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Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

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Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#21

Post by mmsimanga »

locallost wrote: post #12
cmdrriker wrote: post #4

Boy, did Nokia elope after this with M$ft phone which was supposed to right Nokia's collective "ship". Elop joined the hallowed hall of fame of abysmal CEO's who ran their firms into the ground. Remember Lumia, Windows Phone 7,8 & 10 blehh. Was it Balmer that hired Elop?

I had a Windows 8 phone from Nokia around 2015 or so and other than the lack of apps it was a phone like pretty much any other at the time or even these days. By that I mean I don't remember anything really bad about it, especially because I mostly use the web anyway. I have no idea why things succeed or fail and so I don't know for this either, but my guess is it was new, but didn't have anything that provoked an in…

I wonder if they threw in the towel too soon. I too had a Nokia Windows phone and I loved it. They were popular in South Africa as Nokia was a recognised brand. Bandwidth is still expensive here so most people just need WhatsApp and Facebook and they are fine. Perhaps the developed market needed more apps.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#22

Post by skavi »

eslaught wrote: post #15

I'm not saying this is a great letter, but he wasn't wrong. I owned both Symbian and Maemo devices, and the experience (both to use and develop) really was this bad. That's not to say everything about it was bad, or that there was nothing to like (as HN comments have often pointed out, there was), but it didn't hold a candle to iOS, or even Android. (And Android in those days was pretty hideous.) Now what Nokia did i…

I think it’s simple enough to see why Nokia thought Windows would be the right choice. It was far more polished than Android at the time. It ran well on cheap hardware. And they would have Microsoft backing them.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#24

Post by _ea1k »

eslaught wrote: post #15

I'm not saying this is a great letter, but he wasn't wrong. I owned both Symbian and Maemo devices, and the experience (both to use and develop) really was this bad. That's not to say everything about it was bad, or that there was nothing to like (as HN comments have often pointed out, there was), but it didn't hold a candle to iOS, or even Android. (And Android in those days was pretty hideous.) Now what Nokia did i…

That his letter pointed out a real problem never seemed controversial. The shocking part was tying themselves to MS without a reasonable backup plan.

They thought they couldn't build hardware good enough to compete with other Android makers, but somehow convinced themselves that the solution to that was to put their less competitive hardware onto a less competitive platform.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#25

Post by dshep »

Nokia suffered from lack of direction from the top... They had both symbian and maemo, both officially blessed, but incompatible. Symbian was the past and maemo had promise, so what did management do... a hail mary bet on microsoft? It came out of nowhere and seemed desperate, I believe the market's reaction reflected this sadly.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#26

Post by kevin_nisbet »

ggm wrote: post #19

Great hw engineers let down by less than stellar software decisions. Nokia owned a significant slice of late stage pre internet telephony infrastructure level equipment, bridged over to the emerging mobile world and .. kinda missed the boat when Apple happend in with iPhone and then Android's emergence killed them. A lot of people loved their handsets. Just not enough in any single market to make up for some bad deci…

The network / infrastructure side of Nokia still exists. When the handsets division was split or sold off, the network division continued as Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), and was rebranded to Nokia Networks I think after the merger with Alcatel-Lucent.

So for the big mobile wireless telco's, the big players are basically Nokia, Erricson, and Huawei these days. My experience with Nokia's equipment did reflect the burning platform memo, but all the big players had lots to be desired in my experience with them.

Note: I've been out of the industry for several years, so I'm not totally up to date on the vendors.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#27

Post by _ea1k »

jeswin wrote: post #18
zibby8 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was Windows a better choice than Android? You mentioned that Windows had “the best shot of competing with Android”, but why was that desirable? The adage, if you can’t beat them, join them comes to mind.

Maybe they concluded (rightly) that there are no margins in Android devices. Samsung is a rare exception, but by then the signs were clear that manufacturing (including the R&D around it) was shifting to East Asia.

Yeah, the only people making money on Android were the ones with great hardware and brand recognition.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#28

Post by stingraycharles »

skavi wrote: post #22
eslaught wrote: post #15

I'm not saying this is a great letter, but he wasn't wrong. I owned both Symbian and Maemo devices, and the experience (both to use and develop) really was this bad. That's not to say everything about it was bad, or that there was nothing to like (as HN comments have often pointed out, there was), but it didn't hold a candle to iOS, or even Android. (And Android in those days was pretty hideous.) Now what Nokia did i…

I think it’s simple enough to see why Nokia thought Windows would be the right choice. It was far more polished than Android at the time. It ran well on cheap hardware. And they would have Microsoft backing them.

As someone who owned a Windows phone around that time, and knew others who did as well, the shared opinion was that it was a pile of crap.

Nokia went for Windows because of the acquisition target, not because of quality of the OS. With that, they prioritized business strategy over product quality, and we all know what happened after.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#29

Post by hedora »

zibby8 wrote: post #16
jeswin wrote: post #14

Switching to Microsoft seemed like the best decision at that time. Those criticizing are underestimating the software engineering effort required to build a modern OS and the app ecosystem. But what about Symbian and Ovi? I've had a bunch of Symbian devices with the Ovi store. They were simply not in the same league; the apps were basic because the development tools were just not good enough; and targeted basic low-e…

Why was Windows a better choice than Android? You mentioned that Windows had “the best shot of competing with Android”, but why was that desirable? The adage, if you can’t beat them, join them comes to mind.

Oddly, Windows Phone 8 had the best user experience of any phone I've ever used, by far.

I'd still be on it if it existed and wasn't laden with Windows 10 style telemetry. I don't care about having a wide selection of apps. I care about having a low-distraction, well organized UI that's optimized for specific tasks.

For instance, opening an entry in the address book produced a cross-social-network feed of everything they sent you recently (including call logs, email, SMS, twitter, etc...).

That was fantastic, but prepared to have your mind blown: Typing an address into the navigation app and hitting enter (or tapping on a destination) immediately started navigating.

8.1 was strictly a UI regression. I heard 8.5 was even worse.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#30

Post by anthropodie »

_ea1k wrote: post #24
eslaught wrote: post #15

I'm not saying this is a great letter, but he wasn't wrong. I owned both Symbian and Maemo devices, and the experience (both to use and develop) really was this bad. That's not to say everything about it was bad, or that there was nothing to like (as HN comments have often pointed out, there was), but it didn't hold a candle to iOS, or even Android. (And Android in those days was pretty hideous.) Now what Nokia did i…

That his letter pointed out a real problem never seemed controversial. The shocking part was tying themselves to MS without a reasonable backup plan. They thought they couldn't build hardware good enough to compete with other Android makers, but somehow convinced themselves that the solution to that was to put their less competitive hardware onto a less competitive platform.

> They thought they couldn't build hardware good enough to compete with other Android makers,

But that is so wrong. Hardware was their strength. They could've sticked to what they knew best and over time do what's necessary.

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