Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

If the wait is so hard, why don't you get another product? Why the whining? Take it as it is. You want something now, and Nokia is not offering it, get something else. You want something shiny from Nokia, you will have to wait. I am not saying it is easy, but hell, people can surely whine less.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

I don't think IPad bites into the netbooks area because of the keyboard (assuming you speak of keyboard netbooks). Also because most of the people I know that own netbooks they do so because they can also continue work and "work" at home, as in, they need a similar OS.

Also, at 500$ and battery life as it is, it's not going to bit too much into Kindle.

Guess I'm one of those people underestimating iPad (for now). If it goes cheaper, it could be the bedside companion you speak of. For now, I think not. Also, cheap Apple? Hm.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Because I spent this year's mobile cash with n900, easy, right?

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

I don't like netbooks because they're slow and you need a table to use them properly. Especially in airplanes. Slate form factor is easier to carry, lighter and they manage well most places; You can put them where magazines can go.

Granted I can't do all of my sys admin stuffs, because iPad aren't jailbroken yet (yea yea), but right now I got ssh, rdp and vnc on it already to do 90% of what I need. If I need to do plenty of text entry/commands, I just prop the slate up on the table and flip open my bluetooth keyboard (stowaway full sized foldable keyboard).

I'm not saying it's superior in all cases to netbook, but it's a very versatile form factor. And the amount of functionalities they crammed in it (digital compass, accelerometer, great doc manipulation, etc) means it can go places where netbooks don't.

imho this is a form factor to watch.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Then you have one of the most advanced handsets of the market already. It has its faults? It does. If they are too much for you, sell it, and get something that fits you better.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

I don't see Nokia rising up in market share until it innovates something spectacularly fresh, then launches it on Symbian^3 and Harmattan and have people buying phones only thinking which Nokia to buy, and not about other brands.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Fire his arse and then PR1.2 will be released. He is keeping PR1.2 to him self. I hope he get fired

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Ok... do you buy mine for 599€?
When do you read "step 4 of 5" when reserving it last year?
I only read "the future is NOW", and I believe YOU read the same page I read.
Very very simply: I want the thing they SOLD me...

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

intellectual?!??

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Doesn't support the 3G frequencies of my country (I have a couple of friends that bough it despite that...). Why don't you eBay it?

Anssi Vajonki, one of Nokia's VPs said it himself when the N900 was introduced in Nokia World. It was quoted in many places, and even with some dissapointement here.

I read that it had a resistive screen but that Maemo 6 was going to be capacitive. That it didn't have Qt as native. That it was Step 4 of 5. I read reviews saying it lacked features like MMS and portrait mode. Etc etc.

Despite all that, the N900 still does more than many of its competitors.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Uhhhmmmm... I read some of these notes too, but every paragraph ends with "... but this is only a pre-release unit...". Sorry, they do it bad, perhaps the new CEOs does it better, perhaps too late.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

I don't think most of us don't care, we are just more closely informed as to Nokia's strategy. OPK will not be fired because everything is going exactly as he announced in 2007, when he said Nokia would indeed concede share for awhile and remain mostly flat for most of that coming future while focusing on services. How can you fire a guy for doing exactly what he said he would 3 years ago? He lost some share, but has largely kept the ship afloat. I think Nokia's shareholders aren't very worried as rumored, and this is all as much conjecture as their prospects for buying Palm.

OPK said he would return Nokia's focus to hardware and the US market when they had strengthened their strategy, revamped their software ecosystem, became a vertical solution, and market forces were more favorable. The culmination comes in late 2010, early 2011. So a firing would be premature.

Totally agree. Nokia's play in the app sales space will be bolstered by the N8 and American carrier support for Symbian. The American market will get a chance to see Ovi, and developers will have more local reason to begin targeting the platform, along with MeeGo, WebOS, MacOSX, Windows, Linux, and Unix.

I like how you mentioned scale allowing Nokia to "polish" their devices. I expect a couple N8 variants with refined features. No one else can offer such a deal. Apple comes close, but with its slow hardware refinement rates, it doesn't quite match up. It will take Apple a year to update the iPhone 4G/HD/Ceramic Back/iStolen, while N8 variants can come in months. Its an advantage many overlook, and why Nokia has so many "variants" of devices.

Great comment indeed. The synergy of the two OSes is another big advantage.

What many don't get, and why I think this Reuters article has little weight is Nokia's real strategy lies not in Symbian or MeeGo. Why do you think they were open sourced? Because OPK and Co. know they are irrelevant.

