Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman Thursday, February 10, 2011 Nokia CEO's letter to employees TOI Tech, Feb 9, 2011, 01.05 pm IST Indraprasth aka New Delhi - Finland-based Nokia http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Nokia faces a key test this week when chief executive Stephen Elop http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Stephen Elop finally unveils a plan to reverse a sharp slide in the fortunes of the world's number one mobile phone maker. Nokia holds a strategy and financial briefing in London http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/London on Friday, two weeks after it reported a 21 percent slump in fourth quarter earnings and Elop promised: "The industry's changed and now it's time for Nokia to change faster." Engadget has reprinted a copy of the text from an internal Nokia memo from the CEO Elop to the company's employees. Here's over to the letter which several analysts have termed 'brutually honest'. Hello there, There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters. As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice. He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour. We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour. Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe. I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform. And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us. For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem. In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range. And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under EU100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core. Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets. While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind. The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable. We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market. At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/North-America Additionally, Symbian http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead. At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us. And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis. The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem. This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time. On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness. Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Russia , Germany, Indonesia http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Indonesia , UAE, and on and on and on. How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved? This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally. Nokia, our platform is burning. We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future. The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same. Stephen. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/7459579.cms?prtpage=1 End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi Om Shanti o Not for commercial use. 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<snip> Yep, I read about thar in yesterday's local newspaper. No surprise there. The same happened to Palm and is happening to RIM for the same basic reasons: management stupidity and sheer laziness. Nokia is likely to be gone in a few years unles they manage to pull off a minor miracle. According to some rumours they are looking at teaming up with someone else, possibly Microsoft and using the new Windows phone OS ... that will just sink them even faster. Their only real option is to jump on the Android bandwagon. Watch out for more greedy Nokia management rats jumping from the sinking ship.
Oh dear, the rumours were true ... Nokia has just signed is death note. At least it will be adding another nail in Microsoft's coffin at the same time. This is from MacRumors (among other places) ... Nokia and Microsoft Team Up in Smartphone Battle ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Making official what has been widely expected for days, Nokia and Microsoft have announced that the two companies are teaming up in the smartphone market, with Nokia embracing Windows Phone as its "primary smartphone strategy" while contributing its own expertise to further development of the platform. While the specific details of the deal are being worked out, here's a quick summary of what we are working towards: - Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader. - Nokia will help drive and define the future of Windows Phone. Nokia will contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies. - Nokia and Microsoft will closely collaborate on development, joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products. Nokia has long been the world's smartphone market share leader with its Symbian platform, but the company's dominant lead has been quickly evaporating as iOS and Android have rapidly grown. From the other perspective, Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 platform has been fairly well regarded by reviewers, but has yet to catch on as a latecomer to the increasingly crowded smartphone space. A purported memo from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop published earlier this week outlined the challenges faced by Nokia in a smartphone market that has shifted from a battle of devices to a battle of "ecosystems", a theme echoed in the public statements made today in support of the partnership with Microsoft.
In message <ij51q0$q19$-september.org> Todd Allcock Personally, I think it's as good as DOA unless they get some power-user friendly APIs or functionality available yesterday. iOS really needs some competition, and while Android is doing reasonably well today, even I am starting to believe it's fragmentation will bite it in the ass sooner rather than later since manufacturers are so focused on selling more hardware rather than upgrading OSes on existing gear. If Microsoft can compete with iOS and Android without falling into the traps of either, and can get power-user friendly in some of the ways that iOS just isn't, they might have a chance. If nothing else, they have the resources to lose money as long as it takes to get it right.
