I worked as an intern at one of the Nokia's branches (won't tell you where, but it's in N.A.) in a city where there are quite a few Symbian software houses. I talked to a few Symbian developers and they absolutely hate it with passion. We're not talking technology for technology sake but more like "Business wise, it's not worth it unless you'd want your workers to suffer productivity nightmare".
My (short) time at this particular Nokia branch wasn't glowing with roses either; they just laid off several hundreds of their employees and slowly but sure inserting contractors, moving some part of their departments to 3rd world countries.
Their development process was really slow: they'll get their Baseline (I never really sure what it consists of even after I talked to quite a few people but I'm guessing it's the Symbian OS with some standard API/Libraries/Framework toolkits) from Finland once every 2 weeks. Then they would have to merge their code to this Baseline and deal with whatever problems come up.
During the last 2 weeks I was there, some high-level management guy came from Europe. He would gathered everybody to a room to do some sort of All-Hands meeting. In this meeting, he would announce some organization structure "roadmap". I find it strange; instead of talking about the products, this roadmap discussed the company's plan to expand to China and India (DING DING DING!). Of course the guy would immediately told us all that "there won't be any lay-off". But you get the idea...
Here it is... the outcome of such environment: unhappy customers.
It's hard to beat Android that seems to operate in a more Agile way where the workers are far more enthusiastic and passionate.
After some 8 arduous years of dicking around with the horribly broken Symbian/S60, Nokia finally realized in 2008 that their software process sucks and is fundamentally unable to deliver a competitive mobile app platform. Their solution was to purchase a smaller, nimbler company with a ready product, and let the subsidiary produce the user-visible framework more or less independently of the suffocating Nokia structure.
After two years, they've finally shipped the first SDK which targets existing devices with the new framework. It's actually pretty nice: http://www.forum.nokia.com/Develop/Qt
However, these transitions simply take a long time. Apple purchased NeXT in late 1996, and the first usable Mac OS X release appeared almost five years later.
Nokia has split their "OS X moment" into two separate operating systems: Symbian^4 and MeeGo. But neither is ready yet. Meanwhile Nokia investors are getting very antsy: over the past decade, Nokia's stock has lost over 80% of its value, or something like $200 billion in market cap... If the Qt transition stumbles, heads will roll in Espoo.
I never follow the company anymore ever since I left. While I have no bitter feeling since I was there only for 4 months for the fun, name, and to know what's inside, it strikes me that they don't have a very strong grasp of anything. The market, the talent, the process.
I do think that they need to trim down quick. I know that might have hurt their stocks like a kick in the groin, but they've already lost a lot of their stock values. They should do some sort of reboot and becoming an underdog. Slim down that confusing offerings. Back then, they have tons of numbering systems that confuses people who happen to have interaction (reading news, chat, or whatever) with other people that live in different countries.
In Country A, the model might be called E1234, in different parts of the world, the model might be called E1235. The capabilities differ by tiny margin. It just doesn't make any sense. It might be because of regulation or whatnot, but very confusing.
If Microsoft offering is confusing, you should check Nokia's.
Currently, they have nothing other than cheap cellphone to be sold to Asian markets. I happen to be born in another part of the world. Back at my home country, Nokia is still strong because they sell cheap unlocked cellphone (coincidentally, the providers aren't operating like N.A. providers). Having said that, the mid-to-upper level economy population are full of BB users (weird isn't it, not Android, not iPhone, but BB).
BB at least has this "PIN" thing (I don't have a BB so I don't know much about it) where I noticed that most of my high-school friends are exchanging PIN, or exchanging stuff within BB. So I'm assuming there's some sort of ability for BB to have a "soft" vendor lock-in. Nokia has nothing other than cheap price.
However, these transitions simply take a long time. Apple purchased NeXT in late 1996, and the first usable Mac OS X release appeared almost five years later.
During the last 2 weeks I was there, some high-level management guy came from Europe. He would gathered everybody to a room to do some sort of All-Hands meeting. In this meeting, he would announce some organization structure "roadmap". I find it strange; instead of talking about the products, this roadmap discussed the company's plan to expand to China and India (DING DING DING!). Of course the guy would immediately told us all that "there won't be any lay-off". But you get the idea...
That's how I imagine the Windows department at Microsoft when Vista and Windows Mobile 6 was in development
I've worked in large corporate environments for many years and one of the things I've learned is this: if they call a big company meeting and a guy in a suit gets up and tells you they're going to do X but DON'T WORRY ABOUT Y HAPPENING WE HAVE NO PLANS OF DOING Y, you need to immediately begin assuming that Y is going to happen.
Because it will.
Maybe not the next day or the next week or even the next month. But it will happen, and it is because the suits have already started knocking the dominoes over in just the right way, behind the scenes, in the back offices and off-site conversations that you will never be privy to. I'd say this prediction method has worked successfully for me say 90% of the time. It's just something about corporate culture and the types of people who get into those positions, or at least, the pressures put on them to say certain things and not say other things, in order to manipulate employees and maximize their own personal benefit.
My (short) time at this particular Nokia branch wasn't glowing with roses either; they just laid off several hundreds of their employees and slowly but sure inserting contractors, moving some part of their departments to 3rd world countries.
Their development process was really slow: they'll get their Baseline (I never really sure what it consists of even after I talked to quite a few people but I'm guessing it's the Symbian OS with some standard API/Libraries/Framework toolkits) from Finland once every 2 weeks. Then they would have to merge their code to this Baseline and deal with whatever problems come up.
During the last 2 weeks I was there, some high-level management guy came from Europe. He would gathered everybody to a room to do some sort of All-Hands meeting. In this meeting, he would announce some organization structure "roadmap". I find it strange; instead of talking about the products, this roadmap discussed the company's plan to expand to China and India (DING DING DING!). Of course the guy would immediately told us all that "there won't be any lay-off". But you get the idea...
Here it is... the outcome of such environment: unhappy customers.
It's hard to beat Android that seems to operate in a more Agile way where the workers are far more enthusiastic and passionate.