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Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

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Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#101

Post by pjmlp »

stingraycharles wrote: post #28
skavi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While Windows Phone 7 wasn't that great, Windows Phone 8 was quite good.

Used all Windows Phone versions, and they all got more updates than most my Android devices.

Their market was around 10% in Europe when they decided to give up.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#102

Post by alfiedotwtf »

pluijzer wrote: post #81
pengaru wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll counter with the Nokia N900. I've never understood this about N900 fans. My experience with the N9 was great, and never left me wishing I could go back to something more like a Sharp Zaurus with modern cell connectivity. What is it that makes the N900 appealing? Is it strictly the physical keyboard? So the N950 would have been the N900 killer? Or was there something else about it?

The N900 was my favorite phone by far. Most of the reason come as a programmer, not all users might value them. First of all ot was a true Linux phone. Running a derivative of Debian, complete with apt etc. Most of the apps on it, even the app to make a phone call where preexisting open source Linux applications with a nice mobile UI. An UI that was clean and consistent without the need off branding that other platfo…

Totally agree!

I've had them all, including a Zaurus, various Palms with phone, various XDAs, Nokia N900, Free Runner, Firefox phone, Ubuntu phone, you name it... but IMHO the N900 was the best form factor and UI - the only reason why I got rid of it was the band didn't support where I was traveling to.

Still sad the NEO 900 went nowhere. I would jump at that. Still interested in trying the Purism and PinePhone, but with my time as limited as it is, I'll stick to my Pixel 4a running LineageOS for now - but can't wait to get me back a pure Linux phone that works without issues!

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#103

Post by pjmlp »

sangnoir wrote: post #56
stingraycharles wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. and had no apps. Windows Phone/Mobile had atrocious developer share. There few apps that were available were of terrible quality. Ironic, considering this happened in the era of a sweaty Balmer screaming "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"[1] 1. https:/…

Compared with Android, to this day, WinRT development experience is like being in heaven.

It took Android 10 years, for something like AGK to come up, and even then it is a mess of development experience.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#104

Post by cycomanic »

majormajor wrote: post #63
8ytecoder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android was a choice. Not the obvious one. Seriously how many Android manufacturers are really successful? Samsung? Google? Pretty much everyone else is completely interchangeable in the crowd of low cost devices. LG, HTC, Sony …etc have all but disappeared and they all chose Android. Sony especially had some solid hits back in the day. Microsoft utterly failed Nokia but I don’t consider the decision at the time to b…

Yeah, and it's not like Nokia was riding a winning streak in the pre-iPhone market. Nokia hadn't had a ubiquitous hit for several years - before the Razr, before the LG Chocolate, before the Blackberry, etc. They could have probably produced better hardware than the other Android makers - the N9 and first Lumias were very nice devices to hold and use - but they weren't exactly coming in with a ton of momentum in the…

I think you speak from a US perspective. Nokia phones were absolutely ubiquitous in other parts of the world, way into the time of the Razr etc.. Even at the time this memo was written it Nokia still had around 25-30% market share IIRC.

Regarding the N9, it was released essentially without any marketing push, with very little availability (I think they didn't even get it into live stores, you had to order online). It was also released after the memo, so obviously only few people got it.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#105

Post by pjmlp »

LtWorf wrote: post #55
anthropodie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It seems you never tried a windows phone. They were slow. Really slow. Typing was so slow. Opening the camera app even more so.

Owned most Lumia models, Android were even slower.

Starting with Window Phone 8 everything was native code, even .NET, while on Android the first Dalvik versions didn't even had a JIT.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#106

Post by ZeroGravitas »

emptyparadise wrote: post #95

Windows Phone was quite good, but Microsoft had a terrible case of chronically fucking everything up. They made everyone buy new phones for Windows Phone 8, which did not have any user-visible changes (though it did switch the OS to NT). They took multiple years to add basic functionality like a notification center, and by the time they did, it was too late. They actually shot themselves in the foot and had extremely…

I believe Microsoft literally ran an advertisement suggesting that people were spending too much time on their phones. This was an ad for their own smartphones.

That's an interesting look into their corporate attitude at the time.

You could say that their Office app monopoly sabotaged their web browser (and the web in general) and their desktop monopoly sabotaged their phones (and phones in general) but both the web and smartphones proved stronger in the end.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#107

Post by pjmlp »

dshep wrote: post #25

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.

It wasn't also that well received inside, as we were pretty much a UNIX shop.

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#108

Post by jbverschoor »

pjmlp wrote: post #88
phasersout wrote: post #82

I covered quite a few Nokia reviews back in the day and Nokia was by far the most arrogant company to deal with. Every company has it's rules and regulations regarding review devices but with Nokia you had to sign up to three forms just to do your work. Partly with ridiculous rules like a missing charger or cable was up to 50 Euros or so. And they let you very much know where in the pecking order you were regarding y…

Nokia has been one of the companies I had most fun working at, you just met the wrong folks.

You were on the other side of the table

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#109

Post by tuukkah »

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #26
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 burn…

> the network division continued as Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), and was rebranded to Nokia Networks

It wasn't just a rebranding. Nokia wisely bought Siemens out from the Networks joint venture already in 2013, before selling the phones to Microsoft. Then in 2015, they acquired Alcatel-Lucent (including Bell Labs) to the mix. This way, they stayed in Fortune Global 500 even without the phone business.

And nowadays there are new Nokia branded feature phones as well as Android phones and tablets: https://www.nokia.com/phones/

Re: Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)

#110

Post by toyg »

pjmlp wrote: post #88
phasersout wrote: post #82

I covered quite a few Nokia reviews back in the day and Nokia was by far the most arrogant company to deal with. Every company has it's rules and regulations regarding review devices but with Nokia you had to sign up to three forms just to do your work. Partly with ridiculous rules like a missing charger or cable was up to 50 Euros or so. And they let you very much know where in the pecking order you were regarding y…

Nokia has been one of the companies I had most fun working at, you just met the wrong folks.

The difference is the target audience. When a company reaches a huge size, employees have an incentive to act nice internally, because that's the way to promotion; but they have no incentive to be nice towards external folks. It takes effort from management to ensure people act nicely towards others, and Nokia clearly failed at that.

I met one of their "evangelist" when they were trying to push Qt. He came to a iOS usergroup, so clearly in "enemy territory", and just used a precooked slide deck that compared Qt to Symbian - nobody gave a shit about Symbian there, but that's how they lived, stuck in their bubble. He was quite off-putting and way too commercial-focused for a tech UG; I already knew Qt and left thinking I could have done a better job of selling the tech.

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