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

As quoted from Engadget,
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/30/c...-wont-be-made/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/30/n...othe-frustrat/
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...63T1F820100430
"Well, here's a surprise: Reuters says Nokia might consider replacing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in order to please unhappy shareholders who don't see the cellphone giant effectively competing in the smartphone market. The report is mostly based on analyst chatter and doesn't provide any hard sources, but we've certainly seen analysts swarm around blood in the water like this in the past, so it's not totally out of the question -- especially given core concerns about Symbian^3 delays, stagnant profit growth, and (uh oh) competing against the iPhone. What's more, OPK pledged to build up Nokia's US presence when he took over, and he's obviously failed to deliver on that promise -- US marketshare has fallen from 20 percent to 7 percent, prompting one analyst quoted in the Reuters piece to wonder if "Nokia really has the desire to fix the problem." Ouch. That's a lot of big questions with no easy answers -- OPK is scheduled to speak to shareholders next week, we'll see what he has to say. "

I think that sums up a lot of people's feeling concerning Nokia lately. People are worrying about Meego and the devices. Shareholders are upset and Nokia has lost %13 of their market share in the United States. They are delaying everything they do for some odd reason. They might be losing it.

What do you guys think? Are you worried about Meego and Maemo? Will Nokia lag behind?

P.S. I'm not on either camp as I am not a fanboy nor a troller(idk). Just a tech geek. I genuinely want to know what you think about the situation.

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

Kallasvuo may indeed be fired to appease shareholders, but it would be "unfair" in the sense that we'll have a much better view of the situation when the N8 reaches consumers and the Harmattan device is revealed.

Right now people are angry based on one prototype preview written in really bad taste.

Should Nokia have changed its course sooner? Yes. But why punish someone when the changes are finally starting to bear fruit? For his sake, I hope people have just a bit more patience and that S^3 and MeeGo are as good as they should be.

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

Firing OPK now would be either too late or too soon. He made the bets on Symbian Foundation, Meego and Services. That strategy will or will not mature 1H2011. I would give him time until summer 2011.

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

People = Americans
Wut?

.edit
Sometimes when reading stuff online i feel like that there is nothing else than USA and its market.

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

It's based on Reuters article wrtitten by Tarmo Virki. A finn based in Helsinki, Finland. He uses finnish and other european analysts in the article, not just americans.

So, no.

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

I like in what direction things are going technology-wise, and (not being a shareholder) couldn't care less whether Nokia is making profits and maintaining market shares. It would be a shame if a change in management torpedoes the progress that has been made in the recent year, and directs the company to more lucrative but also dumber products that have (temporarily) gained popularity in the last couple of years.

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

I am simply not sure who to blame for the down spiral of Nokia share... I guess everybody should be fired.

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

"..week rushed out details of its new flagship N8 model, which failed to impress the market."

Weird. I have read quite many blogs and user comments that are just in awe of new n8. Eldar just made clown of himself. Maybe I have just read wrong forums :|

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

This, along with "if you don't like it, buy an iPhone" is repeated here often. But the fact is we should all care - a lot.

Market share will directly impact future third party services that may not otherwise be available to us, scale will enable Nokia to polish the devices we want to buy, and profitability is the only thing that can convince Nokia to continue on this path.

The often dismissive attitude towards Symbian is also dangerous. MeeGo is still very much dependent on Symbian's market share to drive application development with Qt, and we should be extremely grateful that a proper Linux distro has this asset behind it. There's no other way it will ever break into the mass market.

And now that Symbian is free software too, surely we should stand behind both of them, and hope Nokia retakes every last bit of ground it has lost.

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

They did not just "lose 13% of their marketshare".
Their market share dropped from 20% to 7%.

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

I really dont care as long as they release PR 1.2 soon.

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

Meh...I never feel sorry for CEO's getting the boot. I'm sure the 7-8 digit "+" severance packages will help soften the blow of any gaps in employment.

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

Agreed, but the US is starting a boom in network infrastructure build out, based on the early stages of "smartphone" boom. The telco/data/hardware/networking market will see a dramatic boom "over here" as "we" move to more converged internet-access/communication devices.

Other than that, for US based news services, 99% of what goes on outside US borders is not covered at length. Sux having to watch DTM races "6 months" after the season ends.

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

I don't know about that. I think I'd be pretty mad if I was fired just before my major improvement initiatives were done, compensation or not.

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

Semantics. 20-7=13? Lost, dropped, removed, whatever. It is still the same. Why argue on a point like that?

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

No, it is an important distinction. Losing 13 points of share is not the equivalent of losing 13% of share, it is more like losing 65%...

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

Think of it this way: Nokia had 20% of overall share. Losing 13% of that part is miniscule. But what they actually lost was 13% of overall market share. That's significant.

