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Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

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61–70 of 538 posts

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#61

I remember the normal engineering mood inside Symbian, Motorola and Sony Ericsson when the iPhone launched. We immediately knew we were toast. We used to say that the iphone made us irrelevant and android made us redundant.

I think we can see the same thing happening today. BYD+CATL are the new iphone and other manufacturers are Symbian, Motorola and Sony Ericsson VW, Toyota and friends cannot change fast enough. They should have started with big battery investments 10-15y ago and RnDing then, not now when Market is flooded.

I wouldn't count Toyota out. Their mega battery plant in North Carolina is coming online this year, and the biggest drag on their current EV/PHEV lineup is the batteries. New EV/PHEV models are on the way, and frankly if they just update what they have with better batteries they will be absolutely phenomenal because they are currently great to drive and run extremely well despite lackluster battery range.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#62
post #57

My personal moment of "CEO's -- they're just like us!" was walking into a Kinko's in Santa Monica to drop off a package, and seeing a sweaty Stephen Elop frantically photocopying documents the week his part in this debacle came to a head.

For those not in the know, this is the Ex CIO of Boston Chicken. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop

Clearly in retrospect these were transferable skills.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#63
post #12

N800 is the future that never was - opem Linux-based mobile computing for the masses. It had developer support, cool form factor, big touchable screen, and no corp to love it.

If anyone wants to know why Europe has issues with innovation needs to look no further than here

Nokia boomers squandered the opportunity they had with Maemo and kept insisting on the sinking ship (or burning platform) of Symbian

But to be really honest Maemo was also a dud. Because they didn't have the sharp focus of Android and kept a lot of crap from Linux (like X11 sigh)

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#64

I remember the normal engineering mood inside Symbian, Motorola and Sony Ericsson when the iPhone launched. We immediately knew we were toast. We used to say that the iphone made us irrelevant and android made us redundant.

I think we can see the same thing happening today. BYD+CATL are the new iphone and other manufacturers are Symbian, Motorola and Sony Ericsson VW, Toyota and friends cannot change fast enough. They should have started with big battery investments 10-15y ago and RnDing then, not now when Market is flooded.

BYD+CATL is Android. Tesla is Apple.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#65
post #37
post #18

This is fascinating. A reminder that being (broadly) right in your analysis doesn't necessarily mean you can execute to turn things around. They note the impact to the high-end, the fact that UI is crucial, they even had a good guess at 2008 sales numbers (estimate 14m, looks like real was 13m). I was intrigued by this bullet point on how their Maemo platform could help: * Cellular development of the maemo platform a…

N9 was very close to launch when Elop came, so that went ahead, but the rest of the development got cancelled immediately to focus on Windows phone: N9 would've otherwise been the first in a series of devices to slowly take over from Symbian. Until Elop canceled everything Symbian was still selling - declining sales, but still millions of units. So while the situation was bad slowly phasing out Symbian for taking all…

I worked in Nokia at the time and played with the N9. Meego was actually really good. It could have been competitive with the iPhone and Nokia could have stayed at the top and been where Samsung is now.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#67
post #45
post #12

N800 is the future that never was - opem Linux-based mobile computing for the masses. It had developer support, cool form factor, big touchable screen, and no corp to love it.

But with no app store. (As a programmer, I never in a billion years would have invented the app store. Yet it was the most important component of the iphone ecosystem).

The App Store didn't exist for the first iPhone. It launched with the iPhone 3G. The original plan was for everyone to develop web apps; the SDK was added due to external developer demand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(Apple)#History

Not denying how important it was, but the App Store wasn't "invented". It was created because Apple listened to what developers wanted.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#68
post #29

I was expecting sort of the opposite, for Nokia to deride the whole iPhone thing. But it was quite the opposite, they understand what they were facing. Ultimately, the could not meet the challenge fast enough.

Nokia produced several early smartphones. Most ran SymbianOS that showed what was possible. The connectivity wasn't there to make it really useful and this was the age of "smaller is cooler" mobile phones, so they tried to keep the screens small.

I imagine that there were several people in Nokia that understood the potential of a phone that could also act like a mini-computer.

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#69
post #29

I was expecting sort of the opposite, for Nokia to deride the whole iPhone thing. But it was quite the opposite, they understand what they were facing. Ultimately, the could not meet the challenge fast enough.

Blackberry took that approach. https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2015/05/26/blackberr... > Instead they comforted themselves with reminders that the iPhone's keyboard was difficult to use and the battery life, terrible. BlackBerry was leading the pack, after all.

I would kill to see the presentation from RIM

This is to Nokia's credit. It didn't work out, but they also weren't arrogant like RIM or Microsoft

Re: Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]

#70
post #48

It is clear that the presentation doesn't really get it. There would be no iPhone mini. This WAS the iPhone mini.

In hindsight it is funny that Apple used someone with very big hands holding the first iPhone in their 2007 ads to make it look smaller. Nobody at that time could imagine that phones would only get bigger.

iPhones got bigger in terms of screen size, but Apple remained obsessed with lighter and thinner phones for many years after that. It's hard to remember this, but some of the earlier smartphones like the Palm Trio were giant awful bricks. You can't really convey weight in a picture, but you can convey size.
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