Andrews reports, “Simonson, who in November switched from CFO to run the mobile unit of Nokia’s devices division, tells India’s Economic Times… ‘I can even make a prediction for 2010: In Latin America, we will grow faster than [RIM]. By 2011, our efforts will start producing results, as we will be at par with Apple and RIM in smartphones. Not only we draw level with them, we will also win the war because, in addition to email, we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features, which will soon become very critical for success of any company in this space.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: First of all, RIM is nowhere near Apple’s level and, second of all, massive self-delusion is no way to run a successful business.
good luck catching a fast moving target, Rick.
“we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features”
How does adding something that others have had for three years make you better than them?
Oh boy, the next lawsuit will be pointed to RIM.
“Not only we draw level with them, we will also win the war because, in addition to email, we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features.”
Ummm…last I checked, the iPhone already has all of these features.
“will soon become very critical for success of any company in this space”
And that statement was only true on the day the iPhone was launched.
By “match Apple” I’m sure he meant ‘burn an iPhone in effigy’…
“Not only we draw level with them, we will also win the war because, in addition to email, we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features, which will soon become very critical for success of any company in this space.”…
e-mail, chat, music, entertainment?… Doesn’t this already exist on iPhone? RIM? Palm PRE? Motorola Droid?
How old is this Rick Simonson? Near retirement? Used to NCR and typewriters with “ribbons”? What a loser comment to make! UNLESS, Rick is trying to imply that in 2012, Nokia will be where Apple iPhone is in 2009! Then he may have something!
It’s the OS and its usability, stupid. You can add all the content you want (see “Verizon”)…but if no one can access it easily, it just won’t matter.
ThIs guy is delusional
what a joke!! How do these morons rise so high?
Listening to fools like this is getting to be too much for my brain. Why not shut TFU and just execute instead of giving the world useless hyperbole? Just out of general principle, he should be fired for being an idiot. He is doomed to fail!
I’m too lazy to look it up but isn’t this one of the guys that said something like “how is Apple going to deal with us?”. Or is this the guy that said “Apple isn’t just going to walk in and produce a good phone.”
Has that brainless wonder even looked at an iPhone. Because he just described a few of the iPhones features. I just wonder if someone slapped a Apple sticker on one of Nokia’s cell phones and told the boss this is the item to beat!
I wonder if he is walking around nude? Any bold kids out there?!
I think the Latin American market should be deeply offended that this guy thinks they’re so stupid.
They can probably be on par with Rim, but forget Apple. To much disparity between Apple and Rim for the statement to be sensible.
@MusicDoc
Thank you. That comment should be printed out and stapled to the forehead of every project lead at Nokia, Microsoft, et al.
I wonder sometimes about these companies and their “vision.”
Because I cheer innovation, I want the Nokias of the world to come out with intriguing products if only to keep Apple motivated.
I hope they realize that the hardware and OS of the phone isn’t the only thing you’ve got to have to be successful with all this content they are talking about. You also need a great piece of software to run on a computer that mates with the device.
Apple has got iTunes on hundreds of millions of computers worldwide. I say Nokia has got some major catching up to do . . .
… and no doubt they will match and surpass Apple in the run out of stores too… oh I forgot they just closed them.
ps. Whatever happened to ‘comes with music’ wasn’t that supposed to wipe Apple from the summit of music? This company is looking and sounding more and more like Microsoft every day all the stupidity and delusion but without the walls, moat and black magic that protects the sales of their products. They will be to phones what Lanchester is to cars in the longer term…an irrelevant memory.
I’ll buy an ounce of whatever he is smoking…..
…and by 2011, Apple will be at 2020.
Nokia can’t know where Apple will be in 2011. So are they trying to match the unknowable, which is pointless, or match where Apple is now, which is just stupid?
yeah, matching Apple circa 2007, … we’re just hoping every Apple employee has a… um… liver transplant was it? right.. that could happen, and… BOOM.. Nokia’s back in the game!
“…we will also win the war because, in addition to email, we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features…”
No matter what Nokia does, this outdated technology company NEVER will be able to add “iPod” or “iTunes” to their phones. Checkmate.
