heck, I’m British, I should be proud of our home grown computers, but the Arc and RISCOS were always a bit of a joke, more so after the PC started becoming ubiquitous and the RISCPC looked like a complete fail.
Still using my trusty E6 as my primary phone. That has Belle on it. It’s really what the E71 should have been. Only the browser lets it down in my opinion. The Lumia 800 I also use just doesn’t allow you to whack an email out as quickly or accurately as a physical keyboard. A Blackberry X10 is next on the list to try. I use few apps which is probably just as well based on these app stores!
Agreed with the other dudes. Belle is really good. Look & feel improved significant. I have no doubts that devices like the PureView 808 running Belle would sell well when not killed 2 years ago. Todays news of Symbian’s discontinuation is really not news. We all knew it ever since Elop’s burning Nokia memo.
Edited 2013-01-25 20:04 UTC
I’ve been using webOS since a little more than a year and I’m pretty satisfied (it’s the only mobile OS in which I feel my phone is *also* a computer), except for some annoying bugs that will never be fixed and especially the subpar browser.
But thinking about that review or just for some experimentation, I would strongly recommend installing Preware on your Pre 2 and experimenting with the patches. I have my personal collection of patches (approx. 30 patches, I can post the list if there’s interest) that I feel mandatory to make the use of webOS significantly more satisfying.
I know it’s like cheating a bit because it’s no longer stock webOS, but at the same time Palm designed it to be so open that modifying the behavior of the UI is really easy and does not involve any ‘dangerous’ steps. It’s far easier than rooting an Android phone, and that’s easy already.
Edited 2013-01-26 00:35 UTC
I’d love to know what your top 30 preware patches are. I’m still using my old Pre2 for the great Mapping Tool app which I use on my hiking trips. Had to reinstall WebOS some weeks ago as the device was getting too wonkey so I’d be greatly interested on any tips on gaining greater stability for the Pre.
Latest incarnations of Symbian are really nice to use indeed, well-designed Qt apps are a pleasure to use and the UI is quite consistent if you exclude some third-party oddballs. I use an 808 as my primary phone and I’m enjoying it very much, its camera being a notable plus.
So BB10 remains the only non-discontinued mobile OS to offer true multitasking accessible through a non-broken UI.
I still hope someone can make something out of the available source code – so that we may see a new effort rise from the ashes of Nokia’s past. Seeing a realtime microkernel based OS disappearing like this is too sad.
Before “Burning Memo”
Nakia had BIGGEST APP STORE. Even Apple app store was smaller.
First CHECK data, than make opinions.
In quantity and quality. The many years Symbian was de facto THE mobile OS made it so. Why Nokia just throw all that away without any migration-path is beyond illogical. Check bill, Nokia. 3% market share 2 years later. Ups?
Edited 2013-01-25 20:11 UTC
The “burning platform memo” was NOT what killed Symbian mismanagement at Nokia for too many years is what killed Symbian.
Everybody likes to blame Elop for Nokia when if you look at where the company was when he was brought on board it was a mess, just a giant mangled mess. They had not one, not two, but THREE different OSes NONE of which was in ANY shape to compete with iOS and Android, you had Symbian, you had the MeeGo which had serious memory leaks and networking issues, and then you had the Java based thing.
So if you want to know why Symbian never really kept up just look at the board of Nokia, they let everything go off the rails and by the time they got off their behind and made a call the boat was already sinking. All Elop could do is throw a Hail Mary pass and hope it would be a hit because there wasn’t a plan B, Neither Symbian or MeeGo had a prayer against iOS.
Man…who would have thought when Jobs came back in 97 and had to make a deal with Gates just to keep the developers from bailing that he would end up making Apple the 800 pound gorilla that even MSFT fears and which can knock out old guard like Nokia without even breaking a sweat.
You mean like Samsung has Android, Bada and Tizen?
It can’t become more bullshit then that. Come on. Many N9 owners will call you a troll on that. Be at least so kind to give a source. You can not? Aha.
Here you go, took a whole 8 seconds with Google. There are 39K other pages talking similar problems but I’m sure you can Google.
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=81359
I have not counted the number of applications for Windows Phone, nor do I intend to but I really did not hear about an “omg, you must have this program on your phone dude!” kind of application for it. Is there one?
The whole point of having Metro shoved into our desktops was for developers to make stuff that would almost “automagically” work on the Windows Phone devices. So far, nothing notable happened.
What was the net benefit to Nokia for killing Symbian, selling Qt? Some quick money for the latter and constant cash from MS for sticking to WP. What will they do when that stops? Short of a miracle, Windows Phone will go the way of the Zune.
That’d ultimately be up to you if you find value in the Windows Phone Store. There are some gems in there by some very bright developers.
Rowi is pretty much my favorite Twitter client across every platform.
There’s Fhotoroom which is a nice social network for uploading images, and since WP8 its gained an impressive amount of users.
There’s a wealth of lockscreen apps to put stuff you care about on your lockscreen. So a Weather app for example could take up the entire lock screen displaying a high resolution image. Another example being cycling my Facebook Friends on my Lock screen. Its a nifty feature.
