How Nokia Went From iPhone Victim To $1 Billion Nvidia Deal (ft.com)
- Reference: 0180500823
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/01/02/070257/how-nokia-went-from-iphone-victim-to-1-billion-nvidia-deal
- Source link: https://www.ft.com/content/0a07cbc3-dac4-4b89-9f26-038deb833060
The company that was once worth $335 billion and controlled more than a quarter of the global handset market seemed destined for irrelevance after the iPhone's 2007 arrival. A last-ditch bet on Microsoft's Windows phone system in 2011 failed, and Nokia [3]sold its devices division to Microsoft for $6.34 billion in 2014 . Revenues had fallen from $44.27 billion in 2007 to $12.56 billion. Nokia rebuilt around its $2 billion acquisition of Siemens' networks stake in 2013, then added French network provider Alcatel-Lucent for $18.32 billion in 2015.
Current CEO Justin Hotard, who took over in April, has pushed the company further into cloud services, data centers and optical networks. Nokia acquired optical specialist Infinera for $2.3 billion in February. The company's optical technology enables information to pass between data centers, and it produces routers for cloud-based services.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/0a07cbc3-dac4-4b89-9f26-038deb833060
[2] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/29/2114253/nvidia-takes-1-billion-stake-in-nokia
[3] https://slashdot.org/story/13/09/03/0526231/official-microsoft-to-acquire-nokia-devices-and-services-business
Which Nokia? (Score:3)
Nokia Corporation has always been strong on the back end, particularly telecoms infrastructure (mobile phone towers, branch exchanges and the like). That never really went away. Nokia as a handset manufacturer was spun off years ago, now the Nokia phone brand is more or less owned by HMD Global (which seem to be retiring it) although Nokia now owns about 10% of HMD. My last few phones have been HMD handsets, they're pretty good for the price although nothing really interests me with their current models.
As the fine summary talks about data and cloud services, this sounds like the Finnish Nokia corporation which never really went anywhere, not the handset manufacturer. Not sure why the author is conflating the two but I'm not surprised either given what passes for "tech journalism" (sarcastic air quotes).
Re: (Score:2)
Worth noting that HMD is basically "old Nokia Mobile Phones guys that started a company on location on the opposite side of the street of the old headquarters".
Haven't been doing well though. I know a few people who worked there, and they seem to have mostly refocused on third word markets last I checked.
Re: (Score:2)
> Worth noting that HMD is basically "old Nokia Mobile Phones guys that started a company on location on the opposite side of the street of the old headquarters".
> Haven't been doing well though. I know a few people who worked there, and they seem to have mostly refocused on third word markets last I checked.
HMD is mostly owned by Foxconn. Like many others, they were happy to pay Nokia Royalties for the brand while they were trying to stand on their own to feet and make themselves a niche in the market, but not anymore, thay are trnasitioning to use the HMD brand exclusively.
They inherited most of Nokia's Dumbphone factories And many of said factories in (more expensive) Europe. IDK if said factories are still operating. Also, they have Foxconn's manufacturing might behind them.
And yes, they are pivoting to the
Re: (Score:2)
I know some of the people who started HMD. They literally leased space almost opposite of Nokia headquarters building in Keilaniemi in Espoo when they started. You can find the address printed on the old phones (Karaportti 2 Espoo), and if you look at it in google maps, you'll see that it sits right next to Nokia corporate campus.
They had zero factories. The company just licensed the rights to the brand from Nokia, and then went shopping for OEM to make their phone designs in China, and settled on FIH Mobil
Re: (Score:3)
> Nokia Corporation has always been strong on the back end, particularly telecoms infrastructure (mobile phone towers, branch exchanges and the like). That never really went away. Nokia as a handset manufacturer was spun off years ago, now the Nokia phone brand is more or less owned by HMD Global (which seem to be retiring it) although Nokia now owns about 10% of HMD. My last few phones have been HMD handsets, they're pretty good for the price although nothing really interests me with their current models.
> As the fine summary talks about data and cloud services, this sounds like the Finnish Nokia corporation which never really went anywhere, not the handset manufacturer. Not sure why the author is conflating the two but I'm not surprised either given what passes for "tech journalism" (sarcastic air quotes).
I had the pleasure and priviledge to work with Nokia (and Nokians) Very closely from 1998 to 2000. (and also was a CEMoD Instructor in the Mid '00s Google that up). Remember that they started as a paper mill and then rubber company, then consumer electronics, and THEN telco.
You are seeing this with rose tinted glasses. The telco part was pretty much separated from the handset part. So much so, that the email addresses of people working in each divisions were different (the email addresses were fused in the
Re: Which Nokia? (Score:1)
Do you feel like a tobacco company lackey now that cellphone use has been proven harmful to minors?
more than a quarter in 2007? (Score:3)
Key Notes on the Extended Data:
2007: ~38% (strong year, with Q4 hitting around 40%; Nokia was overwhelmingly dominant in feature phones).
2008: Peaked at ~38.6â"39% (all-time high for full-year total mobile phones).
2009: Slight dip to ~36% as early smartphone competition emerged (iPhone launched in 2007, but feature phones still ruled globally).
2010: ~32% (still leader, but Android/Samsung gaining fast).
From there, the sharp decline continues as we saw before â" overtaken by Samsung in 2012, devices business sold to Microsoft in 2013/2014, and post-2016 revival under HMD Global keeping it at 1â"2% (mostly feature phones and budget Android in niche markets).
Note: These are approximate annual averages for total mobile phones (not just smartphones, where Nokia's share was high in 2007â"2009 at ~40â"50% but fell much faster afterward due to the iOS/Android revolution)
Re: more than a quarter in 2007? (Score:5, Informative)
Most people don't seem to realize that this is a completely different Nokia. Nokia Mobile Phones was an entirely different unit of the parent company that hasn't been a part of current Nokia in a long time (they sold it in 2014 to Microsoft).
This is talking about Nokia Networks (former Nokia Siemens Networks). It's an IT infrastructure company.
Re: (Score:2)
IMHO " seemed destined for irrelevance after the iPhone's 2007 arrival." is rewriting the history. My interpretation is that Nokia panicked and self-destructed by switching to Windows Phone after seeing iPhone but even more Android taking smartphone market share in 2010 and 2011, and if it instead just had kept developing their own Linux-based smartphones, it would still be around selling their own Linux-based smartphones which were far superior than Android.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a internal feud between Symbian and MeeGo that, combined with the fact software was never Nokia's strong suit, ended up on neither OS having a UX as good as iOS or Android. But even after abandoning their own OS efforts, Nokia's fatal mistake was going all-in on Windows Phone, the app-less mobile OS, in an era when smartphones were all about apps (and still are)
Re: (Score:1)
Microsoft supplied €200 million per quarter for 2 years to Nokia to switch to Windows Phone. Listed as "Platform Support Payment" in Nokia's financial reporting. Stephen Elop believed this would give Nokia time to dig itself out of the hole it was in. That revenue stream is probably what sold Windows Phone to Nokia's Board.