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Nokia made too many phones

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Re: Nokia made too many phones

#21

Post by vdaea »

mikko-apo wrote: post #15
Erratic6576 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think that it was Microsoft which destroyed Nokia from the inside in order to make Windows phone great at last https://slate.com/technology/2013/09/microsoft-nokia-deal-a-...

Nokia's then CEO's Elop's "burning platform" memo leak in 2011 seemed to hurt Nokia a lot by painting their existing and upcoming phones as inferior. > I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform. https://www.engadget.com/2011-02-08-nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-r...

Which is what they were. It's 2024 and Android phones still don't hold a candle to Apple phones...

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#22

Post by Hamuko »

hasmanean wrote: post #13

There 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 phones had a one-week battery life if you weren't using them like a smartphone. We had the Nokia 7650 in our family and if you used it as a camera, the battery life would definitely not be a week.

The conventional wisdow that had to be abandoned was that a phone was a brick that you had in your pocket and that did text messages and phone calls, instead of it being a computer that you might sometimes use for text messages and phone calls.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#23

Post by bborud »

hasmanean wrote: post #13

There 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…

I think Apple succeeded because they were outsiders. I worked for a telco 2 years after the iPhone came out and for years I met a lot of people who denied what was happening while it was happening. Because “we know how this works”.

15 years ago a lot of telco execs thought smart phones would be a small niche for the next 10 years. And would play only a minuscule role in “emerging markets”.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#24

Post by amarant »

bborud wrote: post #14

Nokia could both make too many phones and fail for other reasons. The article doesn’t say Nokia failed because it made too many phones. However, I do remember the first time my wife got an iPhone. Her Nokia was breaking down and she was trying to decide which Nokia would replace it. She spent a week comparing models. In the end she said “fuck this” and got an iPhone. What’s really funny was that Malcolm Gladwell did…

Her Nokia was breaking down?

What warzone had she been to? I remember dropping my old Nokia down a stairwell once. When I fetched it there was a crack - in the tile floor!

Of course this was one of the older models, I think the marketing material included the phrase "supports SMS!" or something to that effect.. Good times!

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#25

Post by rusticpenn »

jbverschoor wrote: post #10
Erratic6576 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think that it was Microsoft which destroyed Nokia from the inside in order to make Windows phone great at last https://slate.com/technology/2013/09/microsoft-nokia-deal-a-...

Nokia was long gone when they were acquired. They were beaten by RIM/BB They tried gaming, didn’t succeed. Later on messaging, but didn’t have the platform (ping)

Not outside USA

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#26

Post by thriftwy »

Nokia could not stick with a single platform, once their heirloom Symbian became inadequate they caved. Like the absolute majority of corporations, they did not understand platforms. Platforms require decade-long thinking, instead of "Q4 this year".

N900 with its Maemo was pretty good phone. Too bad Nokia could not develop on the success. Then they have MeeGo and then the disastrous Windows Phone. MS had the same problem with Windows Mobile - Windows Phone 7 - Windows Phone 8.

15 years later, the Debian + Firefox + APT platform on which N900 was based is still alive and requires surprisingly few maintenance. If they went with it they will have a solid, hassle-free platform which could compete with early Android, especially as they could easily make it run Android apps as well.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#27

Post by rusticpenn »

bborud wrote: post #23
hasmanean wrote: post #13

There 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…

I think Apple succeeded because they were outsiders. I worked for a telco 2 years after the iPhone came out and for years I met a lot of people who denied what was happening while it was happening. Because “we know how this works”. 15 years ago a lot of telco execs thought smart phones would be a small niche for the next 10 years. And would play only a minuscule role in “emerging markets”.

Nokia N900 was pretty awesome and Maemo was a great OS. Unfortunately killed by internal politics.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#28

Post by diggan »

pavlov wrote: post #19

Around 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 somehow lacking in some other aspect, as Apple made basically the same bet but seemed to have pulled it off. Maybe the design wasn't designy enough.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#29

Post by hasmanean »

Hamuko wrote: post #22
hasmanean wrote: post #13

There 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 phones had a one-week battery life if you weren't using them like a smartphone. We had the Nokia 7650 in our family and if you used it as a camera, the battery life would definitely not be a week. The conventional wisdow that had to be abandoned was that a phone was a brick that you had in your pocket and that did text messages and phone calls, instead of it being a computer that you might sometimes use for tex…

So the breakthrough happened when Apple shrunk the computer into a phone, not when Nokia grew the phone…? Interesting.

I remember writing apps for the iPhone and the biggest hurdle to getting it submitted was sizing the screens for the display variants.

There would have been no chance of developing an app for the Nokia ecosystem with all the different screen sizes your app would have to support.

Even downloading an app or ringtone required going through all these scammy websites and you had to enter your exact Exact model number and pay somehow…then they would text you a link or something.

Apple really cleaned up the ecosystem with the App Store. It made apps safe to download.

Re: Nokia made too many phones

#30

Post by blackoil »

It is easy to find such reasons now that Nokia has failed. But they ruled for a decade in part because of too many phones. They had phone at each budget range and demographic.

What they missed was a move from hardware centric world to software centic. The attempts with Linux etc were too little too late.

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