And with the filing today of yet a third patent lawsuit against Apple, I can safely say I’ll never again consider purchasing any Nokia product. Dear Nokia: shut up, innovate and put the customer experience before your business interests.
“we will grow faster than [RIM]. By 2011, our efforts will start producing results, as we will be at par with Apple and RIM in smartphones.”
He is talking numbers not quality, features or usability. He’s saying Nokia will have a smartphone market share in the same ballpark as Blackberry and Apple. Since Nokia owns Europe market and most of the Asia market in cell phones right now, he may be right.
…”isn’t this one of the guys that said something like “how is Apple going to deal with us?”. Or is this the guy that said “Apple isn’t just going to walk in and produce a good phone.””
No; the first statement (loosely quoted) was by the Motorola guy; the second (just as loosely paraphrased) was by the Palm guy. The Nokia guys haven’t yet blessed us with such memorable statements, until this guy.
One must admit, though, these statements (much like Blamer’s) are straight out of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (the “Big Lie” theory — a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”).
The jury is still out whether the Big Lie theory actually works in the 21st century (apparently, it did work for Hitler — his people believed him).
Nokia can’t compete with Apple’s iPhone because they don’t know what makes it a great smart phone. Nokia might be able to compete with RIM but, RIM as even failed to compete with Apple. Android is a mixed up mess and is getting worse every day. Android will implode under the chaos of fragmentation just as Linux as always done, If Linux had been a single unified development effort it would have unseated Windows years ago, it didn’t because it fragmented into hundreds of different distributions with everyone having their own agenda and following a different path. Android has already split into multiply distributions were HTC has one, Motorola has one, Google has another, and so on. Unless Google retakes complete control of Android it’s fragmentation will lead it down the road of the base OS from which it was born.
Nokia missed the boat on the smart phone innovation revolution and they are just too far behind to do anything about it. Microsoft has missed everything with WinMo and was getting plowed under by RIM even before the iPhone was released. Microsoft was more worried about Apple’s iPod then the smart phone market. ‘t get it as a company.
The iPhone has the revolutionary UI for a Smart Phone, along with build-in iPod functions, the full internet, email and well everything else that makes a smart phone great. backed up with access (direct and indirect) to the iTunes stores and management with iTunes. No other smart phone will ever be able to have the level of seamless direct and indirect support of the Worlds largest on-line media store. It’s game over Nokia you missed the boat stick with what you’ve always done best and that is to make cheap feature phones.
Not only we draw level with them, we will also win the war because, in addition to email, we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features, which will soon become very critical for success of any company in this space.
Umm… doesn’t Apple and to a lesser degree, RIM, Microsoft, and Palm already have these things? So the bottom line is that they think they will win because of their Me2 products and services? Nokia investors, you have been warned!
As John McClane said, “Welcome to the party, pal!“
Peace.
Speaking as someone who works for a company that recently retired an engineer from the CEO position, and hired a CFO to replace him, any company run by a numbers guy is doomed. The crash and burn won’t be quite as spectacular and messy as in a company run by a sales guy (Microsoft), but the numbers guy will immediately stifle development and ultimately starve the company to death. Apple is now in a very secure position in both the smart phone and desktop OS markets. Their leading competition is self-destructing in both areas.
Soon as they in the lawsuit, they’ll match Apple technologies? Ahahaha what a bunch of sore losers.
“By 2011, our efforts will start producing results, as we will be at par with Apple and RIM in smartphones.”
Rick Simonson, you have been iCal’ed.
I think he is skating to where the puck is now and not where it will be in 2011
maybe they will, but by 2011 Apple will be even bigger. so they’ll still have to play catch-up
Buster, we use the metric system when measuring “what he’s smoking.” =]
Does anyone know if any company has successfully used patent litigation to drive their own innovation?
It always seems to me that patent litigation is used to circle the wagons and hold the fort where things currently are, not to move ahead to new things.
2011 will be the year when Nokia drop below 30 % in worldwide smartphone market share and Apple will match Nokia in sales numbers.
Also, IIRC, Nokia was demanding access to Apple’s proprietary patents, as part of any patent deal. (Never mind that the Nokia patents in question were supposed to be subject to “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” terms – yet they discriminate against Apple in this way. Apple refused, so Nokia sued.
