The Microsoft (MSFT) smartphone rumor refuses to go away. Though a company exec denied the rumor in June and suggested Microsoft won't compete with Windows Phone partners such as Nokia (NOK), BGR reports a "trusted source" indicates Redmond is working on a high-end smartphone, with a launch expected in the coming months. A Chinese site recently claimed Microsoft's phone will be sold under the Surface brand, and be available in 1H13. [View news story]
You're absolutely right. If MS make a WP8 device, Nokia will have to jump ship. Competing against MS is not feasible. Fortunately Nokia have plenty of experience dealing with multiple operating systems.
Actually it's worse than you make out. Splunk rely on the paradigm of moving the data to the processing. That is you take your data and push it to the splunk systems.
This can be a lot of data; they don't call it "big data" for nothing, which means you need a large and very expensive infrastructure to host and to move the data and you need a lot of power on the splunk systems.
The new paradigm is more in line with traditional software engineering practice; you move the processing to the data. i.e. you put something on the originating systems which performs the processing, analytics and calculations at source and then you only collect together aggregates for resource planning purposes. The need for an expensive infrastructure to manage this "big data" goes away because the big data is never created in the first place.
I'm keeping out of the big cloudy data space at the moment. The margin on the cloud is tiny and big data is primarily bad engineering practice.
The Microsoft (MSFT) smartphone rumor refuses to go away. Though a company exec denied the rumor in June and suggested Microsoft won't compete with Windows Phone partners such as Nokia (NOK), BGR reports a "trusted source" indicates Redmond is working on a high-end smartphone, with a launch expected in the coming months. A Chinese site recently claimed Microsoft's phone will be sold under the Surface brand, and be available in 1H13. [View news story]
Microsoft got Nokia to make windows phones for nothing. It cost them a billion maybe. Windows Phone is not yet by *any* stretch of the imagination, a successful product. Nokia were shipping *30* million Symbian smart phones per quarter before Elop came on board and destroyed their market. Last count they were shipping *4* million windows phones.
So why would they take on that risk by buying the company? I'm pretty sure the only reason MSFT produced a tablet is nobody else was going to do it for them. They might do a phone themselves if Nokia abandons a sinking Windows Phone. The next 6 months are crucial both for Nokia and for Microsoft.
Now, Nokia have done the business, the 920 is as good as a current generation smart phone gets by all accounts it's going to be the best thing on the market by a wide margin, so it's up to Microsoft to produce the goods.
Good Time To Invest In Chinese Equities [View article]
CAPE still a touch high would have to come down for china to be good value. About 20% or so yet to go. I don't think the hard landing is full factored in by any means yet.
You may want to take a look at italy, spain and the netherlands instead.
Karate Principles In Trading And Portfolio Management [View article]
You realise that 99% of karateka will be badly hurt at best, if they attempt to make use in real life of anything they have learned in the dojo? The karate you know today bears little resemblance to what was a brutal street fighting system suitable for self defence.
My point (and this is also something you should apply to investing) is, you need to understand how things are, not how they appear or how people of authority say they are.
If they go to the trouble of dropping them, freezing them, cooking them, shaking them they'll also certainly be testing the software as well. Maybe that's why Nokia don't have quite Apple's margins.
'Weak' Apple iPhone 5 Sales Are A Glitch [View article]
It looks like in order to maintain their 50% margin, Apple didn't bother with a QA department on the iPhone 5 release and left it up to end consumers to find the problems.
It scuffs and chips within minutes of being in a pocket with keys or change, the camera produces a purple haze in sunlight, the maps are poor at best, the glass it seems has a tendency to shatter when dropped.
For a device which is touted as "premium" with a very definitely premium price, the quality seems to be at absolute best, middling and realistically kind of cheap. Within a couple of weeks it's going to look "tatty".
As far as I can tell these are all simple problems to discover by any quality assurance department. Which rather indicates they either don't have one or just went ahead and released the phone anyway. either way, hardly worth the designation of a "premium device" and a premium price.
BTW, doesn't it bode well that the ecstatic iPhone 5 owners are collecting lists of the problems (where I got the list above);
How Many Lumias Can Nokia Sell At These Prices? [View article]
"Maintaining a standalone in-company operating system is just too damn complex and expensive."
Actually, Nokia had 4 operating systems on the go, only one of which was in house.
S40 - Asha <- Still in house. Symbian - Epoc based was run by a consortium. Meltemi - Internal cut down Linux for feature phones Meego - Linux for smartphones, run as a collaboration.
A company the size of Nokia could easily manage an in house Linux distribution like Meego. However they had their R&D org, their operations, their testing split between the 4 and hundreds of models of phones.
It was a case of divide and conquer. It wouldn't have mattered which OS they chose as long as they killed the others and concentrated on just 2 and a dozen phone models.
What they wouldn't have had though is thousands of apps. Having said that, if Elop bless his heart hadn't send the "our stuff is junk and we're dumping it" memo to the world Symbian would probably still be selling well enough that they would have had time to switch to a replacement and transition their existing developer base.
Nokia (NOK) rises 1.5% premarket amidst a (hardly surprising) Bloomberg report the company - burning through about $300M/month - may be considering eliminating its annual dividend payment this year. A Nokia spokesman declined to comment on the idea. The dividend announcement is typically made as part of the Q4 earnings report, which will come in January. [View news story]
I bought with "they're dead *tomorrow*" already priced in so frankly I'm not expecting a dividend till they start making money again. People buy and sell in seconds, minutes on rumours here words there. Things just take longer than that in the real world.
