Wow, the comments here are just, well not very hacker new'sish.
Lots of glib one liners about mistakes with no actual commentary as to why its a bad idea.
Or jokes about how Microsoft is a negative brand, or the devil.
Here's the thing.
1) Microsoft didn't buy permanent use of the Nokia brand so they need to brand as something.
2) the Microsoft brand is very strong and positive with most demographics. Heck most people in tech that I respect now admit that Microsoft is a pretty good company now, both to work for and for their products.
If you have a problem with the brand, then layout your point but putting out a single sentence isn't very helpful.
OK, here is why this is one of the worst, yet completely willful deals ever in tech:
1. Microsoft does not need Nokia. Anyone can work with an ODM to develop and manufacture a high quality smartphone, tablet, or PC.
2. Microsoft didn't even get "Nokia." After a short transition, the brand stays with the rest of Nokia.
3. Microsoft didn't get the patents.
4. Microsoft didn't get the ecosystem. No maps. No Music. No app store.
5. Microsoft got only a very short period of exclusivity. In 2016, around the time Jolla will have matured their business enough to spin back in to Nokia, which is still a large telecom company, Nokia gets to go back into making phones. Meanwhile, Jolla is where you will see Nokia's ecosystem on phones.
6. Microsoft gets ALL of Nokia's legacy phone business. Series 30. The briefly prospering and now dying Asha. Old Series 40. And the factories that make these devices. "Here ya go, Satya. Have fun with this. I'm outta here!"
7. Microsoft gets an interesting but under-developed Android -based successor to Asha. Microsoft will kill it. But they should keep it and allow it to compete against Windows Phone. The important thing is for Micrsoft to have an attractive ecosystem, and an internal competitor to Windows Phone that drives development of a Microsoft ecosystem accessible to Android users would be good for Microsoft. Maybe Satya Nadella is daring enough to keep it. But I would not bet on that happening.
8. It was a shotgun wedding. It was all about the downside of Nokia abandoning or de-emphasizing Windows Phone.
Windows Phone isn't worth saving. Bringing the Microsoft ecosystem to many phone platforms is what should be happening.
I don't get this line of thinking. Microsoft should pack up their efforts to build their own full-service ecosystem and commit to being a player on Google and Apple's ecosystems, but Nokia should commit themselves to putting their entire ecosystem on freaking JOLLA? If Windows Phone is a failure, Jolla is a conga line of ten failures walking straight off a cliff.
Microsoft seem to have been moving towards an Apple-like vertical integration strategy, and the buyout of Devices & Services seems consistent with this.
As part of the buyout, Microsoft have bought the rights to use the patents, and have the option of extending these rights in perpetuity.
Why would Microsoft want a Microsoft ecosystem accessible to Android users?
Windows Phone market share has increased year on year, why isn't it worth 'saving' (I don't think it needs saving, but rather, cultivating)?
>5. Microsoft got only a very short period of exclusivity. In 2016, around the time Jolla will have matured their business enough to spin back in to Nokia, which is still a large telecom company, Nokia gets to go back into making phones. Meanwhile, Jolla is where you will see Nokia's ecosystem on phones.
If only. The thought of this possibility will cheer me up all day today.
Per http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/sep13/09-02an... they did buy use of the brand, but only for current products. So if they want to come out with anything new, it's got to have a Lumia or Asha brand, which they bought outright, or something else, like Microsoft.
It was Nokia's branding that managed to keep Windows Phone alive all this time, and the fact that thanks to inertia most people still recalled Nokia as being the #1 phone brand before the iPhone came around, so they kept buying "Nokias" regardless of what OS they had. If it wasn't for that, WP would've never passed the 2 percent mark, and it would've probably started to die off 2 years ago.
It will be interesting to see how Microsoft manages to go from selling "Nokia phones" that everyone immediately recognizes, to "Microsoft phones" - which isn't a strong consumer brand at all. I have to mention everytime that Microsoft is the company that makes that Windows thing on their PC when I tell normal people about it.
At least in the US, consumer choice is significantly limited by the carriers, so I'm not convinced that sales are very brand-driven. Even the same model might use completely different hardware in the US than the rest of the world.
I bought my Windows Phone as an alternative to Android and iOS. The fact that it was a well-made Nokia was a certainly a bonus and an influencing factor, but I had no brand loyalty at the time. I always call it my "Windows Phone" in conversation and never mention Nokia or Microsoft, so it's possible the hardware rebranding will go unnoticed by the average consumer, as well.
Carrier lock-in is falling rapidly. T-Mobile is leading that charge, another lagging brand (say, Sprint, if it gets its act together) might go with it next.
You can buy a basic phone, unlocked, no contract, for $30 from any vendor. Get a prepaid plan and you're free of contracts. Even smartphones are now well under $100.
My own approach has been to ditch the smartphone (too intrusive, too much advertising, too much spyware, crap battery life), got with a basic "feature" phone (14 day standby). I'm looking for a decent tablet, though my old Android serves that role now -- access to WiFi is pretty decent, and accessing locally-stored content (music, books, and articles) is the most productive use I've got for the device.
Form-factor of a tablet, plus a Bluetooth keyboard, fits the actual data uses of a phone far better than a smartphone. The feature phone is tiny, cheap, and ultimately disposable.
I think it is interesting that there are indeed people on both sides. Some bought Lumias because they were Nokias, some bought Lumias because they were Windows Phones.
Generally speaking (as a Nokia employee on the front lines) I've found that either side will deny the existence or usefulness of the the other.