Metro Tube is excellent too, again, likely my favorite YouTube experience across any platform.
These are a few of my favorites, but its largely up to you what you find relevant.
Well, aside from Microsoft’s built-in apps which work seamlessly across WP8 and W8, Rowi has WP8/W8 versions. So does Fhotoroom. USA Today carried their visual identity over, and the new Windows 8 CNN app is made by the same company that was contracted for the CNN Windows Phone app.
A lot of the Xbox Live games are also similar across both platforms. Some are coming soon to WP8, some coming soon to W8.
I also have my own apps running on both platforms with minimal changes.
So, look. Windows 8 has been out for 91 days. The platform is extremely young. As a developer, I can tell you that it isn’t difficult at all to maintain a unified code base for both platforms.
I don’t think you recognize exactly what is happening. People have been saying that Nokia and/or Windows Phone are dying for a year now.
Anyone who has dared dispute that ludicrous claim was voted down into oblivion. I was voted down when I said that Nokia’s last quarter (where they reached non-IFRS profitability) was more than an anomaly, and that Nokia was in fact NOT dead in the water.
I think people need to come to grips with the fact that Windows Phone is growing, and will is in fact the third ecosystem. It is well on its way to 200,000 apps, has quadrupled sales Year over Year, and for the first time in a while, Nokia did not have such devastating financials.
Nokia’s ASP on their smart devices grew on the strength of the Lumia 920, which highlights a benefit of switching from Symbian. Nokia makes more money per handset off of Windows Phone. They get marketing support for Windows Phone, and carriers are more inclined to support a modern OS platform and throw their weight behind it (Verizon planning to make a 920 variant a Flagship device, 920 already being flagship on ATT)
Nokia has made a 180 in their financials from a year ago. The free fall now has a bottom. Now that Stephen Elop has effectively downsized the company to be nimble enough to keep up with the pace of innovation, it is very hard to imagine a world where Nokia suddenly goes under, or Windows Phone is suddenly doomed.
I don’t know what kind of growth people expect from Windows Phone. Is triple digit growth YoY not enough? Does it have to become Android over night? I’m really interested in knowing what it is exactly that people expect, because I’m unsure they have expectations grounded in reality.
I’m confident that Stephen Elop will be fully vindicated when the smoke clears. It is not easy to steer a ship of that size in the right direction, but he’s gotten them out of the way of most icebergs so far.
I don’t get the wishful thinking that Nokia would just die. I wish some commenters would experience getting laid off before they started wishing for the death of another company because they personally dislike a product.
Go check data first.
Nokia grew (in smartphones) 10% in the last 6 months.
(Smartphone) Industry in same 6 months? 57%.
2y ago Nokia had 29% of SMARTPHONE market.
Now ? 3%
Its fastest demise for any company from Top500 list.
And before you are happy with “profitability”
Avrg. loss made per (Smartphone) handset is around 22%…
Nokia LOSE 1/5 of the price of each Smartphone it sell.
And they do not have stockpile of HQ’s for sale.
I’m unsure what you’re trying to say by this? That Nokia isn’t growing as fast as it should? I don’t dispute this.
It certainly does not mean they are dying, again, as evidenced by their SECOND quarter of profitability on a non-IFRS basis.
And? This was happening, at a dramatic rate, already, prior to the Microsoft deal. Nokia was in free fall. Like I said, Mr. Elop put a ground under Nokia.
Its not hard to see why. Symbian sales are collapsing. It is not that Lumia sales are tanking. They’re showing strong QoQ and YoY growth.
Nokia’s ASP rose 22% QoQ and 30% YoY. Again, showing that Windows Phone sales are replacing that of Symbian.
So they lost 66% of their volume Year over Year while increasing their ASP by 30% YoY. Without Windows Phone, this would’ve been a dramatically worse situation.
Nokia has respectable Gross Margins on their Smart Devices, which tell me that a lot of associated costs are with marketing ramp ups, which isn’t a fixed cost over the year.
I’m having serious trouble finding anything to back that up inside of Nokia’s financials. Have you done the research yourself to confirm this is true?
Thom, you REALLY have to test a 808.
As a ex symbian haters,after watching à lot of review, i must say that on belle fp, the ugliness and the unusefullness of the ui had totally gone.
Only the multicolore and high resolution support is missing, wich Will be avalaible with symbian “carla”, The next symbian that is obviously canceled….
Cool there goes another chunk of nokia’s marketshare!
No problem (not). There is plenty left (not) and when the new WP9 Lumia comes next year (not) it all will change (not)!
Edited 2013-01-25 20:15 UTC
You would be correct were you not being sarcastic. There is plenty of marketshare to go along because the market is growing at an astonishing rate.
While Nokia loss dramatic marketshare, others, like Apple, gained dramatic marketshare.
I think its unwise to assume that Nokia will never return to a meaningful position (say 20%) because as the market has shown, ANYTHING can happen.
And it did happen…
and 2 years and 2 failed Windows Phone tries later…
Near all of the market share to be exact. What means the Lumia strategy did not worked out, failed miserable 2 times and within that 2 years market share fall down to a rounding error. Consequence will be that strategy is changed and then indeed…
They can return to say 20% OR MORE like they had before that strategy for decades depending on how the new strategy works out.
