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

Hmmm, maybe you're right....

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the [saunas] blow.
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!

On we sweep with [open source],
Our only goal will be the western shore.

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

Resources isn't the whole story, and IMHO lack of / constantly shifting focus seems to have been a more significant factor since Diablo.

By which I mean the whole killing Elephanta, Internet tablet -> phone, Hildon -> Qt, Maemo -> MeeGo (and who knows what's coming next) business. That's basically 5+ years of development down the drain by the time Harmattan arrives, and I can't seriously believe any of these were in the roadmap when the N810 came out.

All this after Nokia had demonstrated to the competition that you can build a decent *nix handheld, and then left them alone to build up their own platforms for a couple of years. Clever, that.

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

Nokia is a large corporation. I wonder if the confused strategy is not the result of competing camps within the company.

The lack of support from the top could be due to fear of it becoming genuinely sucessful and what the consquences of such an open device going mainstream would be. I cant imagine why that would be but I do find it odd how dismissive their management are of the device.

I dont know anyone working in Nokia though so Ive no idea of what the culture is there.

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

Now, let me be very clear on one thing:

Let's not misunderstand Nokia's strategy and how its divisions work on that. Very roughly speaking, Nokia tends 3 segments:

The "dumbphone" segment: This is where the very cheap handsets with Symbian S40 sell. Primary rivals in this sector are the cheap handsets LG, Huawei, etc; and this is the most global market.

The "business" segment: This is where the E-Series with Symbian S60 live. Primary rival here is Blackberry.

The "high-end" segment: This is where the N-Series with Symbian S60 used to live. I say "used" because now this segment has been divided into "cheap-end" Symbian S60 will live (like the Nokia N8) and the "bleeding edge-end" MeeGo handsets will live. Primary rivals here are Apple, HTC, etc.

There is much to criticize in Nokia's strategy in the high-end, and some of it is very valid.

However on the other segments Nokia is doing very good. And when people cry bloody murder when they see phones like the Nokia C-6 released, they don't realize that Nokia didn't stop everything to make the C-6. It is just that its corresponding division finished it and launched it, while, at the same time, the high-end is working on a new N-Series.

That is how big is Nokia.

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

Let's talk some real idiocy (IMO) here.

I have been told by some current and ex-Nokia employees that there's still a wholesale personnel dump going on, particularly in North America. The main reason? Lack of degrees. And sure enough, after experienced Nokia employees are let go, I see new listings like "Logistics Coordinator" asking for, of all things, a Master's Degree.

That's nuts. At Nokia I indirectly led around 400 logistics coordinators worldwide and I just have an Associate's degree. Nokia US is really disconnected from reality... I wonder how much of that is corporate-wide...

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

Texrat: Hard to know if the lack of degrees is just an excuse to kick out as many expensive Western workers as possible so they can hire 3 people in a developing country for the price of one in the Western world...

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

While I cynically suspect some of that, many of these replacement jobs are still based in the expensive US.

Again: nuts.

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

There are some developing countries that also offer cheap Master's as continuation of the bachelor degree (the same teachers dictate, so I don't think they are very advanced).

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

Nokia is Led Zeppelin. And Eldar is Rolling Stone magazine.

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

I can appreciate how big they are and how diversified they can afford to be. Their size is not particularly intimidating to me.

They are not really competing successfully at the high end though. The N8 isnt going to do it for them and they didnt seem to want Maemo to. Im not overly hopeful about their commitment to Meego but I would like to be proven wrong.

I guess I just dont get their strategy for the high end market. Steps dont do it for me.

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

Wait, what? Are they outsourcing the Nokia CEO job now?

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

Actually, from what I've heard, Maemo Devices may be one of the most profitable divisions in the company. Whether that's still true or was ever true, I don't know, but I don't believe it's the profitability of the platform that's in question.

What it comes down to is that Symbian and S40 are known, and proven, quantities. A huge majority of the company knows what they are and knows how to work with them. The same can't be said for Maemo. Even though Nokia needs to change their strategy in the long run if they want to remain relevant, dealing with the necessities of that is both scary and unlikely to net many good things for the executives who would be responsible for it today.

Nokia's always been good at playing the long game, and they're not putting all of their eggs in one basket here either with Maemo or Symbian, but the *****footing around around the platform that's going to help keep them a technology innovator in the future is costing them big, and may have, ultimately, cost them the market they got into first.

