First Financial Weekly: Save Nokia or Elop

In the past three years, as the stock price plummeted and investors questioned, Nokia will open its product “black box” at regular intervals in order to save the mixed pessimism and shrinking market value of domestic and foreign diplomacy. Unfortunately, each time the black box is released is a devil - regardless of the N97, N8 or E7, Apple iPhone and Android dominate the era of mobile consumption, Nokia has lost the ability to fight back and lead the market, seems to be a conclusion.

But it finally broke the spell. On June 21, Nokia released the only bright product in the past three years in Singapore, the N9. Compared to the degeneration and sarcasm encountered in launching new products in the past, the most discriminating players and geeks do not seem to place too much in the N9.

"The N9 is not just a step-by-step improvement over any Nokia product," said Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia's senior vice president of design for the N9 user interface and design, to CBN Weekly. This is the first cell phone in the world to completely cancel the "Home" button. It does not have any physical buttons. It also taps the possibility of touch screen gestures. It uses three main display screen designs and the user uses "Swipe". The way to switch, and allows sliding screen operation on the screen in four directions, and from the outside to the inside of the sliding screen can replace the Home button to achieve the function of closing, switching programs and interfaces, similar to the operation method has never been in other intelligence Appeared on the phone.

These somewhat fascinating experiences precisely solved the core crux of Nokia's previous product R&D and design: the operation was cumbersome and complex, not smooth enough, and the limitations of the Symbian platform's imagination on touch screen operation. "I believe that in the future there will be more simple and interesting ways of operation being discovered by us," said Marko Ahtisaari.

According to Francisco Jeronimo, a European mobile device analyst at analyst firm IDC, this may be the best product in Nokia's history. American market research firm Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi also said: N9 provides an observation point for the industry and consumers, indicating that Nokia is still developing strength.

The defeated share price was also slightly boosted by the release of the N9: On June 21, Nokia's share price rose 2% in the Helsinki Stock Exchange. This and on February 11th, Nokia announced that its alliance with Microsoft to develop Windows Phone shares fell 9.8% in sharp contrast.

It should theoretically become the starting point for Nokia's re-emergence. Just as Motorola Classic Android model Milestone brought the old handset maker back to the main battlefield at the end of 2009.

Let N9 to save Nokia?

It was firmly rejected. In the new CEO Elop's strategy for Nokia, there is no N9 roadmap. The N9 is based on the MeeGo platform — an operating system once developed by Nokia and Intel. MeeGo was once regarded as Nokia's replacement of Symbian to counter Apple and Google in the high-end smart phone field. In February of this year, Elop was announced as a "long-term research project."

All Elop's interests are in the cooperation with Microsoft that he is committed to promoting. He sees the Windows Phone platform as the "third ecosystem" Nokia can play a leading role in, in order to compete with Apple iOS and Google Android ecosystem. Although both internal and external opponents believe that relying on Windows Phone will let Nokia lose its advantage and independence in software development and application platform.

Less than a week after N9 was released, Elop made a clear response: despite the huge response from N9, Nokia still has to give up MeeGo and focus entirely on the development of Windows Phone. The first Nokia Windows Phone will be available before the end of the year.

He even wanted people to forget the N9 MeeGo attribute: "N9 is more dependent on the Qt application framework than MeeGo, N9 applications can also be ported to Nokia's Symbian platform through Qt." Elop said. The so-called Qt environment is the first action after Elop took office—the Qt development tools acquired more than two years ago have become common development tools across Nokia's various operating platforms.

Forgetting MeeGo means that Nokia cuts off history: MeeGo was formerly the Maemo platform launched in 2004, and its top leader is the outgoing Nokia executive vice president Anssi Vanjoki – who was once together with Elop as the Nokia Board of Directors CEO candidates consider key figures.

If the N9 that uses the MeeGo operating system and its follow-up models "saves" Nokia, it means that the necessity for Nokia to abandon MeeGo's embrace of Microsoft's Windows Phone four months ago has been greatly reduced.

If N9 is right, Elop is wrong. If MeeGo saves Nokia, then it will not be able to save the company's CEO Elop. This is Nokia's biggest public opinion.

This is enough to reflect the internal pressures and trade-offs that Elop faces. In mid-February, less than a week after Elop announced its cooperation strategy with Microsoft, some shareholders launched the “B Plan” and asked the board to expel Elop, to abandon Microsoft, and use MeeGo as the company's core platform to develop products.

A few months later, Elop continued to visit the R&D center in Europe to appease the angry engineers who had worked hard for MeeGo. He also allowed the MeeGo team to continue to develop the N9, despite the fact that the team had barely been able to prove a successful product in the past six years.

N9's success gave the MeeGo team a reason to openly "slam" the CEO: Private blogger Felipe Contreras revealed that he had received Elop's e-mail and explained that MeeGo was frozen because technical problems caused a very limited number of MeeGo terminals. However, Feilipe publicly denied Elop's judgment. He said that he would work on a daily basis to migrate the MeeGo system to different processor platforms without much problem. Instead, Windows Phone only supports Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset. "People around me don't believe what Elop said." He wrote.

Marko Ahtisaari also told CBN Weekly that Nokia will remain open to MeeGo.

But if Elop wants to save Nokia in another way and also save himself, he must prove that Nokia's Windows Phone is different and experience is not inferior to N9. On the third day of the release of MeeGo, Elop demonstrated the first Nokia Windows Phone codenamed "Sea Ray" at an internal conference. Dramatically, the video and pictures of this product leaked "unexpectedly" via the Internet the next day.

Elop said that this Windows Phone will carry Nokia's genes and features: retain its own industrial design features, interface elements and application platforms. However, from the information of Sea Ray, it is still using Microsoft's native interface. What's more, Nokia's "own genes" retained on this machine are almost exactly the same as the N9.

N9 has become a paving stone to warm up Windows Phone to some extent. "Some important innovations on the N9 will continue on other products," said Elop.

"You can think that Elop killed MeeGo, and then put the Windows Phone into the shell of MeeGo." A retiring Nokia MeeGo engineer told China Business Weekly.

One possibility is that Sea Ray’s chances of success will increase significantly if the N9 is sold well after listing. However, it is very difficult for MeeGo to return to the center of the stage.

This may be what Elop most wants to see.