The real focus is the services and Qt. This will be Nokia's bread and butter going forward. Apple's focus isn't the iPhone per se, but their iTunes media service, MobileMe, the SKD and App Store, and their future advertising delivery system. Just like Nokia's OSes, the iPhone is just a vehicle to enable those services and tools.

If Symbian and MeeGo fail, so what? OPK and Co. have made sure to take them out of the equation. If it fails, they still have the manufacturing capacity to shift to Android, WinMo/WP7, or even WebOS should HP be ready to license it out. I can promise they'll be able to make a better device running Android than anyone else. And they could always port Qt to Android or WP7, make Ovi Maps available to other devices, and still be a formidable foe in the marketplace.

I'm not so worried for Nokia. :rolleyes:

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

66% much larger than 13%. just saying...

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Glad to see you around, chris!

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Where was the part where his plan involved dropping the value of the company 50% from 2007 valuation bringing it back to 1998 valuation levels?

If you owned a company and the manager just wiped out your entire wealth for 12 years while the competition is growing (i.e its not the market, its the PRODUCT) you wouldn't fire him?

c'mon.....

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

And ask yourself if you are from UK or US. Why the hell is that working so perfectly in those countries!

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

There are multiple netbook products and depending from what you want. Basically there is nothing in netbook idea which prevents them to pickup iPad market. The only essential differences between netbooks and iPad for now are a keyboard and a slimness/weight. But that depends - Sony (expensive) is pretty slim.

I don't speak about this stuff - iPad and any touchpad devices are not very good in this anywhere - KBD is absent and thats it. And BT KBD doesn't solve a problem - it is a second device and although it can be used, that solution is not good if there is netbook.

Yes, form factor takes place, and it the reason why i spoke about bedtime. But if we exclude a consumption of prepared content (read - look video, read books) then it doesn't win at all in any situation. And if we speak about airplane then looking video is not the best for it, actually device with N900 form factor is better in it's crammed space. (I am not sure about reading - it may be better to have a bigger screen for many people but Kindles are best here)

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Look at the Nokia line up of phones.
Now look at the blackberry line up of phones.
Now look at the apple line up of phones.

Notice a pattern?

Apple has one phone, they concentrate on that phone and make it smooth user friendly and easy to use.
Blackberry has a smaller list of phones they run a unified OS across all of them. They are coming out with new phones all the time but they incremental upgrades to current models.

Nokia on the other hand has been all over the place they have different platforms different handsets they kill one and replace it with a brand new model that is totally new. Developers are scattered. Over all the sum of the market share was good but because it was so scattered it was not dominate in any one area.

I can see a long term plan hatching at Nokia now with a unified platform core, instead of a shotgun approach to everything mobile it is becoming more focused.

The big question now is it too little too late.
If they fire this CEO and shift gears now I see no way for Nokia to ever make it back to the top.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Nokia has cycled like that before. Stockholders have made good money buying at around $13 per share and being patient. I speak from experience. Twice so far. :D

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

The essential difference is the software stack.

If you're a sysadmin type and that comprise of a majority of your activities with said device, then yeah. In my usecases, it's just a fraction of the thing I do with mine.

N900 is way too small for video consumption.
I've owned 3 tablet PC, 2 netbooks and numerous handheld devices. I've made some comparisons too.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

In airplane sit - it is pretty good form factor.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

This doesn't work. I have seen this being pitched repeatedly just to have it run headfirst into a concrete wall. X86 is (still) not mobile friendly, and XP is downright mobile suicide in all aspects, power, ui usability, size, battery life, etc. As I said, every year somebody tries to do what you say and fails miserably. Last year's attempt was the xpphone, the 2010 fail is still lurking, but I'm confident that some will take the fail-trophy this year, too..

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Agreed. And since we've already spun off topic, to me the holy grail as a (sorry) longtime Windows developer is a Qt experience that lays the world at my feet like Visual Studio does. I don't need to run XP projects on my mobile device-- I just want an easy migration path to get them from the Windows desktop to Maemo/MeeGo.


If OPK is supporting that, keep him on. :D

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

According to the numbers, Nokia sold 100 million phones last year, right? That's a good thing. And they've not lost share in the smartphone sector, global market-wise.

And according to this site, the upcoming OS's are both good... right? That means MeeGo will get support from a larger developer base than with Maemo, right? So that's a darn good thing. Symbian is improving, got a new phone with some killer optics with the N8... and that's a good thing, right?

Then... from this idiot's perspective, what exactly are the stockholders upset about? The drop in market share in areas they don't even advertise in? Or lack of faith perhaps? I'm seriously not putting it together... and don't mind being spoonfed what I'm missing.