Edited 2013-01-26 10:16 UTC
I’m sorry, but your comment just isn’t coherent. Nokia has actually shown modest growth in their Lumia lineup both YoY and QoQ. I’m unsure what you mean that they’ve failed.
Failed to capture a majority marketshare? I could’ve told you that in 2011. Mobile growth like this doesn’t happen overnight when you need to bootstrap a brand and an ecosystem.
What Nokia has needed since day 1 has been to be in a better financial situation (They are in one now) so that they can iterate on Lumia and establish mindshare.
Window Phone marketshare in Europe is surging, varying from 6-12% depending on the region. The two biggest difficulties are the US Market and China.
US I think they’ll see decent sequential increases if the rumors are true and they launch a flagship on Verizon.
China it depends on how they execute, but I’m optimistic.
First its 2 years.
Second 2 years are a full turnaround circle in mobile where contracts run in maximum 2 years.
Theird in that 2 years Nokia went down from having twice the sells of its nearest rival to having 1/10 of it. From number #1 to not being in the top #10 any longer.
Forth that 2 years where more then enough for Samsung to turn from a second hand manufactor to number 1. And enough for Nokia to be done,
Fifth in that two long years Nokia not failed once but twice! First with WP7 Lumia and now with WP8 Lumia again.
To continue burning a billion dollar each quarter* till it works out eventually with WP42 Lumia (or not)?
* and sell crown-jewels like your headquarter, patents and firing half your employees.
How much years, billions of dollars and iterations you need while staying somewhere between 1% and 2% market share (1% Symbian removed) to realize: its not working out! ?
As if HTC’s downfall when they switched to WP wasn’t warning enough. Sanyo anyone?
Change strategy else all money in this world will not be enough.
Yeah, same BS you tell since years. Its declining in all huge markets. China? 100.000 sold units. US? 700.000 sold units. Germany? Half of Q3. Russia? Lost.
That Nokia dumped all there WP7 Lumia inventory for free to italy and brazil to spin the % market share number is typical. Lose million of $ to look good for some minutes and impress simple minds and hope nobody notices when a quarter later its down again.
You not remember that just some months ago you repated here the story that Lumia is a hit in US as shown by the Amazon charts? You not remember your stand its a hit in China and outsells everything else cause Nokia-representatives say so? Come on, don’t fall for such cheap PR-tricks again and again, Nelson. Look at the key-markets, the global market share. Be a bit more clever then that, okay?
Edited 2013-01-26 14:19 UTC
Nokia has only been selling Windows Phone for a year. In that year, its more than quadrupled the Windows Phone installed base.
I think Windows Phone 8 was their pivotal release. You see OEMs gaining confidence (HTC coming on board, Samsung forming a product line around ATIV, PC OEMs showing more interest) and carriers throwing more weight behind the value proposition that Nokia can make.
What does this have to do with their one year of selling Windows Phone? You’re a confused individual.
Which is exactly my point, marketshare is a volatile thing. Microsoft has been on top, Palm has been on top, Nokia has been on top, HTC has been on top, etc.
Things change very, very rapidly, as you concede.
I’m honestly wondering what you consider a success. I consider the 920 to be a successful launch. Do you want them to go from 3% to 20% in a single launch, because I’ll tell you right now, that’s not going to happen. Even OEMs that experience explosive growth don’t grow that fast.
Also WP7 Lumias increased sequentially for three quarters. To the extent that they were limited to WP7, it was a very good run. It established some mindshare and helped them straighten out their financials.
They increased their cash holdings this quarter. Lumia sales are up. Obviously the investment is paying off. Microsoft spent billions and billion on Xbox until it turned it into a marketleader. I’m convinced Windows Phone has consolidated its staying power at Microsoft and we’ll see that continued investment.
If Nokia and their management makes a determination to spend a billion dollars resource wise, then that’s on them, but so far, I don’t think its leading them off a cliff into oblivion. So as much as you like to keep saying it, Nokia is not dying. In fact they’re much farther from death than even a quarter ago.
And they divested Virtu, shifted a bunch of manufacturing, flatted out a lot of middle management, etc.
I think in the business world its called a Restructuring. And guess what? They increased their cash position, stabilized their burn rate, and faced an appreciation on their stock as a result. That is textbook good management.
I think the premise of your question is faulty. It is working out. Whereas you said they’d be dead or dying, they are in a stronger financial position.
They can now afford more investment and iteration, until they claw their marketshare back. As much as you refuse to see it, it is happening.
HTC is an interesting OEM, they are a reflection of where Nokia would be (except about ten times worse) had they gone with Android.
Samsung is the only one making real money on Android.
I feel bad for HTC. On Android they get shut out by Samsung and on Windows Phone Nokia controls 87% of that market.
The figure is 100,000 Lumia 920s alone. 500,000 total devices in China. So Lumia sales there are okay, not phenomenal.
I’m interested in where you derive your Germany and Russia numbers from. I wasn’t aware Nokia broke down Lumia sales specifically (Only D&S and SD from their financial reports)
I think you’re running out of reasons to pretend that Windows Phone isn’t catching on.