If they're not profitable in 2013, then I'll worry.
The Microsoft (MSFT) smartphone rumor refuses to go away. Though a company exec denied the rumor in June and suggested Microsoft won't compete with Windows Phone partners such as Nokia (NOK), BGR reports a "trusted source" indicates Redmond is working on a high-end smartphone, with a launch expected in the coming months. A Chinese site recently claimed Microsoft's phone will be sold under the Surface brand, and be available in 1H13. [View news story]
New Competition Challenges Splunk [View article]
New Competition Challenges Splunk [View article]
This can be a lot of data; they don't call it "big data" for nothing, which means you need a large and very expensive infrastructure to host and to move the data and you need a lot of power on the splunk systems.
The new paradigm is more in line with traditional software engineering practice; you move the processing to the data. i.e. you put something on the originating systems which performs the processing, analytics and calculations at source and then you only collect together aggregates for resource planning purposes. The need for an expensive infrastructure to manage this "big data" goes away because the big data is never created in the first place.
I'm keeping out of the big cloudy data space at the moment. The margin on the cloud is tiny and big data is primarily bad engineering practice.
The Microsoft (MSFT) smartphone rumor refuses to go away. Though a company exec denied the rumor in June and suggested Microsoft won't compete with Windows Phone partners such as Nokia (NOK), BGR reports a "trusted source" indicates Redmond is working on a high-end smartphone, with a launch expected in the coming months. A Chinese site recently claimed Microsoft's phone will be sold under the Surface brand, and be available in 1H13. [View news story]
So why would they take on that risk by buying the company? I'm pretty sure the only reason MSFT produced a tablet is nobody else was going to do it for them. They might do a phone themselves if Nokia abandons a sinking Windows Phone. The next 6 months are crucial both for Nokia and for Microsoft.
Now, Nokia have done the business, the 920 is as good as a current generation smart phone gets by all accounts it's going to be the best thing on the market by a wide margin, so it's up to Microsoft to produce the goods.
Good Time To Invest In Chinese Equities [View article]
You may want to take a look at italy, spain and the netherlands instead.
Karate Principles In Trading And Portfolio Management [View article]
My point (and this is also something you should apply to investing) is, you need to understand how things are, not how they appear or how people of authority say they are.
'Weak' Apple iPhone 5 Sales Are A Glitch [View article]
'Weak' Apple iPhone 5 Sales Are A Glitch [View article]
Why haven't you asked Siri where you could get a good quality mapping application for your iPhone?
'Weak' Apple iPhone 5 Sales Are A Glitch [View article]
'Weak' Apple iPhone 5 Sales Are A Glitch [View article]
http://engt.co/Pz5njg
If they go to the trouble of dropping them, freezing them, cooking them, shaking them they'll also certainly be testing the software as well. Maybe that's why Nokia don't have quite Apple's margins.
HTH
'Weak' Apple iPhone 5 Sales Are A Glitch [View article]
It scuffs and chips within minutes of being in a pocket with keys or change, the camera produces a purple haze in sunlight, the maps are poor at best, the glass it seems has a tendency to shatter when dropped.
For a device which is touted as "premium" with a very definitely premium price, the quality seems to be at absolute best, middling and realistically kind of cheap. Within a couple of weeks it's going to look "tatty".
As far as I can tell these are all simple problems to discover by any quality assurance department. Which rather indicates they either don't have one or just went ahead and released the phone anyway. either way, hardly worth the designation of a "premium device" and a premium price.
BTW, doesn't it bode well that the ecstatic iPhone 5 owners are collecting lists of the problems (where I got the list above);
http://goo.gl/YNdJB
Are you long APPL at the peak? I'm long NOK instead.
How Many Lumias Can Nokia Sell At These Prices? [View article]
Plus there's all the Windows developers who will extend to the mobile arena. Wouldn't worry about "ecosystem".
How Many Lumias Can Nokia Sell At These Prices? [View article]
Actually, Nokia had 4 operating systems on the go, only one of which was in house.
S40 - Asha <- Still in house.
Symbian - Epoc based was run by a consortium.
Meltemi - Internal cut down Linux for feature phones
Meego - Linux for smartphones, run as a collaboration.
A company the size of Nokia could easily manage an in house Linux distribution like Meego. However they had their R&D org, their operations, their testing split between the 4 and hundreds of models of phones.
It was a case of divide and conquer. It wouldn't have mattered which OS they chose as long as they killed the others and concentrated on just 2 and a dozen phone models.
What they wouldn't have had though is thousands of apps. Having said that, if Elop bless his heart hadn't send the "our stuff is junk and we're dumping it" memo to the world Symbian would probably still be selling well enough that they would have had time to switch to a replacement and transition their existing developer base.
I wouldn't have got NOK at 1.80 though.
How Many Lumias Can Nokia Sell At These Prices? [View article]
Nokia (NOK) rises 1.5% premarket amidst a (hardly surprising) Bloomberg report the company - burning through about $300M/month - may be considering eliminating its annual dividend payment this year. A Nokia spokesman declined to comment on the idea. The dividend announcement is typically made as part of the Q4 earnings report, which will come in January. [View news story]
If they're not profitable in 2013, then I'll worry.