I won't read too deeply into the commentary from Endgadget. I'm asking you lot to make it make more sense to me. The numbers initially don't look good though.

Thanks in advance. I'm looking at the global market, not just the one in the US.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

The decline in valuation from last high of ~ $34 per share to current ~ $13 per share.

EDIT: make that ~ $40 to ~ $12

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NOK&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

I think most stockholders want to make money in the short term, not wait and see if the plan will pan out.

Of course if they yank the CEO and put someone new in whole wants to change the path...well just look at US politics.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

The Freerunner died because it didn't work as a phone. Basic phone functionality, like being able to answer an incoming call in less than 30 seconds, wasn't there until the company had already imploded. There were also hardware problems, and Openmoko could not afford to recall all the phones and fix them properly. I don't think its failure is a fair gauge by which to measure customer demand for a linux phone that gives you full linux access, with a finger-friendly UI.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Yep. I have to admit not paying attention to the drop in stock price. That'll get some folks angry. And the lack of patience.. that describes me as well (not a Nokia stockholder)...

Better than having Palin.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

All I know is that I will be picking up as much stock as I can afford right now because I've read the reactions that non-US user forums and blogs have had to the new product announcements in Nokia's main markets. Engadget and Gizmodo's biased Nokia coverage has influence primarily amongst US consumers.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

And here... we agree 100%. Mind you, I'm not the target for the N8, as shown by my disregard for Symbian over Maemo (the little Linux lover in me likes Maemo/MeeGo better)... but I know a multi-media phone that will sell well when I see it.

And it's the N8. Priced right too? Nokia's got a hit on their hands.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

@Gerbick "And here... we agree 100%. Mind you, I'm not the target for the N8, as shown by my disregard for Symbian over Maemo (the little Linux lover in me likes Maemo/MeeGo better)... but I know a multi-media phone that will sell well when I see it.

And it's the N8. Priced right too? Nokia's got a hit on their hands. "

Couldn't you have said the same thing about the n85 or the n86?

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

I just picked up a load but not for this reason, I expect the stock to pop 10 percent when they announce the CEO is being kicked out..

the only real immediate downside might be huge if N8 is a disaster. the video sample looked good but a sample posted by an enduser on you tube looked pretty choppy and bad.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

I could... but I wouldn't.

I had played/used those phones and won't lie... I walked away unimpressed. I've yet to use the N8, however the optics alone surpass what's out there in terms of quality.

The N95 and then the N97 got my attention. But the prior N8* series didn't quite get my attention outside of form factor. The new N8* series can't even say that - I dislike the tapered look. And if anything, neither of them made any splashes in the blogosphere. The N8 has.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

In my opinion, OPK is a ballsy, astute leader. He took the ultimate gamble, trusted his department heads knowledge and vision, and hedged his bets on his massive lead, big warchest of cash and IP, and the analysis of the future in mobile, and has taken advantage of the results to set Nokia up to dominate and become one of the largest companies in the world for years to come.

GROWTH

The global converged device market in developed countries, save the sliver still left in the US, is mostly mature with little prospects for massive growth rates. However, the "Next Billion" mobile tech users will mostly come from the BRIC markets of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

Nokia is currently the leading device seller in each of these markets, and has the most solid and affordable device lineup in the industry, with absolutely no competitor at many low price points. Their prospects on the low to midrange is excellent.

The US market hasn't slowed yet, and is actually driving the industry at the mid to high end. Nokia has gotten both major GSM carriers in the US to adopt Ovi Store billing, both now carry Symbian devices, and they just announced the first 5 band 3G world phone with the most advance camera hardware ever seen on a mobile device. It is possibly the best specced mobile on the planet, priced 20-35% lower than devices in its performance bracket.

It is assumed at least one of the US carriers will subsidize the N8, as two of its colors are not available at launch. I am assuming the blue one will be an at&t exclusive, and the orange one for Orange. Just a guess. Either way, progress in the US is right on schedule. In just 6-8 months, Nokia should announce even more advanced hardware, ushering in the launch of their MeeGo and Symbian^4 unified software ecosystems and devices. With one universal model for the entire world, production costs will be lower, as well as software support.

SERVICES

Say what you will about Ovi, but in the BRIC markets, they are eating massive chunks of the market. It also protects Nokia from flagging hardware sales, and gives the devices longer profitability from time of sale. They are entering a fresh US market and have carrier support.