Consider: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/379486/windows-phone-triples-share-of-u…
Statistics from analyst firm Kantar Worldpanel showed Windows Phone has had the most success in Europe, with a 5.4% market share across five countries
…
The European success is led by a 13.9% market share in Italy, up from 2.8% a year ago.
…
Windows Phone gained 3.7 percentage points year on year, while RIM fell by 9.6 points to 6.4%, Kantar said. Android extended its lead with a 10.5-point gain to 54.4%.
Actually, I correctly used Amazon Charts to argue that Nokia had sold more than 300,000 in Q2 2012. This was because of an article run here that took Nielsen number and multiplied them by ComScore numbers in a weird twisting of statistics.
It turns out I was right, Nokia sold double that in North America at 600,000. Followed by a 300,000 Q3 and a 700,000 Q4.
No, I don’t remember saying that at all. If you can find it I’d appreciate it. Nokia is having modest success in China, but not nearly enough.
Only 920 got sold. Other numbers are from Symbian/etc. All your other comments are on an equal “quality” level. Over and out,
Regarding “theird” and “forth” point (seriously, learn EN …or stop posting when drunk) – and you don’t see how that is an effect of earlier poor state of affairs in Nokia, long before Elop?
Now that Nokia add 16mln SYMBIAN devices (Asha) to its “Smartphone” sales they go and kill Symbian.
Lots of logic.
Anyway, they kill Symbian on “Smartphones” but on feature phones its still The King for Nokia.
Unless Nokia CEO want to back off from that profitable segment too… (And stay with 22% loss making WinP …)
You don’t seem to know much about Nokia and their offerings. Asha handsets (and Nokia “feature phones” in general) are Series 40, which is NOT Symbian.
S30, S40, S60, S80. However. Symbian isn’t Symbian any longer either. Its name Nokia BelleOS now. Its also not S40 (according to marketing) but Nokia Asha and some of the Asha’s are even labeled Smartphones now. Wait till Nokia is renamed to NOK after selling off the IA for cash!
Edited 2013-01-25 20:26 UTC
They’re labeled Smart Phones but counted as Mobile Devices. Else, they would’ve shown the 9.3 million Asha Touch phones as part of the 6.6 million (4.4 Lumia, 2.2 Symbian)
A combination of Series 40 and Lumia devices will save Nokia.
Lumia is still jst a moneyhole for nokia, but i hope you are right.
If that company came down and microsoft got to buy the patents, it would ruin the free market and competition would fizzle out once more, just like it did on the PC.
Would make more sense from a business perspectiver to give up on Lumia and shift resources to Asha to stay competative in the low-price segment that brings in the needed money else they lose that too and what stays is the moneyhole only.
Edited 2013-01-26 10:24 UTC
Nokia can walk and chew gum at the same time. Asha is showing impressive growth (Thanks Mr. Elop) and if they can keep up the pace, it will become a larger and larger part of Nokia’ overall Mobile Unit volume.
Nokia has actually added capital to their coffers, they don’t really have a resource problem at this point in time. A lot of these expenses are one time charges, pensions, restructuring costs, inventory allowances, etc.
Nokia is actually in a very good financial position now, their cash conservation is good.
What I find funny is how wrong the naysayers have been about Nokia. I’m sure it’ll be dead any day now /s
Not quite. Nokia’s debt rating has been at junk status for at least the past 2 quarters, and most analysts have the stock as either underperforming or a hold. So they’re having a hard time raising capital. Which is not good news given how much cash Nokia has been burning through the past few years (although they seem to have slowed down the hemorrhaging a bit lately).
Furthermore, Nokia just had their earnings call this week, and the missed their revenue window by 2.50 BILLION $$$ ($10.50 billion expected vs. $8.00 billion realized). Their year to year revenue took a 20% nose dive, and they are expected to have a negative earnings per share again.
I don’t really trust rating agencies after the financial crisis. After all they rated subprime mortgage backed securities as AAA. Rating agencies are a sham. You do however raise a good point about the difficulty in raising capital.
Yes, I’m looking at this in the context of the last few quarters. Their cash conservation is markedly improved. The YoY results are skewed because 2012 was mixed for Nokia.
What Q3 and Q4 show me though is that there is the beginnings of a recovery for Nokia, and there is a way out of the predicament. Its frail and anything can still happen, but I’m confident in that they are not in the precarious situation they were in even a few quarters ago where I was not sure if they’d survive the year.
Uh, Nokia didn’t miss. They exceeded. Their EPS was $0.08 also beating expectation.
I just ran your numbers and you made the mistake of not converting Euro to USD before comparing it to Wall St. estimates.
Edited 2013-01-26 22:11 UTC
Your personal opinion on the rating agencies is irrelevant. Those are the ratings Nokia has to operate when issuing corporate debt.
The 8 cent per share was expected by analysts. The revenue window is what Nokia missed big time, which is what I was referring to. Furthermore, in order to achieve any earnings per share Nokia had to nix their dividends (which I think were about 50 cents per share on their last issue).