I first heard about the announcement that Nokia woudl adopt Windows Mobile. Then I read the letter that started this thread. The letter really shows a Nokia in disarray. That is scary. So, they dump theor won OS and go with Windows be will become a "me too" with hardware designed dictated/limited by the OS. When PSION offloaded its EPOC32 operating system, it did so to a consortium. That consortium did nothing with it for years. It in fact needed a big rewrite because it was so proprietary it was useless. Eventually Nokia did buy the consortium and gained full control over it but I think the number of years wasted was fatal. Had Nokia bought EPO32 direct from PSION, and started the major rework to the UI and file handling aspects right away, it might have been a different story. It should also be pointed out that in the last 1990s, most phones didn't have the "humph!" to run a multi tasking OS like that, so EPOC/Symbian was really restricted to a few smaprt phones. (yes, they existed well before the iPhone). The big question is whether this deal will just help Windows Mobile stay on life support longer, or whether it would really be able to launch it into success. Just switching OS from Symbian to Windows will not solve the problems at Nokia that have lead it to this state. Nokia is a bit like Digital Equipment Corp. DEC was blindsighted by the PC revolution. Note that there are normal cycles in industry. Motorola used to be the predeminant mobile phone player. Nokia came in with uglier but better designed phones (and cheaper too). You can also look at printers, where Centronics was replaced by Epson and then by HP. Perhaps Nokia's days are over. By going Windows Mobile, they become a slave, and if Microsoft slows development of the OS (as it did to its previous incarnation), it will leave Nokia with old stale products. When HP/Compaq's iPaq became stale because of lack of development of the OS by Windows, it could still continue to get fat profits from coloured alchool in expensive plastic containers. But Nokia is betting the farm on Microsoft here. If Microsoft fails to deveklop that OS rapidly enough, HTC and others will continue with Android, but Nokia will be dead in its tracks. I think Nokia should have adopted a dual Android and Windows policy from the day it decided to abandon its own OS strategy. Lets not forget that HP spent a gazillion dollars buying Palm, supposedly to get access to its OS. Will they squander this and never do much with it (as they did with the iPaq) or will they come out with full force and become a serious competitor to the iphone ? Personally, I think HP will squander that investment, but I could be wrong. With Nokia out of the game permanently, Apple now has one fewer competitor and just need to keep abreast of what RIM, Microsoft and Google/Android are up to.
Microsoft doesn't have the ability to actually compete with anyone ... never has. All they do is steal or buy out someone else, and then screw that up with their incompetence. Microsoft and Nokia are both on the slow slide to non-existence, it's just that Microsoft will take longer thanks to idiots in big business entrenching it so deeply in the first place.
Maybe, maybe not. Don't judge them only by their past crappy operating systems (or by Vista). Windows 2000 and XP weren't great, but they were usable. I've heard W7 is pretty good. Yes, PowerPoint sucks, and Access is so-so, but Word isn't bad, and Excel still beats Numbers, IMHO. MS still churns out some garbage, but they also have some more expensive products that actually work, e.g., SQL Server
Whether it's the Windows or Mac versions, Word is bloated garbage, Excel is better, but still bloated, Access is far too over-complicated for it's own good - you can make the same database in FileMaker Pro in minutes rather than hours, PowerPoint, although getting better, is dismal when compared to Apple's presentation software. Microsoft's user interface is simply awful and the software purposely tries to annoy you at every turn with bad design, whatever you want to do is just so damn difficult ... and that's before you even get to all the bugs. Plus there's the over-complicated pricing structure with 95 versions of each product at different prices and agreement levels. :-\
Excel: $149 (MS Office for the Mac, home and student edition; component software is not sold separately any more.) Numbers: $20 through the Mac App Store, or $79 as part of iWork. With that price difference, one would hope that Excel beats Numbers.
The danger here is that a special relationship between MS and Nokia may cause others like HTC to drop MS products and focus on Android. And Microsoft would have to be very careful about compatibility in some application marketplace. (app store). The other issue is that unless Nokia fixes whatever got it to be lethargic, its efforts with Windows will as succesful as its efforts with Symbian. Sorry, but Microsoft is to blame. Compaq was first to market with the iPaq, (and had an exclusive arrangement with MS for that class of device). HP inherited it, and while it is easy to blame HP, Microosft shares the blame because it stop agressively developping that platform. How quickly HP can do something with Palm will determine whether HP is to enter the mobile market or just write off that investment as a dud. I think that Apple's APP Store is one very mighty asset that makes it VERY hard for new entrants. And on that front, both Microsoft/Nokia and HP/Palm are new entrants. RIM may remain in the business market because of their proprietary services/mail. Yep, but it sold its sole to Microsoft, and Nokia's survival is now at the sole discretion of Microsoft. All its eggs are in the Microsoft basket. Big risk considering that Microsoft does not have a solid history in the mobile market. Consider that HP, traditionally a pseudo subsidiary of Microsoft, elected to give MS a big finger and buy Palm instead. Not exactly a show of confidence by HP in Microsoft's mobile future. Or was Nokia really desperate ? I don't think the market can support more than 3 mainstream platforms, and I say this in terms of available applications. IOS and Android get the first 2 spots. Who will get the 3rd ? Microsoft ? RIM ? HP ? Will Nokia try to have its own ? It remains to be seen (and we will see it later this year) whether Android's market share was due to Apple's artificial limitations (aka: not available on verizon). It is quite possible that if iphone becomes widely available on any/all networks, that there may only be room or ios, android and rim. This would mean that microsoft and HP's proprietary solutions would not get much market traction. And that could mean the end of Nokia.