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

And that is exactly why things are kept in wraps until released.

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

This guy did well on his GRE....

so did this guy...

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

What do you mean will Nokia lag behind? Nokia IS lagging behind and if you look through the window to you right you can see the scenery going forward.

Nokia used to be synonymous to quality, innovation, and the bleeding edge.

Nokia hasn't innovated anything in years. Some perfecting has been done, true, but mostly that, polishing old OSs, mixing this that we have with that that we have, things like that.

We've had Communicators for how many years? Get a keyboard and a wide screen, flip or slide, put our latest OS on it and it's easy living to paycheck. Cookie cutter phones. And they are getting progressively worse compared to the year they released.

Not the best phone. Not the best OS. Not the best app base. Not the best battery, not the best camera (Maybe N8). Nothing here is peak any more save for the price.

Nokia used to sell phones one full generation ahead of everyone for just a few bucks more. Everyone else was a joke. Giants fused together to take 10% off its market. When phones were 1-line of text, Nokia had graphical screens. When they had graphical, Nokia had color. When VGA cams popped up in other phones, Nokia was pushing 1.0, then 1.3 MPx. When they had buttons, Nokia implemented scrollers, then joysticks. 7110 had a middle scroll when mice had 3 buttons.

Now? Same screen as competition, save for few tweaks. Keyboard, few tweaks. USB. Camera (has 3 more FPS). Linux-based OS, like them. Battery. That's it. You look at competitors and at Nokia and frankly, prejudice aside, you have to really think it over. There is no net advantage.

Where is that next-generation company? They should be selling dual core Atom phones with Windows XP and Ubuntu. And with years of perfecting, Symbian should be a decent 3rd choice. Or a finished Maemo. You know, the kind of finished where you have a video call, MMS, conference call, video ringtones. And some apps. Nokia has no apps. A few that come with the OS and that's it. We have to figure it out ourselves. Sometimes without documentation.

Nokia still lives off it's age. The name still means something, they have a good Care Center coverage, and are still associated with good quality parts in this part of the world.

A company that has 8 of the 10 most sold phones in the world is actually getting a run for its money. If this isn't lagging behind I don't know what is.

I'm much better now.

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

Oh, one more thing.

iPhone has a model a year. The whole team works on it. If you wonder why their device is finished and polished, wonder no more.

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

Nokia also used to be synonymous with cheep, low-end candy bar phones with cute interchangeable faceplates, depending on how far back you go. They did what a lot of companies do, they evolved and moved quickly when they were a young company, found a sweet spot, and drove it home. Now that they're larger, it's harder to steer the boat, and smaller upstarts are slowly eating their lunch.

I give you all but the last one. One of the key attractors for me was that their Linux based OS was not like "them". (By "them" I assume you mean Android.) If you've played with Android at all, you'd know it's not at all like Linux. It's more akin to programing for J2ME on the older Nokia lines. Lots of APIs and "openness", but you're still stuck in your sandbox, relying on the mothership's API to talk to the outside world.

I do agree with you though, that they need to stop thrashing about and get their ducks in a row. Pick an OS, innovate again on new platforms (Atom is a decent idea), and focus on taking back market share by out-doing your competitors (which includes marketing...) I think they're starting to get it though, and could see MeeGo taking them in the right direction. I just hope they step it up soon.

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

Agreed. Times have changed, though, and the huge mass of the phone market hovers around the middle. Back then, you had 1, 2 for low, 3 for decent, 5-6 for middle, 7 for pro, 8 for slick and 9 for business.

And while the 1 broke the market, it was still a king among phones. Cheap, rugged, full of features and had stuff years ahead of its time. Flashlight, self-editing ringtones, simple interface, vibration, built-in AOL chat (!), "Other features include a 50-message capacity (inbox and drafts, with 25 messages in the sent items folder), alarm, stopwatch, calculator, 6 profiles, contacts storage (capacity 50, with the ability to assign different tones and icons to different contacts), and games (Snake II and Space Impact+)".

Items in bold are missing from N900 out of the box. And I wasn't a bastard, either, to list 400 hrs standby and wap, that were ahead of its time, but one can't expect a platform like N900 to last that long.

Agreed. But Maemo isn't too much like Linux either. More so, but not alike. I wouldn't want Android on my phone, frankly.

What I meant was we have the same ground level of technology. Modified Linux kernel. Back in the golden days, when Nokia launched 7650, the first ever true smart phone, competition was still rubbing sticks together.

Man that 7650 was sweet. Smart, reliable, slide-up camera, good uptime, barely-touch joystick, customizable menu, the works. Polished, too. Don't remember waiting for the third OS release to see who sent me a message. Don't remember ever flashing it either. Don't remember it crashing, either.

Wonder if it still boots.

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

I think that NOKIA was too long looking around and wated to participate in every single part of electronical devices.