Aside from Google and Microsoft, only Nokia has a compelling service portfolio. Apple's is not as robust and mature, though it is different, and focused on media sales. The fact Nokia has a hat in the game at all is great, as they already control a decent part of the market, and can address other parts with its Qt cross platform software.

They also have the best map data on earth in Navteq. So they have been solidified for revenue streams in every device made by anyone if they desire to address their market, with services, maps, and a cross platform app ecosystem they can proliferate upon the market whenever they wish.

Seriously, stock price can be manipulated. But results can not. All of their losses can be recovered easily with the tools they have acquired, whether they sell devices ever again or not. THAT is the magic of it all. The fact that they will, and will sell more than anyone else, and embed their services at a platform level, without having to spend all of the money making Symbian anymore, is a comfortable position to be in.

Just saying. I would love to hold onto some Nokia stock for the next 5 years.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

It was a phone that gave you Linux. While I don't gauge that as success as future Linux phones, I do gauge it as the response one gets from selling a Linux pocket tablet with bad other functionality.

I believe that if right now I build a Windows box that runs Hildon over it and make the platform run all N900 app base via recompiling with target=NdiOS, 90% of the users wouldn't even notice, let alone be bothered by it, let alone sway them into purchasing an HTC.

My point being, in a phone/tablet/whatever, it's more important to have a nice feature list, apps and whatnot than the OS in itself. While a few want a phone that has a true-debian CLI to it, that is NOT the bulk of the users, that stuff Nokia's pockets.

As for the x86 phone, they all fail because it's not yet possible. Battery to power such a device needs to be large, and that means more miniaturization in the components, which isn't available right now. That doesn't stop it from becoming the Holy Grail of mobile computing.

This far, phones have going forward, and have done so by embedding more and more of the functionality a user needs. First calls, the text, then chat, internet, alarm. Then organizer, and so on. Now they embedded the PDA functionality and the PNA functionality. The more they do, the more valuable they become to the user because we no longer need to carry an internet tablet, a video camera, a picture camera and so on.

Right now what we miss is being able to do basic tasks a laptop does. And by that I mean office functionality and running apps we run at work. Since those aren't going to be ported to ARM any time soon, we need to bring phones to netbooks.

Either that or netbooks will be so small you can carry in pocket and hold to ear, same deal.

Finally, XP might not be the ideal setup for a portable. However, by the time this all goes portable, W7 or W8 or whatever will be optimized or portable to the extent where this becomes realistic.

A small laptop in high energy efficiency mode (minimal screen, no gaming, SSD, scheduling), goes as long as 4 hours online. Yes the battery is as big as N900 if not bigger, but I don't think this is unachievable, especially since I don't see myself upgrading the N900 any time soon. Also, since it's going to be portable, limited motherboard and CPU features will be made available. Just as now you can't compare 10W peak consumption from a netbook to my 200W idle consumption on my desktop, things will be more efficient as we go along.

Tech is already going well. E.g. a memory chip dedicated to hibernation for 256M isn't huge and could restore an OS in 1-2 seconds. N900 takes that long to ring now.

Plus, N900 isn't exactly large. I could live with even bigger.

Also, if it gets enough fine tuning that it gets 4 hours of usage and 12 hours standby, that's enough to hit the market.

I guess I want a small laptop. Don't you?

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Ok, I'm wading in here, because this has been troubling me for several years already. I think Nokia has made some serious blunders in the past few years. I think they have time to turn things around, but they've already fallen behind, and it is going to be harder now.

I think Linux (POSIX-compliant GNU/Linux like Maemo / MeeGo, not Linux-kernel Android or BSD-kernel iPhone OS) is the future of mobile computing. I think a lot of people inside Nokia have believed that too for quite a while. But I think Nokia hasn't been investing in the future properly.

PAST:

The 770 was a revolutionary concept device (a handheld Linux computer!). The N800 took those concepts and promised us a game-changer around the corner (pop out swivel camera capable of streaming video to the net! Two SD card slots! USB host!). Nokia was poised to change the industry. But the N810 was ... lacking. It was surprisingly uninteresting. Very little innovation. Same chipset as the N800. Still no 3D acceleration. Mini SD? It was a dead-end format when the N810 was released! And then the N810W ... whatever. It was like someone said, "Mass market? What's that? Let's waste time making this niche product even more niche!"

It wasn't much better in terms of software. The OS was Linux, yes, but it was using so much proprietary and/or closed stuff interwoven with the OSS, that it was nearly impossible to run Maemo on any other device, it was nearly impossible to run any other Linux variant on the tablets, and existing Linux applications couldn't just be recompiled, they had to be laboriously ported to the OS.

