Nokia is preparing to back Windows RT by launching a 10.1-inch tablet soon. Sources familiar with Nokia’s plans have revealed to The Verge that the tablet, codenamed Sirius, will be launched shortly. While prototype pictures of the device leaked earlier this month, we understand that the final design more closely resembles Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phone products.
Nice specifications, but Windows RT. Nobody wants Windows RT, and for good reason. I say this from experience: Windows RT is horrible. It offers nothing over iOS (let alone Android), Metro applications are side projects riddled with bugs, performance issues, and bad design, and the platform barely plays third fiddle compared to iOS and Android, so developers have little interest in it. On top of that, virtually everyone has abandoned Windows RT.
But, I’m pretty sure some people will tell us this tablet will turn Nokia around.
Now that Balmer is “retiring” and that even Gates admitted that Windows Phone strategy is a mistake nobody (carriers, developers, shops, etc.) will touch Windows on tablet, phablet, or phone!
Nokia should cancel right now the launch of Sirius and they would save a lot of money (unless they put Android on it)!
Edited 2013-08-26 15:33 UTC
But that will never happen. Nokia might as well become (and in 2 years i bet it does) microsofts mobile subsidary. Microsoft will drive Nokia into the ground, which is a shame, because Nokia was an awesome company
Why invest so much in a product that has proven to be an absolute failure? How can Nokia even benefit from this?
I could understand a Windows Phone Tablet to a certain degree because Lumia sales have proven to be at least warm, but windows Windows RT is already dead and there is no point about digging it out from the grave.
It’s like Nokia has become a whore that will do anything to please Microsoft for money while getting a deadly STD in exchange.
Windows Phone sales weren’t spectacular before Lumia. If they can grow the ecosystem then a tablet can help hedge their mobile bet to a degree.
Balmer got retired because of the spectacular sales of Windows Phone!
No he didnt.
Then why he got retired?
Wouldn’t you retire after 30 years in senior leadership?
This came across my Twitter feed just a few minutes ago:
http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/activist-investor-helped-drive-ballmer…
Yeah, I predict over the next few weeks you’ll see about 10 different theories as to why he decided to retire.
Why not hang around for eternity when win, lose or draw he still gets paid an obscene amount of money?
And leadership? Like Jobs and Gates, just no, these guys don’t lead, they bark out vague, often impossible orders, no doubt full of crap from marketing, to the staff that then has to try and make something.
As CEO your job is that and meet the boys at the country club for an important meeting.
He owns an obscene amount of Microsoft stock and is rich beyond imagination, I honestly can’t understand why people so well off even get up for work. That’s just me though.
You and me both, I think I’d stop doing pretty much any kind of work at around the 3 million mark if I didn’t have any projects in mind like Elon Musk, which is the typer of rich guy that is incredibly rare, one that actually DOES something with their money.*
They compare their wealth to the other rich guys and consider themselves less wealthy then they actually are because the next guy over owns a bigger jet or more cars or a bigger island.
Some of them are also hoarders, if they where poor their house would be filled with old news papers and cats.
While others simply collect money just for the sake of collecting it so that they have it and nobody else does.
Obscene amounts of money does strange things to people’s brains.
* I actually do have a few small projects in mind, but I have no interest in running them long term, if I could get them going once I had the money to just travel the world endlessly I’d give the employees the option to buy me out cheap and become a CO-OP, since it’d be good for the local economy.
Edited 2013-08-27 09:56 UTC
Not just you. I’d have stopped working long before reaching the amount he’s worth.
Thing is, if he had really planned on retiring, he’d have at least announced some sort of succession roadmap. That’s the reasonable thing to do when you represent a company with as much presence as MS. He’s neither named a successor, nor has he shown any sign of grooming anyone to fill that role in recent years. If anything, it’s the exact opposite – many of the potential head honchos have left. I think that’s what leading most people to believe that he was forced out.
Well, I suppose they could always hire that Forestall guy.
I left a cushy government job to work full time at a place where I actually enjoy going in to work every day. I don’t get paid much more, I get less benefits — in fact I have to rely on my wife’s health insurance now — but I’m doing what I love.