The estimate percentages still work whether they are in Euros or Dollars. Here is the report straight from Nokia:
http://www.results.nokia.com/results/Nokia_results2012Q4e.pdf
Analysts were expecting Nokia to have a slight revenue bump over the previous year’s Q4 (8.5 billion for Q4/2012 vs 10 billion for Q4/2011).
The principal problem for Nokia is that although they may be “stable” right now, they have to compete in market places that require lots of cash for product development. And nokia, right now, is rather strapped for capital and has to go head to head with players flushed with cash (e.g. Samsung and Apple). I hope they can make it, as I have some colleagues still working there… but they are not out the woods by any stretch of the imagination.
Edited 2013-01-26 23:36 UTC
You don’t even have to look at any of the fancier numbers to see that Nokia isn’t doing well, despite Nelson’s attempts at making it seem so. You only have to look at three numbers.
Nokia sold 4.9 million Lumias in Q4 2012, which is way up from the 2.9 million in Q3 2012. Sounds good right? Well, unless you look at Q2 2012, in which they sold 4.2 million Lumias.
So, despite the release of a brand new flagship device, AND several cheaper devices, AND a brand new operating system release backed by a huge marketing push from both Nokia and Microsoft, AND it being the holiday quarter, they only managed to do slightly better than a random Q2.
And this is what Nelson calls a turning point?
I’m sorry, but that’s just batshit insane.
Companies can do more than one thing at a time, you know…
What are you even trying to say here, what is your point with that post? It’s nonsensical to group them like that – 30, 40 are different than 60, 80 (the two which are based on Symbian).
And whatever Nokia wants to call Belle, technically it’s still very much Symbian.
Wouldn’t Windows Phone eventually face the same problem as Android, where Apple perceives it as a threat and attacks it with patents and tries to enforce sales bans?
No. Microsoft protects its OEMs. A fight with one OEM is a fight with Microsoft at large because it will be Microsoft bearing the legal costs associated.
Besides, Microsoft has a broad cross licensing agreement with Apple, so there is a mutually assured destruction thing going on.
Microsoft has actual, deep level, difficult to work around patents that stem from their years of R&D in Operating Systems. I’m not convinced Apple wants to go there.
Like they protected all those OEMs making PlaysForSure devices, right up until they torpedoed them with Zune? O.K.
I dont know if you have a stupid comment quota to meet or what. You’d almost be right if we were talking about Zune and Plays For Sure. Almost.
Oh I get your overflow, did you not get the memo?
That joke is the smartest thing you’ve said in this entire thread.
Yeah, I’d try harder, but it’s you. I can watch BASEketball instead. It’s more of an intellectual stretch.
He is close with that comparision since Microsoft Surface Phone comes. How to compete against Microsoft with Microsoft’s software?
I doubt Microsoft shields there partners. Specially not if they are of very less value for them any longer. The Apple vs Samsung case was about rounded corners, hardware. Unrelated to Microsoft’s software on say Lumia.
Edited 2013-01-26 10:35 UTC
Again, if I were talking about it from that point of view he might have a valid comparison (Even then he wouldn’t, because P4S was a dead proposition by the time Zune came out. No one was taking it seriously).
The Surface Phone is at this point an unconfirmed rumor. It remain to be seen what Microsoft will do there, but I have reservations. I don’t think Windows Phone has a hardware issue. OEMs produce for the most part superb phones.
Very different from say, the PC OEM market.
You shouldn’t doubt. Microsoft has been extensively indemnifying OEMs for a very, very long time.
Microsoft and Apple have agreements in place already. Apple wont sue Microsoft just like they wont sue Nokia. They’d get beat back into oblivion with a pretty powerful bunch of patent (both software and hardware in Nokia’s case.)
And how is that now different from there newest rounding error market share? It isn’t and you just confirmed that the software is the problem, not the hardware. So do european carriers who where very verbose in suggesting Nokia to make a Lumia running Android.
Finally we agree on something. I too think its the software and not the hardware that is the problem.
Edited 2013-01-26 14:37 UTC
I don’t think the software is the issue either. Windows Phone has one of the highest satisfaction ratings across any ecosystem. There simply is an awareness problem and retail channel issue, which is slowly being solved as carriers grow more faith in Nokia.
A year ago VZW turned Nokia down for a flagship, this year, VZW will carry a Lumia flagship. The brand is beginning to solidify.
If you cant see the bigger picture, that’s on you, but also according to you Nokia is supposedly dying after having two solid financial quarters.
And yet noibdy buys it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/changewave-on-android-and-windows-ph…
iPhone: 71%
Android: 49%
WP: 53%
Yean, half of those 500k Lumia user in northern US where changewave is active like there WP. A turning point that changes everything (not)!
After this MASSIVE marketing splash? In Microsoft’s home region? With the by far biggest marketing budget ever spend on a phone launch?
Yeah, that must be the reason *roll eye*
Like customers not buying cause they like iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Bada more. At least finally WP wins against the discountinued Symbian. Success! Turn around point!
Munch’s The Scream? We see it. Loud and visible.