Every iteration of the Maemo OS took much longer than the competition was taking to get bugfixes and features out the door.

PRESENT:

The N900 / Maemo 5 was really something special. But again, all the same problems dogged them from the first announcements in 2008. The devices were really at least 6 months late into peoples' hands and even then, it feels like they shipped because they had to, not because they were finished. The software again was tangled up with lots of closed bits. Despite all of the public repositories and the SDK, there was still a great deal of "throwing it over the wall".

And PR1.2? Well, that's partly an historical re-enactment of the N900 release for those who missed it the first time. It is also partly the Final Farewell to Maemo for Nokia. They're tying up as many loose ends as possible with this release, because they all know that's it for this operating system.

I honestly think that Nokia's biggest mistake with Maemo has been that they didn't put enough resources into it, early enough. Sure, they've had a great team, but it has been too small for too long. They've been making many of the right choices, but a year or two late. For instance, Maemo became Maemo Devices in the summer of 2009. They should have become Maemo Devices in the summer of 2007. They should have been aiming to have the best team in Nokia by early 2008. They should have been hiring community members to build their software. Instead of letting Google poach Gnuite (Maemo Mapper), they should have gotten him to build a kickass Ovi maps implementation for Maemo 5.

I have really only been talking about Maemo here. But Nokia's had this problem all over the place.

Nokia bought Trolltech in January 2008. A brilliant move. But like every other brilliant move by Nokia, they've been slow and clumsy to implement it. They are only now pushing the cross-platform Qt-everywhere idea in 2010.

Honestly, the N900 should have been running on Qt.

I've heard a lot of noise about Nokia transitioning to a services-based company. I don't know a lot about this area of Nokia, but... Again, the idea is great, but all I know is that I still can't buy the Angry Birds level packs from the Ovi store, and Ovi maps is no better (I would argue that it is worse) on my N900 than the several open source mapping apps I have on the N900.

FUTURE:

Come on, Nokia. You've still got some money in the bank and a good chunk of market share. You've got the best-looking strategy out there right now -- a completely open OS, a very respected cross-platform framework, and lots of potential to make some amazing devices for us all.

Oh and Nokia: If you are having difficulty beefing up your teams with good people, it is probably because you need to get a better HR department first. Stop hiring with a shopping list of buzzwords. You need to be hiring smart, very flexible people who can figure out how to do new stuff, rather than people with experience doing what you're already doing. If you hire experienced people, then you can't be at the cutting edge.

(I know you're doing it wrong, because you haven't contacted me yet... But your competitor did! ;) )

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Qole, that was absolutely beautiful.

And as to your last part: there are several of us (yes, I'll selfishly include myself) that should have been snagged by Maemo Devices. I know I'd be busting my @$$ in any capacity I could if I was still in Nokia directly supporting this effort. Why Nokia doesn't capitalize more on that (hiring VDVsx was great, but letting Gnuite get away as you say was nuts) I have no idea.

Odds are my next job will be with a Nokia competitor since Nokia couldn't find a place for me. Many former colleagues have already done it.

Nokia needs to work harder on keeping passionate people if they want to succeed.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

Engadget and Gizmodo aside, I was quite suprised to see how many 'real professional finance analysts' have directly or inderectly mentioned the mobile-review's preview of N8 in their Nokia outlook. I mean people working at really fancy institutions.

Not that the recent Goldman/Iceland/Lehman news have left me high regard for those institutions, but seeing them use same sources as teeanged fanbois...well puts their profession in perspective.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

You're wrong on this one. It's not like someone said that. Someone said it! Maemo, from 770 to N900, was and is a niche product. And: There's nothing wrong with niche products as long as they're in my niche.

I normally wouldn't have said that (because I assume you know), but it maybe healthy to write it down. I read recently in a German language article that Nokia "failed" with the Internet Tablets, their first attempt on the tablet market, because it never sold well. People seem to be obsessed with hero-devices and sales charts only. I think it's up to Nokia - and only to Nokia - to judge the success of a product, and the only benchmark is their own business plan. If they sell more than expected, it's a success - an we'll never know because we don't know how much they thought they'd sell.

Re: The CEO of Nokia might be getting fired! LG's GW990 not coming out either!?
 

I'll accept that with caveats. The N800 sold more than expected, but that made it a failure in some contexts. I won't mention return rate stats but suffice to say they indicated problems with the out-of-box experience.

Regardless of intended product scope, the support infrastructure should match it. To date it has not with these devices. I find that unacceptable-- especially since I worked so hard (and in futility) in the company to champion improvement.