Sometimes it’s not about the money. Maybe Ballmer just said “I’m done” and wants to enjoy the rest of his life stress-free.
Ballmer is a billionaire, as such he lives in a reality that is very very very different from us (I’d assume most people in this site are middle class).
What I’m trying to get at is that projecting on to him our motivations as “peasants” is an exercise in futility. Hint; one does not get to hoard thousands of millions of dollars unless money is a principal driver for them.
Edited 2013-08-28 23:23 UTC
I read something of the sort here:
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Questionable-rumor-Ballmer-pushed-ou…
and his retirement letter did hint he would have rather retired at a different time.
Whether that is true or not is a completely different story.
Microsoft has had writeoffs larger than $900 million. Why not the aQuantive $1.6B write off? Why not the Xbox $1B write off?
People are guessing.
Edited 2013-08-26 23:06 UTC
It still doesn’t make sense. I mean of course it makes sense for Microsoft to ask Nokia to try luck with this device, as they did moderately well with the Lumias.
But for Nokia, It makes much more sense to do something like a Windows Phone tablet than go with something so high risk at this point. It’s their money, not Microsoft’s money, unless we are to assume that Nokia is pretty much just living out as a services company for Microsoft.
There is no such thing as a Windows Phone tablet. Otherwise I’m sure they’d try, but there’s rumors of a 6 inch Galaxy Note style phablet running WP8 which blurs the lines a bit.
They aren’t spectacular NOW! They have less than 4% global market share…so, yes, they are selling millions, and no, that isn’t even making a SMALL dent in the number of Android and iOS handsets being sold. It’s not enough to motivate developers to make the NEEDED apps for the platform, and it’s not enough to keep the entire ecosystem from dying. It is CERTAINLY not enough to save Nokia from bankruptcy!
When is Nokia going to go bankrupt? NSN just got a 300 million dollar contract to help build out China’s LTE network. Bankrupt indeed.
NSN is pretty awesome. Regardless of what happens to Lumia,etc NSN will survive as a profitable business in some fashion.
Margins are astronomical on tablets, if Microsoft eats some of the advertising cost, this can definitely help Nokia’s bottom line, provided it sells a few million.
Unsure if it will though, not too bullish on it. Especially since its apparently 10 inches, but who knows.
I think the Snapdragon 800 will do a great deal (along with perf improvements in 8.1) should help along the way.
The use of RT is certainly peculiar for a ten inch tablet with how the efficient Haswell is, but LTE may have played a role.
Microsoft will not help Nokia here! Actually Microsoft will even charge Nokia for each tablet sold with Windows!
Microsoft already lost 900 million $ on its own tablet which was sold for only 6 weeks before it got declared a failure! Now Gates is in charge at Microsoft and he made it clear that Windows Phone strategy is a mistake which cannot be fixed anymore!
It’s been almost a year since RT’s rollout. Why wait so long to release this tablet? Does this mean that nokia is now competing directly with MS?
Or is it that MS gave up and decided to try again with nokia as proxy?
And what the hell are nokia’s shareholders doing? Isn’t nokia bleeding enough money already trying to (unsuccessfully) buy their way back into the mobile market?
Edited 2013-08-26 16:01 UTC
Really, they have to have something new to make a difference. Everyone seemed to like the surface’s hardware, so good hardware won’t be enough. Strange it doesn’t even have a rear facing camera, as annoying as they can be.
Looks like Nokia want to make a final suicidal move before going bust and selling all their patents to trolls… Elop’s strategy of self annihilating platform in action. It was probably the plan of some IV or other trolls all along.
Edited 2013-08-26 16:55 UTC
I actually was surprised when I looked at the photo of the Sirius and it wasn’t black.
Hahaha. Seriously, why bother.
I agree. They need to learn from Microsoft and not price the same as the market leader if they want to move units. Plus, 10 inches seems a bit myopic when the big thing is 7-8 inch tablets.
i think 7-8″ tablets sell well because they are noticeably cheaper than 10″ tablets. For home use (browsing, etc) I definitely prefer a 10″ one.
