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Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

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Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#31

Post by crooked-v »

hedgehog wrote: post #17
RiverCrochet wrote: post #6

From the article: "Elop oversaw the 2011 launch of a Linux-based smartphone, the Nokia N9. The N9 ran on a distribution of Linux called MeeGo. Reviewers at the time praised the new smartphone direction the Finnish phone maker had taken. 'Possibly the most beautiful phone ever made,' wrote one reviewer about the N9 for Engadget. But the N9’s accolades did not ultimately carry the day. Nokia announced its Lumia line of…

It wouldn't necessarily have been better, a major reason the Windows phone stuff failed is it didn't have market share to justify app development. Android barely made it work as a well-funded #2. Palm WebOS, MeeGo, there were various efforts that were better than Android and even iOS in a lot of ways but app availability seems to have been the biggest factor in the lack of platform diversity. Edit: And consistent wit…

I still fondly remember my Palm Pre. It felt like something with the potential for as much UX gloss and functionality as the iPhone but much easier to make small apps for.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#32

Post by SoftTalker »

sangeeth96 wrote: post #27

They (WP and Lumia) would've been a strong 3rd player if the right investments and care were given since MS acquisition but alas, I think I should've noticed the writing on the wall for all of MS' consumer business (Xbox, being the latest!) from the moment Satya stepped in and Nokia got cut off. Satya was great for businesses and MS' investors, terrible for consumers.

At that time everyone I knew who had a Lumia/WP absolutely loved it. I don't know how but Microsoft totally fumbled that.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#33

Post by toast0 »

rbanffy wrote: post #2

I think the biggest mistake was adopting Windows as their OS. It negated any technical advantages they could have over Android.

I've written lots of comments, but Windows Phone 7.5 and 8 worked pretty well on low end hardware; much better than Android on similar hardware. If Windows Mobile 10 had continued that trend and delivered on the promise of all WP8 phones being upgradable to WM10, things would be different now.

Microsoft also made some big mistakes IMHO; having a terrible browser and a terrible app marketplace doesn't work: mobile IE was garbage, mobile Edge had a better renderer but worse UX, and they prohibited other browsers at least initialy (Firefox wanted to make an internal port, but were told no thanks). The way they managed APIs for apps led to multiple generations of apps and developers noped out at each stage; WinCE -> WP7 -> WP8 -> WM10 all wanted significant reworking, and WP8.1 wanted a minor reworking. A lot of WinCE apis were available in WP7, but Microsoft wouldn't tell you and wouldn't be happy if you did it. You could run WP7 apps in WP8, but to get new features you had to do the rework and distribute two separate apps. Same for WP8.1, but now you had 3 apps. And again for WM10 ... with the bonus that if you had a WP8 app installed when you upgraded to WM10 there was a 50% chance it wouldn't launch after the upgrade. Apple sometimes did some of this, but major OS upgrades usually applied to all phones, and their users upgrade regularly. Android generally puts backports in the jetpack library so you can build for the newer APIs but still work everywhere.

Of course, Microsoft should have understood the importance of backwards compatibility from their decades of experience on PCs... but they were in full forget about everything mode. :P

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#34

Post by bcjdjsndon »

ohm wrote: post #10

There is a Korean manhwa/manga called Real Man or A Man's Man. It’s about a guy who worked in the mobile phone company. He goes back in time and starts developing software and hardware phone designs before the companies who originally made them do.

I feel like theres so much manga that this is the kind of premise you're left with if you don't want to copy someone else

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#35

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

> In September 2008, the first Android phone went on sale—the HTC Dream,

Excursion: HTC would later sell the HTC HD2 with WindowsMobile (a predecessor of WindowsPhone), which could be "dual-booted" with Android ROMs from the XDA-developers forum or similar.

The 2009 HTC HD2 was basically the modern glass slab, except for a discrete bottom line of physical buttons, which hadn't yet been eaten by software at the time.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#36

Post by afavour »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #6

From the article: "Elop oversaw the 2011 launch of a Linux-based smartphone, the Nokia N9. The N9 ran on a distribution of Linux called MeeGo. Reviewers at the time praised the new smartphone direction the Finnish phone maker had taken. 'Possibly the most beautiful phone ever made,' wrote one reviewer about the N9 for Engadget. But the N9’s accolades did not ultimately carry the day. Nokia announced its Lumia line of…

> We were so close to having literal plain Linux phones. Sad to me. I wonder where this could have gone without Microsoft.

Sadly, I strong suspect it would have gone nowhere. Apps became the name of the game and iOS and Android built up strong app libraries quickly. If Microsoft failed to compete I don't think a Nokia Linux phone would have stood a chance at all. Maybe if it added Android compatibility but that would be as much of an admission of failure as anything.

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#37

Post by eddythompson80 »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #6

From the article: "Elop oversaw the 2011 launch of a Linux-based smartphone, the Nokia N9. The N9 ran on a distribution of Linux called MeeGo. Reviewers at the time praised the new smartphone direction the Finnish phone maker had taken. 'Possibly the most beautiful phone ever made,' wrote one reviewer about the N9 for Engadget. But the N9’s accolades did not ultimately carry the day. Nokia announced its Lumia line of…

> We were so close to having literal plain Linux phones.

IIRC, the dominant position back then was "Android is Linux". Shuttleworth closed his famous #1 bug on Canonical that was their mission in 2013 because now Android/Linux is more popular than Windows and the future is mobile[1]. Also Google still had a lot of good will in the OSS/Linux community back then so most "Mobile Linux" attempts were met with "Just use Android"

[1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/05/mark-shuttleworth-marks-...

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#39

Post by leonidasrup »

arjie wrote: post #18

They really didn't have a chance. Technology had moved past them. The capacitive touch screen, multi-touch, fast mobile processors and the move to the web meant that mobile phones were becoming platforms. And Nokia wasn't a platforms business. To paraphrase Bill Gates, a platform requires that the economic value to the other participants exceeds that of the value to the platform. Nokia was never like that. In aggrega…

Nokia development was limited by its relation with telecom industry (telecoms could limits what Nokias could do, software feautures. The telecoms wanted to profit from software running on Nokias, telecoms didn't wanted to be just dumb Internet providers. Telecoms wanted to be digital service providers - AOLs).

In contrast Apple with iPhone had much stronger position:

"Cingular gave Apple the freedom to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house, a rare practice at the time, and paid Apple a fraction of its monthly service revenue (until the iPhone 3G), in exchange for four years of exclusive U.S. sales, until 2011."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone

Re: Nokia’s years of mobile-phone supremacy ended in an afternoon

#40

Post by mghackerlady »

jmartrican wrote: post #38

IMHO they should cosnider re-releasing the 3310. It might sell similar to vinyl. Maybe update the games section to have some more games.

They have, multiple times. Granted, it isn't the original 3310. They've always been modernised in some way, and I suspect creating the original wouldn't be very feasible today
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