I’m just wondering which OS Nokia will be putting on their low-end phones? Hard to believe that they would choose Windows for that. Nokia still has a large market share for bottom-end phones (mostly in Asia) – if they are retiring Symbian for Windows, they are going to blow away that market. I’m talking phones that retail for around US$75, usually don’t have a camera or 3G capability, but “just work” for talking and text messaging plus simple apps (like calculator, alarm clock, calendar, etc). These phones usually have a built-in flashlight, an endearing feature that I’ve found to be extremely useful.
If Nokia wants to hand that market to Samsung, so be it. Yet another nail in their coffin.
A combination of Asha (which is scaling up with Asha Touch) and Windows Phone (which is scaling down with the Lumia 620 and Lumia 505).
Its S40. That wasn’t canceled yet but there is also not much investment happening. The problem is that Android goes more and more low-end. Its becoming a competition there. Still may give Nokia some more quarters but for the future its not looking good. If they lose that too its game over.
Edited 2013-01-26 10:45 UTC
(and another one…) Nokia will be putting on their low-end phones the same thing they are putting now: Series 30 and Series 40 – which aren’t Symbian!
“around US$75” is rather a lot BTW, particularly S30 handsets sell for significantly less.
Look on the bright side, this is the end of the line for Nokia…
Yeah, it’s not the greatest thing to happen, but Elop’s busy ringing the company’s death knell. At this point, who still even gives a damn about the company? It’s been destroyed. Sooner or later, Nokia is going down… and since Elop is Microsoft’s biggest (only?) fan in the cell phone industry, Windows Phone will probably go down with it. Maybe that will leave Elop without a company to steer right into a cliff, and the idiot will fade into history as one of the world’s most incompetent company leaders, unable to receive such a high position again.
This is exactly why some foreign business owners refuse to give top management positions of their company to anyone unrelated to them, or especially to people of other nationalities. People like Elop. And it’s a damn good reason. Too bad the people at Nokia didn’t know any better.
Microsoft better hurry up and get their own hardware business in gear and up to full speed, because it looks like they’re running out of other people who make phones that are willing to put their OS on. I can’t imagine Nokia being strong enough to hold them off the ground.
Only in the OSNews bizarro land, where up is down and down is up, does a profit of half a billion dollars mean the company is DOA.
Its 1/4 billion and includes
* cheap dumps of WP7 Lumia written off in Q3 already.
* one-time incomes like RIM’s patent-payments, sold headquarter and other assets like patents.
* WP8 and Asha channel stuffing, xmas sells, etc
* First time since 150 years no dividend was payed saving 700 million.
Also this was the last quarter Nokia got money from Microsoft. From now on Nokia has to pay the regular WP license fees.
I expect Q1 will be lose again. Call me wrong when we have the numbers.
Edited 2013-01-26 10:56 UTC
I don’t think they’ll post a loss in Q1 and I’ll be glad to take you up on that.
Here’s why:
– Nokia was already profitable in Q3 before their HQ sale.
– Nokia is supply constrained, which should be resolved by the end of Q1
– Nokia has launched Nokia Maps for all WP8 phones as of a few days ago, and should be receiving royalties from that
– Nokia will be spending less marketing dollars now that the ramp up is done
– Less restructuring costs and one time charges
– Strong Nokia Siemens growth
– Strong Asha growth
– Bigger pushes into China and more low end Lumia roll outs
I think their profit will be lower than Q4 2012 because of seasonality but I think they’ll stay in the red.
Again, I think my track record on this is better than yours given that when Q3 numbers came out you were saying Nokia was dead while I was pointing out that they achieved non-IFRS profitability.
You said during Q3 that Nokia would be dead in four quarters. There are three quarters left and Nokia went from $78 million in profit to $585 million in profit.
So much for dead.
Edited 2013-01-26 11:09 UTC
Who would’ve guessed… you shut down your production and research sites in various countries, get rid of your employees, even sell your main headquarters, and you make a little bit of profit! After you’ve cut thousands of jobs around the world and shut down or sold your properties, suddenly your loss of profit becomes lower: there is no one left to pay and you’re left with fewer taxes and property expenses to have to pay.
Once all of their property and talent is sold, at best, Nokia will only be a shadow of their former self. They might as well just end themselves now, just have Kamikaze Elop hurry up and finish what he started. End the company’s pain and suffering. They won’t really matter in the end at this rate.
Yes basically, Elop has restructured Nokia and made it leaner and more efficient than before. I honestly can’t believe you’re arguing against cost saving measures.
Elop has positioned his company to be more financially secure and as a result has ensured the continued execution of the transition.
What was your excuse last quarter? What will be your excuse next quarter?
The one true cost-saving measure would be just getting it over with and dissolving. And after pawning off all their talent and research/production facilities, pretty much everything they had, they’d probably be better off just doing that.
Face it. You and the naysayers were wrong. Anyone who can read a financial result would’ve known you were wrong.
As much as you’d like Nokia to die, it just isn’t going to happen.
Maybe it’s says something about how the company was managed up until recently…
Up until recently or to be more exact till the quarter Elop issued his burning Nokia memo, destroying there cash-cow a year before they had the new product in markets, Nokia was number 1 for many many years, making huge profits, increasing them quarter by quarter.