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

On a side note, ***** is censored? But ***** cats are the best! :(

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

Master's degree cult is propably due to finnish roots and Nokia USA must have gotten it from the homebase. Everybody and their dog has at least master's over here, even me. Bachelor degrees are mostly considered as drop-out degrees in Finland.

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

That's why I hope the whole getting Intel, and the Linux Foundation involved will finally put Meego on the proper path.

Sadly the whole "Must have this degree" thing is pretty much pervasive in any organization (government and business). Heck a while back I had this participant who retired after working so many years in the Naval Research Lab, he said he would still be working there if it wasn't for the whole "must have MBA" shift. He was great at his job, and he loved it. But the environment changed and suddenly whoever was in charge rather everyone had MBAs.

Then there's this other case in a well known transportation system, where this guy had no formal training in engineering, but because he loved what he did and was always wiling to learn ran circles around people with formal electrical engineering degrees to the point where he was climbing the ladder. But a few months back he lost his job because NTSB found out he had no formal education in engineering. :rolleyes:

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

The problem is not *now*, but where the market is going, failing on the future bets may resolve in a complete disaster.

Peoples cry becouse the C-6 release will not make Nokia rich, while investing the C-6 R&D on maemo/meego will make them happy :)

They try to correct nokia mistakes to have more effort on maemo/meego to have them dominate the world market just to be sure that it will supported/enhanced for ever :)

Niko

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

I think its like that in much of Europe. While I enjoyed my degree as an intellectual excercise, my masters is obviously useless in my day to day work. I wouldnt have gotten in the door without it though.

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

I really felt like the odd man out in there. I ramped up quick on Maemo and was really fired up about the product-- and subsequently discovered I was essentially alone. Other Nokia employees had no clue what the internet tablets were. And they didn't care. There was always enough to worry about with 40-odd Symbian phones being launched around the planet.

Many asked me for prototypes when I was done with them and I know those things are either in a drawer collecting dust or wound up on eBay. Interest was fleeting at best.

EDIT: sorry, not prototypes but preproduction builds.

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

I wonder how they feel about it now with the iPhone, Android, WebOS, Microsoft Phone 7 Series, all out or rearing their heads.

I hope it's "aww damnit we should've jumped on the maemo bandwagon earlier"

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

It depends. When things are booming experience is paramount and degrees can be unnecessary. My bachelor's degree was interrupted due to family obligations but until last year it was never a hinderance in getting a job that paid well above what my AAS should have warranted-- even at Nokia. I got credit for experience, certification, etc. But last year with the economic meltdown all that went out the window. I'm really lucky I fell into a job at all. Some of my former colleagues have not been as fortunate, oddly being told they're overqualified while lacking "the proper degree".

Nuts.

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

I hope it's "Man, good thing we can still jump on that Maemo bandwagon yet".

They still don't have the hang of it. Monolithic "firmware" releases is the best sign you are in the wrong age.

When a sued and broken-into-pieces behemoth like MS releases daily for closed source, the bar is pretty high.

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

You're damned-right Nokia is not competing in the current smartphone market.

Hell, at least Apple is responsive about quickly fixing USABILITY BUGS. Something Nokia shoves under the 'monolithic' releases that take 4 months and waiting..

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

Well, depends. More US, less so in other parts of the world. Around here, there's always been a sort of "level" one needs to be before getting a certain job, and this more the rule than the exception (there are plenty exceptions).

Still, the majority of businesses (especially above a few employees) require a certain degree as specs when announcing a job opening and don't even interview without those requirements.

True, however, that our education system is (was) a bit different, more linear. We have since adhered to international standards, substantially lowering the bar for a batch of degrees.

I agree, however, that the scenario listed has more to do with layoffs or restructuring than actual level mismatch.

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

Well the overqualified thing is usually linked to pay. Not to mention some organizations are afraid to hire people with higher degrees since they may be resistant to being trained (or at worst, may ditch the company the moment the find a better opportunity).

Although the same thing can apply to people with lots of experience.

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

My number one pet hate in today's share holder focussed operation of companies. Why the incessant need to grow profits? Huge profits are stile huge profits and if someone doesn't increase their profits the company gets devalued by a drop in share prices. Something is REALLY wrong, but then again I am a liberal, open-source endorsing scientist who values decency not greed.

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

Because the company projects increase of revenue/marketshare/profit in their quarterly reports?

Because most current valuations already take into account future growth?

