First Nokia-branded Android smartphone to be released exclusively in China

Nokia had a great supply chain and talented product designers, they could have done very well as a premium Android manufacturer (which is where Google wants Pixel to be). I think the mismanagement story, which many ex-Nokians share variations of, makes sense.

And the n900 did have an App store. It was shitty, and suffered from the typical platform bootstrapping problem. And if I recall, there were some security holes that let people download apps for free.

n900's problems were: a) resistive touch sucks b) tiny, tiny hardware keyboard keys c) a pathetic, zero subsidy US launch d) incredibly late to market -- iphone had a 2 year head start e) zero developer credibility f) no support for MMS g) surprisingly flaky USB charging port

Yes, if they had adopted Android when Samsung or HTC did, it certainly would have helped. But they didn't. I'm not arguing that Nokia shouldn't have come out with Android phones in 2009. I'm saying that by 2011, the market was different and they were offering an inferior experience then against a well-established market.

Nokia, like RIM, didn't take smartphones serious for too long. Both thought that there was some non-full-smartphone thing like classic BlackBerry or Symbian devices that would be competitive in a post-iPhone, post-Android world.

It's true that Nokia had a strong brand, but that doesn't seem to have mattered in the move to smartphones. Motorola had a strong non-smartphone brand that didn't translate to smartphones. HTC had no non-smartphone brand and became one of the larger players there before Samsung started just out-producing them. SonyEricsson had a strong non-smartphone brand that just didn't make it through to smartphones.

It's true that Nokia's brand was stronger than SonyEricsson or Motorola, but I think it's more likely that the Nokia brand wouldn't be as meaningful as what Samsung was bringing to the party.

In 4Q2006, Nokia had 36% of the market compared to 22% for Motorola, 11.3% for Samsung, 9% for SonyEricsson, and 6% for LG. Samsung seems to be the only one to have stuck on the leaderboard through 2Q2016 at 22%, Apple at 12%, Huawei at 9%, OPPO at 7%, and vivo at 5%.

And Motorola got into the Android game early. I always preferred Nokia, but it's not like Motorola wasn't a strong brand pre-iPhone.

I think it's easy to say that Windows Phone was the only reason. I think you're spot on that if Nokia had adopted Android when Samsung had, it's a completely different story. But in November 2011, the market had already been shaped against them. It was already a little late for adoption :-(.

Apple releases very few models and sells a lot of them. That means that they have buying power that component sellers can't ignore. They aren't ordering 100k or 500k of a display size. Apple also has the cash to pre-pay for components. Most companies don't have those advantages. Nokia likely wouldn't have been sure enough of a new product to put in a large enough order to be a price-setter. It's also important to note that a lot of Nokia's market-share was on the low-end in the world (emerging markets that don't command premium prices).

Nokia certainly had some great people and great products. I liked them a lot. But I think Nokia would have needed a lot more variation in models like Samsung has, but without its own chip foundry or display-making capabilities.

Motorola also had a strong pre-smartphone brand (commanding 22% of the market compared to Nokia's 36%). Motorola also got involved with Android way before November 2011. It didn't save them.

One of the things to realize is that the market was stacked against ALL of the former mobile makers (regardless of brand, designers, or supply chains). The Motorola Droid came out in October 2009 - more than two years before the Lumias. The Motorola Droid was a good phone with a higher resolution display and camera than the iPhone at the time. It was really nice. It didn't save Motorola.

I'm not saying that Nokia is bad or anything like that. I'm saying that companies that had great brands like Motorola or SonyEricsson jumped on the smartphone bandwagon before Nokia and failed. And I think Nokia's products were historically better than Motorola or SonyEricsson, but by the time Nokia joined the smartphone fray, Samsung was firing on all cylinders. Even companies that joined early like Motorola got swept aside by Samsung.

Why would an Android Nokia have done better? The Lumia phones were fine, but they weren't something that made a Samsung look bad. If anything, phones from Android manufacturers seemed better.

There was certainly mismanagement. However, that's not saying it's just the Android decision. Motorola went to Android very early and put out some great phones, but it didn't leave them in a strong position in the smartphone era. Nokia releasing a below-average-spec'd Android phone in November 2011 just doesn't seem like it would have changed the story. HTC, LG, Motorola, SonyEricsson, and others all released really great phones and they've all been relegated to also-rans. Nokia certainly has/had a strong brand and talent, but brand and prior mobile creation talent didn't seem to save any of the others from getting swept aside by Samsung and Apple.

Yes, if Nokia had made an Android phone and kept making all of the right bets, they could have become a successful smartphone company. But plenty of companies went Android much quicker and made a lot of the right bets and still didn't end up as successful smartphone companies. If you want to rewrite Nokia's management to being "way better than LG, Motorola, and HTC combined", then yea. But saying that just going to Android in November 2011 would have done the trick seems unlikely given that so many companies made better bets than that and failed.