Well... to say it is not a strong brand "at all" it is not true. I can accept more "it is not strong on the mobile phones scope"
Also, can nokia keep producing phone or just recreate a mobile division with another os? (like rebuying Jolla) If yes, it would really be a problem for microsoft, nokia branding really saved the ass of wp for the first years
Windows Phone 7 was released in around November 1, 2010. Dell, HTC, and Samsung all shipped devices at launch. The first Nokia devices shipped in April 2012. By that time Windows phone 7.5, Mango, was available and that's what they ran.
Although this may seem like a massive mistake, that's because we all associate Microsoft as a negative brand, I think you're forgetting that it's associated with negativity in tech circles only. 95%+ of consumers see Microsoft as a huge corporation they can trust. If you asked your parent whether they think Microsoft is a good brand, the answer would likely be "Yes".
I've long had a negative view of Microsoft, yes. But beginning in the ~2005 period, I started hearing some strongly critical views of the company in non-technical contexts -- one of the most notable was an aside made on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". Notable because 1) it was apparently spontaneous, 2) it was from a non-technical panelist, and 3) the specific comment was to the effect that Microsoft had a negative brand equity.
If anything, that's a trend that's accelerated and increased since then. Microsoft was the brand you had to use, not the one you wanted to use. It was familiar, but that can, as is said, breed contempt. Microsoft's direct consumers since the late 1980s have largely been OEMs and corporate CTOs / CIOs, not its end-users, and when it's tried direct mass-market products, it's failed hugely.
It's last significant unalloyed mass-market success was really Windows 95, and even that benefited largely from the utter unsuitability of alternatives: Windows 3.11, Apple (at its nadir and very nearly dead), Linux (far too techy). BeOS, Amiga, or OS/2 might have presented a preferable alternative, but Microsoft fought extremely hard to ensure that could not happen.
No, it's not just the techies.
Outside of gaming and partisans, Microsoft has really lost its brand.
I wonder if that means that other vendors like samsung/lg/huawei/... will not manufacture windows phones anymore as the name "Microsoft Mobile" sounds to me like there are no other vendors that can install MS WP systems on their devices. Any idea?
In the build 2014 they announced a list of 12-14 vendors that are about to ship some new wp8.1, so I think that's not the case.
Surely the fact that now MS control also the HW and can produce phones directly will not encourage, in the mid-long term, other manufacturers to use that os, also if it is license free.
They can use Nokia brand only for few years, they don't have rights for it. It was known right from the beginning of this selling story that Nokia brand will disappear from mobile devices industry. Only the remaining parts of Nokia, not sold to Microsoft (part working on localization services etc.), will be able to continue to use this name.
Correct. But IIRC when acquisition was announced, they said that Microsoft would have license for using Nokia name only for Series 30/40 phones, so there would be Microsoft Ashas, Microsoft Lumias and Microsoft Nokias as 3 product lines. Later news media reported rumours about negotiations for additional licenses.
How is the brand valuable in a practical sense? On the other hand, it has plenty of negative association as a company that tried and failed to compete with Samsung and Apple.
If they really wanted to compete with Apple Inc in terms of branding. They should rather have renamed Microsoft to Nokia. It's not only catchy, but also Nokia is essentially a hardware vendor brand much like the Apple Inc.
Surface phone or something else but Microsoft Mobile? It's horrible from a marketing point of view. It would only work if Microsoft had beaten Apple and Android to the market.
Nokia did not transform from a device company to a software company well enough. A big part of the damage was caused by decisions made long before Elop.
Very true (OPK was the one who really set Nokia up for failure) but at this point I think it is safe to say that Nokia could certainly have done better under Elop's tenure than it had
But then again, memories of Nokia being actually any good will not be tainted by Microsoft Phone, and if Microsoft Phone fails it can be resurrected as NeoNokia..
I can afford any phone I want, but I hated my (2.1) Android and couldn't read any text on the (iOS 6) iPhone even with my glasses on, so I bought a Nokia Lumia 920 with WP8. So far, I have no regrets, although the decision might have been harder if iOS 7 had been released at the time, with its flat UI.
I support Android, iOS and WP8 phones in my household and the Nokia/Windows Phone 8 is by far the most problem-free, which is ironic because I won't let anyone in the house near a Windows computer without supervision; I normally use Linux and switched the rest of my family to Macs.
Because that's what I was using (and leaving) at the time. The Galaxy S III was the leading contender, in fact, but my negative experiences with Android 1.6 and 2.1 (from bad to worse) factored against it. I later supported an S3 for a few months that was buggy and unreliable, so I was happy I didn't get it instead.
It just strikes me as unfair to use a several year old OS as a comparison. I know how terrible WM6 was, but I'm not applying that experience to the current WM8.
I was trying to put my purchase in context. At that time, I had been locked in a 2 year contract that only got me as far as Android 2.1, which was already obsolete by the time the carrier (AT&T) finally allowed me to update from 1.6. So my options were Android 4.x (fool me twice?), iOS 6 (hated the UI) or Windows Phone (loved the UI and updates weren't being significantly delayed or blocked).
And your analogy is apt. Imagine walking into a computer store today and they're selling PCs with Windows 98 preinstalled with the promise you can upgrade to Vista as "soon" as the manufacturer allows it (currently delayed until they rewrite some incompatible adware). That's what the US smartphone market feels like (or did then), especially with Android.
it's not about hipsters. Its about anyone under 40 wanting to seem cool and get apple products. In my classes everyone has iphones and macbooks, not because they are all "hipsters".
Lots of glib one liners about mistakes with no actual commentary as to why its a bad idea. Or jokes about how Microsoft is a negative brand, or the devil.
Here's the thing.
1) Microsoft didn't buy permanent use of the Nokia brand so they need to brand as something.
2) the Microsoft brand is very strong and positive with most demographics. Heck most people in tech that I respect now admit that Microsoft is a pretty good company now, both to work for and for their products.
If you have a problem with the brand, then layout your point but putting out a single sentence isn't very helpful.