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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]

#351

Post by sho_hn »

AlanYx wrote: post #125
anonu wrote: 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.

>they understand what they were facing Parts of the deck suggest that they didn't fully understand what they were facing. For example, the bullet "scaling the user experience to lower HW specs may be challenging. iPhone mini may be closer to iPod UI" comment still suggests they were stuck in the mindset of the time. They thought it was unlikely that Apple could deliver a horizontal platform, rather Apple would be lau…

> Parts of the deck suggest that they didn't fully understand what they were facing.

The biggest one to note is the somewhat-hopeful comment that the lack of Java support was cutting off the iPhone from a "large swath of existing software" ... that barely anyone enjoyed using, and didn't amount to much mindshare or incumbent advantage.

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

#352

Post by Ancapistani »

Huh - the implications of this time period reach much farther than I would have expected.

I recall switching from a small, regional cellular carrier to Cingular with the launch of the iPhone 3G. It only now occurred to me that I'm still there. I stayed with Cingular when it became AT&T, and still have service through them. For that matter, the service has significantly expanded; I now have tablets, watches, and four phones for family members... some of whom weren't even alive when I switched carriers. My bill is ~$450 / month.

If I assume an average monthly bill of $300 (it started around $100, but has been as high as $550), there have been 196 months that I've paid that bill. $58,800 in revenue from me alone, that would have gone to someone else had Cingular not allowed Apple to launch on their network in 2007.

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

#353

Post by seanc »

unwiredben wrote: post #241

I was at Palm when the iPhone launched, and one note from this analysis summed up Apple's new power in the market and how they really changed the landscape. "Cingular has allowed Apple to launch a device with WLAN and inbuilt services" At that time, the carriers controlled so much of the cell phone experience. We certainly would have loved to have launched Palm Treo phones with WiFi radios, but our carrier partners w…

I was at RIM at that time and saw _exactly_ the same thing. When I started in 2008, in addition to WiFi and apps they were squabbling with carriers about whether or not the Blackberry needed an antenna. Carriers were micromanaging devices to an astonishing degree.

The river of money from Macs, iPods and iTunes gave Steve Jobs a completely different kind of leverage in those carrier negotiations. Device only companies like Palm and RIM couldn't have broken that carrier strangle even if they did have the technology.

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

#354

Post by seanc »

mikepurvis wrote: post #193
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…

It’s nice to see that they got it even if they weren’t ultimately capable of doing anything about it. I was an intern at BlackBerry (then RIM) Jan-Apr 2008 and it was astonishing to me how little anyone seemed to care or be taking the threat seriously. Obviously as a student I wasn’t in any of the high level war room discussions, but from what I could see it really did seem like the company was drinking its own marke…

Remember Jim B. scoffing at how you had to plug an iPhone in every night? And how much more efficient BlackBerrys were with data?

Steve knew that the customers did. not. care. And that the carriers would build more cell stations if they had to.

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

#355

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

I have to share that my career as a software engineer started with Windows Phone. They used to give super nice Nokia phones out if you made an app. And free backpacks :)

Developing for Windows phone was easy as drag and drop. I honestly think no other native platform had that good of a DevEx. If you were already an app developer, I can see how it's hard to learn something new. But if it was your first time, this was prolly the easiest platform to start.

Eventually the platform died, and I found a career with Xamarin using a similar stack (C#, XAML) and built for other platforms as well.

I miss Windows Phone. Honestly some of the cleanest devices ever built with the carl zeiss lens and raised screen.

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

#356

Post by sho_hn »

venusenvy47 wrote: post #102
anonu wrote: 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.

The CTO of Motorola was dismissive of the iPhone in her first review and acted like Apple was a little child just learning how to take its first baby steps. I remember reading this and just shaking my head at her cockiness. She left the company before the year was out. https://web.archive.org/web/20070114215511/https://blogs.mot...

Not that it hurt her career in any way, looking at her Wikipedia article. Failing upwards is a thing.

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

#357

Post by drdaeman »

pjc50 wrote: post #279
ryandrake wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many manufacturing companies fail at software. They think of software like it's any other component on the BOM. As if it's just like a screw or a piece of molded plastic: Build the cheapest "software part" that meets the requirements (or buy it from a "supplier"), and then bolt it onto the product some time during assembly. They don't think of software as a major component of their brand. They don't think of softw…

This is very visible in places like TVs/set-top-boxes, which are always chronically awful and slow, and now cars are filling up with terrible software. Which they want to charge a subscription for.

And the problem is, people buy this. The markets are completely broken. And the worst of it - it's unlikely this will be addressed, most likely it'll only get worse.

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

#358

Post by asveikau »

scarface_74 wrote: post #345
jandrese wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1G…

It's easy to forget how popular flash was in that decade. A lot of us found it annoying on desktops too. Not to mention Linux, where we'd deal with binary blobs that were pretty unstable, not because we liked it but because you needed it to interact with the world.

I have not so pleasant memories of having a few different versions of their plugin and I'd try to figure out which one worked for a given website, symlink the right one and restart the browser. And that was the way to watch videos online...

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

#359

Post by zeroc8 »

jayelbe wrote: post #302
badgersnake wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The follow up N9 was that. It was great. Elop canned it. I had to import one from Australia. It was totally worth it.

I miss my N9 so badly! Without a doubt the best phone I've ever owned.

I wanted one, but then Elop killed it. I took quite a long time for Android to become as good.

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

#360

Post by inquirerGeneral »

jandrese wrote: post #319
masom wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... If I remember we were aiming for the newly released "Windows 8"-based Phone OS, and the previous version was fully incompatible with it so all apps had to be redone. Tiles were the new thing to build for.

Microsoft tried to do the same thing on the Desktop side too, but on the desktop they were forced to keep the backwards compatibility in place so it didn't finish off the platform the way it did on the Phone side. Amusingly Microsoft is still trying to make the walled garden happen. Lots of cheap Windows laptops and Desktops ship in what is called "Windows S" mode where only Microsoft Store apps are allowed to run. B…

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