They’ll be competing with heavily discounted Surface RT 1 and the next Surface.
Let’s hope Nokia has 900mi to spare, just in case…
Nelson optimistic(delusional) as ever, why don’t you copy/paste here some cool Windows RT features?
I’ve been right about nearly everything I’ve said about Nokia on this website. Right about their trajectory, right about how much they’d sell, right about their financials, right about their overall health. I’ve been right a lot more often than you’ve even staked out a position.
Some “delusion”. And if you actually took the time to read my comment (which you either haven’t or you’re being willfully or unwillfully ignorant) you’d see that I’m not as confident their tablet venture will work out, only that it has tremendous upside potential.
Surface got Microsoft over 800 million dollars in revenue and had better margins than an iPad, even a fraction of that will be very attractive to Nokia if they can manage supply adequately.
You don’t know a thing.
Why so Sirius?
Ah, Nelson being “right”. The best kind of right, that is technically right, a.k.a. misleading. Like when a $900M loss becomes a $800M revenue. Like when getting soundly beaten in every market becomes a relative YoY growth from barely nothing.
You’re a sleazebag liar, not least when you tell the truth.
You do know how accounting works? It is both possible to have $800M in revenue while having $900M in write offs against future purchases. You do know that this is taken from Microsoft’s own financials, right?
The revenue figure was cited only to show upside potential because of high margins on tablets. That would take actual thinking on your part.
The rest of what you say is an aside and not at all related to anything I’ve claimed, especially not the health and unit sales of Nokia, just to burn down that strawman
You can stop being so disingenuous about the numbers about a product that by all measures is a complete and total failure that single handedly took one of the best and largest market share phone companies and nearly forced them out of the market.
Elop was Microsoft’s parasite to spread the Windows disease to mobile yet again but this time have it completely infect a company. It has failed just as bad as every other mobile project from Microsoft with the added tragedy of taking Nokia down with it.
Complete and total failure with double digit volume growth quarter over quarter and year over year, you have a peculiar definition of failure.
However, in the interest of not rehashing arguments I’ve brought up in literally every Nokia thread (which is ignored and often lost on the delusional) I’ll leave you to believe what you wish and we’ll revisit the topic when their quarterly results show another volume increase and further stabilization of financials.
Nelson, I have not read almost all your posts. But let us take this simply with a question:
Do you consider Windows RT Tablet(Yes, tablet only) a success in the past up to the present? Please explain if your answer is yes.
I consider Windows RT to have had a mixed reaction. Microsoft did move a deal of Surfaces at very high margins, but they shouldn’t have. If they were going to write down a billion dollars, one would argue they should’ve subsidized the devices on that cost and gone for a volume play to build out the Windows 8 ecosystem.
There were some missteps along the way. Messaging got royally fucked up and Microsoft being Microsoft didn’t do much about it. They let the story get away from them. There’s also lukewarm OEM reactions because they’re all approximately useless, but it also was because of performance problems with some of the chips inside the tablets.
There’s no excuse for some of their mistakes I think, but I similarly think that the reception to them was lukewarm at worst. They didn’t completely flop in the market (Surface sold through decent, they wrote down future expectations and unsold inventory, which isn’t mutually exclusive with selling a decent amount).
I think its in the same situation Windows Phone was in 2011. Promising, written off, and at the same time misunderstood. If Nokia can do for RT what they did for Windows Phone they can kick this thing into gear.
First a few things need to happen:
– Microsoft needs to unify WP8 and WinRT. Two strategies, two ecosystems, and two platforms (however close they are) doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t. That needs to change.
– Microsoft needs to become more platform agnostic, which will help Windows Phone. Stop thinking in terms of vendor lock in and start thinking in terms of service lock in. Hook someone on Office on an iPad, then show them how great it is on a Surface. Get someone using Outlook on Android so that when they do try a Lumia it’s not a jarring transition.
Those are just my own personal opinions, a little rambly, but take it as you wish.
