Nokia - Bye!

[kickstart]

The real news is the disappearance of Nokia in the world of mobile phones not this microsoft s h i t

[Duce]

You're right, Kickstart - on a global scale, Nokia was a major player in the mobile market for years, especially in Europe.

Within North America, we mainly only ever saw Nokia feature phones.  Was very few, if any - carriers that offered subsidized Nokia smartphones, which forced North Americans to pay $800 for unlocked Nokia smartphones if we wanted them, so they never were widespread here.  IIRC, I paid well over $700 for my unlocked N95 in 2007 or so.

I had a N95 and a 9300, and still have a Nokia 770 Tablet - best hardware in the industry came from Nokia, imo.

[fishy_fiz]

It's "funny" how quick people are to write off something that is a relatively new market.
We're only at the dawn of the mobile age and there's plenty of twists and turns to play out yet.
The original XBox was also the 3rd player in a market, but with time MS gained some pretty decent traction. Despite the (amusing) cries of many claiming MS are a dying entity they still have the money to have a decent crack at becoming a real player in the mobile market.

Personally I expect many ups and downs for all players over the next few years.
History has shown how quickly things can change in the IT world and phones will be no excepton.

[spirantho]

@fishy_fiz

The mobile market is incredibly different to the console market, though.
The console market is two or three firms competing by releasing major upgrades every 5 years or so. Each step is a large technological step which basically wipes the slate clean each time.

The mobile market, on the other hand, has more players and also evolves. A new phone comes out every 5 days rather than 5 years, so each generation affects the last in a way that doesn't happen in the console market. The result of this is that it will be much harder for Microsoft to take a significant market share like it did in the console wars.

[takemehomegrandma]

It was an epic fail for Nokia to miss out so blatantly on the entire smart phone revolution (and please don't say things like "but Nokia had their 'Communicator' a decade before it all started" — that kind of products is *not* related). If it can't be iOS (which it of course can't, not if you aren't Apple), then at least it has to be Android. With the whole infra structure of app stores etc connected to it of course. There is no third. Certainly not Symbian. And does anyone really want Microsoft's solution? Sales figures this far has said clearly "no", and for Nokia in particular, the newest sales figures for "Lumia" is rumored to be catastrophic. It will be very difficult for them to enter a market that has existed for many years that is completely occupied and dominated by iOS and Android.

Nokia is making the right decision to cut the phone part of the company loose and sell it off to MS. Nokia is still very strong in other segments, and this will remove a considerable risk and bring stability to what's left, and the cash input should be more than welcome and enable investments to further strengthen their positions on the markets they are still on.

Microsoft is going south though. PC sales in general is dropping through the floor, Windows sales are catastrophic. They are going all-in on the mobile sector with phones and tablets, but to be honest it's not going too well there either. Too little, too late. Microsoft in 10 years (or 5 years even) isn't going to be what it is today, or what it was 10 years ago.

This is the fall of the old giants.

[odin]

No more free updates for Nokia Maps on my E72 I guess .

[takemehomegrandma]

No more free updates for Nokia Maps on my E72 I guess .

Actually, I don't think that Nokia Maps was included in the MS deal...?

[NovaCoder]

You're all forgetting what really killed Nokia, and it happened a long time ago.......


[youtube]GJqm17etOSU[/youtube]

[fishy_fiz]

Funny enough the N-Gauge was invloved in both the rise and fall of Nokia.
Not entirely unlike the amiga the early models were pretty darn successful and impressive for their day to a point that there was a shedload of variations, none of them particularly enhancing it while the competitiors caught up and surpassed it.

I quite liked Pandamonium though (screenshot)  

[whabang]

V***u. :|

Also, as one trying to get electronics and stuff from somewhat local companies, this makes things difficult. I really don't want a Lumigon.

[kickstart]

@novacoder

I dont know how is the situation on australia but here the N-Gage and N-Gage QD were not any success but also a failure to kill Nokia.

@odin

Nokia maps are still from Nokia, but i dont know is the support to Nokia phones continues after this, nice phone the E72 =)

[odin]

Aye, the E72 is nice but I curse the thing often for its slowness. In a way it is good that Symbian has been put out of its misery and buried.

Ah yes the NGage . At least it created a funny meme on the interwebs for a while.

[nicholas]

Aye, the E72 is nice but I curse the thing often for its slowness. In a way it is good that Symbian has been put out of its misery and buried.

I think the pre-Elop strategy of getting all the Symbian coders to develop for Qt on Symbian and then migrate to Qt on Meego was a great idea.

It might even have saved them but we'll never know.

RIP Nokia.

[kickstart]

The latest nokia phones with symbian belle (500, 700,701, 808) are faster than many android phones and symbian belle ft2 too, symbian isnt just a 7650, n-gage or N70 by example.

[nicholas]

The latest nokia phones with symbian belle (500, 700,701, 808) are faster than many android phones and symbian belle ft2 too, symbian isnt just a 7650, n-gage or N70 by example.

I loved my N80 and my Black N95-8GB phones, wonderful devices and I could do pretty everything I do with the Android phones I've had over the last 4 years.

Here's hoping that Jolla is succesful and gets bought by Nokia and transformed into a new Nokia phone divison to compete with MS.

[kickstart]

Im thinking in Jolla too, lets pray for it or some more options