[JVIDEL]

I'll never understand why Nokia thought that going with WP was a better strategy than forking android like amazon did.

Think about it: it would have the openness and stability of Linux with the single hardware configuration and quality of the iPhone, total win-win.

Now they are going to android as the cheap option which means only crappy hardware that only "looks" like a lumia.

Had Nokia gone the other way it would be in an even better position than Samsung Mobile is in now, mostly thanks to it's vastly superior software resources.

Then again the exact same thing could be said about RIM.

[Zigurd]

It was all about Stephen Elop's career trajectory, which was supposed to land him where Satya Nadella is now.

[nextos]

Or going full steam ahead with their Maemo / MeeGo which Elop killed. It was an excellent product: http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review.

In fact, N9s still retail for pretty high amounts despite being unsupported and outdated hardware.

[sgloutnikov]

One of my favorite phones along with the N95. The overall design of the whole product is pure genius in my opinion. Sad what happened to it. I own two of them, and use the N9 from time to time when I feel nostalgic.

I think they could have kept working on it on the side, and released a phone every 1-2 years. Even with the minimal size MeeGo team at Nokia, they released 3 major updates.

[rayiner]

> In fact, N9s still retail for pretty high amounts despite being unsupported and outdated hardware.

So do Neo-Geos. Nobody cares how high you can price products that'll only be purchased by a few fanboys.

[pessimizer]

http://neo900.org/ is costing me a fortune. Nokia really did something right smoothly moving their pre-iPhone mini-tablets forward into the new all-screen smartphone world. Too bad they didn't keep it going.

[hbharadwaj]

Thank god none of you are in charge. Just kidding or am I?

Elop played the game straight forward. Forking is a half baked option and when you are leveraging your company, forking is not an option. You need full scale OS support and that means, Nokia could have either gone with MS or Google. Google apparently refused to make space for Nokia's competing service suite (Read-Business Week) and as such, the option was only MS. I know the hate is strong for MS in this community but it's way too illogical to think one man alone could have played his tactics and strategies to influence Nokia to switch to a MS OS for his career progression.

Meego was ruled out as an option as well. A tech-pretty thing may not always work out. WebOS taught us that lesson. So conspiracy theories are pretty meaningless.

[nextos]

MeeGo works fine. I use it everyday. It would have given Nokia independence. The Windows choice was simply a trojan horse strategy.

[pessimizer]

>You need full scale OS support and that means, Nokia could have either gone with MS or Google.

I don't know what this means.

[hetman]

Not a lot of of this makes sense. First, stability. Are you comparing Linux to a ten year old version of Windows? The modern Windows kernel is just as stable as Linux. Sadly, the same can't be said for third party drivers written by Android manufacturers. As for the full system stack. I'm primarily an Android user but I find Windows Phone seems to be a lot more stable from a user perspective.

Second, opennes. The Linux kernel is open, but most of Android is not (and with each Android release this gets worse). Forking would mean rewriting all the closed parts. A lot of Google Play apps don't even work on the Kindle Fire because of the closed parts being different. The only reason forking worked for Amazon in the first place, was that they were selling based on their already existing Kindle ecosystem, not based on Android, Android was just the enabler.

Shifting gears to Android that late in the game would not have suddenly allowed Nokia to catch up to Samsung. Samsung had been organising themselves for years to reap the advantages that come with Android. They didn't just release an Android phone and become an industry leader overnight.

I still think Windows Phone was the better option for Nokia given how immature Maemo/Meego still was (which was primarily Nokia's fault for not anticipating the market and not prioritising it higher). At the end of the day, even a smart decision won't help you if you make it too late.

[rayiner]

Nokia can't compete with Samsung, because the latter's vertical integration means it can make money at prices other vendors cannot. Software is totally secondary to that. Nobody is going to pay more for a Nokia Android phone than a Samsung one. Apple and Samsung have set the price ceiling for the market, and at a level that is ruthlessly weeding out competitors who don't have their supply chain advantages.

Nokia's only hope was to make their phones non-fungible with Android phones, and get access to Microsoft's capital stash. If that doesn't play out, they're in the same boat as RIM, HTC, etc.

[jmspring]

Nokia was hemorrhaging market share and needed cash. MSFT brought the cash with certain strings. Elop being there probably moved that decision along.

If Nokia had "stayed the course", they probably would have suffered a similar fate of RIM (though having the lower end market share/phones to help them limp along a bit longer...)

[jfoster]

They got a cash injection and it set them up for an acquisition.

The alternative was being another Android manufacturer when HTC & Samsung were leaders in that area, and it looked like Google might take the oxygen out with the Nexus line and Motorola. (not sure whether those all line up perfectly chronologically, but none of them are critical to the point of Nokia not wanting to be "another Android manufacturer")

[untog]

Being an Android manufacturer isn't exactly a bunch of roses either. At the last count only Samsung were making serious money through it - everyone else seems to be struggling along.

[presty]

Well, there's Xiaomi. But the truth is pretty much everyone else is making shit phones.

[kyriakos]

at the time when WP was offered to Nokia it was a good option. first of all it came with a nice cash bonus, offered them customization options, offered them a possible new market and differentiation from the various android manufacturers and the promise of a huge marketing boost that they'd otherwise have to do on their own if they went with android. bottomline though WP didn't take off the way they would have hoped and the rest is history.