Large doesn't automatically equal garbage. Word does the job, and so does Excel. I'm no fan of Access, but hours? Sounds like you need some training. I haven't used Keynote, but I already said PowerPoint sucks. You are describing what it used to be (well, what PowerPoint still is) Agreed. Only it's more like a dozen than 95. One thing I hate is that the development tools have all the features of the most expensive edition, so if you aren't deploying to that addition, you have to remember which features to not use.
And it does. BUT, doesn't Word/Pages have the same price difference? And Pages seems to be about equal to Word. Doesn't PowerPoint/Keynote have the same difference? But PowerPoint sucks and Keynote (I'm told) is fantastic.
From memory, Apple's office applications are quite cheap on the Mac App store. The "Home & Student" version of Microsoft Mac Office is almost identical to Apple's iWork ... of course Microsoft again has multiple versions and makes business users pay for the privilege of using buggy software. The real problem is that unless you're fairly self-contained in your needs, you HAVE to use Microsoft Office since it the only software that (nearly) fully compatible itself. It's all very well making a gorgeous presentation in Keynote, only to find that the conference centre only has PowerPoint and won't allow people to use their own laptop thanks to the malware fears of inept IT departments.
They do the job (most of the time), IF you can be bothered working around the awful interface, kludgey control and bugs. Ewwww... training in Acces, good God, NO! Yes, Access is in some ways more powerful (and again there's the bloat since it's mostly ways very few people use), but it's simply far easier in to create a workable and user-friendly database in FileMaker Pro. One of the real problems with PowerPoint is that unless you're going to be using your own equipment, you never know what version the place where you doing the presentation actually has ... which means no matter how many fancy transistions, etc. Microsoft add, you stuck with using the standard old ones and it gets kludgey and difficult to do anything interesting for the audience. Nope. I have yet to use the very latest version, but the previous version of Mac Office is awful - the horrible Formatting Toolbox with options hidden away where you can't find them, and it still has bugs galore (including brand new ones!). The new "ribbon" interface sounds equally appalling and is disliked by many users. You just get used to the idiocies of one version and then Microsoft completely change it. :-\ A dozen, 95. Semantics. ;-) Apple only has TWO version of it's OS.
And it does. BUT, doesn't Word/Pages have the same price difference? And Pages seems to be about equal to Word. Doesn't PowerPoint/Keynote have the same difference? But PowerPoint sucks and Keynote (I'm told) is fantastic.[/QUOTE] You do have a point.
Um, as I posted, it's $149 to $79, almost double. There are only two versions of MS Office for the Mac. The differences are that the Home and Student version doesn't have Outlook, and has only 90 days tech support instead of a full year of tech support. The price difference between the two is $130. Make it in Keynote and save it as a PowerPoint file.
Perhaps, but in the past open standards have succeeded against a closed architecture despite the stability and non-fragmented nature of the closed architecture. Microsoft doesn't give up on key market segments. The difference here is that it's not just Apple they have to compete against, it's Google as well.
That's the MSRP for each. Home and Student edition is on sale regularly for less than $100, and iWork sells for $50. With Open Office at $0, even $100 for Office or $50 for iWork, is high.
That's the MSRP for each. Home and Student edition is on sale regularly for less than $100, and iWork sells for $50.[/QUOTE] But when making comparisons, you need a stable basis; searching for the best price is good when you're buying, but not for making this sort of comparison. If your only criterion is price, that is.