Take the real asset Nokia has left as example. There patent portfolio. 50 billion dollar! This was and is the fruit of all the decades of heavy R&D investment done before, of factories producing world-record phones, of talented emplyees, clever management and high-quality producs loved by customers. The patents portfolio, there biggest current asset left, and the years of profits, of cash reserve, market lead and grow. All gone with the burning Nokia memo except the patents. Parts of the patents turned into cash already (eg RIM’s recent payments saving Nokia’s Q4 numbers, Apple’s payments the quarter before, the sell off of a few of that patents to patent-trolls, etc pp).
Today’s Nokia ia still living and surviving from all the succesful years before that ARE result of that invesments. Sure, somebody like Elop could have joined Nokia 15 years ago already and save lots of cash by decreasing all investment already back then. Streamline like Nelson named it. Then today there would be no Nokia. That’s the facts.
And now after all this “streamlining” we have to ask a question impossible to even think about just some years ago: Will there be a Nokia in 5 years?
Edited 2013-01-27 08:39 UTC
That is revisionist history, Nokia was in deep trouble for some time already when Elop took over.
And Symbian wasn’t a cash cow – S40 is what kept (and keeps) Nokia afloat. What Symbian did have: immense R&D costs (more than the entire R&D of Apple!) for not much return.
I’ve honestly never even laid hands on a Symbian-powered device (not that common here in the Great White North, or at least my end of it)… but it does still seem like a loss to see Symbian fall by the wayside. If only just from the geek/technology-enthusiast perspective.
I can understand the demise of PalmOS, despite using a Treo until about a year and a half ago – it barely counted as an OS, and capability-wise it was about on par with “classic” Mac OS. Same with Windows Mobile; it might not have been as crusty under hood, but it’s interface was barely-adequate for use with a stylus (too many desktop UI conventions where they weren’t appropriate)… and fixing that the shortcomings of that UI probably would have required more work than just building a new one.
But Symbian? From the looks of it, Nokia sunk quite a bit of effort into modernizing the UI and that was finally paying off (at least, judging from video reviews I’ve watched)… only to unceremoniously rush it into the grave.
And I guess that as a BeOS/Haiku fan, I can’t help but feel sympathy for a small, efficient, purpose-built OS… that gets shit on by both Windows AND Linux advocates, primarily for the crime of not being either of those OSes.
Elop has not destroyed Nokia. They actually made a $585 million profit last quarter.
BTW Nokia’s core business is networks not phones.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/breaking-news/nokia-posts-…
Its $250 million profit
Starting now Nokia doesn’t get cash each quarter from Mirosoft any longer and Nokia needs to pay Microsoft in minimum $250 million each quarter for WP licenses. See Q4 report.
Also Nokia sold its headquarter for $200m. They cannot repeat that.
Nokia got $65 millions from RIM. A one-time happening too.
There goes the profit and comes the lose again in Q1.
Edited 2013-01-28 12:35 UTC
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-28/nokia-bond-risks-endure-af…
“Excluding NSN, Nokia continued to burn cash in the fourth quarter, at a rate which is likely to increase in Q1â€
“Cutting the dividend helps Nokia’s liquidity and they should have done it a year ago,†said Ping Zhao, an analyst at CreditSights Inc. in New York. “They need to cut costs further. Even though they made progress, the smartphone is nowhere near turnaround. It’s going to be a long and hard slog for them to get back.â€
I never used Symbian proper, but I feel a little sad to see it die. It was the child of Epoc 5, the very first mobile OS I ever used (Psion Series 5).
I remember back in the ’90s reading about the Psion 3 in a magazine and I became obsessed by it. I was a poor teenager so no mean to purchase one. I remember standing in a store staring at the box, and the only time in my life I juggled with the idea of shoplifting. I can’t believe it crossed my mind, and I’m glad the little angel on my shoulder out weighted the little demon on my other shoulder.
A few years later I graduated as a programmer, got a job, and my first treat was the just released Psion Series 5.
Man did I love it. I remember spending my lunch breaks programming in OPL on it, preparing my D&D games, etc. I was amazed how a weak but full featured computer could fit in my pocket. And I was making fun of my Palm friends. Good times.
Since then I fell into the dark side. Apple.
There will always be a place in my heart for Symbian. It was one of the reasons why I bought the Nokia 808. Partly to add it to my collection and the other is I really wanted to own the last Symbian phone. I’ve owned every Communicator after 2000. While everyone was buying Windows phones I used a 9500 and then a year later I moved to the 9300. I was part of the Pilot program for the E90, receiving it a whole 6 months before it’s release in 2007, it was plauged by software problems however. A few months later I would be swept off of my feet by a new breed of phone though, T-Mobile G1. I always kept a Symbian phone in my bag of tricks though. I had a N97, E7 and now the 808. I’ve always liked Nokia phones, it’s one of those companys who isn’t afraid of radical thinking. My favorite phone of all time the Nokia N9 came from such ideas. I look on Ebay everyday to hope to find the developers edition of the N9, the N950. I already found the very rare White N9 with 64GB of ram and I even heard there were are a few 1.5 GHZ models floating around. My ultimate phone would be the Nokia E7 or N950’s body with the internals and OS of the Nexus 4.
