This reminds me of Dell (are they still around? :-) with a million different indistinguishable SKUs. And when you went to the web site you had to categorize yourself by their criteria before you could even look at the offerings, which always made me feel that I was going to be ripped off. How do I know if I am a small business or medium business or whatever?
Nokia made too many phones
101–110 of 337 posts
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#102There is a very interesting documentary on Nokia on YouTube. I can't remember if it was already suggested here on HN in a previous thread. Here's the link:
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course the implication with these fashion devices was that they were almost disposable, and you'd buy a new one for the next season. This would be great for Nokia's business. Unfortunately their design department seemed consumed by becoming a fashion brand and forgot that they're still a technology company. Everyone knows what happened next. Maybe Nokia was simply too early for the vision, or the execution was s…
I don't really think that the average iPhone user (at least in Europe) gets a new device every season. Actually the opposite is true: Apple does gives you the opportunity to stick to your old device, if you want. iOS 15 still gets updates and can run on an iPhone 6S.
This is how I'm hoping my 13 Mini works out. I can just keep using it until it's ancient.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes this I think is the core issue: while Nokia phones were all a bit different, they were different in superficial and frankly, low-effort ways. Form that did not follow function, phones that looked liked some flashy "original-but-not-really-original" design study straight out of a bachelor's Product Design class. They could never have invented the iPhone, even if they were organised differently. The culture just wa…
That’s basically it. Instead of the perfect phone, most of Nokia wanted to build the phone that makes you want to buy another phone soon. I made them a cappuccino-themed pinball game. The underlying idea was that when the customer is bored with the autumn colors and fabric edges and whatever, they’re buying the next Nokia for the new experience. Apple made a phone whose physical form was adaptable to any software exp…
Symbian was terrible. Working with it was worse than mining asbestos.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#105Jobs made great lemonade out of Apple's slimmed down line in his famous 2x2 matrix ({consumer,pro}x{desktop, portable}). Who cared that they also had the mac mini that didn't fit in? Everybody understood it (and it encouraged people to upsell themselves to "pro").
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#106There was also conventional wisdom which had to be abandoned before the iPhone came out. Nokia phones had 1 week battery life. They were extending it to one month. The iPhone had a given the app experience available on the iPhone they could live with that. This was a bet Nokia would have never made—-they were not in the user interface business. The fact that Apple—who was not in the phone business—-entered their mark…
Nokia had multiple internet tablets running Linux.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet
This was developed to a phone os.
Nokia didn't do great choices but the criticism could be historical...
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#107Around 2003 I did the art direction (mostly pixel-pushing...) for a game that shipped on a Nokia model. I have no recollection of what the phone looked like, but it was part of the "lifestyle" category described in this article. It wasn't one of the craziest form factors, just a candybar phone in pretty plastic with one of those early square color screens. Nokia Design sent a massive moodboard PDF, something like 100…
> Of course the implication with these fashion devices was that they were almost disposable, and you'd buy a new one for the next season. This would be great for Nokia's business. Unfortunately their design department seemed consumed by becoming a fashion brand and forgot that they're still a technology company. Everyone knows what happened next. Maybe Nokia was simply too early for the vision, or the execution was s…
Nokias problem was exactly what OP described. The whole company didn't talk to each other.
Software did their own thing, design their own and the poor industrial designers tried to keep up.
Apple's secret sauce was proper vertical and horizontal integration so that every design feature was also supported by software.
Sauce: Worked at Nokia in the "let's release 200 phones a year" -times.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes this I think is the core issue: while Nokia phones were all a bit different, they were different in superficial and frankly, low-effort ways. Form that did not follow function, phones that looked liked some flashy "original-but-not-really-original" design study straight out of a bachelor's Product Design class. They could never have invented the iPhone, even if they were organised differently. The culture just wa…
That’s basically it. Instead of the perfect phone, most of Nokia wanted to build the phone that makes you want to buy another phone soon. I made them a cappuccino-themed pinball game. The underlying idea was that when the customer is bored with the autumn colors and fabric edges and whatever, they’re buying the next Nokia for the new experience. Apple made a phone whose physical form was adaptable to any software exp…
I had a crash course on Symbian at school by a Nokia engineer. Decided to do my all not to have to work with that POS ever. I succeeded.
I know first hand multiple people (some of them my classmates) who decided otherwise and either burned out or quit. The ecosystem was just _horrible_ from the start. The amount of different phone form factors didn't help in the least.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nokia N900 was pretty awesome and Maemo was a great OS. Unfortunately killed by internal politics.
Eh, I had one and in the end I just didn't find it that great. It was slow, the resistive touch screen was finicky, and there wasn't good apps or software for it. I remember being in a bar once with a friend and we were racing to get directions on our phone to the next bar we were going to (maps and directions on the phone was a magical thing back then), and his iPhone had the results on google maps before I had mana…
I had a friend who used his N900 as a server at home, with an USB network card and all :D
The N950 was a lot better and even the N9 had its moments. But like the GP said, both were killed by internal politics and the move to Windows Mobile. Which eventually tanked their whole mobile phone business unit.
Re: Nokia made too many phones
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course the implication with these fashion devices was that they were almost disposable, and you'd buy a new one for the next season. This would be great for Nokia's business. Unfortunately their design department seemed consumed by becoming a fashion brand and forgot that they're still a technology company. Everyone knows what happened next. Maybe Nokia was simply too early for the vision, or the execution was s…
I'm not sure they are that similar. There were so many significantly different Nokia phones at one point. I'm talking about after 3310, like 3220, 6600, 7610, 3660, 7600, each design is unique. Apple has like two models (small and larger) at a time, and you can get them in a couple of different colors. The big design revolution is that they add rose gold or purple or whatever color each year so that the few people wh…
Apple has 8 different phones you can buy right now counting all the max/plus models (SE, 13, 14, 15, 15 pro). If you add in the storage differences it is 24 unique circuit boards/phone internals, and colors bring it to over 100 different unique products.
From an inventory and logistics perspective, that's actually pretty wild!