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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

#71

Post by pjc50 »

leonidasrup wrote: post #39
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 iP…

We complain (rightly) about the Apple monopoly, but have forgotten that the carriers were a much more annoying monopoly, with even worse policies for trying to charge for things that they'd specifically prevented you from doing.

I think the last remaining example of that is charging for using your phone as a WiFi hotspot.

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

#72

Post by Frieren »

purpleidea wrote: post #66

What a badly written article. How could you leave out the N900 and the development history that came before it? If it wasn't for Elop and Microsoft, Nokia could have dominated and we wouldn't be stuck with mostly proprietary phones. We're still waiting to solve that problem...

> Microsoft

They have fight open source and open standards for so long that it is in their DNA.

Open source and standards are the best most efficient solution, but proprietary platforms have the money to buy politicians and create FUD in the development community.

A big part of the current political situation is derived from platforms owning the public discourse and profiting from human attention.

A world of open standards and open software is a better world.

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

#73

Post by baxtr »

leonidasrup wrote: post #39
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 iP…

Yes I can second that.

During that time I was working for a large Telco. I could see how Nokia operated. They did everything the telco asked for, they installed any bloatware just to keep their sales numbers high.

Apple in contrast would say: if you ever touch the user experience on our phone we will go to the other big Telco in your country. Guess who won.

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

#74

Post by calgoo »

afavour wrote: post #53
VulgarExigency wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, they had Maemo/Meego. As the owner of a N900 myself, it was really good, but they decided not to bet on it for some inexplicable reason.

I think the reason was a lack of thriving app ecosystem. Microsoft seemed like a much better bet in that regard, they just messed it up in incredible ways.

I mean MS paid a stupid amount of money for Nokia too, i think that was they mayor influence. MS bought a platform to run Windows on for $10 billion if i remember correctly?

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

#75

Post by mehdix »

purpleidea wrote: post #66

What a badly written article. How could you leave out the N900 and the development history that came before it? If it wasn't for Elop and Microsoft, Nokia could have dominated and we wouldn't be stuck with mostly proprietary phones. We're still waiting to solve that problem...

It hurts reading this after just realizing that I can't unlock my Samsung S24's bootloader anymore (to take control of my phone), because Samsung has decided to erase that feature irreversibly using a remote update.

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

#76

Post by mjg59 »

purpleidea wrote: post #66

What a badly written article. How could you leave out the N900 and the development history that came before it? If it wasn't for Elop and Microsoft, Nokia could have dominated and we wouldn't be stuck with mostly proprietary phones. We're still waiting to solve that problem...

The N900 shipped two years after the iPhone while still having a resistive touchscreen. In the story of Nokia resisting Apple and Android it's basically irrelevant - it's part of the history that led to the N9, but it's not until we get to the N9 that there's a meaningful response to the market shift they represented.

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

#77

Post by msh »

purpleidea wrote: post #66

What a badly written article. How could you leave out the N900 and the development history that came before it? If it wasn't for Elop and Microsoft, Nokia could have dominated and we wouldn't be stuck with mostly proprietary phones. We're still waiting to solve that problem...

Nokia was already in deep trouble before windows phone. If they did not go windows phone they would have ended up a android OEM (still better for them than what ended up happening) but there was no realistic way for them to "domination" at that point. That would have required them to change strategy years before they first saw the iphone.

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

#78

Post by ckastner »

The death knell was Elop announcing that Nokia would be exclusively Windows, at a time when Windows had low single-digit market share and where this exclusivity was a one-way street. Other major manufacturers continued to ship Windows phones, and they did that in parallel to their main Android line.

I never understood what the end game here was. If they had wanted market dominance based on someone else's OS, they could have just used the well-established Android. There was little to gain (their efforts of promoting Windows Phone would have also helped the competition's offerings) and all to lose.

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

#79

Post by Gibbon1 »

cdud3 wrote: post #47
nextos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussed in HN many times, but worth restating once more. The N9 was fantastic. A joy to use, and in many ways the best design, both hardware and software, I've ever handled. Everything had been designed with care and some UI elements remain unmatched. I think I was one of the first developers that got an N770 engineering sample (the first product in the N770-N9 saga) and it was really clear that they were onto some…

To add to that: Elop announced the end of N9 weeks before it's release and more then a year before the first Lumina was available. Dead on arrival not even shipped in major markets. Yet the N9 was years ahead any competition of that time.

Elop knew what his job was. Sell Nokia to Microsoft.

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

#80

Post by msh »

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…

Reviewers were nice to it because they knew it was DOA.

It did have some good sides but it was in most ways worse than comparable iPhones and androids.

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