Nokia E7
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/09/10x0914nojar3…
Nokia N950
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/06/Nokia_N950.jpg/…
Edited 2013-01-26 08:34 UTC
You are not alone with monitoring places to catch a N950. The last I saw on ebay change owner for over $2000 (!!). Freaking awesome and way to much for my pocket. I never will understand why it wasn’t regulary sold. The demand for a qwerty-N9 was and still is very high.
Edited 2013-01-27 08:54 UTC
Now aws the Symbian (and all derivatives) are killed and wiped off the board, there will be two remaining platforms that Nokia will put all their attention to:
– Windows Phone 8 for the developed countries
– Series40 for the rest of the world.
So the picture is extremely simple for developers too: You write .NET and whatever MS technology for the Windows Phone and then you write Java 2 Micro Edition MIDlets for the Series 40. BTW ALL non-Lumia devices are and will be Series 40 devices (even those small type-only $15 phones) so there is a HUGE market for J2ME app developers. Nokia OVI store runs on majority of the Nokia low-end phones.
I currently do J2ME development for the Asha and it is blazingly fast and total joy to work with. The plus side is that with couple of small modifications (like screensize and non-touch interface) I can make my app run on any S40 phone.
No, there’s also Series30, in the lowest cost handsets.
Of course, current S30 handsets don’t support 3rd party j2me apps, so the picture for the devs is as you described.
Basically, Symbian’s problem was that the biggest customers of Symbian Ltd (Nokia and Sony Ericsson) were also the biggest owners. This resulted in “interesting” situations. Such as that Nokia and SE -abusing their position in the board- prevented Symbian Ltd from ever shipping a UI. Instead, Nokia and SE developed their own UIs. So, Nokia for example owned the UI for keypad phones (Series 60) and licensed it to others. This prevented other manufacturers from making S60 phones profitably. So, Nokia essentially had a monopoly on Symbian keypad phones. SE owned the UIQ UI for symbian touchscreen phones and essentially had a monopoly on that (theregister had a story about this). This allowed each company to get comfortable in the segment they “owned”, and products (and Symbian itself) stagnated. They were just begging for someone to come with a new OS and disrupt them. MS failed with windows mobile, apple succeeded. The unification with Symbian^3 was too late. Now back to the Nokia/Elop/WP whinefest.
I’m posting from my E7, which I use as my main phone. I also have a N900 which rocks but sucks my battery like there is no tomorrow. My E7 is showing its age, the charger connector is failing sometimes. I would put a thousand euros for a new Symbian phone. It’s not as good as Maemo but that one is dead too. So what alternative do we have? We are left with WP, Android and iOS, all of them requiring you to hack your phone to install an app, ‘jailbreak’ they call it and then you can not upgrade anymore. They have crappy c#, java or objective C stacks that is difficult or impossible to work around. Qt implementation is crappy at best. Will I have to develop my applications ‘on the cloud’ in javascript to use my phone? Sad, very sad.
You are still here? Symbian is over. Go home.
That it has in common with Lumia 🙂
compared to today’s platforms it could not compete and was not worth the title of “Smart Phone OS”
How funny. Spare us any lecture about morality. As usual with regard to Nokia, you’re promoting your personal view as the ultimate truth, but in doing so you’re twisting some facts.
Doesn’t it come to your mind, or are you wilfully neglecting, that many of the layoffs occurred just because of the strategy shift, or – being too kind – because of the notoriously incompetent way in which it was managed?
There would have been some anyway, but it is evident that the downsizing would have been far less dramatic.
Moreover, Nokia had at least four in-house developed OS’s when Elop came – asked by the board, never forget that – three were in production, one in development. Three of them – the most advanced – were killed.
How can an OS enthusiast or a Nokia lover forget that? Why can’t you distinguish between supporting/liking a company and agreeing with any decision its management makes?
Some have/had a sweet spot for Nokia and suffered seeing it dismembered, seeing its expensive but so advanced OS developing division vanish and great talents forced to find a new way without the backing of a large company behind their ideas, seeing a European success story turning into a freefall, seeing two promising OS’s plus Symbian making their way into oblivion, research centers closing and Nokia turning into an OEM tied to an American company who never managed to rule the mobile market like Nokia itself was ruling just months before the shift.
If you looked at it this way, you’d be quite concerned about the future of a once-great company betting all their fortunes on another company’s product, thus being forced to follow an externally imposed schedule instead of being able to shape their destiny. You all know Microsoft got so much more than Nokia from the deal.
Nokia had a huge patrimony of ideas and a unique – not perfect, but different from what you find in the US – company culture. All of that is gone, possibly forever. That’s a crime you cannot condone.
[EDIT: fixed a non-complete sentence.]
Edited 2013-01-29 09:23 UTC
Nokia was in freefall for several years before Elop, many people in turn just refuse to see that because of their emotional investment with “old Nokia”
Those expensive OS division pursuits were giving very mediocre results. 2-3 years ago the Symbian R&D alone was eating more money than the entire R&D of Apple.
Moreover, the one OS which remains (and which was funding that lavish R&D all the time), S40, sees nice improvement recently, under Elop.
I had a sweet spot for Nokia too – but I mostly got over it, I suggest you do the same.
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