Why would it be sad to say goodbye to Nokia? Companies come and go and all of Nokia's problems today are of their own making. Sure they made some nice phones 6+ years ago but they could have easily of competed with Apple, hell Google managed to do it without even having a damn phone they just made the Android platform and worked with other companies to make the devices. Nokia should have embraced Android from day zero, if they had they would most likely be the number one Android phone supplier instead of Samsung.
Well, Google was better prepared to do it since their main source of income is not product sales but advertising. They can give Android away in order to lure eyeballs to the ads they serve.
To do the same Nokia should have changed their whole strategy, focus and expertise in less than 5 years, simply impossible for a company that size. Also worth noting, Google bought Android. It was not "complete" at time of acquisition but it wasn't a "lets begin from scratch" kind of project.
The problem with Nokia and Android is that Samsung will always, in every single case, have cheaper and more powerful devices. Maybe Nokia could've keep themselves in the game with a lot of marketing and a bit of luck, but eventually, down the road, Samsung would take over.
On top of that add that Google is getting in the hardware game and arguably the best Android devices will come from them. Even for Samsung the Android strategy might prove to be a bad idea in a couple of years.
> changed their whole strategy, focus and expertise in less than 5 years, simply impossible for a company that size
Microsoft was bigger than Nokia when, between 1993-2000, they executed several changes of greater magnitude in less than 5 years each (Windows 3, the response to Netscape, Windows NT).
> The problem with Nokia and Android is that Samsung will always, in every single case, have cheaper and more powerful devices. Maybe Nokia could've keep themselves in the game with a lot of marketing and a bit of luck, but eventually, down the road, Samsung would take over
Why? Samsung has only this year started showing small signs of becoming something more than a "fast follower". Nokia used to know how to lead the market... if they still did, they would have no trouble innovating to stay on top of Samsung.
> Why would it be sad to say goodbye to Nokia? Companies come and go and all of Nokia's problems today are of their own making.
Well there are a lot of smart developers in Finland with a good design sense and the executive screwup at Nokia was no fault of theirs. It's not clear to me that there will be a big enough tech market to absorb them all. So there would probably be a net contraction of smart people doing cool stuff. To me, that's bad.
Also, more competition is always a good thing for the market.
