Guest post by “Many well known bloggers, analysts, journalists and customers alike most probably have valid arguments to back this belief, but there are even more that believe otherwise and foresee a success in this partnership. But for Nokia’s upcoming Windows Phone-based smartphones to succeed, Microsoft and Nokia need backing from the worlds mobile operators and Vodafone in Germany seems to be on their side, for now – Jan Geldmacher, managing director, enterprise business at Vodafone Germany, said in an interview with PC World at the Cebit trade show in Hanover.”
The German word “Geldmacher” translates to Dutch “Geldmaker” (correct me if I’m wrong) which translates to English “money maker”. Nice.
Edited 2011-03-01 17:58 UTC
The mobile carriers are going to say whatever they need to say in order to be able to ship these devices competitively. They can’t exactly say it’s a bad idea and then turn around and ask Nokia to give them good deals on the new products, now can they? It’s political, pure and simple, and whether Geldmacher thinks this is a good idea or not doesn’t matter. He’ll say and do what he needs to in order to get good will. That’s how things work.
Well… Technically any deal that would bring more developers to Nokia would be a good deal.
Because the developer community was not “vibrant” on the Symbian side.
It’s a failure, if Nokia/Microsoft doesn’t give them VETO power over carriers, they will fail.
That the carriers are not afraid of the Nokia/Microsoft merger worries me.
Let me share my experience:
I have worked for an international company leader in some ISP network technologies (NO NAME HERE!).
High quality products, very high development processes on software and hardware, and very high customer satisfaction (Yes really).
Then comes on the market the first chinese product, when we, the “technicals“, get their product in hand, we had a good laugh…
However, it was very cheap… Fun’s over.
The hell doors were opened came daemons: Cost reductions, reduced planning, Q&A processes bypassed, and finally, lay-offs.
Then came Microsoft, the promise of rapid developments, costs reduction inductor, delivery on time, promises & promises, a brand new future for us.
… I left the company.
From remaining ex-colleagues, I heard it became worse and worse, aggressive management, high rate turnover, key people still leaving, lack of training, panic mode releases.
Then out-sourcing came along… Do you know stupid developers, that there are a person (say inexpensive) who code really better than you do somewhere else?
The Hell was there: The customers, the ones who have requested to have cheaper products, complained. Idiot bugs detected on the field and nobody to understand what is happening.
This is not the Microsoft fault off course, but…
I still have in mind the picture of MS’ representative shaking hands of our CEO and saying: – “Your future is clear sky!”
… The top management believed it so hard, customers too, but not so long as expected.
Height years to destroy a product brand and retire from the marked.
From the top… To the ground, Game Over.
There are so many similarities with this story and Nokia, than I must be worried for them.
I just hope to be wrong.