Navigation systems, booklet (which is not bad but too expensive) but lost the track of the point that made them big. Innovation
Geeze who remembers the quadric phone which was so ugly but oh well was something new, never seen before.
Or N-gage phones when you took a call you looked like Mickey Mouse :)
But as said before there was technical innovation as well.

And still NOKIA is trying to get everybody happy with the phone they want. Look at the many models compared to other Manufacturers. Why? Make some phones but make them great and you in again.

I really look also forward to Symbian 3 it looks like it will be better then what has been seen before.

Lets keep the track :)

BR

Wolfpac

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

Come again??

I'll give you the UI is different than most desktop/window managers; but once you go into shell it is Linux. It may be busybox for most of it but the commands are there, and if it's missing one a simple recompile will fix it.

The UI on Android is different... and then you go to a terminal and... Oh yeah - that's totally different too.

One of the biggest reasons I like Maemo is that once I'm in a terminal it's nearly identical to my Ubuntu Desktop. Want SSH with keys? Oh, all I gotta do is SCP over my ~/.ssh directory.. exactly like I already do!

Want SSH keys with Android? Hold on... I need to go figure out this app.....

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

While I guess it's kinda sad that a guy as obviously dedicated to company as OPK is (having spent about half his life working for Nokia) may soon be buttered toast, I certainly don't feel sorry for him. He won't have any problem scraping together the change for his next burger and fries.

The Good...or my take on what Nokia's doing right regarding the smartphone business...

1. I think Nokia's on the right path with MeeGo + Symbian + Qt. and just needs time for the plan to work.
2. The Symbian microkernel OS is fine for mid to low end hardware, i.e. smartphones for the masses. Great OS for limited hardware.
3. The more complete, capable but demanding Maemo/MeeGo OS is great for high to midrange hardware, i.e. iPhone competitors. The best mobile OS of all for top hardware.
4. Qt ties it all together (and with other OSs).
5. Open-sourcing everything helps bring other companies on board. A fine plan.

The Bad...or my take on what's wrong...

1. The services end of things is an incomplete, undefined, unusable mess. Ovi services, Ovi store - Ovi everything..WTF is it? I still can't hardly tell, much less actually use any of it. The Total Fail that is Ovi is the single biggest problem in trying to compete with Apple or Google and their gaggle of apps and services. Not hardware, not Symbian/Maemo/MeeGo - Ovi. Unbelievable.
2. The plan is taking too long to get deployed on devices. Now, I don't think it's too late, I think it's actually still very early in this game. But the perception by the media - and therefore stockholders - is not much is going on while their stock is dropping. And everything these days is instant gratification, what have you done for me lately? Nokia/Intel really needs to kick MeeGo development into high gear.
3. The N8 and Symbian^3 are late to the party. It's a weak enough effort that a single post from a Russian blogger has Nokia on the defensive and stockholders calling for the CEO's head on a platter. Unlike the N900, there's no killer hardware or nifty new OS, not much new or exciting there to grab attention away from competitors. And with Ovi a non-factor, it's seriously handicapped from the start.
4. Marketing, or rather, the total lack of it. In the US especially, advertising is everything. It's how the Emperor Jobs gets all the iSheeple to feed from the iTrough. For the N8 to make an impact, Nokia must offer it through carrier stores and make it, well, cheap. Take a loss on every one sold if necessary to build buzz and awareness. Advertise!! Otherwise buyers will grab Android stuff so they can use Google Maps and load up on apps.

So Nokia just needs to fix Ovi, code like crazy, bring out some ridiculous hardware and advertise like Viagra. No big deal, friggin' piece of cake. Anyway, that's my take, from an American point of view and who has no particular fondness for Nokia or any other manufacturer. They're just a business.

Sorry for the long post. Congrats to anyone crazy enough to give a flying fig about what I think to make it to the end of this.

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

I would say, congrats to Eldar on single handledly damaging Nokia so badly.

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

Since this is about OPK, it's also worth pointing out that Nokia's marketshare in USA was allready way below that 20% by the time he got the CEO position.

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

Ok so the question becomes - Was it below 7%?

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

Apple is global leader in intellectual mobile phones, Nokia is global leader in mechanical mobile phones.
Products by Nokia are no more hot is they lack inttelectually added value.

Next global leader in mobile worlds is HTE.
My friends run mobile outlets and still buy second hand Nokia but payinguch less than in previous year.

World goes LTE, SIP phone, Europe goes roaming free,
world goes flat rate, charging pocket money for prepaid flat rate plan.

I develop 3G IVVR apps, systems as 3G video calls are charged in Europe as voice only calls.

GSM standard is closed.
It makes no sense to charge for GSM digital voice calls as at the same time 3G data transfer is charged at pocket money.
Moving GSM calls to data channels, to LTE can let us forget about any fees for mobile calls.