Seems to me Nokia wants the free ride on the back of Apple’s innovation, not the other way around.
One more example of how the patent system drives “innovation”…
I love how they all assume Apple is going to sit still and wait for the others to catch up.
They won’t be near the success they think they will be if they keep looking at Apple and not looking at the consumers. This is the problem with all the handset manufacturers the telcos and Microsoft.
The only puck towards which Nokia will skate, is already in the back of their own goal.
Too bad the iPhone that they’re targeting for 2011 is from 2009.
Even if they somehow do manage to make a contender, it will still be out-of-date by the time they release it.
This comment will be right up there with John Rubinstein saying that no current iPhone owner would remain so after the release of the Pre.
How come there is never what we used to call a “real journalist” around when it’s time to burst these guys their hot air balloun?
md mw = going, like in going up, up and away…
Wow. Nokia’s talking points are starting to sound a lot like recycled Palm missives. I suspect it will work just as well for Nokia as it did for Palm. “Where’s the beef?”
@@Buster…I stand corrected….it should read I will buy 0.02835 kilograms of what ever he is smoking.
I make a lousy Canadian in that respect. Moreover I am a lousy skater and do not particularly like maple syrup either. …but I love hockey…go Habs go (and Macs of course)
I heard that Nokia may come out with a touch screen with a virtual keyboard. Now that’s innovation.
It amazes me how a company like Nokia comes out 2 years later to announce that they will challenge Apple next year. So, it’s going to take 4 years for them to compete with Apple. By the time they come out with anything, Apple will be across all networks, maybe out with their 4th or 5th gen phone and have a billion apps. They may want to concentrate on making widgets.
Well, Jobs did say at the iPhone’s 2007 unveiling that it was five years ahead of anyone else.
So far, those words are ringing pretty true.
“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” – Wayne Gretzky
Nokia’s will be on par to where Apple is NOW… maybe.
Good luck Nokia. Maybe Panda bears will fly by then too.
First off, this guy is not aware of the current situation. Forget what the situation will be in one year or two, he doesn’t have a handle on what Apple – or RIM – have on the table right now. He’s a buffoon.
That said:
Demon, the fact that Linux is “splinter” is not “the problem” that’s slowing acceptance of that OS. There is no innovation in their thinking. They are working at doing the same things as other OSs, only hugely better. And succeeding.
Zeke, Jobs is – like Monkey-boy – a salesman. Not an engineer, not a numbers guy, a salesman. Unlike most others, though, he has a vision of what sorts of products he wants to be selling. And, when he gets the advanced, quality product he has insisted on, he sells the be-jeezuz out of it.
Is Sadam’s old Minister For Information working for Nokia now?
Seriously by 2011 they still won’t have decided whether to drop S60 in favour of Maemo.
So, Simonson is admitting that all his current phones are crap compared to the competition? Why would anyone buy a phone from Nokia now?
It shouldn’t be hard for Nokia to catch up. After all, all Apple did was copy everything from Nokia by infringing Nokia patents anyway!
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Right?
@TheConfuzed1
You said
“This comment will be right up there with John Rubinstein saying that no current iPhone owner would remain so after the release of the Pre.”
Sorry Dude, but you are still a little confused.
The statement was made by Palm investor Roger McNamee, not John Rubinstein.
Gotta love this. From the article, Nokia rep sez:
“By 2011, our efforts will start producing results, as we will be at par with Apple and RIM in smartphones.”
–>So by 2011 Nokia will be “at a par” with Apple from *2009*. I am willing to bet that is exactly what will happen. BWAHAHA!
NOKIA = DESPERATE. Thus the stooopid comments and the ongoing lawsuit warz with Apple. Their sales are flat and so are their heads. heehee. ‘Darned that Apple!’
Yo Apple Fanboys,
I bet that he is talking about North American Market share, considering Nokia currently has at least TWICE the market share that either RIM or Apple has globally.
Ever wondered how the reported profits relate to the current courtcases? Me neither..
You also never seem to have gotten your hands on the N900 that beats any iPhone, hands down, today.
Which leads me to my question: “other features, which will soon become very critical for success of any company in this space”
How can you claim iPhone has all these already, care to share what you think these are? Thanks!