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

Expand or die isn't a suggestion. Everyone expands and if you don't you die eaten. All the decent companies are now part of an unscrupulous megacorp. So, grain of salt.

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

I think its a mistake to imagine these kinds of decisions are taken to improve the quality of the work being done. A recession is an opportunity to weaken the hands of the workforce.

Demanding high quaifications and preferring low experience is one way of doing this. Now you and many others like you feel lucky to have a job at all and still others wish they had one. This in turn puts pressure on even those with the currently desired qualifications.

If a company doesnt taken these opportunities it grows fat and becomes vunerable to takeover.

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

Actually the article mentions stagnant profit growth, which means the profit growth isn't increasing which make the whole thing even more absurd. This is assumes you build in an exponential model into the planning. Oh dear....

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

Not that I am singling you out or anything, but what the numbers suggest is precisely the inverse: the market is going towards getting smartphones to the masses (C-6 and its cousins, they practically cost nothing to Nokia). That is why RIM gets good numbers quarter after quarter, that is why Microsoft launched its Kin phones. Let´s remember that Nokia sells almost more smartphones than HTC, RIM and Apple combined.

The touch-screen luxury phone market is small and has fierce competition. If you (eventually) don't get to the masses, you will not succeed. That is why Palm ended up being bought by HP, that is why Motorola is crashing; and that is why Apple extended its operations overseas and started giving the iPhone the features the world demanded. You can have 1 or 2 "Apples" in that segment, but not more.

So what Nokia is going to do mostly there, is to release one or two flagships there, for the sake of "saluting the flag", as we say here. There is where MeeGo comes in.... hopefully in time, with enough polish, features, services and specially, innovation.

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

Today's iPhone/Droid/N97 is tomorrow's Moto Razr. Today's top-of-the-line unit is tomorrow's 'Free w/contract' feature phone. Things change very quickly.

That said, in the overall scheme of things, I still believe it's very early in the game. There is time. I've argued before and would again that Nokia is actually ahead of the competition - for the long haul. Nokia has problems, but with MeeGo and Qt they are positioning themselves well for the future - thinking long-term, not next quarter.

They just need to fix everything Ovi, write code like crazy, bring out some ridiculous hardware and advertise like Viagra. Reading this thread, I'm not sure the top suits in management understand this. Certainly the shareholders don't seem to get it.

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

I think that they have shown, over the past four years I would guess, that they are somewhat incapable of executing long term objectives. They commit to Maemo(Fremantle?) then Harmattan(?) and now Meego (Fremantle/Harmattan/Intel). They obviously don't have a clear roadmap to the future and I think it is bad when regular people such as myself are able to spot it. They spread themselves too thin with all these phones. Maybe they should take a play from Apple and release one high end phone a year. A phone that has a stable OS, bleeding edge features, and kick-*** customer support. I think that would do more to shore up the image that people have of Nokia. Sure they can release a thousand mid-range phones but for the $600 price and up they need one device every 12-18 months IMO. They will be known as a value brand, that generic gray and white cereal box on the shelf if they continue in this fashion. They make great entry phones but their high end devices cannot and should not follow the path of these mid range devices. For them to think so long term they shouldn't change their game plan like every day.

"They just need to fix everything Ovi, write code like crazy, bring out some ridiculous hardware and advertise like Viagra. Reading this thread, I'm not sure the top suits in management understand this. Certainly the shareholders don't seem to get it."

The shareholders get it. They see numerous devices getting more attention and they want something done about. They wonder why the N900 has not revolutionized the mobile phone space. They wonder why they have somebody in placce that is dragging their feet to get things done. They bought the company that made QT in 2008? It is 2010 and they are just getting it ready to go? They just released the development kit? I remember reading a thread where they complained about a lack of developer resources? How do you have that when you need to compete with the likes of Apple and the surging Android OS? If they make it hard for the developers then it is going to be hell for end-users. I think Im ranting so I will stop.

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

That is exactly what is happening now. Nokia is secure in the mid-range because they can easily migrate their previous high-end there, with almost zero costs in R&D.

However they need something to in the high end, to replace their previous offerings, and that is MeeGo (and maybe Symbian^3 and 4 handsets).

I am guessing there is going to be a converging point, either near the end of this year or the beginning of the next, when the following things should be ready, and roughly around the same time:

- A polished Symbian^3 handset, with previews of the S^4.
- The MeeGo device.
- Revamped services (Ovi, SDK's etc).

