[hippiefahrzeug]

I think Elop's greatest achievement is to sell people the "There is no money in being an Android vendor"-lie. And people are actually buying it.

WP market is much much smaller, so, by becoming a big player in this market, which Nokia achieved in very little time, they became in fact a big player in a market where there really is no money.

Had they instead of this focused on becoming a big player in a market that actually matters, e.g. the Android market, then Nokia may still (or again) be worth a lot. (But then they wouldn't be a cheap take-over target for Microsoft.)

With Nokias connection to telcoms, they could have easily achieved a big chunk of the android market share.

[threeseed]

Hilarious. How is that river of money working out for HTC, Sony, LG, Motorola ?

[hippiefahrzeug]

Remind me: which company has just been sold for peanuts after trying the WP strategy?

[tanzam75]

Motorola tried the Android strategy, and got sold for even fewer peanuts.

Specifically, for $12.5 billion, minus $2.4 billion for the set-top box business, minus $3.4 billion in net cash, minus $2.5 billion for tax assets. Actual cost to Google: $4.2 billion.

Compared to Nokia: €5.4 bilion = $7.2 billion.

[hippiefahrzeug]

Nokia was massively larger than Motorola. (Look at historical market cap data. In year 2000: Nokia > $200B vs Motorola ~$80B).

Nokia was the market leader in smartphones before they went WP. They were larger than Apple and Samsung combined and then some more. Motorola wasn't a big factor in the smartphone business. Google bought them for their patents, certainly not for their mismanaged smartphone strategy. So, Motorola went from 0% smartphone market share to roughly 3% with Android. (Nothing to write home about, but you can't blame this on Android.)

Nokia on the other side was at 34% when they decided to go all in on WP, and look where they are now: 3%. Nokia's fall is of historic proportions. Motorola's fall doesn't even come close.

[tanzam75]

Installed base became meaningless after the iPhone changed the game. Everybody started out at 0% of a brand-new market -- including Nokia. That's why it's known as disruptive innovation.

Nokia's mistake wasn't in killing Symbian for smartphones in 2011. It was in not killing Symbian in 2009 or 2008. But it's hard to give up that market share and start from zero.

In cases of disruption, high market share is actually a disadvantage, because you stick with your existing product longer than you should.

[hippiefahrzeug]

I appreciate your engagement in this discussion, but you can't be serious now: Of course the iPhone was a game changer, but that doesn't reset everything to 0. Nokia's brand recognition, Nokia's relationships with telcos and their vast distribution channels... these things don't go flying out of the window just because of the iPhone, and it certainly wasn't a disadvantage.

As for Nokia killing Symbian: To publicly announce a year before you actually ship the next product, that your current products are now obsolete - huge mistake! I don't think there is any dispute on this.

But we digress: I strongly believe that if you do it right there is money to be made as an Android vendor (don't forget those emerging companies from China, Huawei, xiaomi,...), but there is no money in WP. Nokia did a brilliant job with their Lumias, but they just won't sell without the right OS.

[devcpp]

You could come up with many examples of failed companies with devices based on Android. This may just mean that they did something wrong (bad devices, advertising, etc). However, the companies that were successful (e.g Samsung) prove him right.