Nokia plans cheap Windows Phones, aims for Android

He gonna have to battle it out against Boot to gecko as they aiming to hit the real low end as well.

I mean the OS is nothing but a browser, how much CPU power do you need, even worse its Open Source as well.
 
I heard Nokia is cutting another 10k jobs and planning on closing finland, Canada, and Germany plants.
 
The fact that they have a non free OS will always be a disadvantage. Every dollar that they have to spend on a Windows license would be going towards better hardware on a competing platform that uses free software.
Therefore, they would have to cut back on the hardware to get a phone out at a similar price to a cheap Android,
which will then make consumers perceive the Android phone as a better deal due to it having better specs to a similarly priced WP.
How do they hope to compete like this?
 
With all the licensing fees from Microsoft, Nokia will have to look at many more solutions to reduce their costs.
 
They already sacrificed Skype on the 610 because the specs were too low, what else will be lost if they go even lower?
 
When will Nokia wake up, fire Elop, and realize they were onto something very special with MeeGo?

Stupid Finns.
 
Most of the analysis of the smartphone market shakeup has been incredibly shallow and sadly it seems many of the decision makers at Nokia have been amongst them.

Before the iPhone the smartphone market really Symbian world and Nokia's ability to navigate in the platform gave it plenty of opportunity to rule the roost. The over-plowing into Symbian circa 2008 was a mistake not because Symbian was doomed to death but rather because its core values do not fit well in the market that was being formed particularly because the scarcity of resources premise was being rapidly eroded- but the market is always evolving - and because the long term evolution plans of Maemo was wrong. Ultimately Nokia made the fairly classic mistake of overestimating Linux in its corporate model and the idea of going from Symbian to Meego was the big stuff up - - Meego is simply not able to compete with Android. Nokia has some very interesting assets in its holdings including its very own James Bond style gadget maker with a little tea
 and a pairing with Microsoft is really beneficial for both companies - it also creates the amusing 3 major platforms routine Apple, Microsoft, Linux (if Android can really be called Linux). Also while Symbian is very much on the back foot don't write it off, embedded systems have a much longer life and with Microsoft actively moving into the ARM space on later generation ARM processors the conclusion Microsoft branded Symbian based systems (routers, "fixedline" skypephones etc ... - - even array processing systems) should not be over looked. Also if Microsoft wants to keep very strict minimum specs for their Windows approach an entry level market clearly exists - one that plugs into their system.

Nokia like RIM needs to get back on the horse and there may be a long hiatus but don't forget Apple, Motorola and Novell have all had there ups and downs and remember back in 1998 predictions that Linux would kill Windows by 2005 well Windows 7? Granted I made similar remarks about Linux impetus dying back in 03 or 04 within 5 odd years - but the point I made quite clearly is that it is the then overpiked Linux for the Win and that stupid penguin mascot obsession that would die and I (with a vested interest) clearly believe that Android has taken over from Linux in brand power and actual decision making).

Some rather amusing trivia: Motorola was one of the original partners for Symbian, the split company form of Motorola is now a big ingredient in Android. Samsung has several poster child projects for Android is also a key partner in Tizen which is derived from Meego (which evolved in part from Maemo) the ever promiscuous tech company ....
 
I have read yesterday that a ratings agency downgraded Nokia shares to Junk status.
 
Caught a story on News24 that Apple and Samsung now account for 55% of all smartphones shipped... They also take 90% of the profit in that market. Nokia saw a 40% decline in shipments... It would have to grow its Windows Phone business by 5000% to make up for its decline in Symbian shipments. Eish!
 
Arthur said:
... meanwhile, MSFT takes a royalty on almost every Android phone sold in the USA ...
Click to expand...

FIFY

The OEMs only play licence fees for phones sold in the countries where Microsoft own the said patents. The OEMs for instance don't have to pay anything in SA as we do not acknowledge the patents in question same is true for some software patents in Europe and China.

Also don't forget that Microsoft in turn also have to do the same towards the Android OEMs on patents they own, Example Motorola FRAND patents. Its by no way a zero sum game but its also not as simple as a one sided transaction. As for the size its all speculation of the actual cost as its hidden behind NDAs.
 
Arthur said:
Indeed. Industry speculation is they took over $400m last year.
Click to expand...

Aah the figure that was thumb sucked by taking a number and multiply it with all the Android devices sold that year. Yeah sure that's like as factual and accurate as me saying over 40% of windows phone owners would have preferred iPhones just because I know some people that do.

If we add some media reports to the mix we can even say that its zero income for Microsoft as they only use the said licence fees to offset the prices on Windows Phone OS for the OEMs, but again seeing that the cross-licence agreements is hidden behind NDAs all we can do is speculate and use the agreement alone as base for whatever we feel like debating that day.

Edit: Bottom line is we talking developing countries when we talk cheap phones and more to the fact we talking South Africa and in South Africa we do not practice Software patent law. So when we talk cost of cheap phones in South Africa the OEM's do not have to pay extra for Android, but still need to pay for Windows Phone OS on their devices.
 
Last edited:
That's an accounting issue - how they spend the revenue isn't relevant. Applied to Google, your arg means Android is a huge loss leader for them. Sure it drags in eyeballs and ad revenue, but the Android operation with $0 revenue means it necessarily runs at a massive loss despite hundreds of millions of licensed devices. Not perpetually sustainable.
 
Last edited:
Arthur said:
That's an accounting issue - how they spend the revenue isn't relevant. Applied to Google, your arg means Android is a huge loss leader for them. Sure it drags in eyeballs and ad revenue, but the Android operation with $0 revenue means it necessarily runs at a massive loss despite hundreds of millions of licensed devices. Not perpetually sustainable.
Click to expand...

Sorry I dont get your argument?

Are you complaining about Google here? If thats the case you sound like an ISP that is upset because some Starbucks is giving away free internet to its customers. Google sells targeted ad space and if giving away something for free to ensure future targeting as well as space stays available is not a loss as long as your in the black does not matter how you spin it.
 
I just bought a cheap dual sim Samsung for travel, and it is amazingly good for its price.

Can't see how Nokia are going to compete.
 
I still think all of the speculations about Nokia's demise are highly premature.

They can and will make WP devices that will compete with Android ones. Nokia and MS are partners and they will work out a business strategy that will make this possible. Much of MS's mobile success depends on that of Nokia.

It is also premature because MS is creating an ecosystem that aims to leverage its dominance in the PC environment with it running its OS on 95% of the world's PCs.

This is only the beginning of smartphone uptake. There is still a huge market and WP (in partnership with Nokia) certainly intend to take up a large part of the new smartphone users using people's familiarity with Windows as the draw card. The release of Windows 8 and Apollo (WP8) is crucial for their success - this is why I say speculations about the demise of Nokia are highly premature.
 
i'm a bit confused here. i though the ms strategy originally with mobile was to avoid the fragmentation woes which android had by being platform agnostic and targeting a broad range of hw capabilities.
this surely is the way in which they would compete on an equal footing with apple.
ms prescribes top end hw > blows people away with cool hw intensive features > prices it at a premium to offset bloated oem license costs > profit
they could then upsell tablets as fashion devices sporting great cross-platform ms services, push android out of tablets, then push them out of top end smartphones and relegate android to the mass market, the domain of squabbling turkeys.
so how is it that wp is now destined as a mass market mid/low-end os? what am i getting wrong here?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X