They still have time IMO, but not much.

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

Sorry, I haven't gone yet through the 150 posts. Can someone explain what Nokia has to do with the LG GW990?

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

Fremantle and Harmattan are simply codenames for versions of Maemo. The codename for Maemo 5 was "Fremantle", and the "Harmattan" codename was announced long ago for Maemo 6. If it helps to understand the situation, your complaint here would be similar to declaring Microsoft unable to plan for the future due to the fact they released Windows 2000 Professional (codename "Memphis") and then Windows XP (codename "Whistler").

MeeGo is a cooperative project, in which Nokia and Intel are major players, to create and maintain a common foundation (Linux + additional standardized layers) upon which companies may build their own user interfaces and applications for retail products. Though it will not use the MeeGo-standard package format, Harmattan will be MeeGo as it uses the MeeGo software stack and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

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

The best way for a company to avoid being stuck with dead wood is by way of voluntary, NOT involuntary reduction (other than firing for things like incompetence). Layoffs that fail to take all critical factors into account wind up getting rid of the bad with the good.

That's stupid.

In my first professional job, after 7 years I got caught in the last of several rounds of layoffs. A new supervisor who felt threatened by my team leadership promoted me just before the layoff decisions. Turns out being at the bottom of any given job class was enough to qualify an employee for being cut. I had just turned in an innovative process improvement estimated to save the company $250,000 per year.

In a later job I got a major promotion after several years hard work. I was running our local PDM operations in Dallas. During a regular meeting my boss informed me that he was puzzled by our new director's remark that he felt I was paid too much for a "clerk" (I was an administrator and had 2 clerks reporting to me). I informed my boss that what it meant was I would be in the next round of layoffs. My boss laughed and said no way: he needed me badly and had secured my salary for at least 2 more years. Three days later I was laid off, and my boss was stunned. They had never even asked him. Want to know what I found out about the criteria? The CFO organized the layoffs; the top 1 or 2 wage earners in every department were to be cut regardless of history, role, whatever. I had just submitted a new invention for patent consideration (part of my prior role) and had saved the company tens of thousands of dollars in innovative process improvements.

About Nokia I will only say I was told the criteria was being American and having moved from factory operations to timezone (and then global). Supposedly our services were only needed temporarily, and most of the global roles were meant to actually be local eventually. Well, that made sense for most of the roles-- but some of us really did have actual global roles. I performed mine from the Dallas office, my house, Starbucks, the side of any random road, Helsinki, Mexico and Paris. My boss still calls me periodically to express how hard it is for him without my innovative help.

The prior examples are of course anecdotal but I have asked a LOT of people for their experiences, and it turns out I'm not alone. Companies aren't getting rid of employees who make them "fat and vulnerable to takeover"-- they KEEP those people because they're invisible. Somehow those of us who actually give a crap wind up getting the axe. The ones who WANT to keep our employers lean and agile.

To bring this back to topic, I hope OPK isn't pushed out so casually. I disagreed with him on some strategies (like his opposition to lean platforming) but I respected him as a leader. I'd work under him again any day.

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

The LG GW990 in the title actually has nothing to do with anything in the thread whatsoever. It seems to be there to confuse people who haven't read the 150 posts ;)

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

Thats not what I meant. I have no doubt that you contributed meaningfully there and elsewhere.

I meant they dont care whether they get rid of good workers. That is irrelevent. The idea is to squeeze their employees in terms of salary and perceived stability.

If you look at the backstory of the movie, Wall Street, you see that they are trying to show that a company who treats its employees generously leaves itself vunerable. I was trying to make a similar point. When I say fat I am not at all referring to the quality of the workforce. Clearly getting rid of experienced employees is nuts if thats all you care about.

I am not trying to support such behavior. The system is nuts is what I mean.

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

... you know, this is something i dont quite understand with modern economy:

market share goes up, profit goes up.... but for some reason (probably more related to crystal balls than to facts) stocks go down in price. It's the market that decicedes about the value of the shares, right? not the management? why don't investors fire themselves instead of the management that made everything that matters about the company better than worse?

probably the whole concept of shares and stock corporations is a leftover from early days of industrialisation and should be made a criminal offence. it doesn't seem right to anybody that money (without vision, reason and sanity) rules.

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

That's because the crystal ball showed even bigger profits than the ones reported. I.e the price was future loaded.