Asterisk and SIP softphones are a good example how to manage global corporations and pocket money for corporate phone calls.

The same for virtual call center, pbx, ivr, ivvr,
telemarketing.

We don't need more mno vmo mobile phone models as markets are full of low intellectual products.

Hot is ipad and a series of mobile tablets.

Hot is solar charging, mobile charging, fast charging, airnergy.
Hot is not netbook.
Hot is not 3G laptop by Nokia.

Nokia lacks hot intellectual products like iPod touch, iPhone, ipad ...

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

N900 is not netbook or laptop.

iPad? please, don't promote that crap...

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

to say that nokia then should use intel hardware and windows os to compete is in my eyes very weird.

That is at least one thing they shouldnt do.. Intel is quite ready yet.

No if they want to release a phone this year for Maemo that is ahead of anything else then that would be an N900 plus:

1> dual core Cortex A9
2> 512MB (or better 786MB) real memory (besides 512MB or 786MB swap)
3> 512MB root fs (or really 1 big memory of 32GB+ that is fast, instead of that 256MB NAND flash + 32GB)
4> 4 row keyboard
5> real compass

The phone could be a bit bigger screen and maybe a bit bigger overall, but a little bit less thick.

But the thing is that currently it is not really the hardware that does it, its the software.
So lets hope that Meego can so some great things on the hardware that i just described above.

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

That's too funny, thanks.

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

Which is just peachy for the -like- 4 of us, but it matters zero for the rest of them 1 billion phone users.

Few ever SSH. I don't, for example, because I'm on Windows and, while SSH is available and installed, it's not my first choice. I have VNC bound to Alt+Ctrl+V.

Linux-alikeness and the ability to build your own apps is great for a minority and does little to nothing to overturn Nokia's descending trend nor it's image as trailblazers. Neo Freerunner has Linux, 2 accelerometers, touch, and it boots to text only. Sold 10.000 units and died off. Guess why.

I couldn't care less you can rebuild ls to run on N900. I can't, I don't even have C installed (though a programmer 15 years now). What I do care about, however, is the fact that, as a user, I see 3 OSs, with 3 different app bases, and 3 different UIs. Linux, Android and Maemo. They don't cross-run apps, so they are different to me. I am the average user.

To me, the average user, b/ash is a novelty, a nice touch. It should never be there. There's a touchscreen, I plan to use it. It's a phone slash internet tablet, not a pocket compile farm, not a geek curiosity. I should only be in the terminal to work around a bug that is going to be patched tomorrow.

Anyway, the reason it was listed there, as I said, was because we all run the same generation OS and the same underlying tech. Nokia used to be further up.

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

Nokia has no one else to blame but themselves. Maybe this will wake them up (they do have a good history of re-inventing themselves)

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

Heh. Although I don't get his "hot is... hot not.." spiel, I've to agree that the iPad is something else.

Apple really hit many great points with that slate implementation. Don't underestimate the iPad... cause iPad's advantages don't show up in its specs or description.

I've used it for almost 3 weeks now and... I've found plenty to like on it, even though it exists within apple's golden jail.

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

If that was about my post, you misunderstand. Nokia doing Windows would be odd. What I meant was that to me x86 is superior to ARM not in horsepower or anything, but because it would give me the freedom to choose my own OS, and, with it, my own app base.

If I'm a Windows user and a Windows programmer, the ability to run XP on a portable would mean everything to me, because I could run projects I developed myself, like logging on at home to check the temperature sensors and program the heating system. It's home to me, I know the apps, I know the UI, I know the little kinks.

I don't suggest Nokia should use Windows. I used x86 as the thing I perceive as the next step. The netbooks getting smaller meeting the phones getting smarter. Replace x86 with whatever you think is the next step in technology.

@egoshin
You actually understood that? Must be my English, all I got was unrelated sentences about European GSM.

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

I would not say that iPad has nothing. But if we take off the niche which is covered by netbooks and "kindles" (iPad has a similar form factor as netbooks or Kindle) then nothing new is in it. OK, Kindle has a slow screen and can't be used to watch video in bed.

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

They are re-inventing themselves, and the fact that the N8 was being kept under-wraps is because they aren't done with that yet. Now look how much they had to disclose early.

Every single bit of criticism and bad press Nokia has received would be fair, if they had released the N8 right now as it is. But that it not the case (and even the most complaints for eye candy can be addressed with theming...).

The N8 is part of a bigger family of which we don't know anything yet. I would bet solid gold that they even didn't intend to present it as its flagship (a place that is for the MeeGo device); and that it was going to be announced as part of that.

All in all, I am glad the MeeGo device is stil in hiding.

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

Yes, ALWAYS only one step for some great "coming soon" dreams.