You know, it’s funny, how overnight you are now at +3 om pretty much all of your posts when most of them where only at 1 yesterday and most that disagree with you are now down a point or 2. Historically your ranting usually has you at 1 or lower.
Which doesn’t make any sense since you are the only one that ever tries to defend RT, so the odd of this happening naturally are pretty low…
What a pathetic comment. Honestly.
It’s just an observation of something that just doesn’t add up. While I have no empirical evidence as that would be Thom’s area, you are the only one that defends RT and you do so extremely fervently, perhaps too fervently.
I hope he does, though its sad that he’d have to go out of his way to prove that contrary to what you think, people can agree with me.
If they agreed with you they would say something, I always read through a topic and hand out my points then go back and reply where I see fit to do so, I doubt that that is an uncommon practice on this site.
On the topic of RT there are dozens of people saying that they dislike it, and on the side that likes it there is all of just you.
I don’t think you’re one to dictate what anyone does with their upvote, but I find your fixation with a comment score cute in a childish way.
That’s about all I have to say, as this conversation is going nowhere. If Thom wishes, I certainly welcome to shed light on who upvotes me, maybe it will let you take your tinfoil hat off.
Its an easier sell to go with the echo chamber, especially when those who dare to have a view contrary to the masses here are reviled and accused of gaming a pathetic online comment score.
You should honestly be ashamed of your pettiness.
Comment points determine weather or not readers can see your comment or not.
Why be ashamed of pointing out an inconsistency? Tinfoil hat? Lol, right… because you would be the first person to multi account on a site like this to keep your posts visible and your opponents not visible. Its easier then multi account posting, since everyone that tries that slips up since they can’t change their style enough that all of their accounts don’t end up all sounding the same.
Having been a moderator on a tech site before, so to my eyes what you are doing stands out to me as something I would look into as a mod.
I think that you Nelson have a very peliculiar definition of failure!
It is very easy to get double digit volume growth quarter over quarter when one has small numbers. By this definition if one sells one mobile phone today and another 50 next quarter will have triple digit volume growth! I think that according to these kind of measures the company Jolla (see http://www.jolla.com) will look even better than Apple, Samsung! Jolla will have an infinite volume growth quarter over quarter (some number divided by zero)!
“Double digit volume growth quarter over quarter and year over year” can be seen very often when one has less than 5% of the market!
Here are some more appropiate measures of failure:
– Nokia had over 30% of the market in 2010 and now it has 3%-4% of the market => 10 fold decrease for Nokia!
– Windows Mobile has ~12% of the market (during Gates time) and now the Windows Phone has 3%-4% of the market => clearly the today~A¤’s strategy of Windows for mobile phones is even worst than in Gates’ times!
– Nokia was number one mobile manufacturer of smartphones in 2010 and today is number 10!
Edited 2013-08-27 08:06 UTC
But Nokia does not have small numbers. Nokia went from 5.6 million to 7.4 million units in a quarter. That is not small. Maybe compared to every single Android OEM combined that’s small, but if you look at the other Android OEMs (besides Samsung, obviously) they are posting similar types of volumes. Nokia is in the ballpark. So if Nokia is a failure, then the other OEMs have failed as well.
That’s nice, but Nokia did not sell one, or 50 phones. They sold 7.4 million. This quarter its expected to increase by double digits again, as it has for the past few quarters.
If Jolla posts strong QoQ gains, then it does imply that they are getting a strong reception relative to their own volumes. I’d be encouraged and others should too. I was encouraged when it was Lumia shipments going from 2 to 4 million, and I am encouraged when its from 5.6 to 7.4 million.
5% of a very large market is still a large amount of units to sell, and when speaking about the impact it will have on Nokia’s health and stability moving forward, it was a good bet.
If you look at their bottom line sans one time restructuring costs, they’ve posted strong underlying profits since Q3 of last year. That’ significant and as these costs sunset at the end of 2013, you’ll begin to see this materialize in IFRS profit.
