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

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

#341

Post by pembrook »

jebarker wrote: post #192
pembrook wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic innovators dilemma. The entire point of an organization is to systematize, standardize, and make reliable something that is working. When that thing stops working, and the wind changes, that organization is now a giant anchor full of the wrong people doing the wrong stuff inside the wrong systems on autopilot.

My pet theory is that this is the natural lifecycle of almost all companies and the reason for that is that they underappreciate the luck involved in their first success. There are a few exceptions in the form of zombies (typically relying on a monopoly or legislative help), but there are very few repeatedly innovative companies.

Doesn’t need to be a pet theory, that’s just an accurate assessment of reality.

I’m sure in Finnish business schools they spend a lot of time hand wringing over the question of why their domestic champion Nokia failed. What they should instead be focused on is why the disruptor wasn’t also cultivated domestically.

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

#344

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

willvarfar wrote: post #32

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.

Not related to phone companies, but some software companies were in denial about it. I remember purchasing one of the first HTC/Android smartphone, and I told my boss at the time that my new cheap phone could replace all the applications of the company but cheaper, more convenient, in my pocket, and without a computer. He made fun of me and laughed. I knew Java pretty well and whipped up a few POCs to see by myself if we were really doomed, but I didn't told anyone about it. In less than 2 weeks I replace the whole company with 2 or 3 applications with crappy UIs. I quit in less than a month and the company obviously closed soon after that because that was the only sensible thing to do.

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

#345

Post by scarface_74 »

jandrese wrote: post #314
asveikau wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2009 and earlier: Windows Mobile was based on WinCE. The UI was garbage but the innards were pretty functional, and there was desktop-like multitasking. Unpopular opinion: they should have just done a UI refresh of that thing and moved it to an NT kernel. There were a lot of cool third party hacks on this platform. 2010: Windows Phone 7 was still WinCE, but they removed full access to WinCE APIs, and got rid of PC st…

At the time Steve Jobs was putting his foot down against allowing Flash on the iPhone because the performance was so pants, Microsoft was going all in on Silverlight which had exactly the same problem.

That’s a popular misconception.

The first iPhone had a 400Mhz processor and 128MB of RAM. It was so resource constrained that you couldn’t put a picture on your home screen because it would have taken too much memory.

It could barely run Safari. If you scrolled too fast, you would see checker boxes while trying to render the screen.

When Flash did finally come to mobile on Android, it required a 1Ghz processor and 1GB RAM. The first iPhone with those specs didn’t come out until 2011.

Even then on Android, Flash ran horribly and killed your battery. I had a high end Android phone on Sprint back then.

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

#346

Post by dev_daftly »

cbozeman wrote: post #240
jillesvangurp wrote: post #93

I was there as this played out. Nokia had a lot of good software and software engineers but not the management structure to do anything good with that. Nokia was huge as an organization and parts of that organization recognized the threat early on. The problem was at the board and executive level. These people had a blind spot for software. They thought they were still in the electronics business. Lots of people with…

> MS killed the whole division shortly after Satya Nadella took over and was sorting out the mess left by Steve Ballmer. These have always been the real crimes in my mind. Ballmer wasn't an idea guy, he was a top-tier salesman / cheerleader, and he definitely "understood" what actually made Microsoft successful (put out a product, then allow third-party developers and support to extend it / support / learn it inside…

Ballmer, the person who pushed for and created the entire Microsoft Enterprise focus, is not an idea guy that understood what made Microsoft successful? This idea that Ballmer was some goof when he was actually considered a co-founder by Bill Gates which is why he received like 17% of the company when he joined.

Also, they put plenty of effort into getting developers to onboard windows phone. They even created multiple platforms that allowed devs to create a single app that worked across all windows devices(pc, phone, xbox) but developers decided, with some very influential devs being extremely vocal, that is was some sort of power grab to force devs to only deliver their software through the windows store.

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

#347

Post by lotsofpulp »

alt227 wrote: post #171
cs702 wrote: post #59

2007. The presentation reads like an eerily accurate crystal-ball prediction of what actually happened in subsequent years. Evidently, Nokia executives knew well in advance what the iPhone could do to their company. Evidently, they knew they needed to do "something" to avoid an implosion of their mobile-phone business. Evidently, despite their prescience and best efforts, they were unable to avoid disaster. It's as i…

> N-Series and SEMC Walkman probably need to clearly undercut iPhone pricing to succeed in the market. I think this is where they went wrong. They got scared of the new cool kid in school and immediately dropped all their prices, essentially marketing themselves as budget to Apples premium.

They needed to cut prices because phones could had a fully usable browser on mobile broadband with GPS that no one else did. There simply wasn’t a competitor for at least a few years, and it could even be due to the deal Apple made with ATT to make sure all iPhones came with unlimited 3G mobile broadband.

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

#348

Post by nradov »

mitjam wrote: post #263
ndiddy wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was that Kodak essentially was a film chemical production company pretending to be an imaging company. The switch to digital meant they could no longer get the fat recurring profits from selling film that they were used to. Kodak's value peaked at $31 billion in 1996 ($58 billion in 2025 dollars) while the total value of the digital camera industry today is around $8 billion ( https://www.researchandmarke…

I think camera is a major smartphone selling point and certainly cannibalized the digital camera business. Kodak could have upgraded from camera to phone like Apple upgraded from mp3 player.

I doubt that Kodak could have built a complete phone. But they certainly could have been a tier-1 supplier of camera components and software to Apple and other phone manufacturers. It seems like Kodak didn't even really try.

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

#349

Post by sho_hn »

realo wrote: post #284
wegwerfbenutzer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BYD+CATL is Android. Tesla is Apple.

I respectfully disagree. Tesla is run by a bigot, far right extremist. I would never send money to them, no matter their offerings. Not so with Apple.

I don't understand where this trust comes from. Just like any other large company, Apple will not stand up for your civil rights when it seriously threatens the bottom line.

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

#350

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

lysace wrote: post #75
willvarfar wrote: post #32

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.

Do you think non- SW engineering types in e.g. Nokia and Sony Ericsson also immediately knew? I remember a lot of delusion the first year that then turned into bitterness - but I don't have the inside perspective, just hints of it from my then position at a software supplier to both.

As a developer, I remember a few bosses that thought "who needs a stupid phone? no one will buy that" except that Android could already do most of what Windows was capable of, and the bonus was that the SDK was free and Java was an easy language.

They were stuck in their post-Windows 95 world, and did not understand that multimedia CD-ROMs were clunky and dying.

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