Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by Terretta » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:52 PM UTC

jorvi wrote: post #157

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…

> The iphone was solidly in charge by then Nit: the iPhone was only "in charge" for a brief year or two, and then Android ate its lunch in terms of marketshare. What is very interesting is that Apple has displayed twice over ( MacBooks and iPhones) that a minority marketshare can capture the vast majority of profits in that market. OEMs like HTC and LG made a few bucks profit off of any phone, sometimes even losing m…

> Nit: the iPhone was only "in charge" for a brief year or two, and then Android ate its lunch in terms of marketshare.

Marketshare is less interesting than wallet share for many products.

> a minority marketshare can capture the vast majority of profits

Ah, yes, exactly, there it is.

iPhone offers wallet share, and continues to eat Android's lunch in both total spend and ARPU.

There are two cohorts to be in charge of, for two business models: selling something, or giving it away to show ads.

This looks like Android dominates until you get to the section "iPhone vs Android App Spending" and start doing the math that it's winning on total dollars never mind the number of devices.

https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics

Even then, advertisers tend to advertise because they want to sell something. Advertisers marketing something everyone buys, Android audience is best to advertise to. Advertisers with something that depends on extra cash in the wallet before the buyer considers it, iOS audience makes sense. Ad rates reflect this.

Astonishingly, even on the handset makers themselves, there were years Apple captured over 100% of the revenue. That sounds nuts till you dig and see it's as simple as Apple made money, while so many other handset makers lost so much money.

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

#382

Post by PeterStuer » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:52 PM UTC

casenmgreen wrote: post #181

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…

I worked, briefly, at Symbian. They were mind-bendingly, staggeringly, bureaucratic - like to an extent and in a way you absolutely could not imagine if you had not actually seen it with your own eyes.

I love Finland and the Fins. But there is a certain type in that population that is extremely bureaucratic. The only country in Europe that has a contingent that comes near is Switzerland, also a great place to live.

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

#383

Post by tgma » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:54 PM UTC

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…

nit:

> It was so resource constrained that you couldn’t put a picture on your home screen because it would have taken too much memory.

Clearly you drank the Apple koolaid that later artificially limited wallpapers to 3GS (or 3G?) and above when they introduced the feature in later iPhone OS updates.

We had wallpapers and great homescreen and dock themes on jailbroken iPhones without a significant perf impact.

P.S. Contemporary Windows Mobile phones had Texas Instruments OMAP ~200MHz processor IIRC with less RAM and iPhone (2G) was comparatively great.

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

#384

Post by markus92 » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:55 PM UTC

sebmellen wrote: post #335

From the second to last page: > Apple is most probably using the first Application Processor of nVidia in iPhone. Was this true?

Nope, used a Samsung CPU with PowerVR GPU.

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

#385

Post by PeterStuer » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

wbl wrote: post #185

openrisk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the most important bifurcation point in the history of European tech. Today's malaise and grasping for direction has much to do with the demise of this pioneering enterprise. And the fact that it does not appear to have been pre-ordained adds poignancy.

No, the national champions model is the problem. If Apple failed the US still has Android and potentially many other startups. Europe just doesn't have the risk capital or ecosystem.

Which is exacly why Finland should have blocked the MS deal. Nokia was a HUGE percentage of Finland's GDP.

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

#386

Post by Terretta » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

this_user wrote: post #317

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…

Well, there are also a lot of assumptions and complaints about the iPhone and its impact that were commonly made at the time that ultimately didn't matter: - Has no changeable battery - Has no physical keyboard - Is too expensive - Has no support for Java applications They clearly thought that these might be potential vectors for attacking the newcomer, but none of it worked out. Rather than having to play the game t…

- Can't play Flash.

- Forces devs to release their apps as open software, HTML5 apps that anyone can just install the home screen from anywhere*, no marketplace gatekeeper needed, no 70% rev share to the telcos.

* This remains true, except if you really want to you can pay 30% in year one and 15% thereafter for shelf space, mobile apps PaaS, billing/subscription management, and end user app payments support. If you don't want to, you can still just release HTML5 apps like the Xbox Cloud player from Microsoft, downloadable direct from their web site, no App Store involved. And the HTML5 locally installable PacMan game from 2007 still works.

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

#387

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 7:06 PM UTC

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.

My TV's menus consist of what I would charitably describe as clip art. The icons that are supposed to be aligned row-wise are sometimes off by 1 pixel. Text is not consistently aligned with icons. They can't even get left justification right. Some of the UI elements have borders around them, but the bottom border is sometimes 3px thick and the top border is 2px thick. Interaction with the menus generally takes about 500-2500ms from the time I push the button on the remote. Yet everything is animated (using a CPU that is obviously not powerful enough to even keep up with the animation).

As I use my TV, I sometimes think about how many engineers, QA test leads, product managers, and leadership at the manufacturer signed off on this software as acceptable. "Barely functional enough so the customer doesn't return it" is apparently the quality bar.

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

#388

Post by scarface_74 » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

tgma wrote: post #383

scarface_74 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

nit: > It was so resource constrained that you couldn’t put a picture on your home screen because it would have taken too much memory. Clearly you drank the Apple koolaid that later artificially limited wallpapers to 3GS (or 3G?) and above when they introduced the feature in later iPhone OS updates. We had wallpapers and great homescreen and dock themes on jailbroken iPhones without a significant perf impact. P.S. Co…

Yes “I drank the Kool aid” when Adobe couldn’t get Flash to run decently on a 1Ghz/1Gb RAM Android. But it was going to run smoothly on a 400Mhz, 128Mb RAM first gen iPhone?

Was Safari with Flash going to run well when Safari without Flash could barely run?

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

#389

Post by dmonitor » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #327

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 read that as a failure of Palm's management, notably the ones that were negotiating with phone carriers. Jobs isn't the only guy who could have negotiated that kind of deal. Apple was a second run computer company that had almost no previous phone experience. They were not exactly negotiating from a position of strength, and the fact that only one carrier took them up on the offer shows just how tough it was. It so…

> Jobs isn't the only guy who could have negotiated that kind of deal

This is a debatable claim.

> Apple was a second run computer company that had almost no previous phone experience. They were not exactly negotiating from a position of strength

The iPhone was not a mobile Mac. It was an iPod with an inbuilt cellphone. iPod was HUGE. That was their upper hand.

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

#390

Post by mxfh » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

spiralpolitik wrote: post #366

masom wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia also had a ex-Microsoft exec ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop ) that had the goal of ensuring Windows Phone would succeed, and tanked Nokia with it. I was on the DVLUP project where Nokia and Microsoft attempted to inject energy into windows phone app development. We could see the tension between the two companies as we were a 3rd party contracted by Nokia to build the platform. The Nokia exec we we…

Nokia was dead company walking before Stephen Elop. Elop saw the writing on the wall and made one of the choices available. A different CEO would have made a different choice but ultimately at that point it would still have been too late to save Nokia. Nokia was a great hardware company that missed the boat when the market changed to be based around software. When the market changed again to be based around ecosystem…

Was there with the company as intern and junior during Nokia and Microsoft days for Nokia Maps.

In my opinion Microsoft fumbled the app store by bloating it with questionable KPIs on number of added apps by anyone able to submit templates apps, while not getting key apps like WhatsApp on board. S\so it was a hard sell to have people's ecosystems. Same syndrome as with Zune, Tablet PC, and Microsoft Store on Windows.

Build quality and hardware of the Lumias was second only to iPhones and definitly better experience than Android.

The old Nokias had no chance compared to those, and I agree with the assessment that Nokia as Android-Vendor would have made little sense either.