Everybody knows Nokia is no longer #1, and that’s fine, they don’t have to be and aren’t going to be for a while. This is about managing a very risky transition and setting them up for the future, which, like it or not is happening. Their devices are gaining traction, they are gaining marketshare, and the ecosystem is being fleshed out. It was the right bet.
Sorry Nelson, but 7.4 millions units sold in a quarter is a very small number when for example during Q2 of 2013 have been sold in total ~230 million smartphones!!!
7.4 millions is very very small compared to 230 millions!
Here matters the relative numbers and not the absolute numbers!!!! It matters the percentage of the “pie” one gets. It is similar like you would basically start to count the number atoms in your favorite piece of pie even that is 5% of the entire pie and based on the fact that it has billions of atoms you state that your favorite piece of pie is big!!
Your “quarter to quarter” and “year to year” statistics start to become relevant/significant only when one has over 5% of the market. Below 5% of the market those numbers are not significant (there plenty of small “fishes” which can get astonishingly good quarter to quarter numbers).
Edited 2013-08-27 13:02 UTC
Is Sony a failure? How about LG? Lenovo? No? Didn’t think so, they all sell in the same ballpark as Nokia.
Yes. Because Sony, LG and Lenovo have many other very profitable product lines to fall back on while they try to move into mobile.
Nokia has a mobile telecommunications subsidiary, do you read their financials at all?
And this very news item is about Nokia diversifying by going into high margin tablet sales. If it works it will be great, its a big if though.
So go ahead, move the goalposts some more.
Yet again, how well are they doing with this Windows only strategy? That they have added a tablet wont save them since other Windows mobile aren’t selling no matter the specs or price.
you are backing a horse that hasn’t just lost the race but is already in the parking lot of the glue factory.
Didn’t we go over this? They’re doing at least as well as the other non-Samsung Android OEMs. You’re arguing in circles.
if you want to read and read and read about nokia you can visit this blog:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/
The best point this guy brings out is that bill gates even identified windows phone as a failure during a public interview. So while nelson argues technicalities the business side definitely points to failure of windows phone and nokia falling far far short of expectations.
Tomi has been shown to be wrong on numerous occasions. The fact that some of you (still!) take him seriously frankly is very revealing.
Examples?
http://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/the-tomi-ahonen…
I don’t know what else people expected from someone who sources numbers from himself to formulate his arguments.
Also the author of those arguments is hiding behind an anonymous account (that is anonymous-ex-nokian). At least Tomi Ahonen has the courage to acknowledge who he is and what he wrote and his mistakes. I expect that if one has something to say/comment/write to Tomi Ahonen then that person should use his full name.
I guess that you are talking about yourself, Nelson. Right?
I mean what else people expect from someone who uses numbers ( “quarter to quarter” and “year to year” volume growth for Lumia/Windows phone) the way he likes to formulate his arguments?
Edited 2013-08-29 05:18 UTC
Read Nokia’s financial report. The numbers I use are from there.
On the other hand, Tomi sources numbers from “Tomi consulting” and has been (as I prove with the link) shown many times to be wrong or misleading.
Do you disagree that Tomi has been proven wrong by this person? I think there’s enough there to seriously call in to question his analysis.
Of course you like Tomi because he’s anti-Nokia, no matter how wrong he is. He’s a clever troll and you’ve been duped.
Ok. Please, could you provide a link? Please, could you provide the numbers which you referring to (number of Lumia phones sold by Nokia in Q2 2013 and the total number of smartphones sold all over the world in Q2 2013)?
You say “Tomi consulting” like is something bad! Actually I think that it is very good thing!
Sorry, the link does not prove that. The arguments in the link are really weak and it really tries unssucessufly to prove that Tomi A. is wrong.
Yes, I strongly disagree. The arguments of the anonymous are weak at best!
