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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]

#531

Post by chatGDPs »

turnsout wrote: post #82
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…

This is spot-on, and it's a remarkably common pattern when dominant players are faced with a seismic shift—even when it comes from within. Kodak essentially invented the modern digital camera, and had a phenomenal lead going into the 90s. It was not a little side project—they hired IDEO to do vision work, design enclosures and create on-camera UIs. They poured money in, and did ship products. I'd love to know what ha…

The theory is already out there, it’s called Counter-Positioning. Hamilton Helmer in 7 Powers.

It’s a bit more nuanced as Kodak isn’t such a case due to digital photo being commodity.

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

#532

Post by DanielHB »

masom wrote: post #132
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…

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…

I think the critical failure of the windows phone was that app development was not open. You can't compete with established walled gardens by building your own, you can only compete if you make a huge amazing park free to use just outside the walls of the competitors.

Translating this to windows phones, it would have only succeeded if it either:

1) Made browser applications first-class and pushed phone-specific APIs (gyro, bluetooth, etc) to be open. Then pick a fight with google and apple about supporting PWAs better. This would probably keep windows phones as a "low cost, crappy feeling" systems forever.

2) Made the windows phone native-apps trivial to port to run on browsers with a convenient and easy way to deploy those apps on ios/android (hopefully without feeling too much not-native on those platforms). Would require a lot more engineering resources and time, so much harder to pull off.

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

#533

Post by shortrounddev2 »

DanielHB wrote: post #532
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…

I think the critical failure of the windows phone was that app development was not open. You can't compete with established walled gardens by building your own, you can only compete if you make a huge amazing park free to use just outside the walls of the competitors. Translating this to windows phones, it would have only succeeded if it either: 1) Made browser applications first-class and pushed phone-specific APIs…

Well they did do something like that; Windows Phone apps were written in the same .Net UWP SDK as desktop apps, so the idea was that you could target both platforms at once (and Xbox as well). I think MS overestimated how much people cared about native PC apps by that point (basically not at all). Additionally, snapchat was the hot new app at the time, and there was no first party Snapchat app (and if you used the 3rd party one, you risked being banned from snapchat).

The Lumia remains my favorite phone of all time

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

#534

Post by DanielHB »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #533
DanielHB wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the critical failure of the windows phone was that app development was not open. You can't compete with established walled gardens by building your own, you can only compete if you make a huge amazing park free to use just outside the walls of the competitors. Translating this to windows phones, it would have only succeeded if it either: 1) Made browser applications first-class and pushed phone-specific APIs…

Well they did do something like that; Windows Phone apps were written in the same .Net UWP SDK as desktop apps, so the idea was that you could target both platforms at once (and Xbox as well). I think MS overestimated how much people cared about native PC apps by that point (basically not at all). Additionally, snapchat was the hot new app at the time, and there was no first party Snapchat app (and if you used the 3r…

I would argue that windows desktop development using .net is a walled garden in itself as well.

They finally realized what I was saying when they acquired Xamarin in 2016. I never used Xamarin myself, but I hear it is not that great and kinda dying. So like I said the native open platform approach was a lot harder to pull off.

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

#538

Post by felipec »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #126
raverbashing wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 )

> Because they didn't have the sharp focus of Android and kept a lot of crap from Linux (like X11 sigh) X11 let them use existing apps outright and made porting easy. What else would they have used at that time and what advantage would it give them?

The Nokia N9 used Wayland.
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