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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]

#141

Post by turnsout »

smitty1110 wrote: post #111
turnsout wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I worked with an ex-Kodak guy, and he related the following story to me from the 80’s or early 90’s. Xerox was kicking their ass, they were completely owning the copier market. But it was a natural fit for Kodak, they knew imaging better than everybody, why couldn’t they get into this market? This guy was on a crack team of engineers a VP assembled to create a competing product. 9 months later, they demo a fully digi…

That's fascinating. It really seems that a lot of businesses end up hyper-optimized to deliver what they already offer, up until the point where anything that isn't a current offer is attacked by corporate antibodies. And that's when the growth they've optimized for suddenly stops.

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

#142

Post by actionfromafar »

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…

Now I can't find that poem about Elop sinking the Nokia ship or something like that.

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

#143

Post by bombcar »

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…

Was this around the time Microsoft kept switching what "windows phone" was? I remember that the one friend who got into it loved it, and then they released something completely incompatible and he abandoned the platform.

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

#144

Post by ylee »

AlanYx wrote: post #125
anonu wrote: post #29

I was expecting sort of the opposite, for Nokia to deride the whole iPhone thing. But it was quite the opposite, they understand what they were facing. Ultimately, the could not meet the challenge fast enough.

>they understand what they were facing Parts of the deck suggest that they didn't fully understand what they were facing. For example, the bullet "scaling the user experience to lower HW specs may be challenging. iPhone mini may be closer to iPod UI" comment still suggests they were stuck in the mindset of the time. They thought it was unlikely that Apple could deliver a horizontal platform, rather Apple would be lau…

> For example, the bullet "scaling the user experience to lower HW specs may be challenging. iPhone mini may be closer to iPod UI" comment still suggests they were stuck in the mindset of the time. They thought it was unlikely that Apple could deliver a horizontal platform, rather Apple would be launch a series of individual phones at different prices, each with bespoke interfaces, just like all the players had been doing, over and over.

Indeed. I referred to it at the time as the 50-model strategy.

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

#145

Post by Sharlin »

sybercecurity wrote: post #68
anonu wrote: post #29

I was expecting sort of the opposite, for Nokia to deride the whole iPhone thing. But it was quite the opposite, they understand what they were facing. Ultimately, the could not meet the challenge fast enough.

Nokia produced several early smartphones. Most ran SymbianOS that showed what was possible. The connectivity wasn't there to make it really useful and this was the age of "smaller is cooler" mobile phones, so they tried to keep the screens small. I imagine that there were several people in Nokia that understood the potential of a phone that could also act like a mini-computer.

The first Nokia phone-mini-computer was the original Communicator, with a 640x200 resolution and a full keyboard, launched in 1996(!) Of course at that time it was targeted purely for business users, but by 2007 they already had a well-established high-end consumer smartphone selection (the N series – rather more advanced than the first iPhones). They just weren’t able to pivot to the touchscreen form factor, largely due to betting on Symbian – I can see how writing an entirely new OS userland from scratch wasn’t a terribly attractive idea.

In the end they did that too, of course, and the N9 was an astonishingly good phone, with a slick zero-button interface and silky smooth scrolling and multitouch gestures. And a terminal and reasonably-privileged root access if you were so inclined. I used a normal ssh/screen/irssi combo to IRC. It’s such a fucking shame that Maemo/Meego was killed.

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

#146

Post by turnsout »

macintux wrote: post #118
turnsout wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you aren’t already familiar, Clayton Christensen’s theories on this, on innovation and disruption, are widely praised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen

Yeah, this is classic disruption. The amazing part is, I can almost guarantee that execs at Kodak read The Innovator's Dilemma, but it didn't help. Same goes for Nokia. Knowledge of the problem is apparently insufficient.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

wegwerfbenutzer wrote: post #64
criticalfault wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can see the same thing happening today. BYD+CATL are the new iphone and other manufacturers are Symbian, Motorola and Sony Ericsson VW, Toyota and friends cannot change fast enough. They should have started with big battery investments 10-15y ago and RnDing then, not now when Market is flooded.

BYD+CATL is Android. Tesla is Apple.

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by bjourne »

lysace wrote: post #107
bjourne wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at SE when the iPhone was released and that is not how I remember it. :) The mood was more like "lol, it has no buttons!", "too expensive!" and "it can't work without a stylus!" I think many seriously misjudged how "cool" Apple was back then (and consequently how much they'd be willing to spend on status symbols) and how good a snappy touch ui could be.

Did you work with Symbian/UIQ software, feature phone software or something else? The feature phone team actually showed signs of getting the idea of no-jank and a rich UI very early.

Lund working on feature phones! My job was writing and managing test suites for verifying the J2ME implementation. It was a top secret collaboration with Motorola. They took QA work extremely seriously and bugs could delay major launches. Unfortunately for them, "rock solid J2ME" wasn't really what customers were after. :)

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

#149

Post by actionfromafar »

paganel wrote: post #103
criticalfault wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can see the same thing happening today. BYD+CATL are the new iphone and other manufacturers are Symbian, Motorola and Sony Ericsson VW, Toyota and friends cannot change fast enough. They should have started with big battery investments 10-15y ago and RnDing then, not now when Market is flooded.

> BYD+CATL Unless these two companies change the laws of physics in order to exponentially improve the overall performance of batteries (exponentially faster charging times, from hours to 5-10 minutes, exponentially cheaper batteries that would last longer) then, no, they won't be the next Apple. Just ask VW, they almost bet it all on EVs and now they're already with one foot in the grave because of that.

They bet the farm on hiding diesel emissions before that.

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

#150

Post by tmnvdb »

jampekka wrote: post #39
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nokia had deeply dysfunctional internal politics at that point. Tell me a large company other than Apple that wasn't completely dysfunctional.

Google was doing quite well?

I work with Google and dysfunctional is too kind.
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