Here is one example regarding Tomi A. and Gates (rom here: http://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/bill-gates-inte… ):
This is what Gates says about phones and Microsoft:
=========================================
^aEURoeThere is a lot of things, like cell phones, where we didn^aEURTMt get out in the lead very early and^aEUR|^aEURoe
(interviewer interrupts and asks if they missed cell phones)
^aEURoeNo we didn^aEURTMt miss the cell phones but the way we went about it didn^aEURTMt allow us to get the leadership. So it^aEURTMs clearly a mistake.^aEUR
=========================================
and Tomi Ahonen based on this draws his conclusion that
“Bill Gates the Chairman of Microsoft says there is no doubt whatsoever about is the current Windows Phone smartphone strategy by Microsoft succeeding to any possible degree. It is not. Bill Gates says it is ^aEUR~clearly^aEURTM a mistake.” The anonymous tries here to prove that Tomi A. is wrong. I have to say that the argument of anonymous trying to prove Tomi A. wrong is weak at best (or just pure bad will)!
You understood wrong! Tomi is not anti-Nokia and he makes it clear in his blogs! He has been with Nokia for a long time and he still believes in Nokia!
Tomi has some issues with Windows Phone and with Elop! Actually Tomi A. likes Bill Gates and it is really positive about him. I hope that you see that Windows Phone is not Nokia and Elop is not Nokia! Lumia phones is not Nokia! Tomi A. even nowdays has in his pocket a (Symbian) Nokia phone!
Edited 2013-08-29 11:35 UTC
LOL
Really? Is that his best point? Because it is wrong.
http://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/bill-gates-inte…
You’re a smart guy, I hope you can see how severely misleading he is.
Is this the reason for this event?
http://www.wpcentral.com/nokia-holding-world-premier-event-moscow-a…
We’ll find out on wednesday.
Hopefully, Nokia won’t overlook the keyboard, which for me is the biggest letdown of the Surface and Surface Pro. The keyboard is supposed to be the selling point of Windows tablets (actually, running Office is the selling point of WinRT, but you kinda need a decent keyboard for that), and there isn’t a single Windows tablet keyboard that’s worth typing on. The closest thing to usable is the Lenovo tablet’s keyboard, and then they went and messed up the Trackpoint.
At this price point, you have to have something compelling that sets you apart from the already established iPad. Office is that product, but only if you can actually do data entry.
Funny how the TV product placement of this differs:
– iOS – almost every US show or movie – ad nausem, recent example: Dexter
– Windows 8/RT – just a few, select shows: Under the Dome, Touch
– Android – nowhere?
When something shows up as an product placement it immediatelly makes me want not to buy it.
If it’s good why the hell are they trying to do these sort-of-subliminal-programmin on the viewers, huh?
Actually Apple has had product placements mainly due to it’s dominance in the entertainment industry, you often see iMacs and Powermacs/MacPros as set pieces with a sticker over the logos just because they are there in the studio already, so they just grab a dead one or one that isn’t currently being used and throw it on a desk and there you have your prop computer.
Now though I have seen a fair amount of Dell laptops with the logos covered as well as Thinkpads, both IBM and Lenovo just because they are pretty ubiquitous.
Note that you almost never see the actual OS these machines should be running in TV and movies, they are always some kind of bullshit impractical GUI to make it all seem far more “high tech” to the technophopic, this is a simple trick to do since you can just show a solid green or blue screen and fill it in later and have the actor randomly press buttons that rarely correspond to what is happening on screen…
Once upon a non neo-liberal dimension you could assume anything brand-able was just a prop. In the dimension we live in assume the plots been rewritten just to place some piece of crap.
The difference is if you can see the logo it’s a paid product placement, if theres no visible logo but you know who the manufacturer is by the case design you are just a geek that spends too much time with computers.
I’ve seen plenty of Android phones on various shows. As someone else said, you see much of Apple’s stuff because it’s laying around. If you actually see the Apple logo, they paid for it.
Thom,
If I recall correctly I thought you were optimistic that 8.1 would solve many issues with RT. Has your opinion changed?
Edited 2013-08-27 15:17 UTC
Here is the article:
http://www.osnews.com/story/27179/Windows_8_1_on_the_Surface_RT_fir…
You can see that his opinion has not changed. Windows RT 8.1 is an improvement, but Microsoft did not fix the things that made it a failure.